FC: Hollywood wants to plug "analog hole," regulate A-D

[Dave Emery]

On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 08:59:43PM -0500, Neil Johnson wrote:

> Remember it only requires ONE high-quality non-watermarked analog to digital 
> copy to make it on the net and it's all over.

	And that is what this whole nonsensical scheme founders on.

	There are probably 300-500 million existing sound cards out
there and at least millions of existing NTSC analog capture cards.  
Many if not most can do acceptable fidelity conversion of analog audio
and video to digital formats if programmed correctly. And there are even
a few tens of thousands (or more) of new generation PCI cards that
capture ATSC digital video (including HDTV) direct to disk in the clear.

	The MPAA cannot will these out of existance.  Sure some are
obselete ISA based designs, but there are certainly enough reasonably
current boards around so that it will be a long long while before 
the population of working systems capable of performing analog to
digital conversion of either watermarked audio or video reaches 
insignificance.   And without that point being reached, anything else
seems pretty ineffective as per your point above.

	And telling the public that they face serious jail time if they
don't turn in that Creative Soundblaster from the old PC in the attic
closet isn't going to fly.   The sheeple may be sheep but even they
aren't going to accept that kind of nonsense from Hollywood or any
corrupt congress.

	I'd even venture to say that if this issue breaks out into
the big time and the public really is faced with crippled devices
that don't work and mandatory obselescence of existing expensive
computer and entertainment systems with potential jail time for
use of old equipment that the backlash will be so intense that
raw public votes will control over Hollywood money.


-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
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