Sununu Sets Aim on Broadcast Flag Again

Flag waver writes "Senator John Sununu (R-NH) will introduce legislation that will prevent the FCC from creating technology mandates for the consumer electronics industry. As a result, the FCC would be hamstrung in its efforts to revive the broadcast flag. '"The FCC seems to be under the belief that it should occasionally impose technology mandates," Sununu said in a statement. "These misguided requirements distort the marketplace by forcing industry to adopt agency-blessed solutions rather than allow innovative and competitive approaches to develop."' Sen. Sununu previously tried without success to remove the broadcast flag provisions from the massive telecommunications bill that died before reaching the Senate floor during the last Congress."

Comments

I wish he was my representative

[packeteer]

I am sure i am not the only one who wished i was being respresented by someone sensible on topics like this.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Dissman]

I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, i campaigned for a congressional candidate in my district, he lost... but if he were in Washington right now, i *bet* he'd be a cosponsor to this kind of sensible legislation.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[arivanov]

If I was an american - I wish he was not my rep.

This is a classic case of throwing the baby out along with the bath water as this will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[2.7182]

"Wonder if Sununu's fired now ?"

(It's a palindrome I just made up.)

Re:I wish he was my representative

[kg4czo]

Why? This kind of legislation is good. It allows the market to grow on it's own as opposed to the FCC dictating what technology can and can't do with respects to DRM.

There is no mandatory interoperability or standards enforcement the FCC does with respect to these kinds of technologies.

In essence, the FCC doesn't have the power to dictate which road technology takes. They can, however, dictate by whom and how the frequency spectrum can be used, and also regulate censorship on public broadcast networks.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[fireboy1919]

will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards

No it won't. Their position as enforcers will remain.
It'll just keep them from using that position to making their own laws, which isn't the same thing at all. They'll still be the ones to find you and get you arrested if you start broadcasting your own pirate radio station.

I think this generally makes sense. The FCC is supposed to be just an enforcer, aren't they?

I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer the FCC to be the ones making the rules, though, since the alternative is that Congress makes 'em, but it might be for the best. What process do you have to overturn FCC mandates? How can you guarantee that you know about all the rules that they've made up?

Congress has a well-known process in place already to deal with both these questions.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[x2A]

That's what standards body's are for, and they seem to be doing a good enough job at the moment - i'd hate to see how backwards standards would be if left to a government body to dictate. Also, people should be free to move away from standards, and then it's up to the consumer to decide whether they think it's worthwhile or not. Consumer "voting" dictates which way standards go, that choice should not be taken away from people, especially not by an inept body like the government.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

You will not be able to copyright it - Goggle shows clear evidence of prior art.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[unity100]

yea. good legislation. good legislation that removes all barriers from whatever cable/telecom companies might want to do with whatever they have. Good for us - you wish.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were an American betrays why you feel that way... guessing you come from a nanny state like the UK?

Re:I wish he was my representative

[rollingcalf]

"This is a classic case of throwing the baby out along with the bath water as this will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards."

Wrong. They can continue to set transmission standards. Then it is up to the market for devices on the receiving end to choose the extent to which they will interact with those standards. The delivering of the broadcast flag is a transmission standard that the FCC can control, but the way the devices on the receiving end handle the flag should be left up to the market.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[indifferent children]

I like the effect of Sununu's proposed legislation on the broadcast flag, but the intent of the legislation (worshipping 'market forces', not promoting fair use), and the wider effects are terrible. The FCC was instrumental in standardizing, for instance, ATSC (the 'new' digital television standard). If there were no coercive body to create and enforce such a standard, how much do you want to bet that we would have a broadcast version of the HD-DVD/BlueRay wars? Do you really want to have to buy one TV to watch CBS and ABC, and a different TV to watch NBC and Fox?

Corporations are terrible at cooperating, and they don't give a rat's ass about the consumers' persepective. If they think that they can make more money by selling incompatible devices or services, then they will. Only a superceding, non-business, body can force standardization.

I don't expect that the FCC will make the best decisions all of the time. If they had been in the position to choose HD-DVD vs BlueRay, they might have made the 'wrong' choice (whichever one that happens to be). But either choice is better than what we have now, which is: both. By forcing one standard, even a suboptimal one, they also create profitable network effects and reduce expensive waste for corporations.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[chrisgeleven]

While I disagree with a good portion of his views, this is definitely one time where I can say that I am proud to be represented by him.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Zabu]

Living in NH, I am represented by Sununu.
He also voted against accepting the Patriot as is after it expired. He is the only congressman I have ever written concerning his actions. I think he is a genuinely great politician.
btw I am an independent.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[abaddononion]

Yeah, I agree with you. More poignantly, though, I think we're seeing more and more these days that you cant have one single organization who has too much complete say over a field of commerce. For example, look at the troubles we're having with the RIAA, for whom the entire music industry is a personal (or professional, I suppose) interest. I'm sure there are several music studios who DONT think you need to go after music pirates all blood and vinegar, but it doesnt matter, because the RIAA isnt acting under music studio's interests, or consumer interests, or anything. They operating under their own agenda. The FCC, who has obviously been MUCH more reasonable in their history, could have dangers of turning that direction, if they got to a point where it was their business to mandate everything about how these media formats are delivered, handled, AND protected.

Im not even saying that there shouldnt be someone doing this, maybe. I dont know where I stand on that. I mean, standards and consistency can be a nice thing, and maybe there SHOULD be someone trying to enforce certain security aspects over the entire playing field. But, I personally think if there should be such an organization, it shouldnt be the FCC. I know that that seems counterintuitive, because they would be almost everyone's first vote since they're already a close thing to that, but I think that's where we get ourselves in trouble with creating these mega-establishments.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I dont even try to maintain it as fact.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[jejones]

Two words: AM stereo.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Anonymous Coward]

That does not preclude copyright, provided the palindrome was independently reinvented. This is one of the good things about copyright in comparison to patnets -- you have the rights to your own ideas, regardless of whether someone else somewhere thought of something similar earlier.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[caseydk]

Oh come on!

The DoD's standardization on Ada worked out beautifully! Sure, it took them 12 years to decide on it and then ended up granting exceptions anyway, but think of all the useful code they developed and could be shared with other Ada developers. Think of all the efficiencies!

