Broadcast Flag: Critical Coverage

Kim Zetter/Wired: A Case of Piracy Overkill.
Steven Labaton/NYTimes: Critics Press Case on TV Piracy Rules.
and
Farhad Manjoo/Salon: Hollywood to the computer industry: We don't need no stinking Napsters!

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.

The MPAA Q&A on the BF.

Update: see Ed Felten's post on BF Confusion in the NY Times article above.

Posted by Mary Hodder at October 27, 2003 07:33 AM