Pact Reached to Stop Pirating Of Digital TV Over the Internet

Seth David Schoen schoen at eff.org
Mon May 13 17:15:01 EDT 2002


bear writes:

> But you know, I really don't give much of a crap about commercial
> content anymore.  Will this system get in my way if I try to
> make and distribute (and play and copy on standard hardware) a
> nice digital-video, digital-audio recording of a family wedding,
> or an original computer-generated movie, or a demo video for my
> buddy's band?  'Cause really, that's the problem as far as I'm
> concerned; if the system prevents people from making and
> distributing our *own* content with compatible hardware, then
> it has to be destroyed.

Interfering with that use isn't a design feature of the current BPDG
proposal.  There is an effort to use legislation like this to begin to
eradicate open-standards-only equipment from the market (Hollywood
executives are calling CE equipment without DRM "legacy equipment"!),
but there is no current clear proposal to ban support for open
standards.

There is the general risk that hardware could be required to assume
by default that input data is copyrighted and being copied without
permission (a "guilty until proven innocent" policy).  A rule like
that is not part of the current Hollywood-supported mandate, but might
be at issue in the next round, which is meant to involve regulating
analog-to-digital convertors.

-- 
Seth Schoen
Staff Technologist                                schoen at eff.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation                    http://www.eff.org/
454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA  94110     1 415 436 9333 x107

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