Hollywood’s Next Assault
Kiss goodbye to the digital world you have grown to know. Kiss goodbe to innovation and economic growth and properity. Hollywood is very close to getting its way once and for all and when it does your ability to communicate electronically will be stifled once and for all - at least in the US. Get out there folks! Quit sitting on your asses and write your senators, write your congress critters, write your unelected president. Do whatever it takes to get this insanity stopped or your future IS going to suffer dramatically.
Hollywood Wants to Plug the “Analog Hole”
The Big Picture
The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a “well-mannered marketplace” where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood’s tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific, medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a “cop-chip” that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material — your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.
The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda. The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works.
This three-part agenda — controlling digital media devices, controlling analog converters, controlling the Internet — is a frightening peek at Hollywood’s vision of the future. …MORE