Re:I wish he was my representative

[vokyvsd]

No no, the market will cause standardization on its own, it doesn't require a non-business body (unless you call the consumers as a whole the "superceding, non-business body"). Look at Betamax/VHS, or mobile phone formats in the U.S. Do you honestly think that Blu-Ray and and HD-DVD will both live on forever until a committee makes a choice? The real difference between standards in a regulated and an unregulated market: the unregulated market will choose the best format, while a regulated market will choose a standard faster. I would rather wait for enthusiasts and early adopters to find the best format than be forced into a standard that may not be the best. You would rather avoid the uncertainty, which is certainly understandable. I don't think that particular debate can be resolved very easily. What I'm trying to say is that, contrary to what you seem to be arguing, there are definite benefits to an unregulated market. Also, as for "worshiping 'market forces,' not promoting fair use" - I would argue that allowing customers to make their own decisions IS fair use.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[illegalcortex]

I agree with you, partially. The recent story about the FCC mandating that cable boxes not be locked down to a specific provider is an example where I like for the FCC to stick its nose in. The FCC just needs to have a "Rule #1" that any guidance they give is to serve the consumers. The broadcast flag would have failed that test quite easily.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Anonymous Coward]

funny you should mention VHS/Betamax as consumers selecting the better format. Consumers selected the worse format. Consumers may or may not select a format.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Hatta]

But either choice is better than what we have now, which is: both.

Or neither. Seriously, what incentive does the average consumer have to "upgrade" to either format? DVDs and players are cheap, plentiful, and do everything anyone but the most extreme videophile wants. When they flop, it won't be because of the format war. It will be because there's just no demand for them.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to go off-topic, but Sununu was also one of the few republican senators pushing for restrictions and reform on the patriot act.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Your Pal Dave]

No no, the market will cause standardization on its own, it doesn't require a non-business body (unless you call the consumers as a whole the "superceding, non-business body"). As a counter argument I submit AM Stereo. The FCC decided to let the market decide (this was in the early Regan years) and 5 'standards' came about, none of which prevailed.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[HeroreV]

From Wikipedia:

With Long Play (LP) technology available by the mid-80s, a VHS cassette using the PAL system could run for up to 8 or even 10 hours, at the expense of picture quality and inter-machine compatibility. The longest Betamax tape marketed is the L-830 which runs for 3 hours and 35 minutes on the PAL system.

Sony suffered by their reluctance to sign licensing agreements with studios to have films made available in Betamax. Sony also refused to allow pornographic material to be released for their system.

Not everyone thinks "zOMG Betamax pwns VHS!!!!11!1one".

Re:I wish he was my representative

[djrogers]

Two words: AM stereo.

You're proving the GP's point. The market decided that we didn't need or want AM stereo, so we don't have it. I didn't have to spend extra money on every radio I've bought in the past 20 years, and radio stations didn't have to upgrade their equipment, all for something nobody wanted. If the FCC had mandated AM stereo we'd have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars as a country for something nobody wants.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[AK Marc]

No no, the market will cause standardization on its own, it doesn't require a non-business body (unless you call the consumers as a whole the "superceding, non-business body"). Look at Betamax/VHS, or mobile phone formats in the U.S.

There was never a standardization in VHS/Betamax. I know of some places still using Betamax (and last I checked, you can still buy Betamax gear, though expensive). Mobile phones have at least 4 completely different and incompatable communication styles. There is a move to get these standards available on differeing frequencies (CDMA over frequencies traditionally used for GSM). So, if you are implying that the free market will converge on a single technology to the exclusion of others, you are implying something in direct contradiction to your examples.

Companies want to force spending. They will gladly make something incompatable with a competitor if they think it benefits their bottom line. We will have HD-DVD and Blueray for years, with great waste of consumer spending on the format wars compared to having a single standard. I'm not saying the government should step in for that, but if they did, it would only be a benefit to the consumer, regardless of which one they chose.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[DavidShor]

My understanding is that is more of a anti-trust issue

Re:I wish he was my representative

[DavidShor]

I do not think that HTTP was mandated by the goverment, and gopher sites still exist. But at some point, the overwhelming majority of users pick a particular one.

Companies want to force spending, but they rarely have the power to. Making something incompatible with a competitors products has costs as well as benefits, and most of the time, the former outweighs the latter.

And when it doesnt, thats what we have anti-trust for.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Ambidisastrous]

More likely, each competitor in the industry builds a patent portfolio around their own proprietary standards, and they all duke it out for a few years while consumers hold off on committing themselves to the new technology due to the obvious vendor lock-in. Eventually one competitor pulls ahead and enjoys near-monopoly status for a few more years, while everyone else scrambles to build interoperability with the new de-facto standard. Then next disruptive technology comes along, early adopters begin scrapping their old hardware, and the cycle begins anew.

If we're lucky, an independent committee allows these competitors to agree on a shared format before it gets out of control and a true monopoly forms. Otherwise, each company focuses on that old holy grail of guaranteed sustained revenue, vendor lock-in. That's what the MBAs heading each company learned in school, and they're certainly not going to sacrifice that opportunity just to make things easy for the competition.

References: The early Internet (prodigy, AOL, etc.), HTML/browsers, the Unix wars, Windows vs. Apple, document formats, VHS/Betamax, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, cable TV (nearly), most things coming out of Sony, ...

Re:I wish he was my representative

[illegalcortex]

Clarification, please.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[DavidShor]

Cable companies were locking down their set-top boxes so that consumers would be forced to pay monthly for them(It also allows for easier DRM, but that is really a secondary concern). The bigger problem is that there are only 4 major cable companies(and therefore only a couple of set-top companies), so if cable companies are doing the buying instead of consumers, it creates a monospony situation and opens the door to collusion.

By forcing interoperability(all of the set-top boxes were using similar standards anyway), they put the buying power back in the hands of consumers, enabling a more efficient market structure.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[jejones]

That's not how I remember it... I recall there being multiple mutually incompatible systems, with only a few broadcasters or manufacturers willing to bet on any of them, so that AM stereo fizzled. In one room of my house I still have a Realistic AM tuner that can decode one of those systems, assuming anyone out there still uses it.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[packeteer]

I think the biggest issue was the fact that the VHS tapes were cheaper for content producers to release on. The 2nd biggest issue was probably the lack of porn.

How exactly can you say betamax was a better technology if it cost more and you cant even watch any porn?

Re:I wish he was my representative

[cptgrudge]

I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer the FCC to be the ones making the rules, though, since the alternative is that Congress makes 'em, but it might be for the best.

Here's how I see it.

With the FCC, the technical decisions may somewhat cater to corporate interests and the average consumer has little control over them, but they (mostly) stay within the confines of each subject addressed and (mostly) make informed decisions.

With Congress, the legislation that makes technical decisions will most definitely cater to corporate interests, include other irrelevant pork attached to it, and IMHO Congress lacks the background to make an informed judgment on the technical matters that they address. On the other hand, we can vote them out of office if we dislike them, however unlikely.

