E.E. Times has also recently run an interesting overview of the analog hole issue, including some recent developments.

The article starts off by mentioning that the public is not typically well-represented in struggles over DRM and copy controls. (Technology companies have taken up the role of proxies for the public's interest, but it's not necessarily a role to which they're always well-suited.)

The first paragraph suggests that the presence of public-interest protesters "illustrates the frustration and high stakes involved in finding a political settlement to the digital copyright feud". Unfortunately, the main body of the article doesn't address the question of public representation. The battle is always presented as one between a small number of film studios and a small number of technology manufacturers.

Still, this article is worthwhile as an analog hole update.

There are many other sources of good background information and news on current struggles over copyright and technology mandates. One such is Donna Wentworth's Copyfight.

Draft legislation by Rep. "Billy" Tauzin would require the FCC to issue rules mandating that digital TV receivers respond to the broadcast flag in some way.

We're still studying this bill, which has not been introduced. One noteworthy point: the bill contemplates eliminating analog video outputs from digital TV receivers.

Rep. Tauzin's bill will be discussed at a hearing before the Commerce Committee on Wednesday, September 25.

The DVD CCA has failed to select (as it had planned) a "Consensus Watermark" from among watermark technologies submitted by bidders.

EE Times reports on the failure to achieve an agreement.

We understand that the currently submitted bids will expire on November 2, and that there is currently no process in place to solicit or consider new bids.

The "Consensus Watermark" idea has had a significance far beyond DVD Video. Some studios had suggested that it could be the technological basis for a government mandate on watermark detectors, to address the so-called "analog hole". In addition, several existing private contracts refer to the Consensus Watermark (or related security measures) and provide that licensees would be required to detect and respond to the watermark, if and when it is "declared".

One application of the Consensus Watermark would be to control video data after it had been extracted from a CSS-encrypted DVD (perhaps by using a utility such as DeCSS) and converted into a different format. Equipment which recognized the presence of the watermark within the video data itself might be designed to refuse to play watermarked video streams if they were found "in the wild", outside of the encrypted media through which they'd originally been published.

Reports indicate that MPAA is very unhappy that the Consensus Watermark was not selected.

Drew Clark and his colleague Bara Vaida have published an excellent and thorough background article on Hollywood's struggles with technology companies. The article is freely available on-line -- follow the line above to read it -- and National Journal has given us permission to quote portions below.

This is a good introduction to contemporary issues about copyright and technology, from a political perspective.

The technical standard for the broadcast flag itself (which defines what the broadcast flag is and how it may be placed into a broadcast) is available from ATSC. The broadcast flag is called the "redistribution control descriptor" (descriptor 0xAA) by ATSC, and is defined in Amendment 3 to A/65A: Program and System Information Protocol for Terrestrial Broadcast and Cable (Revision A) (commonly known as "A/65" or "PSIP").

Amendment 3, adopted by ATSC in April of this year, can be found in the document linked above, beginning on p. 142. Readers may observe that the descriptor, by itself, doesn't do anything; it's defined to mean that "technological control of consumer redistribution is signaled", but the ATSC standards do not require any particular response to its presence.

Requiring devices to detect and respond to this flag in a particular way is the role of the Compliance and Robustness Rules discussed within the BPDG. Currently, manufacturers are producing legal (and ATSC standards-compliant) devices which do not respond to the flag at all.