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cory doctorow
The best part was that the legal eagles at the MPAA were
wrong. On the advice of “Hollings,” the FCC enacted a Broadcast
Flag regulation that was almost identical to the proposal from
the BPDG, turning themselves into America’s “device czars,” able
to burden any digital technology with “robustness,” “compliance,”
and “revocation rules.” The rule lasted just long enough for the
DC Circuit Court of Appeals to strike it down and slap the FCC
for grabbing unprecedented jurisdiction over the devices in our
living rooms.
So ended the saga of the Broadcast Flag. More or less. In the
years since the Flag was proposed, there have been several at-
tempts to reintroduce it through legislation, all failed. And as more
and more innovative, open devices like the Neuros OSD enter the
market, it gets harder and harder to imagine that Americans will
accept a mandate that takes away all that functionality.
But the spirit of the Broadcast Flag lives on. DRM consortia
are all the rage now — outfits like AACS LA, the folks who control
the DRM in Blu-ray and HD-DVD, are thriving and making head-
lines by issuing fatwas against people who publish their secret in-
tegers. In Europe, a DRM consortium working under the auspices
of the Digital Video Broadcasters Forum (DVB) has just shipped a
proposed standard for digital TV DRM that makes the Broadcast
Flag look like the work of patchouli-scented infohippies. The DVB
proposal would give DRM consortium the ability to define what
is and isn’t a valid “household” for the purposes of sharing your
video within your “household’s devices.” It limits how long you’re
allowed to pause a video, and allows for restrictions to be put in
place for hundreds of years, longer than any copyright system in
the world would protect any work for.
If all this stuff seems a little sneaky, underhanded, and even
illegal to you, you’re not alone. When representatives of nearly all
the world’s entertainment, technology, broadcast, satellite, and
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