The FCC might be the lesser of two evils, but the whole broadcast flag thing is pretty ugly. The FCC has an obligation to the USA's public which should place the group of people much higher than a corporation. Limiting the public's ability to record content does damage to the public. Really, the FCC shouldn't concern itself with the legality of a certain action by the public, but only get involved if the action is in opposition to the public good. Whether or not the end result is used for an illegal purpose, keeping the ability to record content unfettered with restrictions would increase the public good.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[illegalcortex]

What you said simply doesn't make sense. There are four major cable companies - hence no monopoly. If you don't count DISH and DirectTV, then you could maybe argue they have a regional monopoly on premium tv programming. But if the history of local phone companies has taught us anything, it's that the federal government considers regional "monopolies" OK.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[DavidShor]

I did not say monopoly, I said monopsony(To your credit, I spelled it wrong in the last post). Big difference. Monospony is when there is one buyer, monopoly is when there is one seller.

As a side note, if a industry has a high barrier of entry(I cannot think of a better example then a cable company), Oligopolies(industries with few producers) act essentially the same as Monopolies.

But that was not my point, in the set-top box market, there are only four buyers. This creates a Oligopsony(only a few buyers), because of the cable industry's high barrier to entry, this is very simular to a Monopsony. A monopsony is just as bad if not worse then a monopoly.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[illegalcortex]

All of this seems beside the point. Since when in modern times has the US government done anything against a oligopsony, monopsony, or oligopoly? Even though Microsoft was found to be a monopoly, they escaped with relatively little punishment. Since the 30s, the only real use of the anti-trust law has been against AT&T in '82 (again, a monopoly). While I WISH there were more competition in different regions for cable, phone, power, etc., the reality is that anti-trust law doesn't really enter into the picture as your comment implied.

BTW, you can draw an almost direct comparison between the cable box lock-in and sim-locked mobile phones. Would you also call that an anti-trust issue?

Re:I wish he was my representative

[PMW]

*sigh*

A lot of people seem to misunderstand what the role of the FCC has been. They set standards for what is broadcast over the air only. They handle spectrum allocation, energy levels within frequencies, and sometime signal protocals. They have never mandated how the receiver works and they don't mandate how the trasmitter works. All they mandate is what actually goes over the air. That's how transmission standards are normally set. The NTSC standard mandates nothing about how TV sets are built, or TV cameras, only what you actually transmit over the air. The FCC broadcast flag is a complete anomaly because it mandates the details of how the receiver works. This is contrary to past standards where manufacturers were free to implement a solution anyway they liked. And yes, it did work wonderfully. It's similar to how the HTML standard defines how to format the data, but it doesn't make any requirements about how the program has to be written, and it certainly isn't illegal to make a browser that doesn't support a "mandated" feature.

The problem that you're seeing with the FCC being manipulated by industry is so common economists even have a term for it, "Regulatory Capture".

Re:I wish he was my representative

[DavidShor]

I meant that the motivation behind the ruling was anti-trust concerns, actual anti-trust law is rather weak right now. If the government has anti-trust concerns, they usually outsource to state governments or regulatory agencies such as the FCC. Sim locked phones could be construed as a anti-trust issue, but the matter is not as pressing, because many carriers offer unlocked phones. Not only that, but the barrier of entry for a small wireless company is not as large as one for a cable company.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't.

First of all becuse he's a senator.

More importantly because he's an evil war mongering bought and sold anti-progress rethuglican horse's ass. My apologies to all horses. He's only taking more, well, I hesiate to say liberal, OK, less draconian positions lately because he's up for election in 2 years and the democrat (he he) party just tromped thru New Hampshire, taking both US rep seats and both houses of the the state legislature by wide margins. Johnny's running scared and definitly doesn't believe this. He says he wanted it in the last bill when the thugs had the senate but he voted for the bill ignoring arguably bigger issues like net neutrality. And has voted for the war, the drug company giveaways, the oil company giveaways, the bankruptcy bill, Allito, Roberts, etc., etc.

You definitly do not want him as your "rep".

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Scudsucker]

No no, the market will cause standardization on its own

Hardly. DVD-R/DVD+R, eh? Forced standards can be a good thing for consumers and private industry. Take HDTV for example - at one point IIRC there were 40 different standards floating around. Consumers, even early adopters, didn't have much interest in popping several thousand dollars for a TV set that might be a very heavy, expensive door stop in a few years. And manufacturers didn't put much effort into HDTV as there was no standard and consumer interest was low.

If the government had stepped in and mandated a standard, consumers would have been a lot more confident in making the investment in and HDTV set, and manufacturers could have been making money hand over fist on people upgrading their TV's along with their VHS collections. A win win situation. Instead, "letting the market decide" has just wasted a lot of money. And wasted a lot of time - I saw an HDTV demonstration at PBS in 1991.

Re:I wish he was my representative

[Mateo_LeFou]

"Goggle shows clear evidence of prior art"

Finally, someone giving those bastards at google a run for their money

http://goggle.com/

Good, more limits on the FCC

[Ingolfke]

The FCC is taking on too much power. Limiting their abilities is a very good thing.

Re:Good, more limits on the FCC

[x2A]

Yes I think this is a good move, and would like to see it in more places around the world, perhaps even at the constitutional level, so that technology mandates cannot be pushed through other areas of government either.

Re:Good, more limits on the FCC

[Ingolfke]

I agree... I'd take it farther though. These government agencies use minor clauses and loopholes to radically expand their power. Government agencies need to have a specific and clear charter and have their ability to extend their authority into new and emerging technologies or problems limited.

Re:Good, more limits on the FCC

[x2A]

Except perhaps weapons, yeah. When our (us brits) constitution began formation back in 1100's, it was designed to protect against the king (who was the all powerful of the land), and over the hundreds of years following, limit the power of the crown, and move more power to the people of the land. Well now, the government formed, is becoming too powerful, and whilst we have "the vote", the power is not in the peoples hands as much as it should be, and government are free to pass laws that they shouldn't be. Our constitution is currently undergoing some reform, including creating greater seperation between branches (executive, legislative, and judiciary) of the government, but we definitely do need to limits on the areas where the government are able to legislate, such as where it comes to privacy, free speech, and (as this topic covers) technology. Government are becoming more powerful than they should be, and further seperated from the people than they should be (eg, american federal government), and the only thing that can ultimately result from this, is civil war.

I disagree!

[matr0x_x]

Am I the only one that feels these technology mandates are not a major impedence to innovation?

Re:I disagree!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:I disagree!

[Ed Avis]

'Innovation' is just a code word you have to use because if you say what you really mean then people will be upset. See Microsoft. The senator couldn't say that people should have 'freedom' to record what they like in their own homes - although the 'free market' is still an acceptable phrase.

Re:I disagree!

[wiredlogic]

Am I the only one that feels these technology mandates are not a major impedence to innovation?
It cut's both ways. They were working for "The People" when they forced a decision on ATSC, mandated support for closed captioning, and mandated support for CableCard. They were working against "The People" with the bogus broadcast no-copies flag.

