p2pnet.net News:- You’re at home, fresh popcorn in hand, watching Mickey Mouse on your new digitally enhanced, flat-screen home entertainment system with surround-sound. It cost a packet, but that’s OK. Your kids are laughing their heads off at Mickey’s antics, and everyone’s having a great time.

Then suddenly POW! Everything goes black and instead of watching Mickey, you and your kids are suddenly watching static. Because although your new system also has state-of-the-art remote control, you’re not the one using it.

Your Mickey movie wasn’t the approved Hollywood version and technology embedded in the system you paid all those dollars for ratted you out to another entertainment industry system and Hollywood shut you down.

Last September the Federal Communications Commission unanimously adopted provisional rules to allow digital TVs to pull in cable signals as easily “as plugging a card into a set,” as a CNET story put it here, going on:

“The rules allow manufacturers to make sets with so-called plug-and-play capabilities, so consumers can just “plug in” their equipment to receive digital services. Customers insert a security card, or a cable card they would get from their cable operator, to decrypt scrambled cable signals on the sets.”

Under it, digital televisions must be able to receive and recognize an electronic ‘flag’ broadcasters can embed in their programming to “foster the transition to digital TV and forestall potential harm to the viability of free, over-the-air broadcasting in the digital age,” stated the FCC.

CNET says the future of home video recording “could hinge on an obscure fight between movie studios and consumer electronics makers over the connections used to ferry digital TV signals to high-definition television sets and other devices”.

It’s obscure largely because the mainstream media have again been snowed by Hollywood.

But it’s not only home recording that’s under threat.

“The fight over plugs and piracy is just one facet of the ongoing battle in Washington, D.C., to control how computers and other devices can read, save and copy digital content like movies and music,” says CNET. “This particular battle is focused on digital television. But many observers say that once strong copy protection is established for one medium, it could quickly be adopted for others.”

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to read between those particular lines, especially considering that “antipiracy protections have become inextricably tangled with new ‘plug and play’ rules”.

“Digital rights management is critical to the dissemination of high-value content through this equipment,” Fritz Attaway, executive vp of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is quoted as saying.

“If we cannot provide adequate and effective security, those delivery systems can’t be used for high-value content” or, paraphrased, We, not you, will decide what you watch, how you watch it and from whom you get it. Or else.’

The new rules … say that almost any device can receive and unscramble copy-protected digital cable signals - if in turn, it can ensure that the programming isn’t passed further along in unprotected digital form,” the CNET story says.

“That means that if a TiVo box records a digital program, it has to keep it wrapped in high-grade copy-protection in order to send it digitally to another device on a home network, for example.”

The birth of Broadcast Flag
Broadcast Flag, dreamed up by that small group of movie companies and record labels known collectively as Hollywood (with a handful of associated hardware and software manufacturers lurking behind them), ostensibly calls for purpose-built technology to be ‘inserted’ into streaming stations under the pretext of preventing copyrighted items from being pilfered on- and offline.

Attaway’s boss is JackValenti and he dubbed it “access control or redistribution control”.

To be accurate, though, it’s Consumer Control and it’s a major component in Hollywood’s clever marketing plan to have hardware and software Consumer Control technologies and legislations locked into the America’s laws and legal frameworks, initially, but uiltimately, to be used to force the adoption of similar ‘controls’ in other parts of the world.

Consumer Control systems embedded in devices manufactured and sold by recording and hardware and software companies would allow Hollywood to legally plug directly into ‘user environments’ - your home, in other words - to manage what you play and/or view gaining, in the process, hitherto private, personal and confidential information from, and about, you, your likes and disliked and your habits.

This priceless information will decide what the Hollywood Green Machine can get away with (even if it’s really pushing things, as with the recording industry’s sue ‘em all campaign) and what it can’t (which, so far, isn’t much).

Moreover, persuading the entertainment industry to allow various ‘administrative’ and enforcement agencies to piggy-back (and load in) hidden surveillance and feed-back systems via “access control or redistribution control” technologies will be simplicity itself. In return, the various ‘administrative’ and enforcement agencies would increasingly act for, and on behalf of, the entertainment industry - something that’s already happening to an alarming degree around the world.

