Not long ago, I was singing the praises of Michael Powell.
Now, I'm calling for massive civil disobedience of the FCC.
I will not buy any device for the purpose of receiving HDTV. Instead, I will gladly purchase devices that will route packets via the Internet Protocol over that spectrum. In the neighborhood of my house, IP packets will take precedence over HDTV signals.I recommend that other consumers adopt the Jack Valenti Spectrum Re-allocation. I am talking about massive civil disobedience of the FCC. Remember, anyone who receives television over cable or satellite will give up nothing by assigning higher priority to IP packets. For anyone who misses broadcast television, it would be better to give them taxpayer dollars to subscribe to satellite TV than for consumers to pay the Broadcast Flag hardware tax.
By re-allocating spectrum from HDTV to wireless IP, we can kill two legacy birds with one stone. We can hasten the demise of the phone companies--because with a wireless "last mile" the wireless Internet can replace traditional land lines and cell phones; and we can show Jack Valenti, the movie industry, and the television industry what it really means to "score a big victory for consumers."
Brad,
I hope that you're right and that the typical PC manufacturer can ignore this. But if "we'll pretty much forget about HDTV in 5 years anyway," then why not forget about it now? Why not re-allocate the spectrum to something useful? Did you RTFE?
I don't really understand your solution. How are you going to use the HDTV spectrum for your data? Won't that require manufacturers to make and sell new devices that use that spectrum? And won't that be illegal, so that no such devices will be available? This doesn't seem like a measure that the average person can take as a form of civil disobedience.
Posted by Anon on November 7, 2003 06:56 PM | Permalink to CommentArnold,
I don't know if I Read The Fcc's "E" because I can't figure out what the "E" is. I am a little astonished by the volume of end-of-the-world ranting about this in the blogosphere. Well, maybe not.
Welcome, tech people, to the world of interest group politics. The MPAA comes to the FCC with a bad proposal. The tech people mobilize against it, writing thousands of letters. The FCC, of course, ignores the letters and enacts a compromise that's pretty meaningless. If the content owners use this broadcast flag to send us their stuff, then all these issues (like the analog hole) weren't really so important anyway. If they don't, they lose credibility in two realms: (1) suggesting technical solutions, and (2) doing so in a political arena.
I think it's best for tech folks to chalk this up as a clear victory and quietly move on. If we get caught up with the copyfight jihad that wants to ensure that everyone has the Constitutional right to share a just-released movie in full digital quality with a million of their closest friends on the net, we give the MPAA et al a license to come up with dumber and dumber political solutions.
Posted by Brad Hutchings on November 7, 2003 07:05 PM | Permalink to CommentWhere's the mini-howto or FAQ!!!
Posted by marcia wilbur on November 7, 2003 08:39 PM | Permalink to CommentSo do you mean doing ATSC A/90 and A/92?
Posted by Anonymous on November 8, 2003 12:15 AM | Permalink to CommentI haven't read the decision/determination of the FCC, but I doubt that the MPAA and its minions will sit still for the "Software Defined Radio Hole" that the above URL points to.
If they did, then we certainly have nothing to worry about.
Posted by Hamish MacEwan on November 9, 2003 01:04 AM | Permalink to CommentYou might consider going through three steps prior to engaging in civil disobedience to reallocate spectrum from HDTV to wireless IP.
Step 1. Collection of facts.
Some questions you might seek to answer:
What understanding of personal freedom does radio regulation ("spectrum policy") express? How do persons' understanding of freedom differ in use of amateur radio, in use of the Internet, and in use of commercial wireless services, including television?
What general principles best promote the public interest? To what extent have these principles informed radio regulation?
As a resource for your collecting of facts, see "Revolutionary Ideas for Radio Regulaton" (especially Section IV) available at www.galbithink.org
Step. 2. Negotiation.
There has been remarkably little public discussion of radio rights. There's been some effort to resurrect the old communists vs capitalist ideolological struggle in new terms of "spectrum commons" vs. "spectrum property rights." This is rather pathetic, really. Haven't we learned something from the disasters of the twentieth century? Is intellectual life today really this weak?
