Vacation work — Stevens bill cont.
The Video and Audio Flag portions of this draft bill are among the most pernicious. (The draft is here.)
The first part of the bill claims to be aimed at protecting digital broadcast video content, but is actually directed towards controlling devices that attach to the internet. (Plug for article.) The idea is that all devices will acknowledge and adhere to digital “flags” placed in content. The flag itself is noncontroversial. The problem comes when you force all devices to listen to the flag and ensure that flagged content can't be sent online. So far, the FCC's own approval process has arguably been heavily controlled by the “content industry” — smothering in the cradle technologies for content protection that were viewed as insufficiently powerful. The bill provides very few limits on the FCC's discretion to create rules and procedures — and the FCC's track record in this area so far is not a good one.
The digital audio broadcasting section is curious — earlier versions of the bill prohibited personal copying. Now the draft vests complete discretion in the Commission to promulgate regulations about all kinds of digital transmissions. There's a Digital Audio Review Board established that will advise the FCC and is supposed to work towards a proposed regulation.
When did the FCC become the internet lawmaker? Why should the Commission be making rules about content online? There seems to be no limit to the power granted to the Commission under this section:
[T]he Commision may promulgate regulations governing the distribution of audio content with respect to –
(1) digital radio broadcasts;
(2) satellite digital radio transmissions; and
(3) digital radios
What's not included in this description? Anything and everything can be a “digital radio” - a bit is just a bit. If the goal of this bill is to be “deregulatory,” it's hard to see how that goal is being served. Why create technical mandates in this area?
And, by the way, isn't this bill about telecommunications reform? What's radio doing in here?
(Apparently the audio flag is essential to Sen. Frist.)
More tomorrow — plus auction news.
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The idea is more to protect broadcast as a distribution channel — protecting the content is simply a means to that end. It makes more sense in the context that is evolving — cable devices are soon going to have all digital outputs and recordings protected. The issue is whether digital broadcast will be part of that environment or left out in the cold, as it were.
I don't think it's correct to say the flag regulation applies to all devices that connect to the Internet. It applies to all devices capable of receiving digital television or cable signals. Granted, devices downstream from receivers will need to sign technology licenses in order to receive flagged content by digital means, and the terms of those licenses may be subject to the approval process — but (a) those same technology licenses are all coming anyway due to developments in cable and pre-recorded media; and (b) no device manufacturer need sign such a license, and even licensed devices will have no obligations with respect to un-flagged content. So if you believe the flag will have a stultifying rather than reinforcing impact, but content owners stubbornly persist in using it, it may actually wind up driving consumers away from broadcast toward content that still flows unrestricted to the Internet.
And so far nothing's been smothered. There was certainly some lobbying against some outputs, but the FCC has shown an inclination to set a lower bar for protection than the content industry would prefer.
P.S. Everything I said applies to the broadcast flag. The audio flag is a different case entirely, and I'm not sure I understand what the purpose is supposed to be.
The broadcast flag is for digital video, the audio flag is for digital audio.