The Lockyer p2p letter under which a US state attorney’s office acted as a PR front “for Hollywood’s big money copyright holders” is one example, and the Big Music pseudo police raid on the homes and offices of a p2p company is another.

[Added April 12] - Then you have Pirate Lamar Smith and Hollywood Howard Berman’s FBI bill, not to speak of the Italian version here.

And it’s all part of an ongoing, very carefully orchestrated plan by Hollywood and others to plug directly into user environments - ie, private homes - to control what’s being played and/or viewed also gaining, in the process, hitherto private and confidential information from, and about, users and their habits.

One of the earliest, and most important, components was and is the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) bid to get government sanctioning to spy on music listeners under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which it dreamed up in the first place.

It was forced to back down. But, like the tobacco industry, Hollywood operates under the dripping tap principle. Drip, drip, drip. Eventually, everyone goes mind-numb. Tunes them out. And then they slip something past. Again.

Other components of the Hollywood attempt to not merely dominate, but totally control, the international entertainment market include:

US senator Howard Berman’s p2p hacking bill behind which Hollywood would have been able to pretty well hack at will without fear of prosecution or retribution - from the law, at least.

Of it, Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA (Computer & Communications Industry Association) said here, “Hollywood moguls have long railed against illicit tampering with their protected content by ‘hackers’ and ‘Internet pirates.’ Now the Hollywood studios and the recording industry seek statutory authority for their own hacking, spoofing, and virus attacks, with the capability to shut down many Internet websites and services at their discretion.” He added, “No other industry has been deputized to prosecute its own enforcement actions, and we see no compelling reason to provide this enormous grant of power to Hollywood.”

We also had Senator Fritz Hollings’ anti-piracy CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act), described here by Home Recording Rights Coalition chairman Gary Shapiro as, “a particularly dangerous delegation of broad, unfettered regulatory authority, which could have severe, adverse, long-term consequences for American consumers. Indeed, this is a breathtaking delegation of authority to a regulatory agency that is ill-equipped to perform such a monumental task.”

Then there was the Sonicblue fiasco. Sonicblue makes the Diamond Rio range of portable mp3 players, among other products, and has never been exactly popular with the entertainment industry. But Rio really upset them, especially the RIAA. So, copyright lawsuits flew thick and fast until they were eventually settled out of court.

Then came Sonicblue’s ReplayTV 4000 DVR with ‘autoskip’ to allow you to bypass commercials. And not only that, ReplayTV 4000 has a high-speed Net port so you can download and transfer video files and share recorded programs over the Net with up to 15 of your friends. In other words, it gives you complete control over how, what, where and when.

Enter Charles F. Eick, a Central District Court Magistrate out of LA who, during pre-trial discovery in a lawsuit with Sonicblue in the sights, in effect ordered the company to modify its DVR’s to collect data on what tv-watchers watch and to then pass the information to a group including Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; and, CBC, ABC and NBC - the very same crew which was suing Sonicblue for alleged copyright violations. Federal judge Florence-Marie Cooper overturned her colleague’s order. The suit was eventually dropped. when for the first time, “the entertainment industry [may have] given a covenant not to sue consumers for copyright infringement,” as EFF staff lawyer Gwen Hinze said.

The MPAA joined cable operators in urging the FCC to allow remote shutoffs to set-top boxes, said the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC). “By supporting what is referred to as ‘Selectable Output Control’, both the MPAA and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), are betraying assurances recently given to the Congress and to consumers,” said the HRRC on its web page.

The Selectable Output Control capability is, “unconscionable remote control of America’s living rooms and which Hollywood studio executives rebuked earlier this year during congressional hearings on digital copy protection,” stated the CEA. “Earlier this year, Hollywood executives told Congress selectable output controls were outdated and no longer needed, provided home copies are not redistributed over the Internet,” said CEA VP of Technology Policy Michael Petricone, “but MPAA’s filing yesterday supports the notion that cable should have the capability of controlling a consumer’s television set. Which position are we to believe; the one expressed before Congress or this latest stance taken with a federal agency?” Which indeed?

