MPAA is About to Kill the Record Button on Your TV

If you thought that the Broadcast Flag is a finally dead idea, you’d be wrong. As the reports say, the FCC has adopted SOC (Selectable Output Control), which means that it will be they, not you, who chooses what shows can be recorded on your TV.

The Broadcast Flag had a history within the years. Back in 2005 the American Library Association applied to the court of Appeals against the FCC over it. That happened because the FCC made an attempt to put in a broadcast flag allowing studios to choose the shows which are able to be recorded. That time the court ruled that the rules had exceeded the FCC’s authority.

However, that case didn’t stop the right owners to fight against their own customers: in 2006, Sen. Ted Stevens tried to reintroduce the flag again, alongside with Sen. John E. Sununu trying to strike the similar amendment, which failed. It was about to become a major sudden and quiet loss for the public, but the bill never passed after House had adjourned. That was a reprieve until now, as the FCC recently adopted the ruling regarding SOC, allowing to disable some outputs on set-top boxes in order to implement the copy protection for high-value content.

Of course, the MPAA is now salivating over the victory, saying in their press release that this action is very important for consumers, as they will have greater access to watch recent HD movies at home. But the MPAA is the only one who could consider this a victory, or at least the victory for people trapped at home. Those include elderly, the physically challenged, and parents who are unable to afford babysitters, as they get an easier access to films and shows.

If you would like to know what will a world of TV DRM be look like now, it’s easy to imagine just looking at the DVD vs. the CD. The latter doesn’t have limitations and can be used anywhere worldwide, while the first one has encoded DRM so you can’t skip ads and legally make a back-up copy (if the local laws prohibit it), and also have to worry about region codes.

The worst part is that corporate America not only owns the USA, but will now provide more confidence to expand it to the worldwide stage and encourage other countries to do the same. However, everyone knows this will not stop innovation but only direct it toward breaking the DRM.

As soon as recording TV programs becomes a crime in the country, we would also see people’s homes raided for illegal recording devices and PVRs. Will the USA still be a land of the free after that?