On Sat, May 07, 2005 at 05:17:22PM -0400, Eben King wrote:
> On Sat, 7 May 2005, Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> > For those not following along, it appears that a DC Appeals court has
> > struck down the "broadcast flag" regulation created by the FCC. See
> > today's Tampa Tribune, business section. One telling paragraph:
> >
> > "The FCC acknowledged the agency never had exercised the authority to
> > impose regulations affecting television broadcasts after such programs
> > are beamed into households, but it maintained that was permitted by
> > Congress because lawmakers didn't explicitly outlaw it."
>
> Does that have implications on homebrew DVRs being able to record HD
> programs without going through a D-A step, or are you talking about MP3s, or
> what?
I haven't really followed this as well as a lot of other people, so I'm
not really sure. Apparently, it affects digital content sent
over-the-air only, or at least that's the idea. The idea is that if your
TV's tuner is digital, then any digital content could not be recorded
except at analog resolutions. This was set up because the content
producers (RIAA, Hollywood, et al) were afraid that if their content
went out digitally, it would be copied endlessly and perfectly because
it's digital = piracy. It's my opinion that once the broadcast flag
genie was let out of the bottle, HDTV broadcasts wouldn't be the only
things ultimately affected by it. But that's just my opinion.
In answer to your question, if you buy an HDTV card before July 1, you
could do as you wished; after, it would incorporate the flag and not
allow exporting the signal in a way where it could be recorded. In fact,
the FCC intended that devices incorporating the flag also be
"tamper-proof", so you couldn't hack the electronics and defeat the
flag. I've never heard of the broadcast flag being applied to MP3s, but
that doesn't mean it wouldn't eventually happen.
Again, at this point, it's been struck down by a DC Appeals court. But
it could be appealed, or it could be resurrected in some other form.
Hollywood will continue to do all it can to restrict the reproduction of
its content. (Even VHS tapes have Macrovision encryption, and DVDs have
flags indicating the region on whose players they will play.)
Paul
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