And let’s not forget this:

In 2002 the MPAA filed the Content Protection Status Report with the Senate Judiciary Committee and in it, called for regulation of the lowly analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) found in all kinds of electronic devices.

This is like demanding that the cap on your gas tank is regulated so it’ll only accept gasoline sold by the MPAA and/or the RIAA. If the MPAA (and indirectly, the record labels and system makers) gets its way, every ADC will have a ‘cop-chip’ that’ll shut it down if it’s asked to assist in converting copyrighted material.

And if you think the MPAA and RIAA could never get away with such obvious bottom-line-inspired self-interest, think again.

As we pointed out earlier, the record labels and movie companies already regularly use their trade associations to enveigle police agencies around the world into letting them not only initiate, but actually be part of, raids.

So the connection between the entertainment industry and different international police bodies already exists, and has done for decades. And needless to say, enforcement and surveillance agencies around the world would instantly recognize any such newly configured ADC as a heaven-sent opportunity.

But back to Broadcast Flag …
Broadcast Flag reared its ugly head while US Senator Fritz Hollings was trying to pass his anti-piracy bill.

The MPAA Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG) conceived the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) as a way of corralling digital television devices and technologies.

The BPDG, in turn, asked certain software, hardware, and consumer electronics companies - among them, Intel, Philips, Matsushita, Apple, and Microsoft - to get together to develop a standard to prevent digital TV broadcasts from being re-transmitted over the Net in a way that both allows technology, “to thrive” and, “the consumer to be protected,” as Lawrence J. Blanford, President and CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics North America whose company is/was a member described it.

But at the end of the day, it didn’t work out quite like that.

In fact, the BPDP ’standard’ would allow the entertainment industry, et al, to move into your home. And you’d pay the rent.

But to be more accurate, it wasn’t so much the main group that was the problem. Rather, a smaller bunch later dubbed 4C and 5C made up of Intel, IBM, Toshiba, and Matsushita, in the first instance, and Intel, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba, in the second, had a less than salubrious deal with the MPAA to promote certain ’security’ options and technologies, and to get them into the main standard.

In reality, of course, these secret options were the standard.

And you’d never have heard of 5C, at the least, had it not been for the efforts of Lawrence Blanford.

Broadcast Flag is, “really the same model for what’s already been happening on the video side,” CNET News.com quoted RIAA senior vice president of government relations Mitch Glazier as saying. “The concept of a similar ‘broadcast flag’ for digital television signals has already gained approval from an industry standards group, but has drawn criticism from opponents who say the technology will strip consumers of their traditional ‘fair use’ rights.”

The ‘industry standards group’ Glazier referred to was, of course, the BPDG.

“Convened by a few private companies, the BPDG reached many of its decisions in secret and repeatedly evicted reporters from its discussion lists and conference calls,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “BPDG sought the appearance of consensus and downplayed significant disagreements.”

And Lawrence Blanford said the technology supporting the “emerging plan” has the potential to remotely disable a device that’s recording a movie or other program in a consumer’s home.

Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Blanford said in essence, through their private contractual relationships, the small group of studios and companies [5C] would control digital TV technology and how people use their TVs, DVDs, and other devices in the privacy of their homes.

“All manufacturers of TVs, DVDs, and other devices will have to sign up for an overly broad, burdensome and private license, which will govern the encryption technologies that must be in these devices and the process to enforce copyright protection,” stated Blanford.

“This small group of companies will mandate the technologies, control the rules that govern the technologies, and change those rules whenever they desire.

“Most alarming, the public, consumers, licensees, and public officials have not been part of the process that developed the 5C approach, and they would be shut out of its implementation. In short, private interests are taking control of the balance among consumer rights and commercial interests and, as a result, establishing public policy.

“Philips cannot, and will not, accept that. We believe other companies will not accept that. Congress should not accept it either.”

Blanford said Philips had “lost all confidence” that the BPDG will achieve consensus, or that it will allow for serious consideration or adoption of technology solutions of equal merit presented by other interested parties.

“Private industry should be given a chance to reach a consensus,” he added, “but the process should be cleansed by the sunlight of government. Further discussion should be held in an open forum, with the involvement of those who are entrusted with the development of public policy.”

