Cory Doctorow on the Broadcast Flag
EFF: 3-minute Guide to the Broadcast Flag, by Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
European Affairs Coordinator.
Copyfight
calls this “The Broadcast Flag for Dummies” and has more useful links to basic information about the broadcast flag.
As Cory notes, the “broadcast flag” is just the most recent example of the entertainment industry running scared:
The entertainment companies don’t like tools that give you more control. The movie studios boycotted TV because they thought it would clean out the movie theaters. Then they complained that the remote control would make it too easy to skip commercials. Then they freaked out over the VCR, saying it was the “Boston Strangler” of the American film industry and accusing the Japanese (i.e., Sony) of deliberately sabotaging the American economy by targeting the made-in-America film industry with their infernal VCRs. They’re not fond of video-capture cards, sued into bankruptcy a personal video recorder company (like TiVo)…and the list goes on and on.