[John Corn]

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.

Full Story from Tech TV

 

[lee635]

Originally posted by John Corn

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.

Full Story from Tech TV

No wonder we have such an active hacker community. Could we stop giving these people such ripe targets to crack?

News flash: "14 year old Californian breaks multillion dollar broadcast flag encryption scheme with school's 486 computer and posts 4 line code on internet. Broadcast industry urges ban on school computers as nothing but hacker helpers."