Calling on Congress “to reassert its role in this critical public-private partnership by providing an appropriate, public forum to continue these industry discussions and to foster workable solutions on a timely basis,” Blanford said Philips would offer, “complete support to such an effort, including offering related Philips technologies to all comers, under open, fair and easily available terms.”

He also called on other companies to join this discussion to make sure, “we get this right”.

Notwithstanding his concerns, “most of the hurdles to protecting copyrighted digital broadcasts from being illegally redistributed over the Internet have been overcome and a report is slated to be issued on May 17,” said an April 25 Reuters story.

Shortly after Lawrence Blanford revealed the existence of 5C, in a press release, MPAA boss Jack Valenti said, “The MPAA is very pleased that a broad, multi-industry consensus has been reached on the fundamental aspects of a technology, called the ‘broadcast flag’.”

Broad, multi-industry consensus? This was in truth a small, extremely venal group which, under the guise of guarding members against dangerous new technology, is doing its best to front what it calls a ’standard’ to give members control of digital TV technology and how people use their TVs, DVDs, and other devices in the privacy of their homes.

In fact, Valenti - from 1963 until 1966, a top advisor to former US president Lyndon B. Johnson - warned sternly that new technology threatens an entire industry’s [guess which industry] “economic vitality and future security”.

However, this wasn’t in 2002 - it was in 1982 and Valenti was referring to VCR’s.

Back to Black
Black says the anti-copying quest seems doubtful in and of itself, but, “there is something worse at work here: Proposals from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group would give Hollywood - not consumers - the right to decide what consumers may and may not record in the privacy of their own homes. BPDG chairmen say they intend to send the proposal to Capitol Hill for incorporation in a national law.

“If the BPDG proposal succeeds, ordinary people will not be able to cut and paste ‘protected’ sections of digital newscasts or other programming for their own use. Indeed, one scheme put forth by Intel and four consumer-electronics companies would make it impossible to view protected recordings on any hardware outside of one’s home.” Worse still, he goes on, the BPDG would let “media moguls” decide which new inventions would be allowed to copy existing media, and which not. Devices such as mp3 players would have to follow anti-copying instructions built into copyrighted media that gave only the producer the right to decide what their customers could do with them.

“They’d even have a place for people who dared to use products that didn’t follow their rules, or tried to go around the anti-copying technology,” says Black. “It’s called prison.”

Computer makers and consumer-electronics manufacturers that complied with the law - again, under pain of imprisonment - would be saddled with the bill for expensive re-engineering the proposal required, Black went on, also making the point that from the advent of the radio to player piano rolls, juke boxes and cable TV, the VCR and mp3 player, new media have threatened the old but, “At the same time, society has found ways to accommodate new technologies, pay writers, artists and other creators, and still hew to the principle that people who pay for content should have real flexibility in how they use it.

“Balanced copyright evolves along with society. It brings about progress. It makes possible innovation and creative uses of others’ work. It gives us old quotes for new books, ’sampling’ from the latest hit tunes, and new software features inspired by the ‘look and feel’ of others’ program.

“But many of those same creative uses will disappear with the BPDG proposal, at least as far as they go in the new world of digital television. Indeed, the plan calls for extending already flawed copy-control technologies into every digital device on the market, from PCs to digital cameras, camcorders and just about anything else that could process a digital image.”

Black reminds visitors to the association’s site that Hollywood tried to kill the VCR, too.

“Consider,” he says: “Until the video cassette recorder came along, no one thought of home taping as fair use. Now, Hollywood makes some 46% of its revenues from videos. Rebroadcasting TV signals over copper wires once seemed pointless and almost certainly illegal, but for the legal environment that gave us the cable TV system we have today.

Entrenched interests tried to exterminate both technologies and failed. They screamed ‘piracy’ and failed. And because they failed, those same interests - Hollywood and terrestrial broadcasters - are wealthier than ever before.”

As Black says, we didn’t believe them then.

Why should we now?

“Unfair, deceptive, and sneaky behavior”
These days, Mitch Glazier is the RIAA’s senior vice president of government relations. But it wasn’t always so.

