As noted yesterday (FCC to Regulate Whole Internet?), there was an extremely disturbing quote from an FCC official in the New York Times:

An F.C.C. official said, for instance, that the broadcast flag could contain software code that was recognized by computer routers in a way that the program would self-destruct after passing through three routers while being e-mailed by a user.

This quote seemed to raise the possibility that the FCC was considering regulating internet routers. However, there seems to be a somewhat less evil interpretation. Although the quote is still somewhat confusing, particularly the reference to email, Seth Schoen has provided an explanation in the comments section of Freedom to Tinker (Comments: Broadcast Flag Confusion). Ed Felten summarizes thus:

The mystery sentence looks like a very confused attempt to explain the fact that DTCP-over-IP sets the Time-To-Live field on its IP packets equal to three.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried about the regulations the FCC will require in order to make the hopelessly broken Broadcast Flag "work."