More Broadcast Flag Sneakiness
Maybe you haven’t heard about the Hollywood and the FCC’s attempt to implement a Broadcast Flag on all future digital television devices. Here’s a good summary from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
The Broadcast Flag rule would have required all digital TV receivers, including televisions, VCRs, and personal video recorders like TiVo, to be built to read signals embedded in over-the-air broadcast television shows that would place certain limitations on how those shows could be played, recorded, and saved. The sale of any hardware that was not able to “recognize and give effect to” the Broadcast Flag, including currently existing digital and high-definition television (HDTV) equipment and open source/free software tools, would have become illegal.
Any TV, recording device or computer that could read Digital TV signals would be infected with Digital Rights Managment designed to tell you, the consumer and owner of the public airwaves, what you could do with the content on the devices you purchased. The FCC sided with Hollywood and approved the Broadcast Flag requirements. In a suit brought by The American Library Association, the courts recently determined that the FCC overstepped its authority and struck down the order.
Now, the Film and TV industries are taking the fight to Congress. But the problem is, they’re trying to sneak changes through without raising a stink. They want to give the FCC the sweeping power to implement the changes that the courts have already said the FCC does not have. I don’t know about you guys, but the last I heard the Government is supposed to represent the people, not the interests of the organizations who can throw the most money at them (although I’m not naieve enough to understand that this is exactly how the government operates). If you don’t want some TV Exec telling you how, when and why you can watch a show you legally recorded, then take action.
While I understand that companies are concerned that easy copying and redistribution of recorded TV shows, as already happens, will reduce the number of viewers which will hurt advertising revenue, they need to understand that DRM is a virus. DRM is a technological attempt to determine the intent of an individual (fair use or piracy?), and technology can not do that. Much like the fight over MP3s, the companies involved in distributing music would have been much better served to investigate and exploit the existing technology for their own business than by suing their customers. Of course, then we wouldn’t the extraordinarily ridiculous article by former head-witch of the RIAA, Hilary Rosen, complaining that the DRM on her iTunes songs and her iPod restricts her from listening to the music she wants, when she wants, how she wants. That’s the magic of DRM, lady. She actually has the nerve to ask, ” Why am I complaining about this? Why isn’t everyone?” Honey, we’ve been complaining about this for years but your ears were clogged with wads of cash and you couldn’t hear the cries of your customers.
These dinosaurs should be finding ways to adopt new technology and turn it into a solid business model as opposed to trying to quash tech that is already on the market. Hell, if you want to protect yourself against the potentiality of the Broadcast Flag, just head on over the EFF’s home-brew DVR building page and build your own Digital Video Recording device free of any DRM.
