[Meetings]
FCC considers NPRM

The Federal Communications Commission will consider, on August 8, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which appears to relate to the broadcast flag in some way.

[Meetings]
Tauzin's round-table reconvenes Monday

Rep. Tauzin's round-table group is reconvening Monday, July 15, for further discussions. We'll provide more details when we have them.

[Meetings]
CPTWG Meets on July 19

The parent group of the BPDG, the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), will hold its next meeting in Los Angeles on July 19, 2002.

$100 gets you a seat at the table and a chance to eat a hearty catered lunch. What's more, you can make a presentation to the CPTWG just by emailing Maryann Nicoletti. In times gone by, the EFF has brought down the GNU Radio people to demonstrate the futility of the BPDG; we'd love to get your suggestions for future speakers to bring to the meeting (anyone friends with any tony anti-trust attorneys, open source video hackers, ASIC engineers, fair use advocates, or capture-card vendors who'd like to present on the technical feasibility of the BPDG mandate?)

The meeting's at the Renaissance Hotel, 9620 Airport Blvd., LA CA 90045, 310.337.2800, and it gets going at 8:30, and wraps at 4PM.

You can get a $89 hotel room next door at the Four Points Sheraton, too. See you there!

[Meetings]
Tauzin's tasks and timetable

EFF has received a copy of a memo distributed by House Commerce Committee staff counsel on behalf of Rep. Tauzin, providing "assignments" and deadlines for participants in yesterday's roundtable meeting.

The memo is included below.

MORE...

[Meetings]
CPTWG meeting tomorrow

It's a good time to remind our readers of tomorrow's CPTWG meeting in Los Angeles, where the new BPDG report is sure to be a subject of discussion.

EFF expects to attend.

[Meetings]
BPDG conference call details

The call tomorrow has the following dial-in details:

Date:           Thursday 5/23 U.S. / Friday 5/24 Japan
Time:           4:00pm PDT / 7:00pm EDT / 8:00am Japan
Duration:       2 hours
Dial:           1-617-801-9781
Passcode:       4919980

Since there are a limited number of dial-in lines, all participants from an organization have been asked to dial from a single location. In addition, each organization is asked to designate a single spokesperson. Participants are also asked to keep their telephones muted when not speaking. Note that members of the press are, by CPTWG policy, explicitly not invited to participate.

[Meetings]
MPAA proposes conference call

The MPAA has proposed a "special conference call" for BPDG members to discuss two last-minute proposals (on regulations on consumer ATSC modulators, and on recording of Unscreened Content). Both of these proposals were made by the MPAA, and might be the subject of considerable debate. Several consumer electronics companies, at least, appeared uneasy about the regulation of modulators.

The call would be held Wednesday or Thursday late afternoon PT. (Both times are inconvenient for EFF, but we will try to participate.)

[Meetings]
National Journal hosts June 4 debate on BPDG in Washington, D.C.

The National Journal (whose reporter Drew Clark has been following BPDG, and was earlier expelled from BPDG's mailing list) is hosting a debate, or forum on BPDG and "Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood".

The star-studded panel includes EFF's own Sr. Attorney (and Consensus at Lawyerpoint co-author) Fred von Lohmann.

Other panelists are BSA's Emery Simon, Disney's Preston Padden, Philips's Michael Epstein, Seyfarth and Shaw's John Mitchell, Vivendi Universal's Matt Gerson, and Al Mottur of the Office of Sen. Fritz Hollings.

The event will be held on June 4 at 8:30a at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. It's free to National Journal's Technology Daily subscribers, and $300 for the public; reservations in advance have been requested.

Drew Clark will moderate.

[Meetings]
CPTWG meets on June 5

The parent group of the BPDG, the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), will hold its next meeting in Los Angeles on June 5, 2002.

$100 gets you a seat at the table and a chance to eat a hearty catered lunch. What's more, you can make a presentation to the CPTWG just by emailing Maryann Nicoletti. In times gone by, the EFF has brought down the GNU Radio people to demonstrate the futility of the BPDG; we'd love to get your suggestions for future speakers to bring to the meeting (anyone friends with any tony anti-trust attorneys, open source video hackers, ASIC engineers, fair use advocates, or capture-card vendors who'd like to present on the technical feasibility of the BPDG mandate?)

