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GUEST EDITORIAL
Protect your rights and help fight the Broadcast Flag
By Matt Haughey
About this article
We normally don't reprint articles that have already been published elsewhere. But then again, we normally try to avoid sticking our noses into issues of legislation. However, it appears that the U.S. government is again looking at a bill that will substantially degrade our rights as consumers, while simultaneously not even helping the corporate interests it appears to protect.
Matt Haughey, who runs one of our favorite blogs, PVRblog (at http://pvr.blogs.com) wrote what is probably the most cogent explanation of the Broadcast Flag proposal we've read. Please read it, and then contact EFF or your local congresscritter and tell them what you think. Special thanks to Matt for allowing us to republish it here.
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Last month I had an idea to create a shop where you could buy Broadcast Flag-free PC products, which are set to be gone by July 1, 2005. I was even going to stockpile equipment so I could continue to sell it after the fact. I never got around to building the site before July 1st of this year (I wanted to start it exactly one year before the deadline), but the fine folks at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) kicked off their one year clock and site on the Broadcast Flag. I helped them craft the message for the page and they'll be bulking it up soon with links to products you can buy, info on why it's a big deal, and steps you can take to enjoy more PVR functionality before July 1, 2005. One of the features of my Broadcast Flagless site idea was to do a countdown clock, which the EFF has, and I'll be adding to this site as well soon.
This gist of it is this: After July 1, 2005, every PC HDTV card, computer PVR software, and home theater based HDTV recorder (like the HD DirecTiVo unit) will be aware of the Broadcast Flag and prevent you from moving recordings off your boxes. They'll be especially harsh on computer based stuff, since pretty much every computer is connected to the internet these days and the Flag is supposed to suppress the ability to trade shows online.
So what will the pirates do? They'll likely do what anyone would do if hit with prohibition at a certain date: they'll simply use equipment created before the date and do what they do, recording programs and releasing them online.
What will typical home users do? They'll likely buy products not knowing that the Broadcast Flag limits what they can do, record programs, then eventually find out they can't use video streaming or sharing features that products like SnapStream and Windows Media Center Edition will have for HDTV signals.
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