A-Hole bill would make a secret technology into the law of the land

Boing Boing ^ | 23 January 2006 | Cory Doctorow

[ShadowAce]

If the controversial Analog Hole bill makes it into law, US technologists will have to obey a law whose most important details are a trade-secret.

The entertainment industry, always a bastion of media savvy, has proposed its "A-Hole" bill as a legal means of limiting the conversion of analog music and video to digital files. Under the bill, every maker of a device that can convert analog signals to digital ones (like iPods, camcorders, and PCs) would be required by law to be built with a detector for a proprietary watermarking technology called VEIL (the use of free/open source in these technologies would be outlawed to prevent the removal of VEIL detectors).

The idea is that any time you attempted to make a digital recording, your device would seek out the VEIL watermark and respond to any special instructions (e.g., "No recording allowed") it discovered there.

But what the hell is VEIL? No one really knows. The sole commercial deployment of this technology to date has been in a Batman toy (why this makes it fit to be included by law into every American recording device is beyond me).

Copyfighting Princeton Prof Ed Felten called the company that makes VEIL to find out how the technology works. Their answer? They'll tell Ed how VEIL works only if he pays them $10,000 and signs a non-disclosure agreement. And they'll only tell him how the decoder works -- there's no price you can pay to find out how VEIL encoding works.

As Ed points out, this should be a deal-breaker for even considering the A-Hole bill (of course, there are lots of other deal-breakers in that bill, but this is a big one). How can the American public and its lawmakers determine whether this is a fit technology to mandate if its workings are a secret?

The details of this technology are important for evaluating this bill. How much would the proposed law increase the cost of televisions? How much would it limit the future development of TV technology? How likely is the technology to mistakenly block authorized copying? How adaptable is the technology to the future? All of these questions are important in debating the bill. And none of them can be answered if the technology part of the bill is secret.

Which brings us to the most interesting question of all: Are the members of Congress themselves, and their staffers, allowed to see the spec and talk about it openly? Are they allowed to consult experts for advice? Or are the full contents of this bill secret even from the lawmakers who are considering it?

The A-Hole bill is making the rounds of the House, EFF has an easy way to write to your Congresscritter about this.

Link

[ShadowAce]

The title is only part of the reason I posted this. It's actually a serious issue.

[ShadowAce]

[dfwgator]

The title is only part of the reason I posted this.

Sure it is.

[MineralMan]

Funny. Every Windows PC comes with a little app called "Sound Recorder," which has, as its sole purpose, turning analog sounds into digital sounds. You plug in your input into the sound card and record away.

This is stupid.

[Dallas59]

Used car salesman...

[domenad]

DAMMIT. I wish for A-hole legislation every day in traffic.

[ClearCase_guy]

Rogers: I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
Stig: No. Never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to buy his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Rogers: But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig: (pause) Oh yeah, he did that.
Rogers: Why?
Stig: Well he had to, didn't he? I mean there was nothing else he could do, be fair. I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Rogers: What had you done?
Stig: Er... well he didn't tell me that, but he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn't *want* to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. He'd do anything for you, Dinsdale would.

[Constitution Day]

A-Hole Bill

[Ben Mugged]

They are wasting their time. I can build a device from Radio Shack parts for less than $20 that will convert the analog source to digital. The resulting digital stream can then be input to my computers serial port and converted to a MP3 file. No security stamp, no A-Hole technology. Just fundamental electronics.

[Dallas59]

133 views and counting...

[R. Scott]

If it becomes a reality my old obsolete decks will be worth something again.

[Dallas59]

Keep your old computers.

[staytrue]

Seems this is a little late as I have a whole bunch of equipement that plays stuff I make from analog sources.

[petro45acp]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Was going to rant about DRM, but lost the bubble.

DRM = BAD

Responsible individuals paying the piper = GOOD

Cheers,
Top sends

[muawiyah]

Everybody knows its a really serious issue, but everybody who's thought about it for a few minutes realizes that "analog" recording technology is most likely going to disappear shortly.

Some issues really do have to be discussed by the technical people, not just the marketeers and their lawyers.

[staytrue]

I can build a device from Radio Shack parts for less than $20 that will convert the analog source to digital. The resulting digital stream can then be input to my computers serial port and converted to a MP3 file. No security stamp, no A-Hole technology. Just fundamental electronics.

I think the law would make your device illegal and possibly all my computers, dvd players, etc. I'm not sure if they will confisacted the old equipment. But when you get inbetween hollywood and a dollar bill, you better watch out.

[rattrap]

I thought most bills introduced by congress were A-Hole bills, at least they're being specific this time.

[Constitution Day]

Here's one homebuilt device I saw in Popular Science that would be made illegal by this law.
I don't even have an iPod, but I thought it was amazingly inventive.

Rip Records Straight to Your iPod
This retro radio cabinet automatically loads the iPod with tracks taken from classic vinyl

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[roaddog727]

A-hole bill for a bunch of A-Holes....