the SSSCA is here

[eub]

Senator Hollings has introduced S.2048, the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act", which you may have heard of as the SSSCA. This bill would make it illegal to create or use "digital media devices" that do not meet federal standards intended to make copyright violation impossible. "Digital media device" includes any hardware or software that can reproduce, view, or transmit a copyrighted work. An industry committee will agree on the precise technical standards within a certain time, or the FCC will make some up.

Loony as this sounds, loony as it is, this is not an "FCC modem tax". The text of the bill is here, and Declan McCullagh has further articles and press releases here.

The bill's requirements cannot be met on a general-purpose computer. Nor can you meet them purely by redesigning the storage and display peripherals on a general-purpose computer. They can't, of course, really be met at all, but the only approach I can imagine we're in for is one or more government-approved operating systems with copyright management built into their security model. Homebrew and open-source OSes are out.

Comments

[denorae.livejournal.com]

thank goodness for Leahy! (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51425,00.html)

[eub.livejournal.com]

What I'm afraid of is that the CBDTVA is staking out an extreme position so the next attempt looks, by comparison, like a reasonable compromise. Like the hideous Digital Telephony Act that got "compromised" into the still-hideous Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, now the law of the land. Legislators have a bent towards compromising.

[denorae.livejournal.com]

so which part(s) do you think they will leave out? have smaller fines? the whole "don't copy for other people" seems to their main idea, and all the parts (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51275,00.html) are just covering all their bases. I *really* don't like the part about turning over the mp3 player case, though... but I guess they want to fight that battle over again.