Public Knowledge - "New and Improved" Draft Broadcast Flag Bill: This Time for TV and Radio
Remember the “Hollings bill” back from 2002? It was a bill that would essentially put a copyright cop in your consumer electronics and PCs—to ensure you didn’t do anything with content that wasn’t authorized by the content industry. The bill put copyright owners in control of innovation. Here’s the US Senate Draft of the “Digital Content Protection Act of 2006.” Look familiar? It may go about it differently—but the DCPA is essentially the Hollings bill, only in pieces-parts. Instead of saying “one mandate to rule them all,” the controls split into different proceedings at the FCC:Oh my god, it's back. How many times do we have to kill this thing?
* One that requires the FCC to adopt the broadcast flag, and amend it in anyway it sees fit (including total reconsideration and rewrite of the rules!!!)
* Another that requires the FCC to adopt a radio flag for both over the air and satellite digital radio transmissions…”to prevent the indiscriminate unauthorized copying of copyrighted digital audio content transmitted by its licensees and the redistribution of such copyrighted content over digital networks.”
