Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #BroadcastFlag
Most recents (4)
Two visions competed at the dawn of the modern digital era: computers could be a way to empower people to push back against corporate and state control; or computers could transfer power from the public to corporations or governments. 1/ 
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/pai… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/pai… 2/
I've always been baffled by the technologists who pursued control over liberation: surely their own formative experiences were of the liberatory power of technology. 3/
This week on my podcast, I read the final part of "The Internet Heist," my @Medium series on the copyright wars' early days, when the entertainment and tech giants tried to leverage the digital TV transition into a veto over every part of our lives.
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
In Part I, I described the bizarre #BroadcastFlag project, where Hollywood studios and Intel colluded with a corrupt congressman (later @phrma's top lobbyist) to ban any digital product unless it had DRM and blocked free/open source software:
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 2/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 2/
In Part II, I recount the failure of the Broadcast Flag (killed by a unanimous Second Circuit decision), and how the studios pivoted to "plugging the #AnalogHole": mandatory kill-switches for recorders to block recording of copyrighted works:
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 3/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 3/
This week on my podcast, I read the second part of "The Internet Heist," a series of three articles about the weirdest, most far-reaching, most bonkers battle of the copyright wars of the early 2000s.
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
Last week, I read out Part I of the series, which told the story of the #BroadcastFlag, wherein the movie studios and TV broadcasters conspired with a corrupt Congressman to make it illegal to build a general-purpose computer unless it had DRM.
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 2/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 2/
The Broadcast Flag's notional purpose was to prevent high-def digital TV broadcasts from being captured and shared online. 3/
This week on my podcast, I read the first part of "The Internet Heist," a three-part series I wrote for @Medium on the #BroadcastFlag, which was invented 20 years ago, on my first day on the job at @EFF. It's basically my origin-story.
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
onezero.medium.com/the-internet-h… 1/
If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2022/02/07/bro… 2/
pluralistic.net/2022/02/07/bro… 2/
The Broadcast Flag was an incredibly gnarly, high-stakes digital technology issue. It combined three esoteric fields - spectrum allocation, computer science, and copyright - and threatened to ban all free/open source software. 3/
