Help stop the Broadcast Flag
We lucked out when a federal appeals court struck down the lameness that is the Broadcast Flag earlier this month, but that sort of setback doesn't faze the alliance of broadcasters and movie studios which pushed the rule on the FCC in the first place. Remember that the court overturned the rule because the FCC had overstepped its authority, not because the Broadcast Flag was inherently unconstitutional, so now the industry has decided to stop messing around and are leaning on their pals in Congress to enshrine the Broadcast Flag as law. Yeah, we know that most of you probably won't be affected by this either way, since the Broadcast Flag only governs digital over-the-air broadcasts and the vast majority of Americans homes get their TV via cable or satellite (which have copy control mechanisms of their own), but the Broadcast Flag establishes a very dangerous precedent. It essentially gives the government a discouraging amount of control over what manufacturers can or cannot do with their products, something which will both dampen innovation and end up limiting consumers' basic rights to do what they want with their media.
If you're feeling as frustrated as we are, there's something you can do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a new action-alert which makes it easy to let your Congressional representative know just how unhappy you are about this proposed legislation. It's pretty easy to get cynical about Congress, but if you don't make your voice heard then you have no right to bitch about this later. At least not to us.
[Via BoingBoing]
