SSSCA Squirms Forward Again Thursday

An anonymous reader writes: "Here we go! Only temporarily tripped up by Sept. 11th (and of course journalists and webmasters calling his office), Fritz Hollings is starting hearings on embedding copy protection in all digital devices and making the removal or circumvention of these protections a crime. Hurrah for freedom!"

The rest of the world says thanks

[CaptainZapp]

Did those bozos (as in clown) actually ever consider how bad such a law is for the US economy?

If they really pull that off, R&D and manufacturing will spread around the rest of the world, while the US is assembling dumbed down AOL-compliant Warner-Brothers approved cable TV boxes with embedded, digitally rights managed entertainment capabilities.

And other myths and legends...

[Cinnibar CP]

the hearing is meant to discuss whether the government must step in and mandate standards -- which Hollywood believes will allow movies to be distributed safely online, spur high-speed Internet access, and boost hardware sales.

A Hollywood spokesman was later heard to also profess strong belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and honest politicians.

Read This Rob

[prisonercx]

Cmdr - I'd suggest making a new category for stories like this, naming it "Your Lack Of Rights Online" and have a picture of a generic Congressman (maybe one that looks like Hollings) sodomizing you with a legal document. That seems more appropriate than the current icon.

(I say this with a deeply heavy heart. I am honestly scared as to what the world holds for me as a CS major when I graduate.)

PrisonerCX

Re:The Letter Fritz sent me when I asked about SSS

[NumberSyx]

That is a better response then I got from my suposed Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). After writing a nice polite letter about the dangers of both the DMCA and the SSSCA, I got a response about how she supported digital signatures for EShopping, "Way to go Kay !". I will not be voting for her in the future, unless she (or the Interns who answer her mail) starts showing she has a clue about the issues at hand. I have wriiten back, I included a copy of my original letter and her response, and advised her to be more careful in the future about responding to letters, as my letter and her response where completely unrelated. I further stated, based on this incident, that I doubted her abilty to properly represent me on matters that were important to me. I have as yet to receive a response.

funny quote from register article

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the way the register calls valenti "the industry Ass. President". oh man that cracks me up.

Government required technology....

[dacarr]

You know, the last time the US Federal Government required specific technological standards, we got a programming language called Ada.

Specification

[t_allardyce]

In the article they said something about devices that will respond to instructions embedded in the film. Here are the proposed specifications for a byte called 'SSSCA_DRM' to be put at the start of all files and media by law

Bit Description
1st Disable copying of this data
2nd Disable re-booting while media is in drive
3rd Disable ejecting of media from drive
4th Enable tamper-protection - send GPS position to CIA if device is opened
5th Destroy media in drive
6th Destroy drive
7th Destroy device
8th Destroy user

to combat this system simply: SSSCA_DRM = binary '00000000'

I propose a 9th bit: Destroy Bush, SSSCA_DRM = binary '000000001'