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! A bill "for the people." From a republican, no less. Wonders never cease.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, New Hampshire is pretty liberty-minded. Not likely to see lots of neolibs/neocons there.

Re:Amazing

[slightcrazed]

You, my friend, have obviously never lived in New Hampshire.

Re:Amazing

[ettlz]

Even those conservative New England housewives?

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

So, republicans don't care about people? You are a true short-sighted asshole.

Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, with an emphasis on liberty and rule by the people.

Re:Amazing

[endianx]

I can not claim to know much about New Hampshire, but I can say that the Free State Project probably picked it for reasons exactly like this. That is to say, I am not surprised by a vote from New Hampshire that is opposed to government involvement in business.

Re:Amazing

[DavidShor]

Yeah, because warrant-less wiretaps, extraordinary rendition , and near constant government surveillance is the hallmark of any free system of government.

I'm going to create a party called "Shiny Happy People's Joy"(TM), proceed to kill babies, and and then watch you defend me.

Good news everyone...

[rizole]

Death by Sununu.

Sorry.

Re:Good news everyone...

[rizole]

I know it's poor work to reply to your own post but modding my post Flamebait? What? It's supposed to be a Futurama reference and I was aiming for +1 funny. I wouldn't mind a -1 unfunny or -1 offtopic but.....

Sigh!

Sununu

[G�tz]

My first thought was about an Opensolaris distribution by the Ubuntu folks.

Re:Sununu

[ettlz]

Yeah, Debian/Solaris crossed my mind too.

Oh my God, I'm a geek.

Re:Sununu

[niconorsk]

>quote>Oh my God, I'm a geek. And this revelation surprises you somehow. I mean, you are posting on Slashdot after all. :)

Re:Sununu

[StuckInSyrup]

Offtopic like hell, but my first thought was "Death by snoo snoo"

Re:Sununu

[ettlz]

>quote>Oh my God, I'm a geek. And this revelation surprises you somehow. I mean, you are posting on Slashdot after all. :)

Yes, not least because Slashdot is "news for nerds". I'm quite relieved to not be the latter.

Good and Bad

[mastershake_phd]

While I usually think the less government interference is best. The FCCs plan to make all broadcast TV digital will speed up adoption. As a person without cable(yes I know its 2007, but I refuse to pay $40/month) who gets his TV from an analog antenna and bitorrent. Im not sure where this leaves me. Ive looked into how I can watch digital broadcast now, and Im not entirely sure what kinda hardware I need without buying a new TV. Once digital broadcast is the only choice Im sure I can get a digital antenna to analog kit for $20 somewhere. Its not like the FCC doesnt already dictate technology. AM/FM, the cell spectrum, they have already dictated what part of the spectrum is for what. Lets just hope they dont start charging for broadcast TV. The FCC already sold off the cell spectrum, which is now being sold back to us at riduculous prices. $.05 for a text message?

Re:Good and Bad

[Rob the Bold]

The FCC already sold off the cell spectrum, which is now being sold back to us at riduculous prices. $.05 for a text message?

This sounds pathetic, but who is your "low cost" text message carrier? ATT/Cingular/Whatever-they-call-themselves-tomorro w is bumping up rates to 15 cents per. In my back of the envelope calculations, text rates are about 100x voice rates per unit of network bandwidth.

Re:Good and Bad

[rollingcalf]

Dictating what is transmitted is not the same as dictating what features manufacturers must put in their devices. It is not entirely unrelated, but it isn't the same thing.

It's fine for them to require or allow the broadcast flag to be transmitted, but not to dictate that the flag must be interpreted by end-user devices in the way the content makers want.

Re:Good and Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

A nickle is an absurd price for something that should be a "free" service included in the monthly rate. My son recently added his maternal grandmother to his cell phone account and whomever had the number she got beforehand had signed up for tons of messenging services. He had to get text messaging blocked from her number and got the provider to drop all the text messenging charges to it after the absurd bill showed up. Probably the reason the previous owner of the number dropped it or got dropped for them when they couldnt pay the ridiculous text messaging bill. Getting charged for sending and receiving these has all kinds of potential for abuse. That makes that nickle per message really a dime to them and if they raising it to 15 cents its going to be 30 cents. Customers should just drop that amount into a piggy bank every time they think of sending a text message and they would be much better off. I wouldn't be suprised if many have gotten unwanted spam.

Re:Good and Bad

[wiredlogic]

As a person without cable(yes I know its 2007, but I refuse to pay $40/month) who gets his TV from an analog antenna and bitorrent. Im not sure where this leaves me. Ive looked into how I can watch digital broadcast now, and Im not entirely sure what kinda hardware I need without buying a new TV.

As a fellow holdout you should know that the current plans are for the government to provide up to two $40 coupons per eligable household to be used for ATSC converter boxes. Eligable households are defined as those that don't already receive a subscription television service (digital or not). The coupon program is supposed to begin in 2008.

Re:Good and Bad

[Seraphim_72]

FFS! Really? Of all the ills the government could be fixing and they are going to hand out TV coupons?? Gads.

Re:Good and Bad

[mastershake_phd]

This sounds pathetic, but who is your "low cost" text message carrier?

http://www.net10.com/ 10cents min, 5cents text message. Even at these prices its hard to justify text messaging. Someone sends you a text you send one back, thats the same cost as a minute of voice. And you can usually get what you need to say done in 1 minute but not 1 text message.

I don't think I could support this bill

[zenyu]

As a MythTV developer I'm as anti-broadcast flag as one could be, but I don't think I could support this bill.

While the broadcast flag was a travesty amoung quite a few travesties surrounding the ATSC standard the FCC needs to be able to impose standards on the industry. Without mandated standards the cable industry would fragment with each manufacturer of devices coming up with their own standards like Motorola and Scientific Atlanta and all the different access control device manufacturers did in the 1990's. At the moment the FCC is pushing OpenCable(TM). It is in fact anything but open, but it is marginally better for the consumer than the current state of things in the USA because it allows you to buy a box from Motorola, SA, or TiVo you are not locked into whichever one your cable company chooses for their entire system.

But under a different administration the FCC might push for something like Europe's DVB CAM standards which are a better trade-off between allowing broadcasters to encrypt copyrighted material+ and allowing consumers to watch the material as they please once they've paid for it. In Europe they allow broadcasters to encrypt the material but once the consumer decrypts it with the key they buy from the broadcaster the copyrighted material is now a normal video they can transfer to their laptop or iPod to watch there. With "Open" Cable the materials are locked in your OpenCable receiver and can only be transfered to other DRMed devices if the broadcaster specifically allows it.

