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Please help stop Congress from authorizing the Broadcast Flag

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flashbacck

flashbacck

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2001
1,921
0
76
As some of you know, a few weeks ago a federal appeals court ruled the FCC had no authority to prevent the manufacturing and sale of hardware that ignored the Broadcast Flag. Here's a previous ATOT link discussing it.

Now the film and TV industry are lobbying congress to give the FCC that authority. The following link will take you to a form that you just fill out with your name and location, and it'll be sent to your representative in Congress. I think it's a worthy cause, and it'll only take a minute of your time, so please fill it out. Thanks.

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JS...p2a&page=UserAction&cmd=display&id=129

The current plan: sneak a few lines of innocuous-sounding law past legislators to give the FCC the sweeping regulatory authority it needs re-instate the Flag. That would restore Hollywood's power to dictate the design of any digital equipment capable of receiving broadcasts - and once again, technology innovators would be forced to beg permission to provide you with the features and functionality for exercising your fair use rights.

The lawyers and lobbyists are moving fast, but you can move faster. Tell your representative you don't want Hollywood to hobble your digital media devices, and knock out the Broadcast Flag for good.
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From Wikipedia, more detail about what the broadcast flag is.

The FCC's rule is in 47 CFR 73.9002(b) and the following sections, stating in part: "No party shall sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements". According to the rule, hardware must "actively thwart" piracy.

The rule's Demodulator Compliance Requirements insist that all HDTV demodulators must listen for the flag (or assume it to be present in all signals). Flagged content must be output only to "protected outputs" such as HDMI ports, or in degraded form through analog outputs or digital outputs with visual resolution of 720x480 pixels (EDTV) or less. Flagged content may be recorded only by "Authorized" methods, which may include tethering of recordings to a single device.

Since broadcast flags could be activated at any time, a viewer who often records a program might suddenly find that it is no longer possible to save a favorite show. This and other reasons lead many to see the flags as a direct affront to consumer rights.

Particularly troubling to open source developers are the Demodulator Robustness Requirements. Devices must be "robust" against user access or modifications so that someone could not easily alter it to ignore the broadcast flags that permit access to the full digital stream. Since open-source device drivers are by design user-modifiable, a PC TV tuner card with open-source drivers would not be "robust". It is unclear whether binary-only drivers would qualify. Projects could also be affected at the application level. It would likely be illegal for the open-source MythTV project, which creates personal video recorder (PVR) software, to interface with digital television demodulators.

Some devices currently being manufactured, such as the pcHDTV devices intended for the Linux market, would likely be forced to halt production. This portion of the rule also effectively prevents individuals from building their own high-definition television sets and receiving devices. (It may seem far-fetched to a layman, but there have been many instances in the past where engineers have built their own analog TVs, and it follows that some people would wish to continue such pursuits in the digital age).
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K

keeleysam

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2005
8,131
0
0
Done, also modified it, and printed it out. I personally know my congressman, so I'll have a little talk with him about it next time I see him.
 
The Stigenator

The Stigenator

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
15,216
3
81
done, as an EFF member, i highly support this issue. I am all about open source and keeping the rights with the people.
 
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