Preparing for the Broadcast Flag?

Couch Potato asks: "I'm worried that, come next July, the FCC mandated broadcast flag will soon take away all sorts of fair use rights I have long enjoyed. Given that there are only a few months left to make purchasing decisions, how best can one prepare for the advent of the broadcast flag?" "I'm somewhat aware of projects like Myth TV, but it's not all that I want. Specifically, I want to make sure that I can record DVDs or similar files of any program I want off of cable, sattelite or broadcast TV, flag or not and without any other encumbering restrictions (such as the Macrovision DRM for DVDs) and without worry that someday they'll change something so that my old drivers and hardware are suddenly obsolete and useless when faced with updates to the formats. Note that this makes closed-source-only drivers an issue, because assuming the hardware can still be adapted to whatever they change on us, open-sources drivers can be modified and closed-source ones probably won't be, whether for legal or practical considerations. So then, what can someone with a modest budget do to make sure that their constitutional fair use rights don't succumb to planned obsolecense, like the VCR has?"

Comments

Similar question...

[DanThe1Man]

While on the topic, does anyone know if I buy a HD tunner card now, before they become extinct in July, if it will even work after the flag is issued?

The 4-step "Who cares, TV sucks" program

[Cid Highwind]

Step 1: Understand that 99.9% of shows on TV are crap anyway.
Step 2: Cease to care whether or not you can legally record them.
Step 3: Cancel your cable/satellite service.
Step 4: Download the 2 or 3 shows you really enjoy watching.

Re:Write Some Letters

[DataPath]

To excerpt from an article posted on BetaNews:

Two of the three federal appeals court judges from the District of Columbia scolded the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday over what they saw as an overstep of the agency's authority given by Congress. The reprimand came in response to the FCC's ruling on the "broadcast flag."

Re:The EFF is fighting the broadcast flag

[Void_Ptr]

The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This issue isn't a technicality but a very valid point with regard to legislation and powers delegated by the U.S. Constitution.

Our goverment is (and should be) set up in such a way so that, when in doubt, the people have right of way.

This is not only an issue of the FCC overstepping its authority, but a fundamental question of what the federal government can, and cannot do.