This bill looks like it would bar the FCC from doing the only good thing it does do, promulgate technical standards. It would basically religate the FCC to enforcing government mandated censorship and to enforcing technical standards directly dictated by congress, i.e. laws written by companies that write the largest checks to legislators and their families. If get the FCC out of the business regulation business, it would be much more wise to have it give up it's monopoly regulation powers and hand those over to the FTC. The FTC could apply the same standards to telecommunications as it does to other industries and could be more effective without getting into nitti-gritty regulation of specific fees, etc. It could simply bar a cable company that used anti-competitive tactics from selling any content over their pipes, or prevent a content company from owning any cable in the ground.

If you want to pass a simple law that makes any future broadcast flag moot, pass a law that removes copyright protection* from any work where the a paying customer can not easily remove DRM from media without paying an additional fee. You would quickly see content producers begin to police the broadcasters to prevent them from implementing any unworkable and expensive "content protection" schemes. The broadcasters would instead do something smarter like embedding your subscriber ID in the file when it exits the CAM so that any bit-perfect or even decent looking copy could be traced back to the subscriber who originally lost control of it.

+As a guy with a liberterian bent I have no problem with allowing DRM without restriction when dealing with non-government protected creative works in a competitive landscape.

*Copyright protection is a very non-liberterian form of restriction on property that prevents you from improving your property once it begins to look like something someone else did in the last 150 years or so. We accept this restriction on our liberty because the term of the restriction is short and it presumably encourages the distibution of new ideas into the public domain. When DRM prevents the entry of a work into the public domain this alone makes copy rights on works "protected" in this manner troublesome. Combine that with the current term of copyright, which has actually lengthened in these last two hundred years instead of shortening as the means of distribution became cheaper, and extending any copyright protection to a DRMed work in this day and age is downright immoral.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[AB_Positive]

Libertarian - in Sununu's section of the state too. I've had correspondance with him and frankly he's a jackass. I wouldn't be surprised to see that there was some interesting wordings attached to the end of the bill as well.

Do not trust Sununu.

-AB+

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[mangu]

Without mandated standards the cable industry would fragment with each manufacturer of devices coming up with their own standards like Motorola and Scientific Atlanta and all the different access control device manufacturers did in the 1990's

You mean, like the video tape industry was fragmented between VHS and Betamax? Let the market take care of fragmentation.

If you want to pass a simple law that makes any future broadcast flag moot, pass a law that removes copyright protection* from any work where the a paying customer can not easily remove DRM from media without paying an additional fee.

I'd go much further than that. Copyright protection should be awarded only to human-readable material. At most give it to non-DRM digital media that uses open standards. If you put any for of encryption you shouldn't need or receive any additional protection from the legislation. Copyrights are granted on the provision that the material will eventually enter public domain. If your work is distributed with any protection, how will the future generations use it after the temporary protection against copying granted by copyright law ends?

Likewise, copyrights should be granted to software only under the condition that it's distributed with source code. There are methods, such as hardware dongles, that protect executable software against unauthorized copying, you don't need copyright for that.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I remember him as George Bush the Elder's enforcer, he was the one who whipped people into line to get Bush's Supreme Court nominee confirmed. The nominee was Clarence 'Long Dong Silver' Thomas.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[PopeJM]

It seems as though every single time someone makes some kind of defensive fortification (be it stone walls or coding), someone finds a way around it. Just because things are DRM'ed doesn't mean they can't be un-DRMed unless they are made utterly flawed. People built huge stone walls, other people built cannons and the stone walls didn't stand a chance. You don't see too many castles in use as military bases these days.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[rollingcalf]

The FCC should only be in the business of setting standards on what is *transmitted*, and should not be in the business of dictating what end-user devices *must* do. It is then up to manufacturers to implement devices that interoperate with one or more (or none) of those transmission standards, and the market will decide their fate.

So it would be appropriate for the FCC to set a standard on how the broadcast flag is delivered in the signal, but not for them to force end-user devices to interpret it.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, like the video tape industry was fragmented between VHS and Betamax? Let the market take care of fragmentation.

Yeah I hated that, I had to move out of state just to get a VHS player, thanks to just about every city in my state going Betamax.

Wait, what did that have to do with the current argument about cable companies selling you a shitty, lockup-prone settop box (lol scientific atlanta) and you being stuck with it.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[awtbfb]

This is somewhat in line with one of my thoughts. Closed captioning is managed by the FCC. I'm a bit concerned that the language of this bill may much things up on this front.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[tmarklund]

something like Europe's DVB CAM standards which are a better trade-off between allowing broadcasters to encrypt copyrighted material+ and allowing consumers to watch the material as they please once they've paid for it.

Actually, some content providers (at least in Sweden) are starting to screw us consumers by implementing their specific encryption algorithms in only "approved" boxes. So, a DVB-S (satellite) box sold by one program distributor is no longer able to receive programs from another distributor, although they are using the exact same transmission standard. Up until recently this was solved by purchasing a CA module that you put in your box to handle the other distributors encryption system, but now they refuse to sell those (even though they previously agreed to the NORDIG agreement to provide CI slots and CA modules to all boxes). Having two different boxes to be able to watch channels from both providers is not very practical, but that is how it is now.

To make matters worse, the smart cards are now also locked to a SPECIFIC receiver, which means that you cannot have, for example, one box at home, and one in the summer house, and only take the card with you. You must now bring the whole box!

I hope the European Commision will bring this up soon, since it has been threatening to create rules for interoperability if the industry did not achieve this themselves within the last few years, if I remember correctly.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[boldtbanan]

Someone please mod parent up.

This isn't about the transmission format of the signal, which the FCC still regulates and creates standards for, it's about how end user devices interpret that signal and that is completely outside of the defined scope of the FCC.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking apples and oranges with ATSC and Broadcast Flag. How one transmits over OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES must be standardized therefore the FCC mandating that makes sense. It's for the public good. Broadcast Flag has nothing to do with the public good. It adds restrictions to what transmits over OUR PUBLIC AIRWAVES thus allowing a corporation to decide what can and can't be recorded, watched, etc.

It's pretty plain and simple. If these networks/providers don't want to transmit something openly then they have the option of not doing so. This in turn will result in the public getting their entertainment elsewhere. The network can then make a decision, broadcast open or die. The content providers can make a decision, provide it open or don't which of course results in no income.

As far as cable, that's not all that different. I'm sure most cable runs are somehow being allowed by the municipalities and I'm sure if they banded together to tell the cable companies to provide open, competitive pricing on cable boxes, open access, etc that could probably be arranged too.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[DavidShor]

Set Top boxes are more of a anti-trust issue, you are not comparing apples to apples

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[Dachannien]

There's really no good reason to oppose this legislation (caveat: we still haven't seen the legislation, so it may be too early to have this debate). If a governmentally-mandated technology standard is necessary, Congress can specifically instruct the FCC to develop such a standard by narrowly construing the scope of the FCC's power in developing that standard.

