Center for Democracy and Technology won't oppose broadcast flag [ip]
Begin forwarded message:
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Date: August 24, 2005 11:15:24 AM EDT
To: politech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Politech] Center for Democracy and Technology won't oppose
broadcast flag [ip]
Background on broadcast flag:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/05/06/appeals-court-tosses/
Public Knowledge's disagreement with CDT on the broadcast flag:
http://news.com.com/5208-12-0.html?
forumID=1&threadID=8996&messageID=64541
---
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-5842143.html
August 23, 2005 12:06 PM PDT
An array of non-profit groups including the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the American Library Association
spent years fighting the idea of a "broadcast flag," a federal
regulation that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers and
tuner cards starting July 1.
They won. In May, a federal appeals court unceremoniously tossed out
the Federal Communications Commission's regulations.
But now one non-profit advocacy group is breaking ranks with its
usual allies and handing Congress a road map to reinstating the
broadcast flag. The idea is to reduce piracy of digital TV by
prohibiting the manufacture of computer and video hardware that
doesn't sport copy protection technology.
The Center for Democracy and Technology on Tuesday published its
"recommendations" for Congress. Instead of telling politicians that
such a law would be unwise and that it would necessarily infringe on
Americans' fair use rights, CDT merely offers some guidelines for
what the first President Bush might have called a kindler, gentler
broadcast flag.
CDT said, for instance, in its road map: "The FCC did a number of
things right in its initial broadcast flag decisions, including being
open to approving new technologies even if they were controversial."
"We're not lockstep with EFF/PK on this, so we're not out there
saying 'a broadcast flag regime inevitably sucks for consumers,'" CDT
analyst David Sohn told me in e-mail. "Aggressive opposition to any
and all possible versions of a flag rule is simply not our position."
Does that mean that CDT -- which receives about half its revenue from
corporate contributions -- is quietly cashing checks from the big
media companies that have begun to lobby Congress to reinstate the
broadcast flag?
A now-deleted Web page, saved in February 2003 by Archive.org, shows
that Time Warner, Disney, and Vivendi (an owner of NBC Universal)
have been supporters. Though for the record, a CDT spokesman said
Tuesday that only Time Warner (that is, AOL) currently is providing
cash.
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