Kudos to the GNURadio team! Over a year of diligent effort has been rewarded with an open source and open hardware implementation of a PC-based HDTV ATSC receiver. Hopefully, this represents the anarchic nose under the FCC regulatory tent.
A recent /. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/22/ 1958243&mode=thread&tid=129&threshold=-1
And here's a very similar report outlining (with legal publishing tools!) the worrisome situation of publishing and writing tools falling into the hands of private citizens, even of terrorist organizations. Something must be done!
The following commentary on Software-Defined Publishing (SDP) is from the Office of Homeland Security, Seventh Meeting Report.
The emergence of the low-cost, generally available Software-Defined Publishing which can be configured with free, modifiable, open software will present a new issue for regulators. With SDP the world will see a situation where individuals and even terrorist organizations will be able to freely distribute writings and plans without regard to FCC mandates. What will be placed in the hands of the public entrepreneurs, amateurs, and even those with malicious intent will be machines which in principal can produce and send writings to any person, any time.
Of course, it was always possible for an individual to build an illegal press or underground publishing system, but this new technology represents a quantum change in this situation. Any person will be able to buy a general purpose SDP in the same way that any other peripheral for a home computer (like a radio) can be obtained. Then, with the world-wide availability of software that can even be modified if needed, any language, font, or pattern can be emulated. Bans on printer and word processor types will be circumvented with ease. Mandates such as the proposed "loyalty oath" bit embedded in text watermarks will be hard to enforce.
Because the software is open, as a practical matter virtually all mandated restrictions will be at risk (except for total power output which remains a classical hardware issue). Unlike illegal or infringing hardware, software (which could be considered a type constitutionally protected speech) can easily be distributed to millions worldwide for application on commodity SDPs.
Some of the issues described are not unique to this situation. If a person has the instrumentality to design something that the government says is illegal, then they have a personal choice as to whether or not to use it and risk the penalty if caught. But one major problem here relates to the legal responsibilities of the producer of the general purpose hardware and software. If it decided that these producers are liable if their work product is easily repurposed to an illegal function even though many legitimate uses are intended, then this will act as an enormous obstacle to innovation.
