Draft of 'Broadcast Flag' Treaty Now Available

The Importance of writes "If you liked the broadcast flag, you're going to love WIPO's proposed 'broadcast flag' treaty (PDF link). The draft treaty will give copyright-like rights to broadcasters, cablecasters and, if the US gets its way, webcasters. As a broadcaster, you wouldn't have to own the copyright in what you broadcast, but you could still stop people from recording your broadcast, reproducing it or distributing it. The treaty also includes DMCA-like protections, in case you try to circumvent the broadcast flag. The treaty is going to be discussed in Geneva, June 7-9. The draft is discussed over on Corante.com and late last year on the DMCA activists list."

Comments

This really won't change a thing

[scumbucket]

With the hardware that most manufacturers 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 most 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.

Re:This really won't change a thing

[grub]

such a flag would pretty much be ignored by most systems if implemented.

At the moment, sure. However I don't doubt for a moment that there is a concentrated effort to develop and patent a chip which all broadcasts will have to pass through before it hits the TV set. The V-Chip is already in TVs but that's just to keep kids from seeing "bad" TV, the next step is having the broadcasters control what we do with the signals, as if we're all children.

nb: I cancelled my cable months ago

Re:"Fair Use" What's that?

[Unnngh!]

Depends...I remember toward the end of the VHS days, many manufacturers started limiting the signal strength on the tape. The tape would then play back to a monitor but any recordings would be unwatchable. You had to use a signal booster to record. They could possibly limit the signal strength and these technologies would not work.

Content

[Archangel Michael]

Lets see:

Good content sometimes makes money.
Bad content sometimes makes money.
Good content sometimes loses money.
Bad content sometimes loses money.

YET people still make money making content WITHOUT restrictions on "fair use". The question is, does RESTRICTING fair use make MORE money or LESS money?

The various media outlets know that CONTENT is going to be King soon, and that Advertisements are slowly going to lose out.

They are trying to prop up revenue streams with bad ideas that aren't going to work. All technological measures can be twarted, and in the long run, do not work.

People will pay for content worth consuming. Bands will have to play more concerts, poets will have to do more readings etc. Recording is/was just a new form of revenue which has approached the end of its useful life, in regards to generating a profit stream.

Now we are going to have to go back to what worked 200 years ago, before we had TV, Radio and the Internet.

Call me crazy, but should we worry about a "flag"?

[JoeShmoe]

Of course, I'd dearly like to know what exactly this broadcast flag is supposed to be...but I'm willing to bet that this broadcast flag is going to essentially come down to a small sequence of bits (like the "second generation" marker that is used to prevent you from dubbing one MiniDisc digitally to another) or a signal overlay (like Macrovision that causes severe degredation if you copy the content). I don't think there's ever been a time that all the various hardware and content groups have been able to agree on a standard.

So, here's how I think it will shake out. There will be a small bit sequence in a digital broadcast that says "do not copy". It will be trivial to add that support to hardware, and simple to include that in broadcasts.

AND ...simple to remove. Sure, the majority of the audience will be stymied, seeing the error message on their VCR/PVR/DVR and giving up, but there will also be a large percentage...the same people who go out and purchase "video enhancers" to remove Macrovision...that find ways to defeat it. That works for me. Sure, we are breaking the law, but it's civil disobedience, just like making backups of your DVDs and, just like the original Betamax case, time shifting your viewing material.

Maybe, eventually, some company somewhere will sue people who bypass this signal, or a company who makes a signal filter. When that happens, hopefully they will have the balls to take it through the court system to try and positively affirm the public's rights the way previous cases have.

- JoeShmoe
.

Re:DMCA & Such

[canajin56]

Consider a hypothetical political activist that wants to tape broadcasts of the president saying contradictory things on two different occasions, and use these recordings in a documentary.

Sounds un-American. If this political activist would just check the Whitehouse transcripts on their website, he would realize that the president did not, in fact, say those contradictory things. Since recoding these broadcasts is now illegal, by showing them in the first place, we have established that he is a criminal. And, since he is a criminal, he would clearly not be above faking the entire thing.

And that is how they WANT it. They already alter their transcripts and say that the reporters misquoted him, and that the video footage is faked. For example, the footage of the kid sitting behind bush and falling asleep during his speech...the Whitehouse said it was faked, and CNN reported it as a hoax. When it was established that it WAS real, the Whitehouse denied denying it, and the Media said you had misheard them, thw Whitehouse never said it. It must have been a mixup, because they are pretty sure nodbody told them it was a hoax, some poor employee just made it up as a joke...

In closing, the chocolate ration increased today!

Re:Protectionism Double Standard

[payndz]

This is what pisses me off about the so-called 'global economy'. It's fine for corporations to shop around for the lowest possible costs of production (and if that involves sacking thousands of workers in that corporation's home country, then so be it), but god forbid the *consumer* be allowed to do the same thing! How dare they! The drones are supposed to buy what we tell them, when we tell them, at the price we tell them! Just shut up and consume like we tell you!

Sooner or later, the whole system is going to implode. And it'll be nasty. I doubt restricting people's ability to record their favourite TV shows will be the catalyst... but it's not going to help. (Maybe Ashcroft's anti-Pr0n crusade will be a contributing factor!)