In the year 2006 all over-the-air television will be digital. This is pretty hot stuff: crystal-clear pictures, ear-popping audio and interactive features for days. But as the technologists give, the studios take away.

The Broadcast Protection Discussion Group is an obscure group of Hollywood studios and technology companies that are negotiating a "consensus" for any gadget or code that can touch the studios' product. Once they're done, they want to go to Washington and ask Congress and/or the FCC to give their "standard" the force of law.

So what? Well, this is a radical departure from the way it's usually done. Usually, bright nerds invent something cool and the entertainment industry has a nervous breakdown and runs around telling everyone that the sky is falling (Marconi got sued over the radio, Sony got sued over the VCR, and it took a near miracle to get movies out of the studios' vaults and onto television). People pick up on the tech and all the interesting ways that it can be used as a creative tool, and gradually the entertainment industry realizes that a new day has dawned and gets its act together, starts shipping product for the new media, and takes home yet another squillion dollars.

This time around, the entertainment industry wants to take away all that sloppy, inefficient fooling around where technology companies try out lots of different approaches, where garage inventors go from obscurity to posterity under a hail of customers, where you and I get to invent amazing new uses for our stuff that a bunch of engineers in a board-room never would've thought of in a million years. This time around, everything not forbidden is mandatory. MORE...

• FCC comments due tomorrow
  
• FCC NPRM comment time extended
  
• EE Times offers background
  
• Draft Tauzin bill has broadcast flag mandate
  
• DVD CCA fails to select Consensus Watermark
  
• National Journal on Hollywood vs. technology
  
• Amendment 3 available from ATSC
  
• Felten: It's not about the flag
  
• CBS to offer most prime-time shows in HD
  
• Europeans push WIPO Broadcast Treaty to create "fixation rights"
  
• FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on broadcast flag
  
• Digital tuner mandate
  
• Public interest groups ask FCC to consider consumer impact of broadcast flag
  
• EFF to Powell: Be wary of broadcast flag mandates
  
• FCC NPRM to issue
  
• FCC considers NPRM
  
• Tauzin letter to Powell
  
• Text of Hollings letter to Powell
  
• Content Protection Status Report II
  
• Hollings: Broadcast flag now, by FCC mandate
  

EFF.org
The ringleaders of this blog

GNU Radio
From oatmeal PC to digital TV tuner in several fairly complicated steps

Turing's Universal Machine
The foundation of modern computing

Magical thinking
A delusional malady where the impossible is considered inevitable

The MPAA's Copy-Protection Technical Working Group
Nuff sed

Home Recording Rights Coalition

OPENCORES
Open source hardware (freely modifiable and redistributable VHDL source)

Advanced Television Systems Committee

National Association of Broadcasters

Consumer Electronics Association