The final Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) report has been released. The group, formed to break the logjam between Hollywood and Silicon Valley by coming up with a copy-protection scheme that suits everyone, has been the target of close scrutiny by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which formed its first-ever blog to monitor the group's movements. EFF's theory? Senator Hollings's CBDTPA was a smokescreen for the real work going on at BPDG. Hence EFF set out to expose the group's work, and thereby influence its "product."
Now that the product has been released, EFF has unleashed the hounds. They say the BPDG report is bad news: bad for fair use, bad for competition, bad for innovation, bad for free/open source software, and bad for DTV adoption. Further, they underscore the fact that despite some claims to the contrary, no true consensus on copy protection has been reached.
See articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal [Reg. required], and Mercury News.
Slashdot has a good thread going; the story submission carries some interesting docs.
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GrepLaw
