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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Fearful of piracy, the studios want the federal government to legislate how computers are made. Critics say such interference signals the end of the line for digital innovation.
Oct 27, 2003 | On its Web site, the Motion Picture Association of America provides a handy FAQ to help people understand the "broadcast flag," the latest copy-protection scheme that Hollywood wants the government to mandate. According to the MPAA, the idea is a near-perfect solution to a pernicious problem -- the threat that the coming age of high-definition TV will be derailed by a few bad apples intent on trading episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" over the Internet.
"What is the broadcast flag?" the MPAA site asks. To which it provides this simple answer: "The broadcast flag is a sequence of digital bits embedded in a television program that signals that the program must be protected from unauthorized redistribution. It does not distort the viewed picture in any way. Implementation of this broadcast flag will permit digital TV stations to obtain high value content and assure consumers a continued source of attractive, free, over-the-air programming without limiting the consumers' ability to make personal copies."
Civil libertarians and computer hardware manufacturers are wary of any kind of government-mandated technology. But put this way, the broadcast flag doesn't sound very evil. If TV companies want to insert an invisible tag into their shows in order to ensure "a continued source of attractive" programming, so what? As long as the broadcast flag will, as the MPAA promises, not hinder our ability to make personal copies of the shows we love, we might well wonder, "How is this scheme going to hurt us?"
The MPAA is counting on your apathy. It's precisely because the flag seems, on the surface, so innocuous that the studios are having an easy time pushing it to regulators in Washington. And the regulators are biting: According to close observers of the process, the Federal Communications Commission will soon adopt a rule requiring all technologies capable of receiving digital TV signals -- everything from HDTV sets to DVD players to general-purpose PCs -- to recognize and protect flagged TV shows.
If adopted, such a rule is sure to cause a great deal of hand-wringing in the PC industry, which is, increasingly, counting on the convergence between entertainment and computing to push sales. The last thing hardware manufacturers want is for Hollywood to be able to legislate how computers are put together. According to people familiar with the rule the FCC is pondering, the broadcast flag would force all computer companies to make a stark choice: Either add digital television capabilities to their machines and then, as some critics of Hollywood say, "weld the hood shut," making sure that everything else in the PC -- the DVD recorder, the hard drive -- is sealed with copy-protection, or stay away from HDTV altogether, sacrificing sales.
This, critics say, illustrates the real danger posed by the broadcast flag; if the mandate were just another rule governing TVs, the flag wouldn't be very objectionable. But this rule is targeted at computers, an industry that thrives on the freedom to tinker. "I'm old enough to remember a time when everybody opened up their system," says Mike Godwin, an attorney at Public Knowledge, a digital-rights lobbying group that has been among the fiercest opponents of the broadcast flag. "Now, what I'm being told is that in order for my computer to be integrated, it has to no longer be user-modifiable." Godwin, who is not shy about his obsession with "Buffy," adds: "If they destroy television, I'll be upset, but I can live with that. But if they destroy the computer revolution I'm going to be pretty pissed off."
