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A code in a digital TV broadcast that would restrict its redistribution. For example, it would allow consumers to make copies for personal use, but would prevent them from transmitting copies over the Internet. Mandated by the FCC, consumer devices manufactured after July 1, 2005 were expected to recognize the code. In May 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the FCC order. Stay tuned!
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A broadcast flag is a set of status bits (or a "flag") sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include the inability to save an unencrypted digital program to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage, inability to make secondary copies of recorded content (in order to share or archive), forceful reduction of quality when recording (such as reducing high-definition video to the resolution of standard TVs), and inability to skip over commercials.
In the United States, new television receivers using the ATSC standard were supposed to incorporate this functionality by July 1, 2005, but a federal court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's rule to this effect on May 6 of that year. The stated intention of the broadcast flag was to prevent copyright infringement, but many have asserted that broadcast flags interfere with the fair use rights of the viewing public [1].
Officially called "Digital Broadcast Television Redistribution Control," the FCC's rule is in 47 CFR 73.9002(b) and the following sections, stating in part: "No party shall sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements." According to the rule, hardware must "actively thwart" piracy.
The rule's Demodulator Compliance Requirements insists that all HDTV demodulators must "listen" for the flag (or assume it to be present in all signals). Flagged content must be output only to "protected outputs" (such as DVI and HDMI ports with HDCP encryption), or in degraded form through analog outputs or digital outputs with visual resolution of 720x480 pixels (EDTV) or less. Flagged content may be recorded only by "authorized" methods, which may include tethering of recordings to a single device.
Since broadcast flags could be activated at any time, a viewer who often records a program might suddenly find that it is no longer possible to save their favorite show. This and other reasons lead many to see the flags as a direct affront to consumer rights.
Particularly troubling to open source developers are the Demodulator Robustness Requirements. Devices must be "robust" against user access or modifications so that someone could not easily alter it to ignore the broadcast flags that permit access to the full digital stream. Since open-source device drivers are by design user-modifiable, a PC TV tuner card with open-source drivers would not be "robust". It is unclear whether binary-only drivers would qualify. Projects could also be affected at the application level. In theory it would likely be illegal for open-source projects such as the MythTV project, which creates personal video recorder (PVR) software, to interface with digital television demodulators.
Some companies currently manufacturing devices, such as the pcHDTV devices intended for the Linux market, would likely be forced to halt production. This portion of the rule also effectively prevents individuals from building their own high-definition television sets and receiving devices. (It may seem far-fetched to a layman, but there have been many instances in the past where engineers have built their own analog TVs, and it follows that some people would wish to continue such pursuits in the digital age. The technologies used will most likely be centered around software-defined radio, fast ADCs and FPGA chips - tools with so generic use their availability can not be effectively restricted.)
The GNU Radio project already successfully demonstrated that purely software-based demodulators can exist and the hardware rule is not fully enforceable.
The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC had exceeded its authority in creating this rule. The court stated that the Commission could not prohibit the manufacture of computer or video hardware without copy protection technology because the FCC only has authority to regulate communications, not devices that receive communications. It is possible that a higher court may overturn this ruling, or the United States Congress may grant such authority to the FCC. Some of the major U.S. television networks have stated in the past that they will stop broadcasting high-definition content if the rule does not go into effect. [citation needed]
As of June 21, 2005, there are rumors Hollywood is attempting to sneak the Broadcast Flag back as a rider on the Senate Appropriation bill. [2]
On May 1, 2006, Sen. Ted Stevens inserted a version of the Broadcast Flag into the Communications, Consumer’s Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. The draft section can be seen here [3], and the full text of the bill here [4]. On June 22, 2006 Sen. John E. Sununu offered an amendment to strike the broadcast and radio flag[5], but this failed and the broadcast-flag amendment was approved by the Commerce committee, who at the same time voted down the network neutrality provisions [6]. Nonetheless, the overall bill was never passed, and thus died upon adjournment of the 109th Congress in December 2006.
With the coming of digital radio, the recording industry is attempting to change the ground rules for copyright of songs played on radio. Currently, over the air (i.e. broadcast but not Internet) radio stations may play songs freely but RIAA wants Congress to insert a radio broadcast flag. On April 26, 2006, Congress held a hearing over the radio broadcast flag. Among the witnesses were musicians Anita Baker and Todd Rundgren.
At present there is no equivalent signal defined in the European DVB standards. However, there have been recent moves in the DVB to define such a flag for use on clear-to-air television broadcasts. While this will probably include a "do not redistribute" bit similar to the American approach, the European public service broadcasters are likely to push for additional signals to indicate that content should not be encrypted in receiver devices, and that such receivers should also ignore any revocations while playing the specific content item.
How adherence to such a flag would enforced in a receiver is not yet clear. One candidate approach could be the DVB-CPCM standard. There is no European equivalent to the US FCC to create and enforce regulations, so a coherent multinational legal framework is hard to imagine at this time.
The Digital Video Broadcasting organization is developing DVB-CPCM which allows broadcasters (especially PayTV broadcaster) far more control over the use of content on
(and beyond) home networks. The DVB standards are commonly used in Europe and around the world (for satellite, terrestrial, and
cable distribution), but are also employed in the United States by Dish Network. In Europe,
some entertainment companies are lobbying to legally mandate the use of DVB-CPCM in the next level of the controversial
Should the US broadcast flag return, CPCM would be a candidate for addition to the Table A list of approved technologies for enforcement in the US.
Related intellectual property subjects
Related to legal or tecnological status of the Broadcast flag
| Broadcast Video Formats | |
|---|---|
| Analog broadcast | 525 lines: NTSC •
NTSC-J • PAL-M
625 lines: PAL • PAL-N • PALplus • SECAM Defunct systems: Pre-1940 • 405 lines • 819 lines • Baird-Nipkow • MAC • MUSE Multichannel audio: BTSC (MTS) • NICAM-728 • Zweiton (A2, IGR) • EIAJ Hidden signals: Captioning • Teletext • CGMS-A • GCR • PDC • VBI • VEIL • VITC • WSS • XDS |
| Digital broadcast | Interlaced: SDTV (480i, 576i) •
HDTV (1080i)
Progressive: LDTV (240p, 288p, 1seg) • EDTV (480p, 576p) • HDTV (720p, 1080p) Digital TV standards (MPEG-2):ATSC, DVB, ISDB, DMB-T/H Digital TV standards (MPEG-4 AVC):DMB-T/H,DVB,SBTVD,ISDB (1seg) Multichannel audio: AAC ( |
| Technical issues | 14:9 • MPEG transport • Standards conversion • Video processing • VOD • HDTV blur |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Broadcast flag". Read more |
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