I encourage everyone to negotiate a better way to talk about these issues than to continue to work out personal pyschological problems left over from the cold war.
Step 3. Self-Purification.
Nobody explained this better, in words and deeds, than Martin Luther King, Jr. See "A Letter from Birmingham Jail," available online in many places, e.g. http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html
In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. set out this whole sequence of steps, which lead to step 4, direct action. At the FCC, we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday with a special FCC-wide meeting, which included a dramatic reading of portions of "A Letter from Birmingham Jail." Chairman Powell asked each FCC staff member to read King's letter and think about it.
Celebrate the life of Martin Luther King! Learn from him.
Posted by Douglas Galbi on November 10, 2003 10:24 AM | Permalink to CommentAs an American citizen I've come to expect being able to receive broadcast radio and tv over the airwaves to keep me informed of current news, emergencies, political and social affairs and also for entertainment. There is currently no broadcast flag on traditional analog broadcasts and I'm allowed to tape for later listening or viewing pleasure and share these tapes with like minded friends on a non-commercial basis. Why should a digital broadcast be differant than analog? Guess what, hackers will easily be able to defeat this flag, it will be non-tech savy ordinary citizens that will be hurt by a flag when for some reason their new $2k HDTV set won't play legit DVD's or old vhs personal movies due to flag issues. I've heard speculation that this supposed broadcast flag will disable digital devices such as a camcorder if it happens to observe an HDTV broadcast in the background of the family event you are taping, how ridiculous are media corporations gonna get by crippling consumer technology? Other lunacy that's been proposed is having digital devices refuse to play anything that doesn't include a flag, uughh.. I buy many legit foreign dvd's that have trouble playing in my somewhat non-crippled DVD player today, things will only get worse with digital Flags. As a consumer I don't want my electronic devices that I've purchased and personally OWN to be further crippled. Also, a previous comment stated that an old analog vcr could record an HDTV signal, this is not true, there is no compatability between old VHS and new HDTV.
Posted by Mike C on November 16, 2003 08:14 AM | Permalink to Comment
I am becoming convinced that nobody RTFD (read the decision) that the FCC issued. This does not affect PCs in any way unless one installs an HDTV receiver card in the PC. Overall, that has a minimal effect on the PC industry, mostly on vendors who sell the HDTV PCI cards and vendors who are pushing media PCs as part of entertainment centers. I feel bad for the first -- a leading manufacturer of such cards is just up the 405 in Huntington Beach. He has until June of 2005 to produce and market the things and if HDTV is worth receiving, there is bound to be a boon in his sales while his product is still legal. He'll cry all the way to the bank with this.
Media PCs, tough to tell whether that is really a trend in and of itself. For devices like TiVo, maybe the manufacturers decide that securing the digital content is more costly than just not supporting HDTV. And then, while there is going to be a great supply of digitally enhanced broadcasts over the free airwaves thanks to the broadcast flag (/sarcasm), there won't be a demand for it. And the broadcast flag won't matter. We'll just have a lot of wasted spectrum that will be dealt with in a few years.
Finally, the subtlety that everyone seems to miss with this broadcast flag thing is the so-called "analog hole". The regulation does not plug the analog hole. In fact, it specifically doesn't plug it. Consumers will still have the right to plug their HDTV box into their VHS recorder and record to their hearts' content. In fact, they could plug an HDTV box into an analog input of a computer, digitize, and share over the Internet, provided they don't get caught.
What the FCC is saying with the broadcast flag is that the "high audio/visual quality digitization" of content gets some protection if it's put out over the regulated airwaves. But the underlying content deserves and gets no special regulatory enforcement protection.
My prediction is that there is no doom and gloom. The FCC has just wasted a bunch of bandwidth, we have all wasted a bunch of time analyzing the decision, no company is going to invest in HDTV receiver products that integrate with anything else, and we'll pretty much forget about HDTV over the airwaves in 5 years anyway. If we accept that, we can tell the MPAA "hey, you got your broadcast flag, now go back to your room". The MPAA didn't win anything important here.
-Brad
Posted by Brad Hutchings on November 7, 2003 03:31 PM | Permalink to Comment