Build you own liberated television
Posted on March 3rd, 2005 | by admin |I just finished reading this excellent, however long, article about the broadcast flag on the San Francisco Bay Guardian News website. The EFF was having a “Build-In” protest where geeks could gather and build their own broadcast flag free, HD Televisions. I’ve sliced up the good stuff and added emphasis on the most important points.
Let’s say, for example, that it’s a couple of years from now, and your TiVo (bought anytime after July 1 of this year) has recorded the excellent Marx brothers movie Animal Crackers, which was just broadcast on TNT in HD. Tomorrow you’re getting on a plane to Australia, and you’d like to save a copy on DVD to watch on your computer during the 15-hour flight. You’re entitled to make a personal copy under federal copyright law, so it should be no problem. And in fact, it was no problem back in the days of analog broadcasts and VCRs. But with the Broadcast Flag in place, TNT can send out a signal that tells your TiVo not to make HD copies of Animal Crackers. So when you burn that DVD and put it into your computer somewhere over the Pacific, you get a bunch of garbage. The FCC has just stolen your rights. For now, consumers may not realize the immense impact of the Broadcast Flag – the big content owners and the FCC are being pretty foxy about it. Even after the Broadcast Flag goes into effect, you’ll still be able to make low-quality copies with your VCR. Most televisions are still receiving and outputting analog signals. The full impact of the flag won’t be felt for several years, when most broadcasts are in HD and most people have chucked their VCRs. Suddenly you’ll find out that the DVD player you bought last year can’t play HD programs you burned from your new TiVo. Sound confusing or hard to imagine? That’s precisely the point – the FCC is counting on your not being able to figure it out until it’s much too late. The Broadcast Flag is an unholy alliance of government, big entertainment, and big electronics. Each is protecting the others’ interests so that they can maintain control over the marketplace. The only losers in the deal are small entrepreneurs and consumers. Back at the Build-In, Seltzer and Brydon are jumping up and down and shouting. “We’ve got TV!” Seltzer exults. Brydon can’t stop grinning at her monitor, where they’ve tuned in some local news. The picture is still a little jerky – the software needs some tuning – but we’ve got our first HDTV working. Best of all, it’s a liberated TV – it isn’t an “authorized device,” and it’s not “broadcast flag compliant.” It certainly isn’t “robust against user modification.” But because it was built before the July 1 start date of the Broadcast Flag rule, it’s going to remain perfectly legal. This TV will always be able to record HD shows and burn them to DVDs for personal use. Next year, Brydon can loan her friends an HD-quality copy of Battlestar Galactica if they missed it that week. “I think the Broadcast Flag punishes the wrong group,” Kiefling says. “The people who do mass piracy will always have the means to – the flag won’t stop them. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck with broken entertainment systems.” “That’s the worst part of all this,” Fleming says. “People won’t realize how bad it is until suddenly their stuff stops working.”
Now I’m really starting to consider getting a pre-broadcast flag HDTV Tuner PC Card.