"Some 400,000 to 600,000 films are being stolen every day, and it is getting progressively worse," says MPAA boss Jack Valenti.

He was giving evidence to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing and during his testimony, called proposals to ban technological mandates "poor public policy".

Valenti dubbed the technology "access control or redistribution control". In reality, it's Consumer Control and Hollywood has an ongoing, very carefully orchestrated plan to have hardware and software Consumer Control technologies and legislations locked into the America's laws and legal frameworks, and to use that to force the adoption of similar 'controls' in other parts of the world.

They would allow Hollywood and its movie, recording and hardware and software components to legally plug directly into 'user environments' - private homes - to manage what's being played and/or viewed gaining, in the process, hitherto private, personal and confidential information from, and about, users and their habits.

Moreover, persuading the entertainment industry to allow various 'administrative' and enforcement agencies to piggy-back (and load in) hidden surveillance and feed-back systems via "access control or redistribution control" technologies would be no task at all. In return, law enforcers would increasingly act for, and on behalf of, the entertainment industry - something that's already happening increasingly around the world.

"No one," Valenti told the hearing, "can forecast what future technology mandates will be needed. That's why it is not in the national interest to ban what you cannot see, to prohibit what you do not know, to turn your back on what you cannot measure."

"Enjoys cross-industry support"
As an example, he recalled Broadcast Flag designed, he said, "simply to stop digital over-the-air broadcasts from being re-directed to the Internet for anyone to pilfer, easily, swiftly," adding, "by the way, consumers will never know there is a Broadcast Flag, unless they try to re-distribute a program to the Internet."

By the way? Not at all. Consumers would get Broadcast Flag, not to speak of other Consumer Contol devices, whether they liked it or not. If they tried to remove them, they'd in trouble because Hollywood could quite literally shut them down, remotely. And that's the best case scenario. Under the worst, they could end up in jail for disabling Hollywood's Customer Control systems.

"The Flag enjoys cross-industry support," promises Valenti.

Not true. In fact, to the contrary. But if the words seem familiar, last year Valenti said, "The MPAA is very pleased that a broad, multi-industry consensus has been reached on the fundamental aspects of a technology, called the 'broadcast flag'."

The "broad, multi-industry consensus" is in truth a small, extremely venal group which, under the guise of guarding members against dangerous new technology, is doing its best to front what it calls a 'standard' to give members control of digital TV technology and how people use their TVs, DVDs, and other devices in the privacy of their homes.

Valenti - from 1963 until 1966, a top advisor to former US president Lyndon B. Johnson - warned sternly that new technology threatens an entire industry's [guess which industry] "economic vitality and future security". However, this wasn't in 2002 - it was in 1982 and Valenti was referring to VCR's.

Concocted by that small group of movie companies and record labels known collectively as Hollywood, Broadcast Flag ostensibly calls for purpose-built technology to be 'inserted' into streaming stations under the pretext of preventing copyrighted items from being pirated.

Under it, every computer sold would have to have industry developed monitoring and remote control technology on board and anyone who tampered with, or disabled, this technology could, and would, be prosecuted by various US government departments.

Broadcast Flag caught the public eye last summer when then US Senator Fritz Hollings was trying to get his so-called anti-piracy CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion) Act passed. At the time, Home Recording Rights Coalition chairman Gary Shapiro called it, "a particularly dangerous delegation of broad, unfettered regulatory authority, which could have severe, adverse, long-term consequences for American consumers."

Enter the MPAA's Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG) which conceived the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) as a way of corralling digital television devices and technologies.

The BPDG, in turn, asked certain software, hardware, and consumer electronics companies - among them, Intel, Philips, Matsushita, Apple and Microsoft - to develop a standard to prevent digital TV broadcasts from being re-transmitted over the Net in a way that both allows technology, "to thrive" and, "the consumer to be protected," as Lawrence J. Blanford, President and CEO of Philips Consumer Electronics North America whose company is/was a member described it.

But at the end of the day, the BPDP 'standard' would allow Holluywood to move in. And you'd pay the rent.

Within the main group was a smaller bunch later dubbed 4C and 5C made up of Intel, IBM, Toshiba, and Matsushita, in the first instance, and Intel, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba, in the second. They had deal with the MPAA to promote certain 'security' options and technologies, and to get them into the main standard.

In reality, of course, they wanted these secret options to be the standard.

And you'd never have heard of 5C had it not been for the efforts of Lawrence Blanford.

