Earlier this month, we completely creamed the motion picture studios over the Broadcast Flag, an effort to criminalize open source and win a veto over the design of electronics and PCs. Now they're floating draft legal language on the Hill that would put the entire technology industry under their thumb, turning their friends at the FCC into device-czars with jurisdiction over any technology that could be used to facilitate "indiscriminate redistribution" of movies over the Internet (monitors, PVRs, analog-to-digital converters, hard drives, etc).
EFF has an action-alert you can use to tell your elected law-maker how you feel about this. Just enter your ZIP code and click submit, or better yet, rewrite our form letter to express your outrage in your own words.
A lawmaker who breaks America's televisions and PCs has no business expecting to be re-elected. In fact, such a Congresscritter would be lucky to get away with a mere tarring and feathering.
As a constituent and a proponent of innovation, I am writing to voice my opposition to legislation that revives the FCC's proposed "Broadcast Flag" regulation (47 CFR 73.9002(b)), which was unanimously struck down on May 6th 2005 by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Broadcast Flag cripples any device capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It makes digital TV hardware more expensive and less capable, impeding rather than accelerating the digital TV transition. Worse, it gives Hollywood movie studios a permanent veto over how members of the American public use our televisions and and forces American innovators to beg the FCC for permission before adding new features to TV.
The big media companies are threatening an HDTV boycott unless a Broadcast Flag law is passed and implemented this year. This is an empty threat. Viacom made that same threat back in 2002, yet CBS (owned by Viacom), still transmits nearly all of its prime-time shows in HDTV, even without the Broadcast Flag. For that matter, even if broadcasters like CBS aren't willing to provide programming for digital television, there are plenty of innovative new content creators who will.
