Joe Born, the CEO of Neuros (whose Recorder 2 technology lets you convert your TV shows, DVDs, and home movies into PSP and iPod vids) has written a fantastic open letter to Congress decrying Hollywood's A-Hole Proposal, wherein all the analog outputs on your devices would be locked up to the entertainment industry's specifications:
Today, we make a next generation digital VCR of sorts that would effectively be outlawed if HR 4569 becomes law. This device records to digital form from analog sources of all varieties: TV broadcasts, DVDs, etc. This device is meant to make it easier for consumers to adapt content they have already obtained legitimately for use on portable video devices, including those made by our own company and by others such as the Sony PSP and Apple iPod. Although it is theoretically possible that devices like ours could be used for piracy, the reality is that they present little practical threat since vastly better technologies are already widely used by pirates. These alternate technologies are already outlawed by the DMCA and would be made no more illegal and no less used by the proposed legislation.
Devices like ours, on the other hand, are emerging on the scene to provide consumers with a legal and moral option for getting more use out of content they obtain legitimately, and are thereby providing them with an incentive to purchase content rather than pirate it.
