Electronic Freedom Foundation Uses Innovative Means of Combating CBDTPA
The Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) has produced a short animated cartoon called Tinsel-Town Club that attempts to educate non-technical people about the changes that the entertainment industry is trying to make to limit its own cusomers' legal rights. The focus of this cartoon is the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), a bill which would make the following activities illegal:
- playing your CDs on a desktop computer,
- creating legal copies or mp3s of the music that you own to play in your car, or listen to while you exercise, and
- creating mix CDs of music you've paid for.
What do these activities have to do with either broadband Internet access or digital television? Lobbyists for the entertainment industry have convinced some members of Congress that the Internet is not suitable for entertainment as we know it today. And, in order for the entertainment industry to expand its use of the Internet, individuals must not be able to copy digital entertainment from one computer or one media to another. In the lobbyists opinion, many Americans will violate existing copyright law if given the chance.
The EFF believes that the CBDTPA amounts to a substantial reduction in citizens' property rights. Their web site says, "This is not the way copyright law is supposed to work." The site goes on to suggest that the people contact their representatives in Congress and indicate opposition to the CBDTPA.