New Bill To Potentially Limit Consumer "Fair Use"

Hi guys,

I was reading the July 2002 issue of CPU magazine, and I noticed and article that really caught my attention.

Seems Congress is looking at two acts that could drastically change the power we have over media we purchase. These are the "Security Systems Standars and Certification Act" (SSSCA), and the "Consumer Broadband and Digial Television Promotion Act" (CBDTPA). These acts and the S.2048 Bill (though the acts may just be part of this bill) risk taking away priviledges we used to enjoy in the category of fair use.

Imagine every PC that you bought having copy protection built in. Tampering with the protection would be a crime even if it's for legal purposes.

I do agree that copyrights should be protected, but I think that consumers should have some freedoms too.

Do some research on this whether it be on the following links or other places that you find (if you find others please post them in this thread). Post your thoughts on the matter and lets see what we can do about this situation before it's too late.

Sites To Visit for Info And Things You Can Do:
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/
http://www.senate.gov/~judiciary/special/feature.cfm
http://digitalconsumer.org/
http://hrrc.org/html/what_s_new.html
http://digitalspeech.org/

(If there's any problems with me posting this I'll remove it, but I think this is something everyone would want to know about.)

this is why i build my pc.

Even if the new parts to PC's come built with this stuff? As I said. Check out some of the links. All they would have to do is make the copy protection and stuff standard with the parts. Then even if you built your own PC, you'd still have the same problem as everyone else.

oh god damit.

Ah... Senator Hollings, the corporate slut. May his CBDTPA (formerly SSSCA) be shot down in flames.

The DMCA in my opinion means the "Dictators from Mega-Corporate America" act.

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stor...873149,00.html
On a similar note, look here for an interesting story regarding Palladium (a future version of Windows).

I wrote my congresswoman about the 2nd act.

Well, after seeing what happened with CARP, I decided to bump this thread. Also, definitely read up on Palladium. Some of it's features (this OS will be tied to hardware via a chip it seems) point to topics mentioned in this thread and may also raise some privacy concerns depending on the direction it goes. I'll probably post some more links on it later.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brotherman
Even if the new parts to PC's come built with this stuff? As I said. Check out some of the links. All they would have to do is make the copy protection and stuff standard with the parts. Then even if you built your own PC, you'd still have the same problem as everyone else.

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Um, couldn't you just import components from a country that doesn't bother with bullshit like this?
Just a thought.

Maybe. But the point is wouldn't people rather do things to help stop this bill from passing rather than paying crazy fees to get computer parts that aren't modded? And that's assuming that this doesn't catch on in other countries.

Bumped up again to complement the CD Copy Protection Thread.