Howard Coble, Mitch Glazier, Reach Out Rosen, Cary Sherman, Howard Berman, Billy Tauzin, Fritz Hollings, Jack Valenti, Mitch Bainwol, John Conyers, Lamar Smith, Michael Powell Here's Uncle Tom Cobbley and/ ALLLLLLLLL, Here's Uncle Tom Cobbley and all ... (Sung to the tune of Widdecombe Fair)
You're at home, popcorn in hand, watching Mickey Mouse on your new digitally enhanced, flat-screen home entertainment system with surround-sound. It cost a packet, but that's OK. Your kids are laughing their heads off at Mickey's antics, and everyone's having a great time.
Then suddenly POW! Everything shuts down without warning and instead of watching Mickey, you're looking at a blank screen.
Because although your new system also has remote control features, you're not the one using them. The Mickey you were watching wasn't the approved Hollywood version, so Hollywood shut you down - remotely
B-Day is Nigh - that's the day the MPAA's Broadcast Flag, Hollywood's long-term plan to manage consumer environments (their homes, in other words) through technology it controls, goes into effect.
If the 'rule' gets through, it'll do considerably more than 'irk' viewers: it'll hand them, their personal habits, private and confidential information, and a lot more, to the entertainment industry on a plate.
"The federal government is preparing for the first time to require that personal computers and other consumer electronics devices contain technology to help block Internet piracy of digital entertainment," Krim's story goes on.
"A rule being considered by the Federal Communications Commission is one of a series of proposals pushed by the entertainment industry to help thwart copying and online trading of movies and television shows that increasingly are being broadcast in digital form with high-quality picture and sound.
"But the new rule also would force consumers to purchase new equipment if they wanted to record enhanced digital-quality television programs and replay them on other machines."
Krim says opponents are concerned the plan might lead to government regulation of how personal computers and other devices are built, "particularly if hackers crack the system and further changes are deemed necessary".
However, dubbed Broadcast Flag, this scheme has little or nothing to do with piracy or hackers. It's a major component of a bald-faced, carefully orchestrated Hollywood plan to revolutionize how it distributes, and then literally controls the use of, product ranging from movies and CDs to the devices that play them.
In the process, it would also gain priceless marketing data explicating how individual consumers use the technology they paid for, what they use it for, and when, how they pay for it, and so on - the stuff business planners dream about.
It's nothing less than Direct Consumer Control, nicely and legally locked into the America's (at first) laws and legal frameworks.
And the possibilities are endless. This marriage between Hollywood and governments would allow various 'administrative' and enforcement agencies to piggy-back (and load in) surveillance and feed-back systems via 'access control or redistribution control' technologies, as MPAA boss Jack Valenti likes to call them. In return, law enforcement agencies would increasingly act for, and on behalf of, the entertainment industry - something that's already happening with alarming regularity around the world.
Entertainment industry routinely conduct investigations and then hand the results to police forces to complete, making it all official.
Anonymous FCC staffers said they expect the agency to settle on details of the "broadcast flag" rule by the end of the month, says Krimm, pointing out that broadcast flag, "takes its name from the bit of computer code that would be embedded in digital television signals and would be read by 'compliant' devices such as a television set or a digital video recorder".
It wouldn't affect consumers who record shows the "old-fashioned way, with VCRs". Nor would it affect programming received on a cable or satellite system, "in part because consumers pay for that content".
But the entertainment industry doesn't want digitally enhanced 'high-value' entertainment sent free over the air to be easily copied and distributed on the Internet, says Krim, echoing the entertainment industry's rationalization for seeking to have Broadcast Flag firmly embedded into The Law.
"FCC officials said they expect the final rule to enable competition among different means of deploying the flag system to protect broadcasts, rather than the government anointing one in particular," the report goes on.
"Unlike with recent FCC decisions on high-speed Internet access and media consolidation that have deeply split the five-member commission, none of the three Republicans and two Democrats has led a public campaign against the broadcast flag."
"I'm optimistic we'll have a clean majority," one 'senior agency official' is quoted as saying. "The commission has acted in the area of digital television in a very bipartisan fashion."
One supposes it depends on what he means by 'clean'.
"And, opponents argue, the proposed system would require every device used by a consumer who wants to watch digital programming to recognize the flag," says the WP. "Thus, a DVD recorded on a compliant recorder, connected to a compliant television set in a family room, could not be viewed in an office, den or bedroom unless devices there also were compliant.
"That means buying new equipment. Critics say that in addition to forcing consumers to shoulder the cost of protecting one industry's products, the flag system undermines a consumer's right to 'fair use' of copyrighted works regardless of appliance or location."
The Consumer Electronics Association, hitherto among the most vocal opponents of Broadcast Flag, is now neutral on it, "saying its members are split," says Krim.
Could the fact Hollywood now has the clear and up-front support of Michael Powell's FCC be anything to do with that, one wonders?
"Of greatest concern to some opponents, including major technology companies such as Microsoft Corp., is that device makers, tech firms and the entertainment industry could not agree on the technology that would be used in devices to recognize the flag and act accordingly," the report continues.
"Instead, the FCC has been working from a proposed rule drafted by the Motion Picture Association of America, which gives the moviemakers a strong hand in evaluating which technologies to use.
"The MPAA agrees that the system only begins to attack the piracy problem. Making analog copies is another huge problem that the industry wants to prevent through legislation or regulation."
According to Krim, an FCC staff member, "noting the agency's general reluctance to mandate the use of particular technologies," said, "everyone is kind of holding their nose on this one" but the rule will pass unless it would give too much control to the entertainment industry".
But as he points out, only people who'd bought into the technology would be affected. Certainly, milllions would knuckle under to Hollywood. But they do that already.
In the meanwhile, the same kinds of people who've made life Hell for the MPAA (not to mention the RIAA) would start figuring out ways to circumvent Hollywood's control mechanisms.
The result?
The birth of a brand new cottage entertainment industry offering a very wide range of product designed and made by an equally wide range of entrepreneurs and innovators, none of whom give a damn about Hollywood and its bottom line, but all of whom care a great deal about the end-user because, to paraphrase Pogo Possum, 'We is them'.
