MPAA Wants Control of Your TV (EFF)

[Drew Wilson]

Our friends at Public Knowledge have been doing a great job in Washington, D.C., fighting against the MPAA's efforts to selectively disable the high-definition analog (i.e., "component" video) outputs on your cable box. In essence, Hollywood is telling the FCC that it won't give Americans early access to blockbuster movies unless the FCC lets it kill your analog outputs.

Public Knowledge has an update today, letting us know that Hollywood is back at the FCC pushing for this anti-consumer, anti-innovation change in the FCC rules:

The MPAA claims it needs this power in order to prevent infringement of “high value content” its members would make available to Americans “for the first time” — or, as we like to call it, “the exact same content in the exact same format at the exact same quality, 30 days earlier.” It also continues to ignore the fact that other studios already release content this early, and that the content in question is available on the Internet long before the proposed window. Clearly, something else is actually at work here: the MPAA is attempting to hold content ransom to convince the FCC to give them the ability to control how consumer electronics are built and used. And to get there, it has asked the FCC to give them a special immunity to the pro-consumer rule that bans SOC without a single iota of evidence that it is necessary.

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Ahh yes, another case of the copyright industry not taking "no" for an answer.

[moneoa]

Good lord those asshats really blow me away sometimes. ..

"we want access to your cable box you own to put limits on what you can and cannot output"

"Why"

"to prevent piracy of course, so you don't download it weeks early like you alread.....oh shit nevermind we will be back with some more bullshit rhetoric to make our shitty point"

[Signa]

It will never pass. It's bad enough they got HDMI so locked down as they do. For them to expect consumers to buy a new TV because their old one doesn't have the latest/greatest is asinine.