Video Asylum

Posted by clarkjohnsen (R) on October 12, 2004 at 10:56:16

Piracy rule is definition of misguided

By Hiawatha Bray | October 11, 2004 -- Boston Globe

If a shopkeeper tried to charge $1,000 for a broken computer, you'd probably be outraged. You might even complain to the government.

Don't bother. These days, the government wants us to buy broken technology. Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission, which has somehow come to regard the public interest as identical with that of the movie industry's.

Cast your minds back to spring 2002. Democratic US Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina horrified technologists when he proposed a law to require that PCs and other digital devices have built-in features to prevent illegal copying of music and video files. Hollings trained as an attorney, not an engineer. Yet he proposed to mandate design specs for practically every piece of digital technology sold.

The outrage consigned the Hollings plan to an early grave -- or so it seemed. But like the lurching undead in a zombie flick, it's back. Only this time it's being served up by the FCC.

It's all about high-definition television. Little by little, the technology is catching on, as the networks show more HDTV programs and consumers shell out $1,000 or more for compatible sets. But HDTV worries TV and movie producers. It's easy to copy HDTV shows, and the copies look just as good as the originals. Having witnessed how digital piracy has ravaged the music industry, the Hollywood moguls had no desire to go next.

Enter the ''broadcast flag," an antipiracy technology to be built into HDTV signals sent over the airwaves. The plan, fortunately, doesn't apply to HDTV shows moved by cable or satellite.

The flag sets limits on the receiver's ability to copy the program. Say you have a digital video recorder. Some of them have add-on DVD burners so you can make extra copies of the shows you like. But HDTV recorders will have to include the broadcast flag. A flagged program could allow the recipient to make two DVD copies, or one, or maybe none. It's up to the broadcaster or the producer.

There's a loophole, though: The video recorder may allow you to make unlimited low-resolution analog copies. But of course, that means poorer video quality.

So if you love HDTV, you can probably forget about making personal backups of your favorite shows. The TV producers can choose to forbid it. Such personal copying is quite legal, but thanks to the broadcast flag, the networks can block it.

The new rule doesn't just apply to standard digital video recorders, either. You can turn any desktop computer into an HDTV recorder. Just add an HDTV tuner card, like the one sold by ATI Technologies Inc. for $200. Now throw in software that records the incoming video stream. A bunch of Linux mavens have created such a program, called MythTV. Now you're in business. Your PC will let you record any HDTV broadcast, flagged or not, and make as many copies as you choose.

But only if you get busy. Once the broadcast flag rule kicks in, on July 1, it will be against the law to sell devices like the ATI card. Only HDTV cards that comply with the FCC mandate will be permitted.

For the first time, the federal government is going to dictate what kinds of hardware can be built into a personal computer. The government is going to order that your computer be crippled, to protect the interests of a few large companies. If that scares you, you're not alone. Last week a host of public interest groups, including the American Library Association, Consumers Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed a case in the US Court of Appeals in Washington, urging that the FCC rule be overturned.

''We're suing the commission because we're saying they don't have any authority," said Mike Godwin, legal director of Public Knowledge, a Washington technology policy lobby that's also taking part in the suit.

Godwin says the broadcast flag doesn't really involve broadcasting -- the FCC's true bailiwick -- but what happens to shows after broadcast, which is none of the FCC's business. Besides, he says, Congress has not given the FCC specific authority to regulate the design of electronic devices to prevent data piracy.

In an e-mailed statement, the FCC disagreed, claiming ''ancillary authority to regulate equipment manufacturers" when necessary to fulfill the agency's regulatory duties. They may even be right, which would be a bloody shame.

This may seem trivial to those with no desire to record HDTV shows on their computers. But suppose the music industry had gotten the government's ear just as MP3 music was taking off. They would have put flags in music CDs, and mandatory antipiracy hardware on PCs. They would have saved themselves billions in lost sales. And they would have stifled the development of Apple's iPod music players and legal online music downloads. Every new restriction may well smother some other new expression of creativity, or some profitable new business.

And for what? HDTV programs, unlike pop songs, will never be swapped over the Internet. They're a few dozen gigabytes apiece. You'd need multiple DVDs, or a costly new blue-laser recorder, just to copy them to disks. And forget about shifting one such flick over your DSL line using peer-to-peer software. It would take a week. ''As far as we know, no one has ever done it even once," Godwin said.

But the FCC doesn't want to take the chance. It has chosen to mandate technology that hinders innovation and restricts the freedom of consumers. Good news for 20th Century Fox or the Walt Disney Co., perhaps. But the FCC is supposed to be working for us.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

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