Patrick and Martin invited me to today's show to talk about Hollywood's attempt to stifle our ability to watch movies on digital television. Here's a quick reference FAQ you can use to learn more about the issue.

• Q. What's the Broadcast Flag?
  The Broadcast Flag is a signal embedded in a digital television signal. If it's set to "true," the receiving device is supposed to restrict the distribution of the program in which it's found; if it's set to "false," the receiver is supposed to let you do anything you want with it.
  
• Q. Why do we need a Broadcast Flag?
  Congress is anxious to get Americans to switch to digital television (DTV), so it can shut down the analog broadcast towers and auction the spectrum they use to cellular carriers. But Congress can't shut down analog television until 85 percent of American households buy digital sets.
  
  Congress is looking around for ways to encourage Americans to buy digital sets. Hollywood movie studios say that if there were Hollywood movies available on DTV, Americans would buy digital sets to watch them with.
  
  What's more, Hollywood says that it won't release the its movies for DTV broadcast until the Feds come up with a Broadcast Flag plan to keep viewers from making digital copies of its movies and circulating them on the Internet.
  
• Q. Do we need a Broadcast Flag?
  No way. There are a bunch of reasons why a Broadcast Flag would be a bad idea:
  
  1. Broadcast flags won't stop unauthorized copying. Even if DTV receivers are designed to restrict distribution of shows with a Broadcast Flag, there's nothing to stop people from connecting the analog outputs (cable, composite video, etc) of their receivers to their computers and capture the shows that way -- in fact, that's how all the TV programs circulating on the Internet today are captured.
     
  2. Hollywood always does this.
     
     Hollywood swore that it wouldn't allow its movies to be transmitted on color TV in the fifties, and then in the eighties it said the same thing about prerecorded VHS cassettes; in fact, Hollywood studios sued all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the VCR off the market, and they still ended up releasing their movies on prerecorded cassettes.
     
     Calling their bluff was all that was needed to force their hand.
     
  3. Hollywood doesn't say that it will release movies.
     
     Hollywood hasn't made any promises about the availability of its movies, even if a Broadcast Flag is mandated by the Feds. We could end up with an expensive, freedom-limiting Broadcast Flag mandate, and still not have any movies on DTV.
     
  4. DTV doesn't (necessarily) need Hollywood movies.
     
     There's no reason to believe that Americans won't switch to DTV without Hollywood's help. No one has offered objective studies or surveys to support this idea.
     
     Meanwhile, the people with a lot of skin in this game, like the national broadcasters who've spent billions upgrading their equipment to support digital television, are already making their primetime lineup available in DTV. If DTV flops, these companies will be out billions, but they're not the ones calling for Hollywood movies on DTV.
     
     What's more, Marc Cuban, the owner of HDNet, the only national DTV network, says that he's not interested in airing Hollywood movies. He's making his own programming, and he's ready to beat Hollywood at its own game. He's not your neighborhood cable access guy, either -- HDNet is the outfit that brought you the 2002 Winter Olympics in HDTV.
     
  
  
  
• How will a Broadcast Flag mandate affect technology?
  The most comprehensive Broadcast Flag proposal to date came from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG), an inter-industry group with representatives from Hollywood, hardware and software vendors, consumer electronics companies, and broadcasters, cable and satellite operators.
  
  The BPDG's final report contained a number of troubling recommendations for implementing the flag, including:
  
  1. Banning open source.
     
     In order to keep viewers from modifying their receivers to get around Broadcast Flag restrictions, the recommendations decreed that all devices that interacted with DTV signals (including PCs) would have to be implemented to "frustrate end-user modification." Since open source or free software is meant to be freely modifiable by end-users, this means that no open source software could be written that would interact with DTV signals, including drivers for DTV peripherals, like burners and storage mechanisms (drives).
     
     
  2. Requiring Hollywood permission to make devices.
     
     Under the BPDG proposal, any output or recording technology in a DTV device would have to come from a list of "approved" technologies. This list would be governed by Hollywood studios, giving movie companies the ability to create private laws about what technologists can and can't build.
     
  
  
  
• How will a Broadcast Flag mandate affect freedom?
  In addition to taking away the freedom of programmers and technologists to make programs and devices for DTV without Hollywood's permission, the BPDG proposal would also limit the American public's freedom to use video in new and innovative ways.
  
  But under the BPDG proposal, this gets turned on its head. Hollywood doesn't have to get a court to rule on a use before banning it; instead, Hollywood can just make it illegal to build tools that permit those uses.
  
  If there had been a BPDG-like mandate in force in the 1970s, it would have been illegal to manufacture a VCR that allowed time-shifting. Not because time-shifting itself was illegal, but because Hollywood would have never permitted it to be built and so the Supreme Court would never have gotten a chance to consider the question.
  
  Digital television opens up a new world of innovative uses that we can all benefit from -- even Hollywood! But if a Broadcast Flag mandate makes it illegal to manufacture devices without Hollywood's permission, that world will dwindle to the tiny sphere of uses that doesn't scare Hollywood.
  
  
• Q. Is this for real?
  Unfortunately, yes. Even though the BPDG final report showed that a Broadcast Flag mandate wasn't promising enough to justify all the sacrifices Americans would have to make to accommodate it, Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-SC) moved the ball out of Congress's court by asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement a Broadcast Flag without an act of Congress.
  
  On August 8th, Chairman Powell and the Commissioners of the FCC voted to start a "rulemaking" proceeding on the Broadcast Flag. Between now and October 30th, they'll collect comments from the public and from interested parties, and then they'll decide whether Americans will get a Broadcast Flag mandate forced on them.
  
  
• What can I do?
  If you're worried that the public's end of the copyright bargain is getting worse and worse every day, if you're worried that the right of technologists to make innovative tools is on the chopping block, you're not alone.
  
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a member-supported nonprofit organization that works to uphold civil liberties in technology law, policy and standards. Through the generosity and support of its members, EFF has helped to build a online world with real-world freedoms: programmers have the First Amendment freedom to write and export code; e-mail users have the right to privacy in their communications unless law-enforcement agencies get a warrant; authors have the right to engage in parody and criticism online without being shut down in the name of copyright.
  
  EFF has been fighting the Broadcast Flag since the first meeting of the BPDG, and it's working hard to get the FCC to understand that a Broadcast Flag won't protect copyright, but will undermine our freedom.
  
  By joining EFF, you will help support an efficient, effective group of committed activists in upholding your rights in law, policy and standards. You can join EFF with a tax deductible donation.
  
  By signing up for the EFF Action Center, you'll get regular updates on civil liberties doings, and access to tools for making your voice heard with lawmakers. Sign up for the Action Center at:
  
• Further reading
  EFF maintains a weblog devoted to the Broadcast Flag and the BPDG, with copies of all proposals, letters and rulemaking orders.