FCC Adopts Hollywood Tech Mandate

Crud. Despite the plea from thousands of home theater enthusiasts (like me), today the FCC approved the "Broadcast Flag" mandate. The worst provision of the mandate (summary pdf is here) is that any new technology set to record over-the-air digital TV will need FCC approval before coming out. One of the EFF's responses sums it up well:

"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful recording features from television products you can buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."

What this will mean for HDTV recorders like upcoming TiVo products and other software/hardware products is unknown, but it will definitely delay products going to market and might prevent products from ever hitting the market if they don't obtain FCC approval.

The biggest shock is that public affairs and news programming are not exempt from the rules. This means that public domain programming like CSPAN and PBS will need to also be encrypted, which seems like nonsense, since the Broadcast Flag was designed primarily to protect Hollywood movies.

update: Ernest Miller weighs in with a good summary.

Comments

[Andy]

CSPAN and PBS will need to also be encrypted

Wow. That's slightly disgusting. Shouldn't public broadcasting be freely available to anyone? I have a secret wish that PBS would follow BBC's open content initiative and free up the vaults of decades of amazing programming for use and education. I wouldn't be half the geek I am today without Computer Chronicles and Nova.

Someone on Slashdot had a great point that this is a backdoor method of gradually introducing digital rights management on all media fronts and hoping the consumers don't notice it.

[Aaron Swartz]

The broadcast flag doesn't involve any encryption.

[Nathan Mendel]

Broadcasters are not required to set broadcast lag on anything.