EFF And MPAA On Broadcast Flags

mpawlo writes: "Greplaw reports that a broadcast flag is a digital tagging technique used for television programs distributed through digital TV stations. The broadcast flag is used as information stating that the program may not be redistributed. It is not your everyday digital watermarking technique. The idea is to mandate a standard for a broadcast flag. The content providers, through The Motion Picture Association ('MPAA'), will most likely aim for the standard to be lobbied into a law through The Broadcast Protection Discussion Group. Hence, the law would require all hardware able to play the digital TV content to carry broadcast flag equipment (not playing unmarked content). The Electronic Frontier Foundation ('EFF') fears that a law stipulating the standard would threaten creativity. The MPAA has published a list of frequently asked questions ('FAQ') regarding broadcast flags. The EFF has commented the MPAA FAQ."

Comments

From MPAA's FAQ

[dattaway]

...protecting content, broadcast or otherwise, will spur the availability of high definition content and thus spur innovation for the systems, devices and services needed to deliver and support them in a broadband environment.

They sure love the word spur, which is derived from the term used to kick the shit out of a horse to get it going. A spur is a sharp instrument worn on the ankle of an abusive cowboy to beat a tired horse into submission.

Is this what the MPAA has in store for consumers? Wouldn't you love to have the MPAA spur your living room technology?

This would affect any player prorgam

[GoatPigSheep]

So basically they are saying that every video playback software on computers would have to support this? Would this kill open-source video playback software?

On the other hand, like most copy protection measures, it will surely be cracked within a day or two.

A Few Choice Quotes

[ShoeHead]

from the FAQ:

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 consumer's ability to make personal copies

Sounds good. But, do we trust them?

...of some 70 organizations that participated in the BPDG, only some 14 submitted dissenting comments on one or more issues. Of these 14 dissenters, six were self-styled "consumer" groups that appear to be opposed in principle to any restraints whatsoever on the reproduction and redistribution of content.

I like how they cast a little doubt on whether or not these guys are actually representing consumers. Who else would they be for? Who else might there be but the artists/actors?

They go on to say what seems like... aw who cares. There's so much in that FAQ that just makes me want to grab one of their execs, throw em in a chair, and grill them about what they actually believe. Crazy stuff.

The whole thing smells like (is) propaganda, but that's the age we live in.

Re:Obligatory "Right to Read" Link

[1010011010]

From the notes at the end of "Right to Read":

[...] the idea that the FBI and Microsoft will keep the root passwords for personal computers, and not let you have them, has not been proposed. This is an extrapolation from the Clipper chip and similar US government key-escrow proposals, together with a long-term trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to give absentee operators control over the people actually using the computer system.

But we are coming steadily closer to that point. In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the SSSCA that would require every new computer to have mandatory copy-restriction facilities that the user cannot bypass.

Well, it's been proposed now. It's called "Palladium." What's a good non-computer career that pays well?

Where we can go from here...

[Insanity]

The holy grail of copy protection is to keep everything off the internet, and thus, off the personal computer. General purpose computing devices are the biggest threat, and everything possible is being done to cripple them.

For now, we can get HD signals over component analog outputs, which when done right, are of excellent quality. And capture cards with component inputs will come around soon enough. Macrovision in these cards is often implemented or enabled through the drivers, which can and will be hacked. So if we're using an external tuner and a capture card, the video can end up on a computer, just as long as macrovision over component is defeated.

The enemy of this approach is the external tuner that refuses to output anything greater than 480p over component. We'll see about this - all TVs currently on the market will only accept HD signals over component, so this would be breaking compatibility with the entire installed base today. Mod chipping is a possibility here, or APEX-style hidden menus.

Some day, we'll have HD transferred digitally over 1394. It's a certainty that your 1394 tv will accept a signal only from an approved 1394 tuner and will output only to an approved 1394 recording device that implements DRM. But interestingly enough, I have a 1394 port on my computer right now.

I can transfer DV over 1394 from my camara to my computer. What's to stop me from transferring MPEG2 over it from my future tv? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only thing stopping me is a lack of driver support, and the DRM layer in firewire. The latter is the challenge: cracking DRM at the hardware level. All the EE geeks of the world have their jobs cut out for them.

So the question is this: how hard is it to build a black box that takes an mpeg2 video stream over 1394 and strips it of its copy protection? We usually can't fab our own ASICs, but what about FPGA? Can/will it reach high enough speeds to process firewire signals in realtime?

Ah well, I'm skeptical. It seems to be taking an increasing amount of sophistication to defeat DRM, and the one thing the underground community doesn't do too well is coordinate its efforts. It would need the cooperation of the EE geeks for the hardware level DRM, the CS geeks for making mpeg2 over firewire work on the PC, etc.

King Solomon Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. Any station utilizing this station gets limited in their duration of use - say, 2 hours of flag usage per week. Hollywood gets theirs, consumers don't get horrifically inconvenienced. It would be absolutely prohibited to use the flag on any news broadcasts or children's programming. Should they overuse their quota of flag time, they get tagged with a $20k (increasing by $5k/month/month (exponentially) if a broadcaster chronically does this, to prevent them working lawbreaking into their cost of business) fine per 15 minutes of misusage of the public airwaves, rounded up in 15-minute blocks.

This idea forces them to use their quota in the wisest way possible. New X-files episode? Sunday night movie? They get free reign of what to do with their 2-hour lock-out block (in 30-minute increments, again, so as to keep them from trying to spread their block across all of their shows). After that, they're toast until next week, and whatever they don't use they can carry over at a 25% deduction per week of stale usage.

Also, the flag would not permit them to block PVR (Tivo/Replay) usage in any way - the PVR would have to pass the do-not-copy flag to prevent archiving or moving online.

All of this is because of the simple problem that RealNetworks caused by providing this "flag" concept for RealPlayer streams. It was abused. RealPlayer Plusses could NOT EVER record streams because there was no incentive offered to a broadcast without the damn flag. Regulatory limits are cumbersome but should be their only door for this kind of confounded idea.

Re:VHS Recording...

[purpledinoz]

I think the government should take away all profits earned from VHS tapes. The MPAA wanted to take away VHS from us, lets take away their VHS profits from them and show them what it's like if VHS didn't exist.