One of the benefits of the FCC's often-laborious process of rulemaking is that it allows new issues to be discovered and resolved. This is what has happened in the Commission's proceeding on a seemingly-arcane issue: "encryption of the basic tier."

Public Knowledge’s Position

In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress told the FCC to increase competition in video devices—consumer electronics that can display and interact with pay TV content. That competition is still missing.

A consumer should be able to attach any non-harmful device to a cable network and access the programming that they are paying for. After all, when cable was analog you could simply plug your TV directly into cable.

This ability should apply to more than just “cable,” however—today, satellite TV is more popular than ever, and Verizon and AT&T offer subscription TV services that aren’t strictly “cable” (The FCC calls these MVPDs, or “Multichannel Video Programming Distributors”).

It's great to see the FCC issuing orders and moving its agenda forward. The National Broadband Plan called for the Commission to increase video device competition--that is, to create the conditions that allow for third-party devices to as easily interoperate with cable or satellite video as they can with Internet-delivered content. The Commission just took an important step in the right direction by issuing an order designed to fix some of the most egregious consumer issues that have made using CableCARD devices such a challenge. CableCARD is far from an ideal solution (for example, you can't use it with satellite), but with AllVid (the proposed successor) still on the drawing board, it's all we've got for the next few years.

What exactly is the difference between a “standard” and a “tech mandate”? There was some confusion today at the House hearing on the FCC’s efforts to promote a more competitive market in home video devices. (Here’s Harold's written testimony from the hearing.)

Today's Broadband Plan has great things to say on the topic of video device compatibility--the idea that consumers should be able to access the video content they pay for on any device. It recommends that the Commission pursue a "gateway" approach: a lightweight model that allows for compatibility between consumer devices and networks such as cable, satellite, or FiOS TV. Late last year, Public Knowledge and others filed a petition with the FCC asking that it follow this exact approach--a petition cited heavily by the Plan.

Public Knowledge has long argued that the market for "video devices"--things like set-top boxes and DVRs that you attach to your cable or satellite provider's network--is not as competitive as it should be. In fact, it's not as competitive as the law requires: back in the 1990s, Congress directed the FCC to adopt regulations promoting common standards of interoperability to make the market for these video devices as competitive as the market for other high-tech equipment. As a result of this lack of competition, consumers end up paying high prices for limited devices.

There are many reasons for this lack of competition.

As devotees of our hit video series Five Minutes with Harold Feld (or as the cool kids call it “5MWHF”) will no doubt recall, on the eve of Thanksgiving MPAA dropped a lengthy filing into the Selectable Output Control (SOC) docket. Among other things, it called Harold a liar. Harold immediately took five minutes to tell MPAA to chillax, and yesterday we filed our official response with the FCC. Although I urge you to read our full reply (I promise it is much shorter than the MPAA’s), if you are in a rush here is the short version. Our response basically made three points.

**Most of MPAA’s Filing is Unrelated to SOC.

Last week the MPAA sent another letter to the FCC trying to defend its Selectable Output Control (SOC) proposal and calling out Public Knowledge. We sent a formal reply to the FCC today. All of this means that what we are doing is working, but it also means that the MPAA is not giving up. Here’s Mr. X-Parté to recap the action so far, along with PK’s response:

The MPAA's attempt to get the FCC to allow Hollywood to impose Selectable Output Control (SOC) on consumers has gotten quite a bit of coverage in the tech-savvy blogosphere over the past few days.

I was reading through the comments on two prominent blogs' postings, Boing Boing's Tell the FCC to say no to Hollywood's insane "Selectable Output Control" kill-switch and Gizmodo's MPAA Still Trying to Plug Your Analog Hole with Selectable Output Control, and it appears that even among a very informed subsection of the public, SOC still causes a lot of confusion. The main point of confusion is the relationship of SOC to other forms of video DRM.

As the Selectable Output Control (SOC) battle continues here in Washington, Public Knowledge just sent a letter to the FCC pointing out that movie studios are doing some of the best work to show why SOC just doesn’t make sense.

As you may recall, the entire point of SOC is to allow movie studios to release movies via Video on Demand (VoD) prior to the DVD release. The MPAA claims that without SOC protection, the VoD releases (which, unlike DVDs, are not protected and therefore theoretically easier to copy) would immediately be used to make perfect copies available to pirates. These perfect copies would destroy the market for DVDs, and ultimately destroy Hollywood. SOC protection would allow studios to protect VoD distribution and therefore save Hollywood.