MrGaribaldi
Posts: 2,488 +1
This just came down into my mailbox, and made me sit bolt upright!....
It covers what the MPAA wants to do in the near future (with the US senates help), and how it will affect you...
A short quote:
I urge you all to read it, think about it, then talk to your senators/whoever can help STOP this madness!
Tell your friends about it, show them that it doesn't just limit itself to computers, but will affect (allmost) everyones lives... (the allmost refering to hermits & the like)
It covers what the MPAA wants to do in the near future (with the US senates help), and how it will affect you...
A short quote:
...your cellphone would refuse
to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted
music coming from your stereo.
I urge you all to read it, think about it, then talk to your senators/whoever can help STOP this madness!
Tell your friends about it, show them that it doesn't just limit itself to computers, but will affect (allmost) everyones lives... (the allmost refering to hermits & the like)
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei@rsasecurity.com>
To: "'declan@well.com'" <declan@well.com>
Subject: MPAA wants all A/D converters to implement copyright protection.
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:17:08 -0400
My mind has been boggled, my flabbers have been ghasted.
In the name of protecting their business model, the MPAA
proposes that every analog/digital (A/D) converter - one of
the most basic of chips - be required to check for US
government mandated copyright flags. Quite aside from
increasing the cost and complexity of the devices many,
manyfold, it eliminates the ability of the US to compete
in the world electronics market.
If this level of ignorance, chuptza, and bloodymindedness
had been around a hundred years ago, cars would be
forbidden to have a range greater then 20 miles, to
protect the railway industry, and transoceanic airline
tickets would have a $1000/seat surcharge, to compensate
the owners of ocean liners for lost revenue.
I know that Tinsletown is based on dreams and fantasies
(as well as the violation of Edision's movie patents), but
someone needs to sit these people down and teach them
the lesson that King Canute taught his nobles.
Peter Trei
[The above is my personal opinion only. Do not
misconstrue it to belong to others.]
---
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 16:06:08 -0700
Subject: Hollywood wants to plug your analog hole
From: Cory Doctorow <cory@eff.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
FYI
--
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html
Hollywood Wants to Plug the "Analog Hole"
*New MPAA report reveals chilling agenda*
=The Big Picture=
The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood
has always dreamed of a "well-mannered marketplace" where the only
technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its
business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood's tune, the
movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose
technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and
innovation.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the "Content
Protection Status Report" with the Senate Judiciary Committee last
month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its
own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital
converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific,
medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be
controlled by a "cop-chip" that will shut it down if it is asked to
assist in converting copyrighted material -- your cellphone would refuse
to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted
music coming from your stereo.
The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda.
The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a
veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to
fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to
assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works.
This three-part agenda -- controlling digital media devices, controlling
analog converters, controlling the Internet -- is a frightening peek at
Hollywood's vision of the future.
=Hollywood Tips its Hand=
The "Content Protection Status Report"
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/content_protection.pdf) points to
future where innovation and fair use rights are sacrificed on
copyright's altar, where entertainment companies become *de facto*
regulators of new technologies, deciding which mathematical instructions
are mandatory and which are forbidden.
The first part of the document details the efforts of the Broadcast
Protection Discussion Group (BPDG: http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/), which
will release its final standard for the regulation of digital media
technology at the end of May. The BPDG's standard would ban the
production of digital television devices that had not been approved by
three Hollywood studios. Approved devices will only interoperate with
other approved devices. The combination of legal restrictions on digital
television devices and licensing restrictions on the computer
technologies they can interface with gives Hollywood an absolute veto
over all new digital media technology without the need for unpopular,
sweeping legislation like Senator Hollings's Consumer Broadband and
Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA).
=Plugging the Analog Hole=
But the most disturbing pieces of the Status Report comes later in the
document. The second section, "Plugging the Analog Hole," reveals
Hollywood's plan to turn a generic technology component, the humble
analog-to-digital convertor, into a device that is subject to the kind
of regulation heretofore reserved for Schedule A narcotics.
Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the building blocks of modern
digital technology. An ADC's job is to take samples of the strength
(amplitude) of some analog signal (light, sound, motion, temperature) at
some interval (frequency) and convert the results to a numerical value.
ADCs are embedded in digital scanners, samplers, thermometers,
seismographs, mice and other pointer devices, camcorders, cameras,
microscopes, telescopes, modems, radios, televisions, cellular phones,
walkie-talkies, light-meters and a multitude of other devices. In
general, ADCs are generic and interchangeable -- that is, a
high-frequency ADC from a sound-card is potentially the same ADC that
you'll find in a sensitive graphics tablet.
Hollywood perceives ADCs as the lynchpin of unauthorized duplication. No
matter how much copy-control technology is integrated into DVDs and
satellite broadcasts, there is always the possibility that some Internet
user will aim a camcorder at the screen, always the shadowy fan at the
concert wielding a smuggled digital recorder, always the audiophile
jacking a low-impedance cable into a high-end stereo. These bogeymen
plague Hollywood, and each one uses an ADC to produce unauthorized copies.
Accordingly, the report calls for a regimen where "watermark detectors
would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital
conversions." The plan is to embed a "watermark" (a theoretical,
invisible mark that can only be detected by special equipment and that
can't be removed without damaging the media in which it was embedded) in
all copyrighted works. Thereafter, every ADC would be accompanied by a
"cop chip" that would sense this watermark's presence and disable
certain features depending on the conditions.
This is meant to work like so: You point your camcorder at a movie
screen. The magical, theoretical watermark embedded in the film is
picked up by the cop-chip, which disables the camcorder's ADC. Your
camcorder records nothing but dead air. The mic, sensing a watermark in
the film's soundtrack, also shuts itself down.
The objective of a law like this is to make "unauthorized" synonymous
with "illegal." In the world of copyright, there are many uses that are
legal, even -- *especially* -- if they are unauthorized, for example,
the fair-use right to quote a work for critical purposes. Any critic --
a professor, a reporter, even an individual with a personal website --
may be lawfully copy parts of copyrighted works in a critical
discussion. Such a person may scan in part of a magazine article, record
a snatch of music from a CD or a piece of a film or television show in
the lawful course of making a critical work.
And you don't need to be a critic to make a lawful, unauthorized copy!
You might be someone who wants to "format-shift" some personal property
-- say, by scanning in a book or transferring an old LP to MP3 so that
you might take it with you while travelling with your computer. This is
absolutely lawful, but under the "analog hole" proposal, providing the
tools to make such unauthorized uses would be illegal.
