[DMCA-Activists] Politech: CDT Won't Oppose Broadcast Flag

[Seth Johnson]

The Center for Democracy and Technology supports universal
content control. -- Seth


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Politech] Center for Democracy and Technology won't
opposebroadcast flag [ip]
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 09:15:24 -0600
From: Declan McCullagh <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden

Background on broadcast flag:
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/05/06/appeals-court-tosses/

Public Knowledge's disagreement with CDT on the broadcast flag:
http://news.com.com/5208-12-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=8996&messageID=64541

---

http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-5842143.html
August 23, 2005 12:06 PM PDT

An array of non-profit groups including the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the American Library
Association spent years fighting the idea of a "broadcast flag,"
a federal regulation that would have outlawed many digital TV
receivers and tuner cards starting July 1.

They won. In May, a federal appeals court unceremoniously tossed
out the Federal Communications Commission's regulations.

But now one non-profit advocacy group is breaking ranks with its
usual allies and handing Congress a road map to reinstating the
broadcast flag. The idea is to reduce piracy of digital TV by
prohibiting the manufacture of computer and video hardware that
doesn't sport copy protection technology.

The Center for Democracy and Technology on Tuesday published its
"recommendations" for Congress. Instead of telling politicians
that such a law would be unwise and that it would necessarily
infringe on Americans' fair use rights, CDT merely offers some
guidelines for what the first President Bush might have called a
kindler, gentler broadcast flag.

CDT said, for instance, in its road map: "The FCC did a number of
things right in its initial broadcast flag decisions, including
being open to approving new technologies even if they were
controversial."

"We're not lockstep with EFF/PK on this, so we're not out there
saying 'a broadcast flag regime inevitably sucks for consumers,'"
CDT analyst David Sohn told me in e-mail. "Aggressive opposition
to any and all possible versions of a flag rule is simply not our
position."

Does that mean that CDT -- which receives about half its revenue
from corporate contributions -- is quietly cashing checks from
the big media companies that have begun to lobby Congress to
reinstate the broadcast flag?

A now-deleted Web page, saved in February 2003 by Archive.org,
shows that Time Warner, Disney, and Vivendi (an owner of NBC
Universal) have been supporters. Though for the record, a CDT
spokesman said Tuesday that only Time Warner (that is, AOL)
currently is providing cash.

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