EFF: Fight the Broadcast Flag from Your Armchair

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: EFF: Fight the Broadcast Flag from Your Armchair
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:20:05 -0800
From: EFF Press <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Contact:

Wendy Seltzer
   Staff Attorney
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   [email protected]
   +1 415 436-9333 x125 (office), +1 914 374-0613 (cell)

Annalee Newitz
   Policy Analyst
   Electronic Frontier Foundation
   [email protected]
   +1 415 436-9333 x131

Fight the Broadcast Flag from Your Armchair

EFF Releases HD PVR Cookbook and Build-In Kit

San Francisco - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
announced the next stage in its challenge to the Federal
Communications Commission's "Broadcast Flag" technology mandate.
The organization released a step-by-step guide, the "HD PVR
Cookbook," that teaches people how to build a high-definition
digital television (HDTV) recorder unaffected by the
technological constraints of the Broadcast Flag. In addition, EFF
is encouraging people to protest the FCC rule by holding
Build-Ins -- gatherings around the country to build unfettered
HDTV recorders and experience first-hand the kind of innovation
stifled by the government mandate.

The Broadcast Flag, which places copy controls on DTV signals, is
aimed at stopping people from making digitally perfect copies of
television shows and redistributing them. Yet it also stops
people from making perfectly legitimate personal copies of
broadcasts. More disturbing, the Broadcast Flag will outlaw the
manufacture and import of a whole host of TiVo-like devices that
send DTV signals into a computer for backup, editing, and
playback. After the Broadcast Flag regulations go into effect,
all personal video recorder (PVR) technologies must be Broadcast
Flag-compliant and "robust" against user modification -- and that
means, once again, that the entertainment industry is trying to
tell you what you can do with your own machines.

Now individuals can fight back by hosting a Build-In before the
Broadcast Flag goes into effect on July 1, 2005.  EFF held the
first Build-In at its offices in late January, inviting a number
of local programmers, TV fans, and bloggers to try out the
Cookbook and test-bake their own HDTV recorders using standard
computers equipped with HD tuner cards. The results were
smashing: the dozen attendees created five working PVRs over the
course of the day, using the KnoppMyth distribution of the
open-source MythTV software package. Groups who want to host
their own Build-Ins can contact EFF for a "Throw Your Own
Build-In" kit, which includes a hard copy of the HD PVR Cookbook,
a KnoppMyth CD-ROM, and (of course!) free EFF t-shirts and
stickers.

EFF releases its technological challenge to the Broadcast Flag on
the same day that the organization and other civil liberties
groups challenge the FCC in the courtroom. In ALA v. FCC, the
groups -- including the American Library Association and Public
Knowledge -- argue that the FCC has overstepped its authority in
mandating the Broadcast Flag and that the rule should be struck
down.

"Even as we're suing the FCC to stop this interference with
technological innovation, we're also helping television watchers
to get off the couch and build their own fully capable PVRs,"
said EFF Special Projects Coordinator Wendy Seltzer, who
organized the Build-In. "Every MythTV built helps demonstrate the
creative development that may be cut off by bad regulation."

HD PVR Cookbook:
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/

Pictures of the EFF Build-In:
http://wendy.seltzer.org/photos/mythtv/build-in/

Throw Your Own Build-In:
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/cookbook/buildin.php

More about the Broadcast Flag:
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_02.php#003356

About EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties
organization working to protect rights in the digital world.
Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry
and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF
is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most
linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/


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