Seth David Schoen writes: > A group of industries meeting in Los Angeles is planning to recommend > to Congress that regulations be imposed on all devices capable of > receiving and demodulating ATSC broadcast signals. These regulations > would include "robustness" and "tamper-resistance" rules designed to > prevent end users from getting access to cleartext MPEG versions of > broadcast signals. > > This proposal is similar to the more infamous SSSCA (now CBDTPA) but > is much narrower -- it only applies to one particular technology > (ATSC) rather than to all computer and CE systems. The industries > which were concerned with SSSCA are actively promoting this as an > "alternative", "compromise", etc., and using it as an argument against > the CBDTPA! > > 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. > > We would like to get in touch with lead developers on any projects > which would be affected by this -- especially projects which include > or plan to include ATSC support. Currently, I'm only aware of one > or two tuner/capture cards which would be affected. If this initiative > succeeds, any future cards sold in the U.S. will include "tamper- > resistance" and copy controls. > > For more information, please see > > http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/ > AFAIK, there isn't anybody working on such drivers yet, although there is some talk right now on the linux-dvb mailing list about including ATSC into the Linux DVB API, which would be moot if this proposal is successful. Maybe you would like to repost your request there. Have a look at http://www.linuxtv.org/mailinglists/linux-dvb/. There has also been talk about adopting the API by the Linux TV Alliance, which includes many American companies, but I haven't had any news from them recently. Marcus
