Analog Hole

Our senses are analog. So before you can see or hear any digital media, it has to be converted to analog. Anything analog, however, can be converted back into digital form and copied. To Hollywood, this feature looks like a bug, one they call the "analog hole." But in an age of DRM and content restrictions on digital media, the analog hole is the last line of defense for fair use and your other rights—it's the only way to get a DVD onto a video iPod, for example. And the analog hole has also been the last refuge for innovators trying to build new gizmos to take your rights into the digital age—the Slingbox, for instance, depends on it to digitize and send your digital cable programs to your cell phone over the Internet.

Hollywood wants to change all that, enlisting federal bureaucrats to regulate technology companies and hobble anything that touches analog video outputs, including video cards, VCRs, PVRs, and much more. By government mandate, all analog-to-digital technologies would have to obey copyright holders' commands and have their hoods welded shut, cutting off user modifications and open source developers.

Proposals to plug the analog hole won't do anything to stop "Internet piracy," but they will stifle innovation and restrict fair uses. You won't be able to use tools like the Slingbox to send recorded TV shows to yourself over the Internet or build your own home theater PC to time-shift The Sopranos. If you want to record a TV show and excerpt it for a school report, too bad—the copy-controls might not let you.

So far, EFF's helped keep these misguided bills from becoming law. Learn more about them below and help support our efforts through our Action Center and by becoming an EFF member.

Take Action: Stop Congress Mandating Secret Technology

Related Efforts to Plug the Analog Hole

Hollywood is also pursuing other ways to plug the analog hole, by adding copy protection to analog content, intentionally degrading picture quality from analog outputs ("down-rezzing"), and preventing devices from using these outputs altogether. Learn more through the links below.

ARDG: Developing Plug Proposals

In 2003-2004, EFF covered and criticized the work of the Analog Reconversion Discussion Group (ARDG), an inter-industry working group tasked with examining technologies to plug the analog hole. The ARDG is similar to the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG), which came up with the initial "broadcast flag" proposal