Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Senate SSSCA hearing on "the digital television transition"

[Steve Schear]

At 11:49 PM 2/27/2002 -0800, John Gilmore wrote:
> An EFF media release pointed me to this Senate press release:
>
> U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation
> announcement of hearings:
> http://commerce.senate.gov/press/107-159.html
>
>            Chairman Announces Hearing on Digital Content
>     Copyright Protection, Broadband, and Digital TV Transition
>
>   WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), Chairman of the
>   Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation announced today a
>   full committee hearing on digital content copyright protection, the
>   promotion of broadband services, and the digital television transition
>   on Thursday, February 28, 2002, in Room 253 of the Russell Senate
>   Office Building.  Senator Hollings will preside.
>
> This is the guy who is going to try to outlaw VCRs for HDTV.  Receivers
> that can listen to over-the-air broadcast HDTV and record it without copy
> protection crap would become illegal to own, make, or distribute.
>
> He and his buddies in Hollywood are trying to outlaw the GNU Radio
> software, among other things that the copy-prevention mafia doesn't
> like -- such as open PC architectures.

I'm not sure how they can effectively outlaw the GNU Radio as long as the 
basic code is fully unbundled and offered as a signal processing instrument 
test set construction kit (i.e., it doesn't come packaged with any 
"demodulators" and such).  All "add-ons" should be in a separate code set, 
maybe in different open source support group.  This, of course, requires 
GNU Radio to support dynamically linked modules and scripting, as has been 
discussed.

steve