An Update from the EFF About the Broadcast Flag
This has been in my queue for a couple of days. The broadcast flag threatens to make archiving digital television very difficult, if not impossible. The EFF is asking for people to write to congress about this.
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Stopping the Signal: Broadcast Flag Update #2
October 10, 2005
Not long ago we updated you on the MPAA and RIAA’s shenanigans to smuggle the Broadcast Flag through the United States Senate. Those who paid attention during “Schoolhouse Rock” will realize that’s only half of the duo’s burden. To make the Flag law, they must march it past the House of Representatives, too.
Now the second shoe has dropped: 20 members of the House sent an open letter to Congressman Fred Upton, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet (part of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce), and its ranking member, Edward J. Markey. All 20 pledged their allegiance to the Broadcast Flag.
The letter is short, with a single substantive talking point. If Congress doesn’t deliver a Broadcast Flag pronto, warns the letter, content producers will abandon free, over-the-air broadcast TV.
To pound home this dire threat, the phrase “free, over-the-air television” is repeated no fewer than eight times – with four repetitions in four consecutive sentences. It’s a little like the local racketeer rustling up extra protection money by emphasizing over and over how beautiful your precious Ming vase is, and what a tragedy it would be if anything were to happen to it.
But no matter how many times this threat is repeated, it’s not even close to credible.
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