Gary Shapiro of the CEA testified recently in front of Congress against a proposal to protect this distribution and recording of all audio & video content. This proposal was made by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Way back the days when the VCR was first introduced, Hollywood was upset and concerned that people would record broadcasts and not watch live news or go to movies. A similiar hearing was held in front of Congress and legislation resulted that allow a consumer to make 1 copy for personal use.
What this new technology yielded was an entire new business resulted -- video releases of movies, video rental, etc.
Now with new digital technologies there is a push to eliminate the ability to create copies for personal use AND prevent the time and space shifting of content.
If they succeed, you can say goodbye to your TiVo. If you are one of the fortunate people to have a Multi-Room Video system, you can say goodbye to watching 1 DVD movie on multiple TVs throughout your home during a party. And forget ripping music from a CD, or distributing music to different rooms in your home for playback.
If they succeed, you will probably have to buy all new equipment. Because the broadcast flag they want to embed in the encoder and the decoder of the content hasn't been developed yet. So some CE manufacturer will have to develop some costly copy protection scheme, get everyone to adopt it as a standard, and then you'll have to buy all new expensive equipment just to receive TV or satellite radio broadcasts.
Check out Gary's speech transcript on http://www.ce.org/. And stick up for your rights as a consumer by calling your congressman!
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
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