I thought they just wanted to make sure that new types of devices had piracy protection.
That in itself isn't very much different than "eliminating the extension of fair use to any new types of devices". If the devices have to have piracy protection, and if by law you are not allowed to bypass that protection or even construct programs or devices to bypass it (already current law), than the content providers can lock you out of any legal fair use of your legitimately purchased content. You have the theoretical legal right to fair use now, but most forms of fair use are locked out by the device, and its illegal to attempt to bypass this lock out even if you never make illegal copies. There are also ongoing attempts to build rights management in to not just players for media but in to all hard drives or other storage media.
But the law goes beyond that. It changes the full existing fair use rights to "customary historic use". Thus you don't even have the theoretical fair use rights that you have now. You may have no right or ability (at least without breaking the law) to make copies of the same quality as the original show, or even slightly reduced quality copies like you can make from regular TV now with a VCR (the loss of quality on the highest setting for a VCR is minimal, and even the lowest setting maintains the same resolution).
It doesn't just cover digital media, there are active attempts to "close the analog hole" limiting your ability to make copies through analog recording devices (like VCRs)
bpdg.blogs.eff.org
Also even much of the "customary historic use" is being controlled to a much greater degree than in the past. For example broadcasters pressuring Tivo to allow for the deletion of premium content from the hard drive after a moderately short period of time (a few weeks). At the same time the content providers are trying to force a "broadcast flag" law. Originally they lobbied the FCC to make it a regulation but it was struck down by courts who ruled the FCC exceeded its authority. Now they are trying to make it law.
"A broadcast flag is a set of status bits (or "flags") sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not it can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include inability to save a digital program to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage, inability to make secondary copies of recorded content (in order to share or archive), forceful reduction of quality when recording (such as reducing high-definition video to the resolution of standard TVs), and inability to skip over commercials. In the United States, new television receivers using the ATSC standard were supposed to incorporate this functionality by July 1, 2005, but a federal court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's rule to this effect on May 6. The stated intention of the broadcast flag was to prevent copyright infringement, but many have asserted that broadcast flags interfere with the fair use rights of the viewing public."
en.wikipedia.org
In addition to limiting your use of shows, songs ect. the digital rights management required to enforce the limits also fragments the market. For example you can't use music from Itunes on other MP3 players, or download and use protected music from other services on your Ipod.
In addition to all of the direct negatives of these laws, regulations, and efforts, you also get the result that the content providers get legal protection, not just against making illegal copies but against any temps to bypass or negate any of the current or future controls they decide to implement. One current control is the DVD region code. There is nothing illegal about playing a DVD made for Europe on an American DVD player but on most DVD players (and the people pushing these laws are also trying to stamp out "region free DVD players") it won't work, and any attempt to make it work is illegal. Any number of other restrictions could be put in place, without any political debate or legal process, and again any attempts to get around them would be subject to legal penalty possibly including imprisonment even if the actual copyright is never violated.
See also
bpdg.blogs.eff.org
Tim |
