Stop the Broadcast Flag Mandate (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

The Broadcast Flag Mandate is an FCC rule that would make receiving TV with free software illegal in the USA. Read more in this Linux Journal article. "Right now, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States of America is preparing to hand down a regulation, the so-called Broadcast Flag Mandate. This regulation would make it a felony to own, sell or use important free software tools of communication, such as GNU Radio, Project GNU's software-defined radio program. The issue here has nothing to do with copyright infringement, despite the claims of the RIAA, the MPAA and the AAP; the Broadcast Flag Mandate would make purely private use of GNU Radio a felony."

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Stop the Broadcast Flag Mandate (Linux Journal)

Posted Dec 5, 2002 19:32 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

It's funny, we see all these big name companies (IBM, SUN, HP, etc.)
contributing to various Free Software projects (GNOME, Linux, Bash, GCC,
etc.) But when the community needs help to secure it's right to write
software they are nowhere to be seen.

We have the hackers, the community has already written a world class
compiler, kernel, c library, shell, desktop.

They have what we're short of: money and lawyers to fight for our right to
write Free Software.

The FSF started the DigitalSpeech project to fight against laws such as this.
Bruce Peren's is doing work for the good guys too. Can anyone out there
spare a few tens of dollars/euro a month for these projects?

Ciaran O'Riordan

www.digitalspeech.org
www.techp.org

Stop the Broadcast Flag Mandate (Linux Journal)

Posted Dec 6, 2002 0:35 UTC (Fri) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link]

When Oh When |Is the world going to get it's collective ass into some form of shape and deal an once and for all time the death blow to people like the RIAA MPAA AAP and gawd knows how many other big groups/orginizations .

The world is in dire need of good quality software and opperating systems but all thy ever happens is some LITTLE OIKE! like a sad senator or similar paid by big money groups like M$ organises yet another bill to stifle advancement

I could go on but i am shure you get the idea i live in the UK but what happens over thete in the US in the long run affects us here as well , Squash them before they squash us ..

Pete .