[FAQs]
What is Table A?

Many of the practical consequences of the BPDG proposal for consumers (and for competition in the marketplace) lie in a yet-to-be-written appendix to the specification. This appendix, called "Table A", enumerates the kinds of digital outputs which are allowed on devices which can receive digital TV signals.

The idea is that a device which receives a TV program with the Broadcast Flag set is not allowed to output the content of that program in digital form, except via a technology specifically mentioned on Table A.

This raises three questions: first, why should this be so? (What's wrong with letting device manufacturers choose for themselves what kinds of outputs their devices will have? If consumers want a particular kind of output, why shouldn't they have it? Why should legislation determine the capabilities of future digital televisions?) Second, what technologies will be permitted? Third, how is that decision going to be made?

The first question goes to the heart of the BPDG proposal and is addressed elsewhere (at least, by skeptics of BPDG; we haven't seen much in the way of a public defense of this mandate, which is being represented as a fait accompli in most circles).

The second and third questions are empirical matters. An earlier draft of the BPDG Compliance and Robustness Rules divided Table A into Authorized [Digital] Outputs and Authorized [Digital Removable Media] Recording Methods. The two Authorized Outputs mentioned were DTCP and HDCP; the two Recording Methods mentioned were CPRM and D-VHS.

DTCP ("Digital Transmission Content Protection") is a copy-control scheme for digital video devised by five companies (called the "5C consortium"). HDCP ("High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection") is a similar copy-control scheme devices by only four companies (the "4C consortium"). Both of these schemes restrict what a consumer can do with digital video; both require a license if a device manufacturer is going to be able to implement them; both constrain the functionality of products in which they are incorporated. Both cost money to implement -- the licenses are not free. DTCP encrypts video transmitted over a digital bus called IEEE 1394 (or "FireWire"). HDCP encrypts video transmitted over a different -- and video-specific -- bus called DVI ("Digital Video Interface"). The encryption, in both cases, is meant to "protect" the content against the consumer, and to restrict playback of the content to "authorized", licensed devices.

CPRM ("Content Protection for Recordable Media") is an encryption scheme for recordable media which is also meant to prevent media from being played back in devices other than those licensed by the 4C consortium. D-VHS is a new digital videotape spec which -- you guessed it -- also prevents media from being played back, except in licensed devices.

So here the suggestion was that four particular copy-control technologies, all closed standards and all of which have "compliance and robustness rules" of their own, were to be permitted as outputs from digital television receivers; all other video standards, and all other recording media, were to be banned by default.

Since the BPDG was formed by companies from the 5C and 4C consortia, it is difficult to imagine that it would recommend that their technologies not be permitted. (The role of 5C in crafting this mandate is further detailed by an FCC memo which will be discussed elsewhere; see the forthcoming item "Who's talking to the FCC?".)

Subsequently, the specific technology list was removed from Table A; the current discussion draft from BPDG does not contain any specific technologies at all, though it still bans "unauthorized" technologies by default. But now Table A has been left blank, and a discussion has begun about a proper procedure for choosing technologies to be added. (This shift took place as a result of a discussion at the last BPDG in-person meeting in Los Angeles.)

Interestingly, all current proposals for filling in Table A seem to involve agreement by some number of major movie studios -- that is, members of the MPAA -- and, perhaps, agreement by some number of major electronics companies or other corporations. No agreement has been reached within BPDG, but various "vehicles" or "methods" for approving technologies have been suggested. These typically employ a formula such as "n% of Major Studios and m% of manufacturers". No studio proposal, to our knowledge, has yet contemplated the possibility that technologies could be approved without any Hollywood sign-off. Thus, the discussion appears to be centered on choosing values for the percentages to be plugged into these formulas. (Perhaps the FCC would be asked to certify that, in fact, 30% of the major studios had agreed that a technology could be used, or 40% of consumer electronics companies, or 10% of broadcasters...)

Of course, if Hollywood agreed that new video technologies could be developed without its permission, there probably wouldn't be any BPDG process in the first place.