The problem is when the FCC attempts to essentially create law on its own without the involvement of our duly elected legislators, and this legislation would prevent that.

Re:I don't think I could support this bill

[Dachannien]

Asking unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks.... ;)

The content cabal's interest in getting the FCC to adopt particular standards isn't because of a desire to force interoperability. Interoperability is good, and once an open standard begins to emerge, most manufacturers will design for that standard (or design for compatibility with multiple standards, in the case of things like DVD-R and DVD+R). No, the content cabal wants FCC-mandated standards because it forces manufacturers to implement DRM that conforms to the content cabal's wishes. Compliance with such DRM would be optional without the technology mandate, and manufacturers would swiftly drop the unnecessary parts of the standard, including DRM, to produce a product that was both less expensive and more valuable to the consumer.

We see the converse happening in cases where standards are protected by patent. Support of UOP and region codes in DVD players is mandated by the DVD-CCA, which controls licensing of the standards for DVD players. Direct support for CableCARD in HTPCs won't happen because the implementation of CableCARD readers is protected by patent (much to my consternation - I'd fork over for digital cable today if I could get my custom PVR to receive the signals directly). There would be UOP-free and region-code-free DVD players as well as CableCARD-reading PCI cards all over the US if it weren't for these licensing issues.

Now, such patents won't work in the case of the broadcast flag, because a non-protected and DRM-free standard (ATSC) is already in use. Therefore, the content cabal needs the FCC to do its dirty work, and this legislation is intended to prevent that from happening without the focused review that Congress can provide and that the FCC will not.

Nobody imposed standards on the PC industry

[Anonymous Coward]

And free and open markets took care of that "problem".

Re:Nobody imposed standards on the PC industry

[K'Lyre]

Mod parent up.

Legislating the market

[adpsimpson]

...introduce legislation that will prevent the FCC from creating technology mandates...
...These misguided requirements distort the marketplace..."

The irony of the attempt to introduce a law to prevent the ability from another government agency introducing laws in the area it was set up to oversee is amazing - laws to castrate the law-making powers of a government body?

How would this law, restricting the placing of restrictions on the market to by a body set up to restrict the market (one way or another), fit the mythical golden rule that the free market (without intervention or restrictions) is only one step below heaven/utopia?

Re:Legislating the market

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

The irony of the attempt to introduce a law to prevent the ability from another government agency introducing laws in the area it was set up to oversee is amazing - laws to castrate the law-making powers of a government body?

Somebody needs to go back and relearn their civics(not the ones from Honda).
See the FCC is part of the executive branch, it(the FCC) should be executing the laws from Congress(the legislative branch)instead of just making up mandates through some sort of fiat the FCC does not posses. It's all about checks and balances.

Re:Legislating the market

[moeinvt]

"prevent the ability from another government agency introducing laws in the area it was set up to oversee"

Big difference between "introducing laws" and "oversight" and calling the U.S. Senate "another government agency" in comparing it to the bloody FCC is ridiculous.

When you talk about "introducing laws"(laws ==legislation) I presume that you mean implementation as opposed to some sort of suggestive effort. THAT is a power reserved for the LEGISLATIVE branch of government. Congress may pass legislation granting some power to the FCC, but "introducing laws" is not one of those powers. The FCC deserves to be whipped if it thinks it can implememnt some sort of mandate on every single hardware manufacturer in this sector.

Re:Legislating the market

[gravesb]

Orginally, the FCC was set up to regulate the radio spectrum. Radio stations were interfering with each other, and only through government regulation could radio become useful to the public. Since the spectrum was a scarce and limited resource, and was allocated by the FCC, the FCC was given certain powers that were deemed in the public's best interests. Examples include a requirement to provide opposition the opportunity to respond (The Fairness Doctrine, now largely discredited) and the requirement to inform viewers who is sponsoring certain news stories. The government felt that it was important that the public was well informed, to the extent they were willing to hedge the first amendment rights of editors in certain ways, such as by forcing them to publish responses to attacks and opinions. However, as news sources become more and more available, the public's ability to get other sides of the story are better than ever, without the FCC. If you don't agree with something on CNN, you can go watch Fox. Or you can look around the Internet. No longer are you restricted to a few radio stations and a newspaper or two. The FCC is still needed for deconflicting spectrums, but its content oversight role is really becoming less and less important, and should be reeled in. Of course, the FCC is currently trying to expand its content oversight role. The get back on topic, if the broadcast flag can somehow help the FCC regulate the spectrum in a more efficient manner and provide more content providers in the same amount of bandwidth, then maybe its ok. However, if its the FCC trying to dictate technology, then it needs to be prevented. Remember, the FCC is just as open to bribes as Congress is. Just because they are making the rules doesn't mean that they will be any more pro-consumer.

Re:Legislating the market

[dodongo]

It's well understood, I think, in policy theory that regulatory agencies are fully-legitimate actors in the policy process. They're given mandates by Congress, and of course, the House and the President control appropriations to the various departments and agencies. But once that mandate has been made law, the agencies are free to create regulations to enact that mandate however they see fit, until either public or legislative outcry against that regulation actually effects a change.

So you're half-right: FCC isn't allowed to "make laws". But it is allowed to make regulations as a method of enacting the laws it's charged with implementing. If Congress has a problem with that, then it needs to further change the law to specify bounds in which the FCC may act.

Cell phone networks

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Why? This kind of legislation is good.

It basically put US 10 years behind the rest of the world with regard to cell phones.

Re:Cell phone networks

[HUADPE]

As an American living in Canada (going to McGill), I'll take the disparate and fighting networks over the Canadian GSM system. Why? I pay twice as much here. My American phone costs around ~$40 USD/month, my Canadian, ~$80 USD/month. Same services, no ringtones or music.

Re:Cell phone networks

[mjh]

It basically put US 10 years behind the rest of the world with regard to cell phones.

I know a lot of europeans who agree with this sentiment. I haven't spent a lot of time in europe so I'm unfamiliar with what it's like over there. However, looking strictly from a technological point of view CDMA (e.g. verizon, sprint, et al) seems to be much more innovative than GSM. With GSM everyone gets timeslices to use the air whether they're actually using it or not. With CDMA, only those who are talking use the air. As a result, with CDMA you get a *LOT* more people using the same frequency than you can with GSM. It's no surprise to me that EV-DO (highspeed data on CDMA networks) is much more widespread than is UTMS/HSPDA (highspeed data on GSM networks). The CMDA networks had a lot more bandwidth available. (*)

If it's true that CDMA is more innovative than GSM, then it's not true that the US is 10 years behind the rest of the world w.r.t. cell phones. The result of not having a mandated standard for how digital cell phone technology was to be used has been that the market was able to innovate. And the result is more efficient use of the bandwidth, which means that the scarcity of the airwaves is lower. Which means cheaper cell phone service is cheaper. Which means more bandwidth available for high speed data.

