[News]
Table A flamewar at BPDG meeting

So what was all the fuss about? Table A. Table A enumerates which technologies are permitted to receive or record digital TV signals. If you're going to produce such a white-list, you need to have some criteria whereby new technologies can be added to it.

You'd think that the criteria would be technical. You'd be wrong. The studios want the criteria to be entirely subjective. They're cooking up formulae for addition to the table that work like this: "If n studios and m broadcasters are willing to use your device, you're in." The studios came for a polite deliberation of the values of n and m, and were outraged when 5C (a consortium of five companies) and Philips had the temerity to venture proposals that contained actual, technical specifications for Table A.

It started with 5C, who presented four softball proposals (studios and broadcasters, n percent of prerecorded media in the format, technologists and studios and/or broadcasters, and devices that already interoperate with Table A technologies) and then dropped the bomb with:

Technologies that are at least as effective at stopping unlicenced distribution as tachnologies already on Table A.

That got the studios' reps up on their hind legs! The Hollywood people started buzzing angrily amongst themselves (something they did throughout the meeting, talking to each other, at full volume, while technologists who had the floor tried to address their concerns), pausing only to listen to the Philips rep, who said words to the effect of:

We're glad to see part five on the list. This is a Discussion Group for the Technical Working Group, and all the criteria we've seen to date are based on approval from content owners, not technical criteria.

I was sitting next to the Fox people, who clearly resented the implication.

Any technology that the studios approve for use will have its technical merits thoroughly investigated! We're not going to unfairly withhold our approval from a technology that will help protect our interests!

(cough Betamax cough)

But Philips had only been firing a warning shot. Next, they presented their own six-point proposal:

a) To be an authorized output, a technology shall, with respect to marked (flagged as copyrighted) content:

1. Require users build or buy hardware devices that can defeat the flag, acquire the keys to the cryptosystem (which shall be 56 bits or greater)

2. Preserve the flag, default to a flag if there is none present

3. Autheticate the received file using a cryptographic authentication scheme or a hardware handshake that prevents promiscuous snooping on the interface in order to confirm that the receiving product complies with the rules for digital outputs, digital recording and robustness at least as restrictive as those defined for Covered Products herein

b) To be an authorized recording technology, a technology shall, with respect to marked [flagged as copyrighted] content:

1. Require users build or buy hardware devices that can defeat the flag, acquire the keys to the cryptosystem (which shall be 56 bits or greater)

2. Preserve the flag, default to a flag if there is none present

3. Autheticate the received file using a cryptographic authentication scheme or a hardware handshake that prevents promiscuous snooping on the interface in order to confirm that the receiving product complies with the rules for digital outputs, digital recording and robustness at least as restrictive as those defined for Covered Products herein

This clearly discomfited the Fox people and their MPAA breathern. They hotly denounced the Philips proposal, arguing that it failed to make provisions for robustness or for revocation (the ability of the studios to decide, by fiat, that the technology that you bought last year isn't good enough any more and remotely deactivate it, turning it into a paperweight).

When Philips challenged the vocal Fox contingent to propose additional technical criteria that would make the proposal satisfactory, Fox balked. They couldn't produce such technical criteria, because to do so would stifle innovation.