Endangered Devices – Buy an HDTV for Freedom!

Don’t tell my 15-year old who’s been lobbying for HDTV, but this is the sort of thing most likely to get me to act sooner rather than later. It strikes me that the efforts of industries to preserve themselves by criminalizing behaviors are more likely to lead to widespread civil disobedience than to anything helpful to their cause.

[foo] Endangered Devices – Buy an HDTV for Freedom! (Offer not good after 7/05). Wendy Seltzer, lawyer for the EFF (join here), talks about the drive to mandate building restrictions devices into hardware that plays media content. The broadcast flag requires HDTV devices to check for a “do not redistribute” flag in the content they receive. With the flag, they can’t output high-def digital or record it. She says that this mitigates against open source software since it is modifiable; all tuners would have to be closed source. “In the post broadcast flag world, no one can bulid a TiVo without first asking permission from the FCC.” Until July 1, 2005, it’s capable to… [Joho the Blog]