Federal Communications Commission, an American government organization that controls much of the broadcasting and telephone rules in the United States, is condidering so-called "broadcast flag" to digital TV broadcasts and requirements for computers and consumer electronics to obey such flag.
Basically, entertainment industry wants to make it impossible to simply copy digital TV broadcasting material -- that is normally being sent in MPEG-2 format that can be transferred pretty much directly to DVDRs -- in high quality capture to PC and then distributed over the Net. Therefor, industry wants FCC to rule that broadcasters could set a "flag" to those shows that they don't allow being copied and that all electronics manufacturers would have to implement features to their products that would make them to obey this flag.
In real life, this would mean that next generation "Tivos" wouldn't be able to record shows or movies that broadcasters think is too valuable for them to allow users to time-shift or record -- even for personal purposes. Obviously, technology companies oppose this ruling and claim -- very reasonably, actually -- that if, or when, someone hacks the copy protection, FCC would then require them to change their products again to implement further copy protection methods, until those get cracked as well. Consumer groups oppose the idea as well, since it kinda kills the idea of digital VCR totally -- system can't determine whether user is going to store the movie/show only for watching it after his/her holiday or does the user have plans to distribute the recording over the P2P networks.
And to thwart the idea further, despite broadcast flag available or not, old analog recorders, such as current generation of "Tivos" and other PVR systems and good old VCRs could still record the shows -- only in current NTSC resolution, but it would still be possible.
Source: MSNBC
In real life, this would mean that next generation "Tivos" wouldn't be able to record shows or movies that broadcasters think is too valuable for them to allow users to time-shift or record -- even for personal purposes. Obviously, technology companies oppose this ruling and claim -- very reasonably, actually -- that if, or when, someone hacks the copy protection, FCC would then require them to change their products again to implement further copy protection methods, until those get cracked as well. Consumer groups oppose the idea as well, since it kinda kills the idea of digital VCR totally -- system can't determine whether user is going to store the movie/show only for watching it after his/her holiday or does the user have plans to distribute the recording over the P2P networks.
And to thwart the idea further, despite broadcast flag available or not, old analog recorders, such as current generation of "Tivos" and other PVR systems and good old VCRs could still record the shows -- only in current NTSC resolution, but it would still be possible.
Source: MSNBC
