For signals along the lines of what Lucas is saying, look at ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Agreement (or rather, look at what you can), which is being deliberated in very tight secrecy, much like the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group for the broadcast flag. The term “anti-counterfeiting” may be not only a ruse to make it difficult to criticize a draconian pre-emptive authorial power kind of notion of copyright, but also a very close description of palladiation — where some sort of encrypted watermarking is used much like on Youtube to identify works — this can be connected with TPMs and remote attestation and revocation a la the Kindle episode. Similar impulses seemed to me to be behind the Xcasting treaty, also pursued by the same forces now apparently working on ACTA.

The CBDTPA was only barely averted, people don’t quite realize. They had the schemes figured out for just rolling it out on the broadband and digital TV platforms, so that it would be a fait accompli brought about by the Commerce Department and the FCC. Targeted actions on both sides were what stopped that — when we shut down the broadband side, they scrambled to the FCC and published the broadcast flag NPRM. If they had managed to quietly roll out their plan on the broadband side, then the broadcast flag, then they would have put Congress into a position where it would be quite difficult to resist draconian legislation that would correlate with those schemes — putting Fritz chips in all electronic devices consistent with the “protections” in place in broadband and digital television.

A similar approach via a “fait accompli” ACTA treaty, may be afoot.

Seth