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

[Mike Rosing]

On Thu, 30 May 2002, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> This is absurd.  In all the commentary on this issue, no one has made
> the obvious point that the MPAA has no interest or intention in putting
> watermark detectors into every ADC chip!  They don't care about the ADC

If they don't they are screwed.

> chip in a digital thermometer or even a cell phone.  All they care about
> are things like PC video capture cards, which are high fidelty consumer
> devices capable of digitizing copyright protected content.

And everyone outside the US will build their cards without the detector,
or with a software switch to turn it off so they can sell more in the US.

> Their white paper is a brief summary of their goals and intentions and
> does not go into full technical detail.  But let's use a little common
> sense here, folks.

Common sense says they are corrupt pigs who will stop at nothing to
get their profits back up.

> It's pointless to try to shoot down this proposal by raising all these
> horror stories about ADC chips in industrial and technical devices
> being crippled by a watermark detector which will never be activated.
> If you waste time developing this line of argument, you will be left
> with nothing to say when the actual bill focuses only on the specific
> devices that the content holders are worried about.

And what are they going to do when people build MP3 players from auto
ADC's that don't detect watermarks?  Make them illegal?

> And sure, a sufficiently talented electrical engineer can produce a custom
> board to do non-watermark-aware ADC, and digitize TV shows and music.
> The MPAA has to accept that such activity will continue to go on at a
> low level.  They just want to make sure that consumer devices are not
> sold that enable every customer to make easy digital copies of copyrighted
> data based on an analog source, as they can now with the Replay DVR.

And what's to prevent it from happening at a high level if there's
enough profit in it?  MPAA is a tiny market compared to the rest of
the electronics industry - it will be easy to bypass the law on a
huge scale.  You don't need to be a "sufficiently talented electrical
engineer" when you can go across the border, buy 1000 simple/cheap
devices and bring 'em back in your pickup truck.

> Please, let's use some common sense and not go overboard with an obviously
> mistaken interpretation of the MPAA's intentions.  That wastes everyone's
> time.

MPAA is definitly a waste of everybody's time.  They need to be shot
so we don't have to listen to them anymore!!!
:-)

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike