Broadcast Flag

Just in time for the House Telecom Subcommittee’s May 6 hearing on Net Neutrality legislation, Public Knowledge achieved a new level of notoriety when we were prominently mentioned in a blog post on the American Spectator, the publication best known for funneling millions of dollars to investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

OK. Hopefully you all realized that S. 4108, the APRIL Act of 2008, was a joke. After all, there were a few excesses in there that would indicate how ludicrous the bill is.

Hollywood for years has had a fascination with spies. Some are action spies, like the various incarnations of Bond, James Bond, or cerebral spies like Alec Guinness’ masterfully subtle George Smiley. All sorts of people have played TV spies, from Robert Culp and Bill Cosby to Patrick McGoohan, Robert Goulet and the fabulous Lady Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee.

There have been spies who watch and listen to us without our knowledge. Gene Hackman had a creepy turn as the telephone eavesdropper (technically not a spy, although he spied) in “The Conversation” in 1974. Ten years ago Will Smith’s “Enemy of the State” played off of the then-paranoid “fantasy”, now a reality, of the all-hearing National Security Agency (NSA). The current crop of Bourne films shows a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the technical capability to listen and see anything and anyone at any time.

Background: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) admitted that the figures it had been using to track “piracy” on college campuses were triple the actual figure. The LEK study purports to calculate a $6.1 billion loss for the industry. See story here

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge:

“It’s a shame that Hollywood discovered its error so late. For the last two years, the MPAA has blamed college students for 44 percent of the alleged “piracy” causing industry losses. Now it finds a data-entry error brings the real figure to about 15 percent. Because of this revelation, we should question MPAA’s entire study and the figures it had used to persuade legislators to write bills to crack down on what now seems to be a much smaller problem than the industry would have us believe.

An NPR story yesterday captured some pungent words from soon-to-go-through-the-revolving-door Senator Trent Lott. He was commenting in disbelief about the FCC move to permit more consolidation of media companies. He said (paraphrasing):

Newspapers? Why is the FCC protecting newspapers? I don’t get why we’re crying crocodile tears over newspapers… It’s technology that’s affecting newspapers. Where I live [on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi], we use newspapers to wrap mullet.

Putting aside the fishwrap reference (oddly reminiscent of the fate of some Bach manuscripts), let’s just note the incredulity with which Sen. Lott approaches the idea that the FCC is out there regulating newspaper mergers.

We had heard rumblings a few weeks ago that the MPAA was trying to push the broadcast flag, yet again. More recently we heard some more details that the content industry is trying to win over some in the consumer electronics industry to push for the technology mandate that would cripple many home devices and limit fair use of legally obtained content by consumers and educators alike.

You may remember the last push of the broadcast flag was buried in the series-of-tubes Senate telecommunications bill that thankfully went nowhere. That version’s language gave FCC the needed permission (which was lacking(PDF)) to instate the copy-protection scheme that would limit what you could do with over-the-air broadcast television.

A few weeks ago, NBC Universal filed comments in the FCC’s proceeding on “Broadband Industry Practices.” It asked that the FCC require that Internet Service Providers institute “bandwidth management tools”—its code for network filters—to try to screen the Internet of copyright infringement. Yesterday, we filed our response, joined by Consumer Federation of America, EDUCAUSE, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, FreeCulture.org, Free Press, Knowledge Ecology International, Media Access Project, New America Foundation, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

The recording industry was kind enough to invite me to join a conference call announcing a new coalition called musicFIRST, whose members include the RIAA, Soundexchange, the music industry unions and over 80 artists. The coalition’s sole goal is to eliminate the exemption that over-the-air broadcasters have from paying the same performance royalties that satellite radio and webcasters pay to the record labels and performers. Representatives from RIAA and Soundexchange were on the call, as was Martha Reeves from the Motown group Martha Reeves and the Vandellas (who is now a member of the Detroit City Council) and Rob Garza from the band Thievery Corporation. The coalition’s clear message is that as a matter of fairness to artists, the exemption should be repealed.

For immediate release April 26, 2007

Statement by Public Knowledge President Gigi B. Sohn on the death of Jack Valenti

“In my 10 years at Media Access Project, I worked alongside Jack Valenti and the MPAA in an effort to preserve Federal Communications Commission rules that promoted diversity in broadcast programming. Then, from 2001-2004, as President of Public Knowledge, I opposed Jack and the MPAA on nearly every digital copyright policy issue.

“Regardless of whether we were policy friends or foes, Jack treated me with kindness and respect. There was no one in Washington I respected more for his intelligence, his commitment, his integrity and his ability to work across party lines. Jack was one of a kind, and a national icon. He forged a lasting legacy for the entertainment industry that will be sorely missed.”

The US delegation is holding another roundtable on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty next month to discuss the latest draft of the treaty and the next round of negotiations. As others have noted, it's open to the public, so long as you RSVP to the Copyright office by May 5th. The official announcement of the roundtable is here.