yes that was a good read i hope this is relevent...
from: Hollywood's copyright fight might hit digitally close to home
Hollywood provides a great escape, right? But how do consumers escape Tinseltown's desire to control more of our digital future?
Because, if Hollywood gets its way, future digital devices will be manufactured only if approved by the entertainment industry. Also, digital monitoring systems would prohibit analog-to-digital media conversions -- no matter how innocuous. Plus, under one proposal, computer file-sharing services, such as Morpheus, Gnutella and other peer-to-peer networks, will go the way of recently departed yet highly popular Napster.
All of these plans are being considered because technology is at the center of the copyright debate. Entertainment interests argue that the Internet threatens to topple their businesses by facilitating the easy exchange of all works, including copyrighted works, through file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and Gnutella. Accordingly, the entertainment industries are calling for a dramatic reformulation of copyright through laws and policies that erode many public freedoms in order to safeguard entertainment profits.
On April 25th, 2002, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a document with the Senate Judiciary Committee called the "Content Protection Status Report," in which the major film studios set out their three-point battle-plan for the copyright wars.
First is the so-called "Broadcast Flag" mandate. [The Broadcast Flag is a signal embedded in a digital television signal, thus the name of the mandate.] Under this regime, all devices capable of receiving a digital television (DTV) broadcast will only be allowed to employ "output" or recording technologies that have been approved by MPAA member-companies. While this is proposed as a means of slowing the "Napsterization" of Hollywood movies that are aired on DTV channels, it goes much farther than that.
Never before have American technologists been required to seek the entertainment industry's permission before making new devices. That's a lucky thing, too, as entertainment interests have sought to ban entertainment technologies from the player piano to the radio to the VCR.
A Broadcast Flag mandate, like the one currently under consideration by the FCC, could grant those same companies the right to veto features in both special-purpose entertainment devices and general-purpose PCs that may never even be used in connection with a DTV program.
The Broadcast Flag sets the stage for a much more sweeping objective: plugging the "analog hole." The "analog hole" refers to the fact that no matter how much copy-prevention there is wrapped around a digital file, eventually the file's contents have to be converted to an "analog" signal, which can be captured and re-digitized. For example, the music on a CD might be locked up in all kinds of advanced secret codes that prevent unauthorized copying and distribution, but when the CD is playing, the music can be captured by a digital audio recorder and converted to an "unprotected" MP3 that can be freely played on any device.
At the core of this operation is a standard piece of electronics called an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a low-cost, general purpose component that is employed any time the real world -- its sounds, sights and motion -- are fed into a computer. ADCs in your cellphone convert your voice to digital data; ADCs convert the signals captured by scientific instruments as diverse as MRIs, CAT scanners, seismographs and radio telescopes.
Accordingly, the report calls for a regimen where "watermark detectors would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital conversions." The plan is to embed a "watermark" (a theoretical, possibly infeasible, invisible mark that can only be detected by special equipment and that can't be removed without damaging the media in which it was embedded) in all copyrighted works. Thereafter, every ADC would be accompanied by a "cop chip" that would sense this watermark's presence and disable certain features depending on the conditions.
This is meant to work like so: You point your camcorder at a movie screen. The theoretical watermark embedded in the film on the screen is detected, and your camcorder records nothing but dead air.
Under such a system, all unauthorized analog-to-digital conversion of copyrighted works is prevented. The problem is that not all unauthorized reproduction is unlawful -- in fact, a great deal of unauthorized reproduction is legal and customary, such as quoting a politician's stump-speech in a newscast, or recording a "mix-tape" of your favorite upbeat songs to listen to during your morning jog.
More important still are the little, incidental reproductions we make of copyrighted works as we move through our daily round. A cop-chip in your cellphone would kill your conversation if you strayed too close to the watermarked music playing on a nearby stereo; your camcorder might refuse to capture your daughter's first steps if she takes them in front of your television during playback of a watermarked cartoon -- even your family holiday photos might come out blank if your loved ones pose too close to copyrighted building facades or logoed signage.
Hollywood's report to Congress moves onto its third legislative goal: "Putting an end to the avalanche of movie theft on so-called 'file-sharing' services, such as Morpheus, Gnutella and other peer-to-peer (P2P) networks."
P2P networks -- such as the Internet itself -- are simply general-purpose technologies, like VCRs or crowbars, with lawful and unlawful uses. Nevertheless, Hollywood argues that any system that facilitates infringement should be shut down by the courts. This is a time-honored tradition for the American entertainment industry, which spent 1976 to 1984 working in Congress and the Supreme Court to ban the VCR.
That initiative resulted in the landmark "Betamax" Supreme Court decision, which established the principle that the test of a technology's lawfulness is not its potential for being used for infringement, but its capacity to be employed for "substantial non-infringing uses."
VCRs -- which can be used to make unlawful copies of copyrighted videos -- are legal, on the basis of their myriad lawful uses.
P2P networks are much the same. P2P networks are systems that permit two or more parties to share digital files. These networks are employed by academics to share audio-recordings of lectures, by archivists who share public domain books, music and films, and by independent artists who share promotional works freely with their fans.
And yes, P2P networks are also used by file-traders who illegally share copyrighted audio, video and text files; just as VCRs are used by bootleggers who illegally duplicate pre-recorded VHS cassettes for resale.
The Hollywood call for a ban on P2P is the most recent attack on the Betamax principle. While it's not clear how the MPAA companies will shut down P2P networks -- which are inherent in the Internet's architecture -- we can, perhaps, look to recent history for some idea.
In 1995, Hollywood's representatives in government penned "The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights," calling for a neutered Internet whose functionality had been magically constrained to "permit [rights-holders] to enforce the terms and conditions under which their works are made public."
To observers of Hollywood's lobbying efforts, the third section of the Status Report is a return to this old objective.