Broadcast Flag - The FCC Broadcast Flag Ruling

The FCC Broadcast Flag Ruling

Officially called "Digital Broadcast Television Redistribution Control," the FCC's rule is in 47 CFR 73.9002(b) and the following sections, stating in part: "No party shall sell or distribute in interstate commerce a Covered Demodulator Product that does not comply with the Demodulator Compliance Requirements and Demodulator Robustness Requirements." According to the rule, hardware must "actively thwart" piracy.

The rule's Demodulator Compliance Requirements insists that all HDTV demodulators must "listen" for the flag (or assume it to be present in all signals). Flagged content must be output only to "protected outputs" (such as DVI and HDMI ports with HDCP encryption), or in degraded form through analog outputs or digital outputs with visual resolution of 720x480 pixels (EDTV) or less. Flagged content may be recorded only by "authorized" methods, which may include tethering of recordings to a single device.

Since broadcast flags could be activated at any time, a viewer who often records a program might suddenly find that it is no longer possible to save their favorite show. This and other reasons lead many to see the flags as a direct affront to consumer rights.

Particularly troubling to open source developers are the Demodulator Robustness Requirements. Devices must be "robust" against user access or modifications so that someone could not easily alter it to ignore the broadcast flags that permit access to the full digital stream. Since open-source device drivers are by design user-modifiable, a PC TV tuner card with open-source drivers would not be "robust". It is unclear whether binary-only drivers would qualify. In theory it would likely be illegal for open-source projects such as the MythTV project, which creates personal video recorder (PVR) software, to interface with digital television demodulators.

Some companies currently manufacturing devices, such as the pcHDTV devices intended for the Linux market, would likely be forced to halt production. This portion of the rule also effectively prevents individuals from building their own high-definition television sets and receiving devices. (It may seem far-fetched to a layman, but there have been many instances in the past where engineers have built their own analog TVs, and it follows that some people would wish to continue such pursuits in the digital age. The technologies used will most likely be centered around software-defined radio, fast ADCs and FPGA chips - tools with so generic use their availability can not be effectively restricted.)

The GNU Radio project already successfully demonstrated that purely software-based demodulators can exist and the hardware rule is not fully enforceable.