Broadcast Flag is, "really the same model for what's already been happening on the video side," CNET News.com quoted RIAA senior vice president of government relations Mitch Glazier as saying. "The concept of a similar 'broadcast flag' for digital television signals has already gained approval from an industry standards group, but has drawn criticism from opponents who say the technology will strip consumers of their traditional 'fair use' rights."

The 'industry standards group' Glazier referred to was, of course, the BPDG.

"Convened by a few private companies, the BPDG reached many of its decisions in secret and repeatedly evicted reporters from its discussion lists and conference calls," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "BPDG sought the appearance of consensus and downplayed significant disagreements."

And Lawrence Blanford said the technology supporting the "emerging plan" has the potential to remotely disable a device that's recording a movie or other program in a consumer's home.

Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Blanford said in essence, through their private contractual relationships, the small group of studios and companies [5C] would control digital TV technology and how people use their TVs, DVDs, and other devices in the privacy of their homes.

"All manufacturers of TVs, DVDs, and other devices will have to sign up for an overly broad, burdensome and private license, which will govern the encryption technologies that must be in these devices and the process to enforce copyright protection," stated Blanford.

"This small group of companies will mandate the technologies, control the rules that govern the technologies, and change those rules whenever they desire.

"Most alarming, the public, consumers, licensees, and public officials have not been part of the process that developed the 5C approach, and they would be shut out of its implementation. In short, private interests are taking control of the balance among consumer rights and commercial interests and, as a result, establishing public policy.

"Philips cannot, and will not, accept that. We believe other companies will not accept that. Congress should not accept it either."

Blanford said Philips had "lost all confidence" that the BPDG will achieve consensus, or that it will allow for serious consideration or adoption of technology solutions of equal merit presented by other interested parties.

"Private industry should be given a chance to reach a consensus," he added, "but the process should be cleansed by the sunlight of government. Further discussion should be held in an open forum, with the involvement of those who are entrusted with the development of public policy."

Calling on Congress "to reassert its role in this critical public-private partnership by providing an appropriate, public forum to continue these industry discussions and to foster workable solutions on a timely basis," Blanford said Philips would offer, "complete support to such an effort, including offering related Philips technologies to all comers, under open, fair and easily available terms."

He also called on other companies to join this discussion to make sure, "we get this right".

Notwithstanding his concerns, "most of the hurdles to protecting copyrighted digital broadcasts from being illegally redistributed over the Internet have been overcome and a report is slated to be issued on May 17," said an April 25 Reuters story.

Shortly after Lawrence Blanford revealed the existence of 5C, in a press release, MPAA boss Jack Valenti said, "The MPAA is very pleased that a broad, multi-industry consensus has been reached on the fundamental aspects of a technology, called the 'broadcast flag'."

Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA (Computer & Communications Industry Association) says the anti-copying quest seems doubtful in and of itself, but, "there is something worse at work here: Proposals from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group would give Hollywood - not consumers - the right to decide what consumers may and may not record in the privacy of their own homes. BPDG chairmen say they intend to send the proposal to Capitol Hill for incorporation in a national law.

"If the BPDG proposal succeeds, ordinary people will not be able to cut and paste 'protected' sections of digital newscasts or other programming for their own use. Indeed, one scheme put forth by Intel and four consumer-electronics companies would make it impossible to view protected recordings on any hardware outside of one's home." Worse still, he goes on, the BPDG would let "media moguls" decide which new inventions would be allowed to copy existing media, and which not. Devices such as mp3 players would have to follow anti-copying instructions built into copyrighted media that gave only the producer the right to decide what their customers could do with them.

"They'd even have a place for people who dared to use products that didn't follow their rules, or tried to go around the anti-copying technology," says Black. "It's called prison."

Computer makers and consumer-electronics manufacturers that complied with the law - again, under pain of imprisonment - would be saddled with the bill for expensive re-engineering the proposal required, Black went on, also making the point that from the advent of the radio to player piano rolls, juke boxes and cable TV, the VCR and mp3 player, new media have threatened the old but, "At the same time, society has found ways to accommodate new technologies, pay writers, artists and other creators, and still hew to the principle that people who pay for content should have real flexibility in how they use it.

"Balanced copyright evolves along with society. It brings about progress. It makes possible innovation and creative uses of others' work. It gives us old quotes for new books, 'sampling' from the latest hit tunes, and new software features inspired by the 'look and feel' of others' program.

