FCC adopts "broadcast flag"

America's Federal Communications Commission confirmed on Tuesday that it has adopted a "broadcast flag" to be transmitted on all digital terrestrial television broadcasts in the United States. The flag, encoded into programmes, is designed to prevent sharing of digital TV shows on the Internet.

Cable and satellite providers are not affected by the ruling, as they are seen as "more secure platforms" by the FCC, although they will be able to incorporate the flag into their existing conditional access systems. The FCC has said however that system operators may only incorporate the flag into programmes that have it specifically enabled on local broadcast programming. The Commission has also requested comment on whether to allow local cable operators which relay local DTT broadcasts, to encrypt their digital basic tier in order to allow the broadacst flag to be carried as part of the existing conditional access system.

In a Report and Order adopted by the FCC on Tuesday, the Commission has said it will permit use of the flag "at the discretion of the broadcaster." No prohibitions will exist on its use, however, enabling local broadcast stations to transmit the flag on news and current affairs programmes.

As such, the FCC's ruling today is in essence a two-pronged approach on the matter of digital rights management. In the first part, it enables broadcasters to transmit a broadcast flag at their discretion. The second part, however, requires all digital terrestrial television receiving equipment containing demodulators to recognise and "give effect to" the broadcast flag to a certain standard of robustness. The Commission has stated it will accept "ordinary user" robustness, which it says will protect innovation while ensuring security of content. In this way, it is expected that consumers would be able to share digital content over a home network, for example, but be unable to share it over file-sharing applications on the Internet. Products must comply with the FCC's ruling by July 1st, 2005. Only products with digital tuners are affected by the ruling, so stand-alone digital video recorders, DVD players, and PCs without digital tuners are not affected. And, in order to counter criticism from consumers' groups that the flag could render existing equipment useless, the FCC has said that all existing TVs "and related equipment" will remain "fully functional."

The Commission is now operating a certification process for broadcast flag implementation technologies, to ensure the market is ready by the July 1st, 2005 date.

Reaction to the ruling was swift. TV giant Viacom, which owns the CBS broadcast network, said that the ruling was an "historic step forward for consumers," adding that "the Commission has resolved to protect broadcast content and ensure that Americans will continue to receive free, high quality programming in the digital age."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the ruling "tramples fair use." EFF staff technologist Seth Schoen said: "The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful features from television products you can buy today. The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."