Re: [DMCA-Activists] DRM news

[Jonathan Watterson]

On Thu, 2002-06-13 at 11:09, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
> 
> I thought it as the issue that RMS and Bruce Perens were discussing a
> month or so back...
> 
> They (certain parties) want to make DRM a requirement in television and
> furthermore a requirement that all devices have it.
> 
> That means no FS implementations of TV.
> 
> Wish I had more details.
> 
> - Serge

Hey, Serge, thanks for asking, and you're not a schmuck. ;) I suddenly
realize I haven't been keeping you guys posted on what's going on. Let
me catch up.

The issue you mention is the BPDG, or the Broadcast Protection
Discussion Group. It is a nominally "open" group, reporting to a
subcommittee of the MPAA, that's been meeting for the past year to come
up with tech specifications for copy-protection/DRM controls to be
installed in all devices capable of transmitting digital TV signals,
including any computer with a video card. The end goal of the group was
to present its results to Congress and have them made mandatory. This
would criminalize GNU Radio. The group consists mostly of people from
the tech industry, Hollywood, cable and satellite TV, and related
industries.

We and the EFF crashed the party. We put ourselves on the BPDG mailing
list. Seth and Cory at the EFF maintain a weblog documenting the whole
thing, at http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/. Last month Brad and I, along with
Seth, Cory, and dozens of slashdotters, sat in on a conference call,
scheduled to hammer out the details just before the "final report" was
to be presented. That phone call is documented here:
http://old.lwn.net/daily/bpdg-notes.php3. 

Largely as a result of our free-software advocacy and the EFF's consumer
advocacy, the whole BPDG process fell apart. Tech companies like
Philips, who looked ready to comply with Hollywood's plan for political
purposes, suddenly were willing to raise their concerns -- after all,
the plan would have given Hollywood *veto power* over any new
digital-TV-related technology. Even *Microsoft* objected to the process,
essentially putting them on our side. As a result, the "final report"
was mostly a documentation of the group's inability to achieve
consensus.

I would forward the "final report" to the list, but it consists of
several large ZIP files each including a bunch of really gnarly Word
documents. If anyone wants it, let me know.

The next steps: the BPDG has passed the buck to the shadier "policy" or
"parallel" group, formed in conjunction with the BPDG to handle politics
while BPDG handled tech. We're on their mailing list too, but after the
slashdotted conference call, the cabal seems to be much less willing to
discuss their business online. It is likely that before the end of the
year, either (1) the parallel group will produce a DRM system that they
will ask Congress to rubber-stamp, or (2) we will see a renewed push for
the Hollings bill. Either way, however, we have thrown a big monkey
wrench into the system and bought some time. 

The most immediate thing that y'all can do is spread the word. Shining
the light of day on this process is what will thwart it. They're still
putting people on the mailing lists for BPDG and the "parallel" group;
directions are at http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000005.html#000005.
Other than that, we're still formulating a longer-term strategy (and
we're always open to ideas). But the bottom line is that now the DRM
hydra will stick another head up somewhere and we have to watch for
where that somewhere will be.

J

-- 
Jonathan Watterson                                Digital Freedom Organizer
http://digitalspeech.org                          Free Software Foundation

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