"But many of those same creative uses will disappear with the BPDG proposal, at least as far as they go in the new world of digital television. Indeed, the plan calls for extending already flawed copy-control technologies into every digital device on the market, from PCs to digital cameras, camcorders and just about anything else that could process a digital image."

Black reminds visitors to the association's site that Hollywood tried to kill the VCR, too.

"Consider," he says: "Until the video cassette recorder came along, no one thought of home taping as fair use. Now, Hollywood makes some 46% of its revenues from videos. Rebroadcasting TV signals over copper wires once seemed pointless and almost certainly illegal, but for the legal environment that gave us the cable TV system we have today.

Entrenched interests tried to exterminate both technologies and failed. They screamed 'piracy' and failed. And because they failed, those same interests - Hollywood and terrestrial broadcasters - are wealthier than ever before."

As Black says, we didn't believe them then.

Why should we now?

Back to the Commerce hearing, concluding his testimony, Valenti urged Congress to "heed our warnings that unless there is put in place various baffle-plates of protection, we will bear witness to the slow undoing of a huge economic and creative force.

"Which is why I urge the Congress not to close the legislative door on any new technological magic that has the capacity to combat digital thievery, which – if unchecked – will drown the movie industry in ever-increasing levels of piracy."

Jon Newton

All this technology depends on the CPSA system. CPSA is almost certinly going to be broken, its just so complex there are many vulnerable points. One of its most important subcomponants, CSS, has been broken already. However, even is CPSA is broken thus makeing it useless for anti-piracy use, it still retains considerable anticompetative power. If the license fee to use CPSA technology is fairly high, smaller CE manufacturers and any open standards would be driven off the market, thus effectively granting only a few large companies exclusive rights to produce entertainment CE equipment.

"Some 400,000 to 600,000 films are being stolen every day, and it is getting progressively worse," says MPAA boss Jack Valenti.

And out of 400,000 to 600,000 films 3 of them are worth watching. Valenti can bend over so I can show him where his broadcast flag can be stuck.

I build computers for a living. I have no intention of putting that hardware in my systems

sorry, should've said software

Has Jack Valenti ever downloaded a movie? I'm sure if he had, just to ease his own mind, he'd understand that it just ain't worth doing. People who are REALLY serious movie goers (watchers) couldn't stand to watch the crap that comes out of downloaded movies! pepe

*Sigh* I may be struck down by the off-topic police for this one... but I thought it interesting...

Has anyone else noticed the similarity between the RIAA/MPAA's manner of speaking and our lovely president's?

According to the the MPAA, they are "very pleased that a broad, multi-industry consensus has been reached on the fundamental aspects of a technology, called the 'broadcast flag'."... Funny. I thought we also had something of a "huge multi-lateral coailition of the willing" for Iraq.

Not quite Mr. Valenti. Try again.

I am a programmer, needless to say I will do everything in my power to keep this nazi regime from conquering our freedom. whether it be legal or not, no one controls my choices other than myself. There are 1000s if not millions of others that will not stand for this and will make sure we keep our digital freedom even if that means ignoring laws that are wrong but still none the less punishable under...

well in honesty I've seen some very excellent quality DivX and AVI films. When encoded and burned to a VCD they are excellent quality but you're right, there are quite a few that are not

Meanwhile, Philips introduces a DVD player that records!

i really dont blame the mpaa because a movie costs millions and when people watch a movie once and then just move on with their lives, making movies cost lots and lots of money and the bills gotta be paid, but i dont agree with the riaa because making a cd is only $.40 which is nothing

Anyone who d/ls movies instead of seeing them in the theater is missing alot. I've nothin against the MPAA. As Oldschool stated...millions to make a movie at 5 10 bucks for a ticket. CD's cost 15 to 20 and more. I can buy CD's for way less then .40 I'd like to see a break down of where the cost goes for CD's.

They tried to kill the vcr, trying to kill internet, they will try to kill super high speed internet (download a 2 hour movie in 2-3 minutes, and anything else that comes down the pike.

Maybe we should go back to shadow puppets??

We'll we need to hand them the hardware industry like we need a whole in the head....

Does this mean we can't listen to any other type of music? Will we need an RIAA home entertainment system in one room, and a non-riaa in another. Or will the RIAA be nice enough to allow us to play none-RIAA music while they monitor every non-riaa song and movie we watch so they can recognize a trend and squish their competition before they have a chance to succeed in the industry. I've always wanted to unite the entirety of the entertainment industry into one big corrorsive monster.

