FCC Considers Mandating HDTV Copy Protection

HeavenlyWhistler writes "The Washington Post reports that the FCC will make a ruling this month on whether or not to mandate that all HDTV receivers implement copy protection when a 'broadcast flag' is detected in the received television signal. Movie and TV studios are pushing for this in an attempt to limit consumers' home-recording rights. An October 8 article states that CBS, under orders from Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin, has threatened to stop all HDTV broadcasts unless the broadcast flag is approved. While the comment period on the proposal (Docket 02-230) is over, the FCC web site will still let you submit comments. The EFF also discusses this issue."

Comments

These people really don't get it.

[salesgeek]

RIAA, MPAA, now the broadcast TV industry really just don't get it: the purpose of all this digital technology is to lower the marginal cost of copying and editing information. Every copy protection scheme is doomed to fail, even in a "trusted" computing environment. At the end of the day, it's all binary data and it costs NOTHING to reproduce it. If anything, the media should be embedding advertising and so on so they can sell commercial time on the traded files. It's an opportunity.

Incidentally, there would be substantially less file swapping going on of TV shows if the networks made them available on DVD or electronically. I'd love to be able to go FOX and buy the episode of the Futurama I missed the other night for a reasonable - considering it was free on the air price.

I hope congress and the FCC see Viacom's threat to halt HDTV broadcast for what it is: an attempt to ursurp the governement's power. In fact, I hope we all wise up to the increasing granularity of intellectual property and reverse that trend. At the end of the day, the people will wise up to it and the people absolutely will limit intellectual property rights.

Re:These people really don't get it.

[Alsee]

If the people decide that copy-protected HDTV isn't acceptable, even a crooked regulatory agency can't make them purchase the receivers in question.

True, the government cannot force consumers to but crippled productes. But the government CAN prohibit the public from buying anything other then crippled products. The end result is just as bad. When the government tries to impose a specific anti-consumer technology and fails the result is that the product and the good technology is exterminated.

This exact situation happened with the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) passed in 1992. This law mandated that all digial audio recording devices MUST contain a DRM system known as SCMS - Serial Copy Management System.

What was the result of this law? It exterminated a host of new technologies and products. Case in point: Digital Audio Tape. DAT was a perfectly good technology. It had all of the digital benefits of CD, but it used standard audio cassettes. Think back to 1992, if you could have gotten "CD quality" from normal audio cassttes, don't you think it would have sold like hot-cakes?

What happened? Early adopters jumped on it, but suddenly you had a few thousand people screaming bloody murder when bands recorded THEMSELVES and the DRM system blocked them from making copies. They were the copyright holder, yet the copy control system denied them their legitimate right to make copies.

DAT is a ten year old perfectly good technology. I defy anyone to walk into a mall and find a DAT device, a Digitam Minidisc, or a host of others. People simply won't buy a crippled product, therefor an entire decade of technologies were exterminated. This is what happens when the law attempts to impose DRM.

The first new successful digital recording technology since 1992 has been the IPOD MP3 player. And the only reason MP3 players are legal is because of a LOOPHOLE in the Audio Home Recording Act. That law does not apply to computers. If you look at MP3 player advertizements you will see that they add in small print touting semi-silly features like datebook software. By being "computers" with software for other uses they aren't strictly a "recording device".

The idiots in the RIAA shot themselves in the foot. One of the reasons CD sales are down is that people are no longer buying music they already own on cassette. Every time there is a new format they got to make massive "re-sales". Records, 8-tracks, cassettes, CD's. In order to prevent "digital piracy" they exterminated DAT, Minidisc, and all new digital media. They lost the chance to make "re-sales" in all of those formats. And the irony is that they blame the drop in sales on "piracy".

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Wont change a thing

[DaHat]

I've spent the last 6 months working with professional and broadcast level digital tv encoders and decoders, even writing a fair amount of software on both sides. This flag is pretty pointless, and is often a laugh when discussed at work.

With the hardware we build and work with, the sort which a broadcaster would use to both create and monitor their transport stream, the ability is needed to record and play back at will, thus, such a flag would pretty much be ignored by our systems if implemented. Besides, if you end up modifying the ATSC standard, in order to prevent breaking all previous encoders/decoders on the market, you would need to make such modifications to portions of the stream which are unused, and existing off the shelf parts would ignore such a modification. Thus, the protection starts off ineffective.

Even after the existing non compliant decoders/recorders/etc on the market are retired to due age or death, newer hardware which ignores such protections would still be available, you'd just have to pay a fair amount.

What's on my Christmas list this year? A DTV decoder as well as a recorder/player unit, cost for both? About 15k. As sad is it is to ask, how important is your right to copy to you? Is it work 15 thousand dollars?

Very humorous

[StormReaver]

When considered from the perspective of my TV viewing habits, this whole HDTV + copy protection gets to be rather funny.

I stopped watching most over the air broadcasts early in 2003. The shows have become less than mediocre, and I have lost my patience with the overabundance of unentertaining commercials (even if they were entertaining, the frequency with which the interrupt the primary mood and flow of the main show render them extremely annoying very quickly, usually after the first showing).

With the increasing frequency of the few good shows now being released on DVD, I can watch them at my leisure completely uninterrupted and at excellent quality. This further reduces my desire to watch even those shows over broadcast TV.

Even though I make a good living, I am quite miserly with my money. I have to spend time considering whether watching TV is worth even the few hundred dollars needed to buy a new analogue TV when my existing one dies. Spending thousands of dollars on an HDTV set is laughable. Nothing on TV or DVD is good enough to justify spending anywhere near that much on a mere viewing station (which is all a TV set really is).

This is where the media broadcasters become hilarious from my perspective. They want me to spend thousands of dollars on a viewing station that makes me endure the worst parts of broadcast TV (annoying commercials), won't let me store and watch the broadcasts at my leisure, and won't let me edit out the commercials (which is what I do with my VCR via the pause button on those occasions I actually watch and record broadcast TV).

So HDTV essentially boils down to being nothing more than an extraordinarily expensive DVD player minus all the benefits a DVD player provides, and minus most of the benefits that we currently have with analogue TV broadcasts (with transmission clarity being the only remaining benefit if you're willing to endure a high degree of even clearer crap).

Pardon me if I don't rush out to buy this garbage, and instead scratch my head wondering why anyone would want to buy into this. I already have better things to do with my time, so TV broadcasters have to provide an extreme incentive to pull me to the TV. Instead, they seem to be doing everything in their power to drive me away; so I shrug and do things other than watch TV.

This in turn saves me money on products I don't buy due to advertising exposure, even on those rare occasions where the advertising makes me aware of something that I would actually want.

The only downside is that legislation protecting these nearly worthless digital broadcasts would also adversely restrict the usefulness of other digital products that I would want.