[Discuss-gnuradio] SLASHDOT: MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
From:
Steve Schear
Subject:
[Discuss-gnuradio] SLASHDOT: MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
Date:
Fri, 24 May 2002 13:20:19 -0700
A month ago, the MPAA filed its report
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/content_protection.pdf ) with the
Senate Judiciary Committee on the terrors of analog copying. I quote: "in
order to help plug the hole, watermark detectors would be required in" --
are you sitting down? -- "all devices that perform analog to digital
conversions." At their page Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/feature.cfm) the Senate lays out the
issues they'll be looking at, including briefs from corporate groups, and
provides a comment form
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/input_form.cfm) so your opinion can be
heard as well. As Cory Doctorow writes: "this is a much more sweeping (and
less visible) power-grab than the Hollings Bill, and it's going forward
virtually unopposed. ...the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
(http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/) is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on
new technologies to Hollywood." Doctorow's article on the "analog hole"
(http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html) for the EFF does a great
job of explaining the issues to non-electrical-engineers, and has many
thought-provoking examples of how requiring such technology would be a
giant step backwards.