Someday in the future when we all have terabyte hard drives, 100 Gz processors, 100 Mb/sec internet speeds, and we have every song ever recorded on our hard drives, along with all of our favorite movies, we'll look back on this nonsense and smile. Something like the way we look back on the MPAA's efforts to ban VCRs back in the 80s.

Most of the movies being downloaded the MPAA doesn't own...usually they're pornography,or anime.And every once and a while an actual movie.Really its a big hassle to download movies.Often times they are horrible quality,glitch up,the download can start going far slower than it should.

And if somehow that bill passes,I'll keep my crappy computer.Atleast I can use it without someone knowing what online comics I like to read.

Valenti should be dead by now he's so old and brain addled. Why is he still living? Probably all that money pumped into life extending drugs

I have been boycotting the MPAA for a while now and it is not because I think they are a huge corporate monstrosity (which they are). It is because movies and TV are just garbage. The MPAA's big studio players do not want to take any risks so they regurgitate the same formulaic junk, unfortunately people are wising up and telling all their friends how horrible a movies was just after seeing it. They should sensor cell phones and email if they want to fix declining profits.

DeadMan2003-he's a vampire who walks in sunshine

So that's where all our money's going - Valenti's life account!?

I can see it now:

Dateline 2084 - MPRIAA Police acting on a tip from an in-house informant, this morning arrested, tried and executed an entire family of Digital Pirates, including both parents, their 10 year old son and 14 year old daughter for attempting to photograph a statue of His Highness, King Valenti.

The execution was carried out immediately after they were pronounced guilty. King Valenti was unavailable for comment. Copy protected film available at 11 PM.

MikeTwo345 has a point. How much of this is coming from, or with the support of, the Blac oops, I mean White
House.

I think Dick "The Real Slim" Cheney is behind this, and I figured out that his "undisclosed location" is his own personal bat cave below the RIAA headquarters!
~code

software looking into our computers and see exactly what we do? isn't that spyware? isn't that illegal? after that why don't we all go down to the post office and tell the government whether or not were are jewish so we don't accidntly get carted off to a concentration camp

400,000 - 600,000 films are "stolen" daily ? Their vaults should be empty by now. As we all know tis is NOT theft. At the very worst it's copyright infringement. Iam so sick of the spin that's being used , almost to the point that we almost accept it.
THAT'S WHAT SCARES ME!!!

WABBITMAN

Ah, Jack Valenti...You make Cary Sue Shermen look intelligent. Wise up you stupid crack-head.

I still buy VHS. I like old movies, so all the special goodies found on DVDs aren't necessary. And I'll check out tapes from the library or rent them from the grocery store and copy them. Or tape 'em off TV.

Whatever the moniker used - "broadcast flag," "schmoadcast schlag" or whatever, what it amounts to in the end can be spelled thus . . . D-I-S-E-N-F-R-A-N-C-H-I-S-E-M-E-N-T against the consumer. Just as I'd predicted some months back in an article about falling ticket sales at the box office.

Not to mention: S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-M - the 300-year-old fossil Valenti's open support of Big Government dictates upon new technology, as well as which technology lives or dies - a techno-Dr. Mengele, if you will. Valenti, it must be remembered, is a radical leftist whose most (in)famous achievement was to knock down the old Production Code in favor of the ratings system we see today.

Another example of the multinational entertainment-media complex attempting what amounts to partial-birth abortion against new technology. They weren't content with attempting to strangle the home-video industry in its crib during the Beta battle, now we have this . . .

And also, the makings of an elite-led coup, albeit without a single shot fired or any blood shed on the streets.

Almost like the recent 9th Circuit ruling on the California recall election. . . .

But back to the issue at hand: Because our "elected" officials have been in essence bought off by practically every special-interest group on earth (Hollywood, Big Media, Big Oil, the educrats and teachers' unions, the ACLU, you name it), two questions that beg to be asked to Mr. Valenti never are, as follows: 1) Who died and left you in charge of which new technology lives or dies, and 2) Who asked you for your opinions, anyway? Such devices weren't made for you and your fellow radical Imperial Copyright Junta elitists, they were made for the public, a.k.a. the "unwashed masses," a.k.a. the "hoi polloi." Whom you obviously feel CANNOT be trusted with squat as far as this is concerned.