Before that, he was chief counsel, Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, and former chief of staff to Howard Coble, one-time chairman of said subcommittee.

Mitch gained a certain notoriety when in 1999 he slipped the now infamous “sound recording” amendment into the unrelated Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, slated for safe passage through Congress. This made music recordings ‘works for hire’ which in turn meant artists weren’t able to get possession of their own masters. Naturally, the artists believed they’d been hung out to dry.

“RIAA had succeeded - in November - in getting legislation through Congress that labeled recorded performances as ‘works for hire’ which artists’ reps said would benefit the recording industry at the expense of musicians,” said a February 17, 2000, Washington Post story by Judy Sarasohn “Special Interests Of Revolving Doors and Turntables.”

“The measure, attached to another bill, came as a surprise to them,” it added.

The amendment not only surprised them - it infuriated them and led to an oversight hearing in May, 2000, chaired by Senator Coble who led off with: “… As many of you know, this amendment has caused some to criticize my colleagues, my staff, and me as having indulged in unfair, deceptive, and sneaky behavior.”

He went on that it was his belief that, “opponents of this language were overreacting”. However, artists and spokesmen for artists, “continued to express anxiety over the issue and I concluded that my calm interpretation did not assuage their comfort [”assuage their comfort”? ; ] nor did it resolve their problem. So I then decided to grant their request for this hearing.”

Mitch ended up at the RIAA as a lobbyist - with a very, very handsome salary increase. RIAA chairman Hilary ‘Reach Out’ Rosen, then President and CEO, claimed the RIAA didn’t know the position was going to come open when Glazier made the changes to the Satellite act. But she didn’t say, and nor was she asked, if she knew an opening of some kind, ideally suited to Glazier’s very special talents, was in the offing.

The bill was eventually repealed, but not before the RIAA boss Hilary Rosen, senator Coble and congressman Berman had used the hearing to start a mutual admiration club.

It’s also of interest to note that Howard Berman’s fief is California’s San Fernando Valley - next to LA and the Not-So-Magnificent-Seven movie companies.

And by an amazing coincidence, Berman’s top five contributors during this present election cycle were: Walt Disney Co - $32,000; AOL Time Warner - $28,800; Vivendi Universal - $27,591; Viacom Inc. - $13,000; and, News Corp. - $11,750.

This numbers come from opensecrets.org, which says: “The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization’s PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.”

It adds that in 1999-2000 (as of December 1, 2000) Berman pulled down close to $100,000 in PAC contributions from the communications and electronics sector which includes, of course, the movie and music folks.

“RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC”
In the meanwhile, Glazier was behind yet another ‘amendment’ for yet another totally unrelated piece of legislation which once again would have benefitted the RIAA. This time it was, believe it or not, the anti-terrorism bill - then only just approved by Congress - which caught his eye. As Wired News put it in “RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC”:

“An RIAA-drafted amendment according to a draft obtained by Wired News would immunize all copyright holders - including the movie and e-book industry - for any data losses caused by their hacking efforts or other computer intrusions ‘that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent’ electronic piracy.”

But once again, the amendment was spotted and the story added, “In an interview Friday, RIAA lobbyist Mitch Glazier said that his association has abandoned plans to insert that amendment into anti-terrorism bills - and instead is supporting a revised amendment that takes a more modest approach.”

Omnibus digital television transmission bill
On Broadcast Flag, once more, a July 15 Reuters story said, “Rep. Billy Tauzin, who chairs the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, said his staff has begun to prepare a comprehensive bill that would resolve questions swirling around the new medium, hoping free, over-the-air digital broadcasts would become commonplace before too long.

“The staff has been ordered to begin drafting an omnibus digital television transmission bill and to have it ready by September for discussion, unless all the parties can tell us by September that they have resolved the remaining issues that stand between their reaching agreement,’ the Louisiana Republican said at a press conference.”

On the same date, [Jack] Valenti said, “We are near the edge of an agreement on remaining technical aspects of the broadcast flag, and we’re anxious to avoid further delay. We hope to resolve these remaining matters in the very near- term so that we can move forward with implementing the broadcast flag as expeditiously as possible.”

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