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May 09, 2005
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There Is More Than One Way to Achieve the Broadcast Flag
The Broadcast Flag is dead (for now), but that does not mean that user-friendly, pro-consumer television is in the future. Wannabe gatekeepers will continue to push their wares with every trick in the book as this C|Net News story shows (Time Warner Cable DVRs near a million):
The number of Time Warner Cable customers with digital video recorders is closing in on the one million mark. During its announcement of first-quarter results last Wednesday, the cable division's parent company Time Warner said DVR subscribers were up 136,000 to 998,000. Subscriptions to video-on-demand service were up 108,000 to more than 1.6 million.
posted by Ernest Miller |
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Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme. He is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
Ernest Miller's blog postings can also be found @
1. seaan on May 9, 2005 10:36 PM writes...
Seems like a good idea to remember what is important. I don't have any problem with companies that provide inferior solutions (e.g. broadcast flag). So long as customers have legal alternatives, Time Warner can sells a DVR that does not fast forward, or is not capable of recording shows that have some flag set. The market, under most circumstances, will rapidly take care of that
Note that I don’t have a pure libertarian point of view. First there is not currently a level playing field – the government has already distorted the market (e.g. FCC mandate of Broadcast Flag, DMCA, etc.). Second there are powerful oligarchic consortiums that use a number of techniques to ignore the market (rent seeking laws, legal harassment, PR campaigns, etc.).
So to restate, the system problems occur when the government blocks alternatives; or when effective monopolies collude against products (past examples include suing RIO for MP3 players, limiting digital outputs, suing Replay for DVR functions, etc.). That is what a copyright reformer needs to watch out for.
Permalink to Comment2. Ernest Miller on May 9, 2005 10:55 PM writes...
I agree, in general, however the cable companies are definitely creatures of government regulation. Gatekeeping monopolies that exclude alternate providers. In such cases, it is very likely that eventually the only DVR you'll be able to get will be rented from the cable company, which will control it at their pleasure.
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