Plans by a number of Hollywood studios to prevent the unauthorised redistribution of digital TV programming over the internet are doomed to fail, according to a leading consumer electronics executive.
The Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA's) plan, which is currently before US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would require all devices to recognise a data bit in their digital TV signal - the "broadcast flag" - and encrypt the content using only "authorised technologies".
But Lawrence Blanford, president and chief executive at Philips Consumer Electronics, said that it will "hurt consumers, impede innovation and be impossible to implement".
The problem, according to Blanford, is that the plan would not prevent the unauthorised redistribution of digital broadcast content over the internet, as the MPAA recently acknowledged to the FCC.
News source: vnunet.com
