FCC "broadcast flag" approved

Posted Nov 6, 2003 23:28 UTC (Thu) by cross (subscriber, #13601) [Link]

> Redisitribution? We are talking about signals that are sent over the air
> waves which the broadcaster wants to reach the widest possible audience.

And which with public has already paid for to the tune of hundreds of dollars per household per year in the form of a hidden sales tax levied by media corporations through advertising, the price of which is added to the cost of living of every consumer regardless of whether they even own a television.

Figures for the United States are very hard to come by, but for the UK the terrestrial commercial channels raise over £150 nett* per household per year through advertising. Contrast this with £116 for the Licence Fee which funds the BBC. The difference is that, apart from being cheaper, all BBC content has been paid for explicitly by the public and is therefore the property of the public, freely accessible and redistributable by the public.

This is alluded to briefly in a piece Lawrence Lessig wrote recently for the Financial Times.

Lawrence Lessig: The BBC's lessons for America
http://news.ft.com/servlet/...

The broadcast flag is intended to ensure that you cannot treat the output of the commercial broadcasters in the same way. Despite the public having paid even more for it, it remains for a century the private property of those same corporations who got the money to produce it largely through a form of unacountable and well hidden private taxation.

This is an issue which I believe The Founders understood well when they wrote the copyright clause into the constitution. Once "we the people" have paid for the production of our culture, it is rightfully the property of the people and corporations have no right to perpetual control over our access and use of it.

It might well be that in the Corporate Age our best guarantee of maintaining some element of freedom over the production, access and control over our culture is to have our own corporation. The only way that can reasonably work is if the cost is shared over everyone, thus giving everyone joint ownership and access to the work produced. Displacing taxation into corporate hands is not the answer. Taxation, if it is to be levied at all should be explicit, clear, and subject to oversight by "We the People".

* i.e. the cost to consumers is considerably higher once gross figures, the costs added by advertisers and advertising agencies are factored in. Sources: ITC annual report 2003 (http://www.itc.org.uk) for TV income, UK Census 2001 (http://www.statistics.gov.uk) for population figures.