Personally, I prefer the market based solution.

(*) There are, of course, technical details that override this summary. The technical details are not the point.

Re:Cell phone networks

[wiredlogic]

GSM is much overhyped by the Euros. It's only notable feature is the ease of transferring SIM cards between different devices. Incidentally, this makes it easier to steal and clone phones as well. It's worth noting that the next generation CDMA protocol, CDMA-2000, which is used to provide the EV-DO services has preserved forward compatability for older phones. This makes it easy to gradually deploy CDMA-2000 with a focus on the more profitable urban markets while keeping a fully functional network for all users. Data services can still drop down to 1xRTT where EV-DO is unavailable. The GSM networks are in a terrible bind because their next generation upgrade path is the entirely incompatable W-CDMA. During the transition phase GSM providers will have to install equipment to support both protocols and the phones will have to support both systems as well.

Re:Cell phone networks

[david.given]

With GSM everyone gets timeslices to use the air whether they're actually using it or not. With CDMA, only those who are talking use the air.

So what happens on a CDMA system if everyone talks at once? Do half the connections drop out because it's overcommitted resources?

Re:Cell phone networks

[Tancred]

No, it's complicated, but code division allows multiple simultaneous signals with the ability to pick out each signal at the receiving end. See the Wikipedia article for some details.

Oh, and to the grandparent - in GSM everyone does NOT get timeslices whether they're using them or not. Your phone in idle state monitors a paging channel, just like everyone else's. If you're called, you'll receive a message on that channel and arrangements for a dedicated timeslice are made. That dedicated resource is released at the end of the call.

Also note that a CDMA network (e.g. Verizon or Sprint) is not referring just to the radio interface, it's a whole system with many parts between those radio towers. A GSM network has similar pieces. UMTS (aka Wideband CDMA) uses code division instead of time division and has been rolled out to major cities by the GSM operators (T-Mo, Cing). Most operators in the world chose GSM and UMTS instead of CDMA.

PLEASE support this!

[Anonymous Coward]

All:

I'm posting anon for damn good reason.

I work engineering for one of the largest cable companies in the country. We've been hearing that all the new contracts have clauses forcing us to provide broadcast flag measures. We've been told to have it ready this spring for a test run against customers this summer.

I'm talking about:
  - Disable record
  - Limit playback to N times
  - Disable analog
  - Limit outputs to 480i
  - Disable fast forward/rewind/skip forward/skip back

I feel it's unethical... especially since you're already paying for these channels.

Please support this legislation. I don't want this to happen!

Re:PLEASE support this!

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense, but if you help implement this, you're scum. Oh, and is it Comcast? Sounds like something they'd do.

Re:PLEASE support this!

[silas_moeckel]

The FCC is involved how? Those are contracts between the cable companies and the broadcasters. Since they only cover devices that they provide people with G3 tivo's should not be affected. I could support this law if and only if it required cable companies to utilize open standards and not impose restrictions on top of those standards. Cablecard is a step in the right direction it needs to be made more free by disallowing charging per cable card and stop the cable card people from dictating what can be done once it's decrypted the data, just like we had in the 80's when they unscrambled the pay channels per house and did not get to care how many tv's were in the house.

Re:PLEASE support this!

[MobyDisk]

Hold up! The FCC's broadcast flag requirement has been removed. If you're company is rolling out the broadcast flag, they are doing it of their own volition.

Of course a cable company would not want a government body to force them to use a standard. They are feeding you FUD. It's like saying you work for AT&T and they are telling you how network neutrality is awful and you should vote against it.

Re:PLEASE support this!

[MobyDisk]

Ohhhh, THIS is why the cable company wants the FCC's powers limited. The FCC is standardizing cable boxes and the cable companies are going to lose their lock-in.

Before reading this article, I was hating the FCC's technology mandates because of the broadcast flag. But now I see that the FCC's technology mandates, in general, seem to be pretty good. B&W TV, Color TV, standardizing cable signals, standardizing set-top boxes. The FCC is a blight that the courts fixed. But it seems like we are better with them, than without them.

Re:PLEASE support this!

[glindsey]

Working in engineering as you say, your group has the ability to "accidentally" insert backdoors into the system that disable all of these restrictions. If enough people are in on it, these backdoors might, oh, I don't know, mysteriously not get caught by code reviews... curiously not be documented in QA test procedures...

Just a thought.

Re:PLEASE support this!

[pipingguy]

...a test run against customers...

Tech lingo or the attitude of the cable companies?

TV is not a neccessity

[FatSean]

It's OK if some people buy the 'wrong brand' and end up with a doorstop in a year or two. Why does the government have to make sure everybody can get fucking television?

Oh yeah, because the economy depends on you buying shit you don't need...and without TV telling you what to buy...you'll buy less shit you don't need.

So cynical today.

wait

[syrinx]

Hold on... something praising a Republican? On Slashdot?

Excuse me, I need to go check to see if cats and dogs are living together, and how many other of the seven seals are open.

Re:wait

[Scudsucker]

Hold on... something praising a Republican? On Slashdot?

Some Republicans are right wing assholes all of the time, and some Republicans can be right wing assholes some of the time, but not all Republicans are right wing assholes all of the time.

Sununu is in trouble

[fistfullast33l]

That's why he's pulling legislation like this out again. His state went primarily to the democrats last election (two house races, which was completely unexpected). So previously red new hampshire is now more indigo. Doesn't help that the state Republican party had a few problems in the 2004 election with the phone jamming scandal, which pissed the voters off a lot. So Sununu is currently the conventional wisdom's most vulnerable senator in the upcoming 2008 election. Both parties know this so I have a feeling his election is going to be not only closely watched but heavily contested. Anything he can do to put him in a good light with the voters will probably be done.

On a side note, the guy who was the mastermind behind the phone scandal, Terry Nelson, was also the mastermind behind the Harold Ford ad ("Call Me") which probably caused Ford to lose the election and is now the campaign manager for John McCain.

Re:Sununu is in trouble

[DavidShor]

Lets be honest, anyone stupid and racist enough to be scared by the "Uppity blacks are fucking white women!1!1" thing was almost definitely not going to vote for Ford. If the add was shown in any state outside outside of the south, it would have guaranteed Ford's victory unless everyone involved with the ad was fired.

Corkers subsequent win is more of a indicator for why I should stay away from Tennessee then of Republican dirty tricks.

Re:Sununu is in trouble

[fistfullast33l]

Possibly, but poll numbers before the ad were in Ford's favor. After, they were in Corker's. So you do the math on how many people it unconciously swayed. That said, I didn't really like Ford as a Democrat anyways. He was way to conservative for my taste. Of course, now he works for the DLC I think, so I don't think we've heard the last of him.