The meeting's at the Renaissance Hotel, 9620 Airport Blvd., LA CA 90045, 310.337.2800, and it gets going at 8:30, and wraps at 4PM.

You can get a $89 hotel room next door at the Four Points Sheraton, too. See you there!

[Meetings]
Next in-person meeting: April 29

A meeting announcement was just sent to the BPDG mailing list. The next meeting is at the LAX Renaissance Hotel on Monday, April 29. It runs from noon to 8:00p, with lunch and dinner included; the fee for the meeting will be $120 instead of $100, "on account of the extra meal". Prospective attendees were encouraged to write to Maryann_Nicoletti@mpaa.org to advise her that they plan to attend.

The topics for discussion at this meeting were listed as follows:

• Authorization of protection technologies on Table A (i.e. what are criteria, and processes)
• How requirements regarding OTA content retransmitted in scrambled (possibly non-VSB/QAM modulated) form will be addressed
• Output of Unscreened/Marked content via consumer VSB/QAM modulation
• In-the-clear recording of Unscreened/Marked content for certain formats
• Resolution of bracketed alternatives in the requirements draft

A rough paraphrase of these:

• Which outputs and which recording methods will digital television receivers be (legally) permitted to use? How should we determine which methods will be illegal? (Since all digital output and digital removable-media recording technologies will be presumed illegal by default, what process will someone have to use to cause a technology to be certified legal?)
• What happens when a device remodulates a signal (turns it back into a radio signal)? Should this practice be allowed, and what effects will it have?
• In what circumstances should it be legal to record this content without encrypting the recording (to "protect" it from the consumer who owns the recording)?
• Can we reach an inter-industry consensus on certain language in the current BPDG draft on which we have not yet agreed?

[Meetings]
How to attend CPTWG

It's possible that we have readers who've never been to CPTWG or an in-person BPDG meeting, but would like to attend. (The next CPTWG meeting is Tuesday, April 17, and will include a BPDG meeting.)

All you'll need is $100 and transportation to the Renaissance Hotel at Los Angeles Airport (9620 Airport Blvd., Los Angeles). The hotel offers free shuttle service to and from airport terminals. Once you arrive at the hotel, simply walk up to the conference room, hand $100 to the MPAA representative, and make out a name tag for yourself. Lunch is included. Most participants dress formally.

We're told that members of the press are not welcome and are turned away; there's never been a public statement to that effect by CPTWG, and its web site has no mention of such a policy, but a few regulars have conveyed this impression to us.

Public scrutiny of CPTWG's work is sorely needed; please join us if you can.

The cheapest hotel nearby the Renaissance is probably the Four Points LAX right next door.

[Meetings]
Updated meeting schedule

According to Michael Ripley, there will be only two meetings next week:

4/15: BPDG conference call, 4-6pm PDT (8-10am 4/16 Japan)

4/17: BPDG in-person meeting in L.A., to begin directly following the CPTWG session and end by 2:00pm (with a working lunch)

[Meetings]
BPDG meetings for week of April 14

The BPDG is considering having three meetings next week:

1. A telephone meeting in the afternoon (PDT) on Monday, April 15
2. An in-person meeting at the Copy Protection Technical Working Group Meeting in Los Angeles on Tuesday, April 16
3. Another in-person meeting in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 18

If you have comments on the schedule of the first and third of these, you can send them to Michael Ripley at Intel. Considering these proposed times, it doesn't appear that many people from BPDG will be at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in San Francisco next week. But we will, and we hope to see some of our readers there.

[Meetings]
BPDG in-person meeting, April 3
The next BPDG meeting will take place in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, April 3. The cost is $100, and the meeting will start at 8:00 in the morning at the LAX Renaissance Hotel (where CPTWG meets regularly). If you want to attend, write to Maryann at the MPAA. Tell 'em the EFF sent you.

[Meetings]
Future BPDG meetings schedule

• April 1: BPDG conference call, 3:00pm PST / 6:00pm EST.
• April 3: possible in-person BPDG meeting in Washington, D.C.
• April 17: Copy Protection Technical Working Group, Los Angeles.

If you've got $100 and a yen to participate in the "consensus," come on down to sunny Los Angeles or frosty DC and sit through a CPTWG meeting -- there's a good chance we'll be there too.