Deeplinks Blog posts about Analog Hole
With the recent iPhone 7 announcement, Apple confirmed what had already been widely speculated: that the new smartphone won’t have a traditional, analog headphone jack. Instead, the only ways to connect the phone to an external headset or speaker will be via Bluetooth or through Apple’s proprietary Lightning port.
Those tiny wireless earbuds aren’t the only thing that just became easier to lose. So did users’ freedoms.
It's the dawn of a new year. From our perch on the frontier of electronic civil liberties, EFF has collected a list of a dozen important trends in law, technology and business that we think will play a significant role in shaping online rights in 2010.
In December, we'll revisit this post and see how it all worked out.
1. Attacks on Cryptography: New Avenues for Intercepting Communications
In 2010, several problems with cryptography implementations should come to the fore, showing that even encrypted communications aren't as safe as users expect. Two of the most significant problems we expect concern cellphone security and web browser security.
Digital Video Recorders, once considered a mortal threat by the entertainment industry, have now become its new best friend. It's just the latest example of how the industry's constant warnings of the dangers of "piracy" frequently turn out to be baseless hysteria.
Remember 2001? Digital Video Recorders ("DVRs") like TiVo and ReplayTV were poised to win mainstream adoption, allowing consumers to fast-forward past advertisements more easily than before. In response, the entertainment industry behaved predictably — it freaked out and filed a bunch of lawsuits.
As Blu-ray.com reports, the AACS licensing authority has released the "Final Adopter Agreement" it plans to enforce against consumer electronics companies that make BluRay players (and any other AACS devices that come along). Buried inside that 188 page document is a plan to eliminate analog video... forever. BluRay device makers will have to restrict analog outputs to low resolution first:
2.2.2.1 Analog Sunset – 2010. With the exception of Existing Models,
any Licensed Player manufactured after December 31, 2010 shall
limit analog video outputs for Decrypted AACS Content to SD
Interlace Modes [composite video, s-video, 480i component video and 576i video] only.
On the last day of 2013, analog outputs will be banned on BluRay players:
While the Senate was standing up for civil liberties, the House was handing out a Christmas gift to Hollywood. For digital consumers and innovators, however, it looks to be a nasty stocking-filler.
Representatives Sensenbrenner and Conyers have introduced H.R. 4569, the "Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005," a.k.a. the return of the MPAA's "Plugging the Analog Hole" scheme, which is itself just a variant on the dreaded "Hollings Bill" introduced back in 2002.
The new bill is a rehash of the one we first mentioned on Halloween. It would impose strict legal controls on any video analog to digital (A/D) convertors "manufacture[d], imported or otherwise traffic[ed]" in the United States.
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