Alan Cox writes: > > One result of this proposal appears to be that no ATSC tuners could > > have open source drivers, nor could open source software play back > > recorded ATSC signals, nor could those signals be recorded in > > open-standard formats. Existing tuner cards like HiPix which don't > > include copy controls and let you open an ordinary MPEG stream could > > be banned outright, in favor of alternatives like AccessDTV which > > require proprietary drivers. > > Im curious how all the conclusions are reached looking at this from a > european perspective. The basic european model uses smartcard modules to > do cryptography for digital TV and does analog overlay onto the video > signal (because if the digital signal does touch the computer its game over > for any copy protector). Hi Alan, There's an "unspoken assumption" going on in this U.S. industries' discussion. In the U.S., the regulatory authority (FCC) has _already mandated_ that terrestrial digital TV broadcasts may not be encrypted at all. All of the industries assume that this is going to continue to be the case, otherwise they wouldn't even be talking about mandates (they would just encrypt the signal). Since they aren't allowed to encrypt the signal in the U.S., they feel they have to regulate all the devices which are capable of receiving it. This proposal also allows timeshifting, but the devices which do the timeshifting have to be "tamper-resistant", so not a PC with a free operating system or anything. You could still have something like a TiVo _if the user can't extract the content_. If they were allowed to encrypt the broadcast signal, they would do a smartcard thing like what you describe. That is what cable and satellite systems in the U.S. are doing and/or looking at, because they are allowed to encrypt _their_ signals (and typically do). In that case, the DMCA comes into play. The BPDG situation only exists because of the U.S. regulatory position that these digital broadcasts will not be encrypted. They're also still confident that they can "securely" get this content played on computers -- just like DVD. :-) -- Seth Schoen Staff Technologist schoen@xxxxxxx Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/ 454 Shotwell Street, San Francisco, CA 94110 1 415 436 9333 x107
