] The latest anti-piracy move will prevent you from making
] high-quality copies of broadcast TV programs. And the new
] "broadcast flag" technology enables all manner of other
] restrictions.

[ MIT|Technology Review goes into depth on the evil broadcast flag. Honestly, i'm about this close to cancelling my cable anyway. I'd miss Good Eats, and Scrubs, and i guess i'd have to go to ESPN Zone more during football season, but TV's getting to be not worth the expense. That being said, Simson's cautions are reasonable -- it's hard to forsee the eventual effects of seemingly little things. -k]

] If the flag is present, your TV will go into a special
] high-security mode and lock down its high-quality digital
] outputs. If you want to record a flagged program, you

Christ this pisses me off. Nearly all non-hackers I talk with this about, even people with lots of tech background see no problem with this complete lost of control. I too can understand the potential. Imagine spending an extra $2 on top of a movie ticket and watching a movie opening night in your living room. The technology is cool, the MPAA is not. They will abuse this to no end, and will only allow copying when they can't profit from the content.

Example: If a Simpons DVD set slated to ship in the fall, do you really think any Simpsons episodes Fox broadcasts for 6 months before that release will be copyable? Hell no. Now some jackass in Fox Marketing controls my ability to record. Remeber DivX, the original Divx? You think thats going away? Tivo + time limit control flags = Divx for TV shows. It will totally happen. Self-destruction shows, forced down-sampling, and other policies are totally in our future.

Worse of all I feel will be a "can't change the channel" flag. Did that Turner Exec say changing channels was stealing a while back? Wake up people and show that you will not take irresponible and indiscriminet use of these flags.