IP: MPAA wants all A/D converters to implement copyright protection.

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei () rsasecurity com>
Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:15:52 -0400
To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: MPAA wants all A/D converters to implement copyright protection.

[For IP, if you see fit - pt]

My mind has been boggled, my flabbers have been ghasted.

In the name of protecting their business model, the MPAA
proposes that every analog/digital (A/D) converter - one of
the most basic of chips - be required to check for US
government mandated copyright flags. Quite aside from
increasing the cost and complexity of the devices many,
manyfold, it eliminates the ability of the US to compete
in the world electronics market.

If this level of ignorance, chuptza, and bloodymindedness
had been around a hundred years ago, cars would be
forbidden to have a range greater then 20 miles, to
protect the railway industry, and transoceanic airline
tickets would have a $1000/seat surcharge, to compensate
the owners of ocean liners for lost revenue.

I know that Tinsletown is based on dreams and fantasies
(as well as the violation of Edison's movie patents), but
someone needs to sit these people down and teach them
the lesson that King Canute taught his nobles.

Peter Trei
[The above is my personal opinion only. Do not
misconstrue it to belong to others.]

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http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/23/2355237.shtml?tid=97
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MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!

Posted by jamie on Friday May 24, @09:30AM
from the op-amp dept.

A month ago, the MPAA filed its report [PDF][1] with the Senate
Judiciary Committee on the terrors of analog copying. I quote: "in
order to help plug the hole, watermark detectors would be required
in" -- are you sitting down? -- "all devices that perform analog to digital
conversions." At their page Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age[2],
the Senate lays out the issues they'll be looking at, including briefs from
corporate groups, and provides a comment form[3] so your opinion can
be heard as well. As Cory Doctorow writes: "this is a much more sweeping
(and less visible) power-grab than the Hollings Bill, and it's going forward

virtually unopposed. ...the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on new technologies to
Hollywood."
Doctorow's article on the "analog hole"[4] for the EFF does a great job of
explaining the issues to non-electrical-engineers, and has many
thought-provoking 
examples of how requiring such technology would be a giant step backwards.

[1] http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/content_protection.pdf
[2] http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/feature.cfm
[3] http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/input_form.cfm
[4] http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html

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