And to 'IFeelFree': Unlike the 1980's, ever since which time our freedoms in the area of 'fair use' have been hanging, in the words of a certain radio talk show host, "like a loose tooth," the RIAA / MPAA Goliaths have far too many friends in Congress, the kangaroo courts and the news media for the true issues to truly come out, thus save for groups of people like ourselves demonstrating in PEACEFUL, NON-VIOLENT protest (and in large numbers) outside the courts, outside the headquarters of these One-World elitist organizations, and so forth (on top of physical snail-mail letter writing campaigns), Valenti, Bainwol, Sherman et al. may yet drag all our freedoms down with them, like the proverbial lemmings falling off the cliff.

I agree with everyone that maybe Hollywood needs to make a real movie for once. I'm confused on the 400,000-600,000. Are there really that many movies out there still capable of transfering to a digital format? I'm not even sure the entire world combined has made that many movies since the advent of the movie camera back in the last 19th century and many of those have turned to dust by now seeing as the film they were filmed on had a bit of iron in it and we all know what happens when oxygen hits iron.

And what exactly are these "pirates" downloading? I'm sorry, Mr. Valenti, but I just can't see how bad this is.

I sure hope this "broadcast control" crap never comes to pass. If it does, I'll move to an island in the Pacific and start up my own competing company.

There has not been a lock made that cannot be broken, picked, cracked or otherwise unlocked. If they think that this latest idea, even if it somehow made it thru a vote of the public, is going to stand up to us, they are nuts. Look at how long it took us to figure out all the others? Someone broke they "Celine Dion" copy protected CD's in less than a day! As for allowing them to jack-in to our private lives and see what we are doing with the technology that WE created?...to control what WE watch...I would shut off everything and go "off-the-net" before i would allow them to do that.

In short, they may have grand ideas, they may think they have control over what we can do, but in the end, we will be the ones paying them thier salaries, and if pushed hard enough, im pretty sure we can find another way to spend the money we would have given them.

They depend on us for the money they are using against us! I say "cut them off"!

- Jolly Roger

- He who holds the purse strings makes the rules!

"cleansed by the sunlight of government"

Uhhh....my respect to the writer for their insight, but has anyone who didn't live before 1930 ---ever--- seen our government construe anything even remotely close to sunlight? Maybe a flickering match-stick or perhaps one of those cheap keychain flashlights that break after a month. Sunlight? That's like saying Microsoft cares, or Hitler committed suicide because of the guilt he felt toward the Jews.

My second point which I so conviently seem to have forgot...............Oh there it is. I can see it now people start making "contraban" versions of TVs, computers, VCRs, DVD players, etc and selling them on the black market. These devices not having any of the "protection" hardware installed and we have yet another smuggling/illicit manufacturing ring. Anyone who wants to reclaim our trampled rights is now no better than a drug or weapons dealer.

"Downloading is theft." Yadda yadda yadda just say what you really mean already. "We want your souls."

Well lets see how this all plays out showing an example of a movie download.. say of The Hulk


Spoof files -320,000
Poor Quailty -30,000
Incomplete -20,000
Mis-labeled -20,000
Porn laced - 9,000

Grand Total of 399,000

MPAA stated # downloaded 400,000
minus bogus files -399,000
Actual Downloaded 1,000

While I do agree the MPAA has a better case considering the cost of making a movie, versus that of making a CD, I have BIG problems with being force-fed any type of security to control what the heck I look at.

As someone mentioned before, a lot of the downloaded movies aren't even owned by them. I myself am a big anime fan, and what I want to see isn't licensed over here right away, if at all. Now, maybe I'm not visiting the right sites, but I don't hear nearly the same stink from Japan as I do here for crap that I don't d/l personally. Why? To most of them, it's fere advertising. They even allow independant artists to make comics based on their movies/series/games/etc. As for fansubs, foriegn fans will go out of their way to try and get merchandise, so they do wind up getting a profit in the end.

It seems both the MPAA and the RIAA overlook the FREE advertising they get via file sharing.

And this new plan is going to say I can't enjoy what I can't even get to in this country, media the MPAA doesn't even own it? The last two brain cells they were sharing amongst themselves must have finally bit the dust.

While I don't know how to build a comp, there's plenty of classes to learn. It seems if this were to go through, (though i'm highly doubtful), we'll have to make our own computers. (And vcrs, and DVD players, and even TVs.) I see a new job field opening up: electronic educators.

Computers are sufficiently complex to make any protection system breakable. Once one persons done it, they just write a crack and anyone can run it. Building CE equipment isn't nearly as easy. Most of the work ive read about on produceing CE is basicly moodifying computers for silent running and specialised functions.