At 06:20 AM 5/30/2002 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote: >Peter Trei writes: > > My mind has been boggled, my flabbers have been ghasted. > > > > In the name of protecting their business model, the MPAA > > proposes that every analog/digital (A/D) converter - one of > > the most basic of chips - be required to check for US > > government mandated copyright flags. Quite aside from > > increasing the cost and complexity of the devices many, > > manyfold, it eliminates the ability of the US to compete > > in the world electronics market. > >This is absurd. In all the commentary on this issue, no one has made >the obvious point that the MPAA has no interest or intention in putting >watermark detectors into every ADC chip! They don't care about the ADC >chip in a digital thermometer or even a cell phone. All they care about >are things like PC video capture cards, which are high fidelty consumer >devices capable of digitizing copyright protected content.
But that also means it could block sale of analog test instruments, such as programmable PC-based spectrum analyzers. steve