[opendtv] Re: MPAA tries to get sneaky (again) with broadcast flag legislation
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 12:44:23 -0400
At 4:09 PM +0200 10/3/05, Jeroen Stessen wrote:
>What is truly at the heart of the broadcast flag is broadcasters'=20
>ability to control content after it has left the airwaves and entered=20
>your living room. In short, it's another face of DRM.
How can you call it DRM? The content is completely UNPROTECTED.
What the Broadcast Flag represents is even more insidious that Must
Carry/Retransmission Consent. It is an overt effort by the media
conglomerates to use broadcasters to do their dirty work. It asks
that everyone downstream of the broadcast implement onerous DRM
solutions to protect something that is broadcast in the free and
clear. It seeks to restrict when and where you can use not only
broadcast content, but in all likelihood, ANY form of content that is
produced by these conglomerates.
And the best part is that laws already exist to prevent the illegal
re-distribution of TV content.
But these folks want more than law - they want total control over
your ability to consume content. They want to control not only the
content they produce, but every device that has the potential to
touch it. If the Federal Government were to open an organization like
MovieLabs, the civil libertarians would be in an uproar.
>And this is the kind of democracy that the US want to share with the world =
What Democracy? We've never had one, and hopefully never will.
We once were a representative republic, with a small central
government, where the States were not only allowed, but encouraged to
be different, to meet the needs of the people who chose to live
there. At one time capitalism was considered to be a good thing, and
competition was considered to be the fuel for our economic engines.
Somehow - with important precedents coming from our socialist
brethren in Europe - our governments have evolved into massive
bureaucracies that are unable to do the most basic things, like
dealing with a hurricane. We have the best government that the
special interests can buy. Competition is largely a thing of the
past, as virtually every special interest in this country has turned
to government to protect them from the evils of competition. And now,
with help from the politicians, they seek to extend their reach
deeper into YOUR pockets.
Here's a suggestion that might help save your asses...
Build your own Internet.
Regards
Craig
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