Fergie's Tech Blog

Broadcast flag "recommendations" for Congress published

Declan McCullagh writes in the C|Net News Politics Blog:

An array of non-profit groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the American Library Association spent years fighting the idea of a "broadcast flag," a federal regulation that would have outlawed many digital TV receivers and tuner cards starting July 1.

They won. In May, a federal appeals court unceremoniously tossed out the Federal Communications Commission's regulations.

But now one non-profit advocacy group is breaking ranks with its usual allies and handing Congress a road map to reinstating the broadcast flag. The idea is to reduce piracy of digital TV by prohibiting the manufacture of computer and video hardware that doesn't sport copy protection technology.

The Center for Democracy and Technology on Tuesday published its "recommendations" for Congress. Instead of telling politicians that such a law would be unwise and that it would necessarily infringe on Americans' fair use rights, CDT merely offers some guidelines for what the first President Bush might have called a kindler, gentler broadcast flag.

posted by Fergie @ 8/23/2005 12:51:00 PM