Heat Wave: BFIV

That really has nothing to do with this post, but we seem to be having one. It feels like it's 85 degrees F outside, there's a hot wind blowing, and the smell of smoke and burned leaves drifts down from the hills, the kind of air we get before the hills ignite or the ground slips (that second one is a myth, but people here always say it, because we had a big quake in one of these spells).

BFIV is just the next post on this topic: David Ho/AP are reporting that the FCC is on the verge (I'd love to say of a melt down but no) of voting for the Broadcast Flag.

"This is potentially the first real FCC step into regulating the Internet," said Ed Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. He said the FCC is moving too quickly and without public hearings on an issue affecting many millions of people.

Remember Ed Black was on the BF Panel last spring at the DRM conference, where he cautioned consumer groups to get involved in the standards bodies or risk losing the fight to a few companies who might define a standard with a competitive disadvantage for other companies, where consumers then also lose out on the most competitive marketplace possible.

"This is the first step that leads to trash dumps full of obsolete technology," said Chris Murray, an attorney for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. He said the FCC is working on "a solution that isn't going to work, with technology we haven't yet seen, to a problem we don't yet have."

Also, from Ed Felten's BF comments submitted last spring to the FCC in response to the MPAA's comments on the necessity for the BF:

As a technical matter, these [MPAA] claims are simply incorrect -- a significant investment of time, effort, and expense is required to capture and redistribute DTV signals in this [over the internet] manner. I call the Commission's attention to these errors because the erroneous assertions underlie MPAA's entire argument in favor of regulatory action by the Commission.

Note in the earlier Piracy Meter post, Informa Media states that they don't believe movie piracy will be pervasive in the US until 2020. It's still worth contacting the FCC, and easy, using either Digital Consumer or EFF's email template. Take a minute, and write a couple of your own words into the template.

Posted by Mary Hodder at October 25, 2003 05:03 PM