Re:Sununu is in trouble

[DavidShor]

You have a point, but elections have so many variables that it is hard to tell. I don't mind conservatives, if they are consistent they can be intelligent and reasoned and usually provide something to the debate. I didn't like him because he seemed insincere and opportunistic.

I say, let them implement the Broadcast Flag...

[denis-The-menace]

Only then will joe six-pack will give a damn about the DRM, etc.

Worst case scenario: MPAA snaps out of it and realise it's suiside

Best case scenario: People avoid Cable like the plague and view non-MPAA material off the Internet.

Who ... to ... hate ....

[cascadingstylesheet]

Google's Sununu ... checks standard list of geek prejudices ... head explodes ...

Of babies and bath water...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

This is a classic case of throwing the baby out along with the bath water as this will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards.

I'd like to have my cake and eat it to; I'd like the FCC to be able to enforce interop (mandating *open* systems) without them having the ability to enforce DRM (mandating *closed* systems). Taken as a whole, our laws have never been that philosophically consistent, anyway... why start now? ;-)

In reality though, the baby is just as bad as the water. The FCC's mandate is arguably more compatible with them having authority to enforce the broadcast flag than with them having the authority to enforce device interop. The broadcast flag *could* be argued to be part of a standard affecting how signals are broadcast over the public airwaves. Not quite as much with device interop (though there are some gray areas there, to be sure).

If we have to be consistent here, then I think the less they have the power to enforce, the better off we'll all be in the long run. It's not the norm for politicians and bureaucrats to be working hard to guard the interests of your average citizen. When those sorts start mucking around with "devices of class X *must* implement N" and "devices of class Y *shall not* implement Z," we usually get more standards mandated by lobbyists than by a zeal for consumer protection.

As for Sununu, he's trying to legislatively enforce a limit on a bureaucracy's authority. I gotta tip my hat to that.

On the other hand...

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

Sure, if the FCC isn't toothless, then it has the power to do much good for us. No argument there, but I think the old maxim still applies with regard to government authority: "Only relinquish power to your friends that you would not fear in the hands of your enemies."

Put another way, give the FCC as much power as you'd let a Sony exectutive have in setting technology mandates, because one day the Sony executive will be pulling the strings of the FCC's processes.

regulation sometimes a good thing

[Scudsucker]

Yes, the broadcast flag is a horrible idea, but one that comes from zealous copy control, rather than a new technical standard. IIRC, one reason it has taken so long for HDTV to catch on is that at one point there were 40 different standards floating around. Few consumers would committ to buying a TV for thousands of dollars when there was a good chance it would be useless if a different standard was adopted. If the FCC had steped in, and said "ok, this is the standard - make your own version if you want, but it wont be a standard HDTV" we could have started getting them 10 years ago, or more.

Re:regulation sometimes a good thing

[vtcodger]

***one reason it has taken so long for HDTV to catch on is that at one point there were 40 different standards floating around.***

Well, yes, it probably is. But's not the only reason or even the primary reason. Reasons why HDTV hasn't caught on:

• Not that many stations on the air because no one thought to ask how long it would take to put up new transmitters and antennae for essentially every TV station in the US. [Answer ... quite a while]

• High cost of DTV recievers and the fact that many households have LOTS of analog TVs (we have six in regular use and a couple of more in the garage)

• Lack of quality programming and way too many commercials. I sure don't need HDTV to watch fluorescent (or phosphorescent, I'm not sure which) moths flit around the screen for twelve minutes out of every hour. And that's one of the less annoying ads.

• Lack of cable bandwidth for HDTV over and above current channels in many areas.

• Poorer signal coverage for (H)DTV relative to Analog

• Lack of competent standards leadership from the FCC.

It's worth noting that Britain seems to have managed it's DTV rollout a lot better than the US. I'm still looking for a real detailled discussion of the differences in approach.

No way that analog TV in the US is going away at the end of 2009. It isn't going to happen unless a lot of senators and congressmen relish the prospect of having to find a real job after the 2010 elections. I'm thinking 2012 at the soonest, more likely 2015 or later.

Taking Things Seriously

[flanaganid]

I like to oot, oot, oot, ooples and Sununus

That's all I ever hear when I see Sununu's name.

Raffi for Senator!

Sununu and the FCC

[TimTerrific]

Mr. Sununu does not seem to understand why the FCC was created.

Not Following

[DavidShor]

To make sure radio stations do not jam each other?

Re:Not Following

[TimTerrific]

Yes, in part. Also to set technical broadcast standards for both radio and telephone--TV was just in it's infancy at that time. From

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent federal agency established pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 (title 47 of the United States Code). Section 1 of the Act sets forth the authority for the creation of the FCC, stating, For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications, and for the purpose of securing a more effective execution of this policy by centralizing authority heretofore granted by law to several agencies and by granting additional authority with respect to interstate and foreign commerce in wire and radio communication, there is created a commission to be known as the ''Federal Communications Commission'', which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this chapter. This is very broad authority. This section grants jurisdiction to the FCC over all interstate radio and wireline communications, which pretty much covers everything. You should also notice that this initial language has universal service language built right into it, setting forth the driving policy of making available to all people an efficient communications service.

So, like it or not, Mr. Sununu is wrong. The FCC is indeed responsible for mandating technical requirements and standards for consumer electronics. Why? So your cellphone doesn't interfere with your cable TV or your microwave oven doesn't interfere with your computer!

Re:Not Following

[DavidShor]

Ok, fair point. Do not see where the broadcast flag fits into that.

Re:Not Following

[antizeus]

If my device receives a broadcast flag, but ignores it, would you say that would cause radio interference with other devices?

Re:Not Following

[TimTerrific]

The 'broadcast flag' may or may not be mandated by the FCC. The issue is that Mr. Sununu is pushing the idea because the RepubliNazis are supporting the RIAA and MPAA in their efforts to control how we can use the media we purchase. Most consumers disagree, and we have several options:

1.Inundate the FCC with e-mails protesting the broadcast flag,

2. Quit purchasing CDs and DVDs althogether--boycott the industry.

3. Simply hack the broadcast flag when/if it comes, just like the DVD code.

he's a "real" republican

[r00t]

In recent years the party has been pretty much hijacked by Bible-thumpers, but Sununu still has the old-style republican values. The traditional republican values are/were reduced government, individual responsibility, not favoring random odd special interest groups, welcoming others into a melting pot rather than supporting divisions amongst ourselves, keeping down the taxes, and retaining a military strong enough to deter the troublemakers of the world.

Somehow this turned into the War on Porn, kissing corporate ass, anti-evolution, and spying on everyone. It's damn painful to see the party veer off the course of freedom, but you can still find many old-style republicans like Sununu.

Snu-Snu

[pipingguy]

I like his last name, it sort of encourages you to keep going: Sunununununu...