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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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.

Good, more limits on the FCC

[Ingolfke]

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

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.

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Sununu

[G�tz]

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

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

[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.

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

[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: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.

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!

[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.

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.

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.