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Yet another bill has been introduced into Congress trampling rights and common
sense in order to suck up to corporate media intrests. And this one is a
doosy, on the level of the atrocious free speech infringing DMCA.
It's Senate bill S.2048, also known as the Consumer Broadband and Digital
Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). It would prohibit the
sale or distribution of digital devices, unless the device includes
copy-protection standards set by the government. The hope is to stop the
Napsterization of digital media, but all it really does it make it illegal to do
pretty much any kind of copying of any kind on your computer. This bill would
cover any kind of hardware and software that might possibly be used to copy
something, from TV's to computers. It wants to make anything that can copy a
copy-protected work illegal. If the same bill was introduced back in the 70's,
VCR's and cassette tapes would not exist, and you would not be able to tape TV
shows or record music from the radio. Other possible aftershocks of this
legislation include:
- limits on "format-shifting," for example, the ability to create
mix-CDs of music you've paid for;
- controls built into hard-drives that
would allow files to be labelled as "unmovable," so they could not be backed up,
or moved to another machine, nor could the drive be effectively optimized;
- restrictions on the manufacture and distribution of devices and programs
that can play unrestricted formats, such as MP3 audio and DivX video files.
But that's not even the worst of it. As this Wired article
explains, the effect on coders and the open source movement could be enourmous.
Within 3 years after the bill becomes law, the only code programmers will be
able to distribute will have to have embedded copy-protection schemes approved
by the federal government. Due to the very broad wording of the bill, the CBDTPA
regulates just about every program on your computer, and this includes
simple stuff like the "copy" or "cp" command on a Windows or Unix computer.
Anything that could even remotely be able to reproduce copy-righted works would
be affected by this bill. The only loophole is that you could still program
anything you want on your personal computer, you just couldn't distribute to
anyone. And since most other countries are smart enough not to make laws like
this, it would effectivly create a firewall around the US since any program
imported (read: downloaded) from a non-US country that didn't include these
standards would be deemed illegal. That would have huge affects on the open
source world, where code is collaborated on with people from throughout the
world. If this bill passes, it could lead to a "US-Linux" version that is
created independently of any other version, since incorporating non-US code
would be deemed illegal. Scary scary stuff.
And of course the major media companies love this bill, like Disney and News
Corp. Luckly so far there seems to be a large public backlash against it. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation has a webpage set up discussing the bill and what you
can do about it. The Justice department created a web-form for
comments, though contacting your local senator would probably be a better idea.
Hopefully through public outcry we can prevent this bill from passing and
becoming law. We don't need yet another DMCA.
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