Frivolous patents actual or alleged aren't the only things in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's sights these days. The group is also taking aim at the so-called broadcast flag, launching what it calls its Digital Television Liberation Project.
The broadcast flag is due to take effect July 1, 2005. It's a Federal Communications Commission regulation calling for copy-control lockup of digital television signals, a bid to keep people from making and distributing digitally-perfect copies of television shows and movies.
The EFF also says the regulation will outlaw importation and manufacture of "a whole host of personal video recorders," devices sending DTV signals to a computer for backup, editing, and playback.
All PVR technologies must be broadcast flag-compliant and strong against users modifiying the devices – meaning, the EFF said, that the entertainment industry wants to dictate how PVR buyers use their machines.
"We want to open the high-definition revolution to everyone, preserving the abilities to time-shift and manipulate media that we've come to expect," said EFF staff attorney Wendy Seltzer announcing the DTV Liberation Project.
The project will include what the group calls a "cookbook" teaching tech-minded and not-that-tech-minded alike how to create their own fully-capable DTV devices, with the Project aiming to use those computer-based PVRs as benchmarks, comparing general-purpose computer capabilities to "the limited subset of viewing options broadcast flag-compliant devices can offer," as the EFF puts it.
"When people see how many more features today's PVR has than next year's," Seltzer said, "we think they'll be as puzzled as we are by the FCC's choices to 'advance the DTV transition'."
The EFF said the Project seeks hardware and money donations, and volunteers to help develop the cookbook. For now, the EFF said, they've already built a high-definition PVR around the MythTV package, a free software suite. Seltzer said she plans to demonstrate the machine at this month's DefCon trade show.
