The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (or CBDTPA) was a United States bill proposed in 2002 that would have prohibited any kind of technology that could be used to read digital content without digital rights management (DRM)—which prohibits copying and reading any content under copyright without permission of the copyright owner. The bill was known in early drafts as the Security Systems and Standards Certification Act (or SSSCA), and was sometimes derisively called the Consume But Don't Try Programming Act.
The CBDTPA was proposed by South Carolina senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC). Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had stated that he could "not support" the proposed legislation and, as chairman, intended to block consideration of the controversial bill. This essentially killed the bill in 2002.
Proposed penalties for violating the CBDTPA ranged from five to twenty years in prison, and fines between $50,000 and $1 million.
Richard Stallman criticized this act due to the restrictions that it would place in the immediate and long-term future on free software, dubbing the bill the "Consume But Don't Try Programming Act."
Other U.S. senators named as sponsors of the CBDTPA bill include:
- John Breaux (D-LA)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
- Bill Nelson (D-FL)
- Ted Stevens (R-AK)
Famous quotes containing the words consumer, television, promotion and/or act:
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a part as it may please the master to assign you, for a long time or for a little as he may choose. And if he will you to take the part of a poor man, or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private citizen, then may you act that part with grace! For to act well the part that is allotted to us, that indeed is ours to do, but to choose it is another’s.”
—Epictetus (c. 55–135 B.C.)