Broadcast Flag

A broadcast flag, also broadcast flag written, [ bɹɔ ː ː st ˌ dkɑ flæg ] (" broadcast marking ') is a form of digital rights management (English Digital Rights Management, abbreviated DRM) for use with television broadcasts.

At the request of the rights owner to send the content provider of the digital signal in the data stream of the television program with, making compatible devices are controlled accordingly. Among other things, as time-shifted and / or repeated playing as well as the copy and redistribution of individual shipments shall be limited or completely prevented, eg by limiting the number of copies or restriction of playability on only certain approved hardware.

Unlike specific implementations for digital rights control the term broadcast flag designates only ability that can be used by the transmitter side in a certain shape influence on the receiver side if and how receptive ( ie unencrypted and / or analog ) image signals from the receiver be delivered.

Implementation

The implementation of a broadcast flag is always two steps ahead:

The first is that a specific character ( flag) to be sent from the transmitter to the receiver, the setting of this protecting and / or the level of protection to the outputs.

The second stage is that is switched accordingly depending on the level of protection set the signal outputs of the receiver or above to pass a signal, such as a Macrovision glitch.

At the moment there is a severe lack of uniform standards, such as the flag is transmitted or what it consists, as there are already several mutually incompatible approaches to rights management on the output side:

Three different standards are competing for the transfer of rights control information on the output side:

Because of this variability is currently having a mechanism as is necessary for the broadcast flag, made ​​only over transmitter-specific limitations of the receivers, such as the transmitter at the premiere of the request for a suitable Premiere HD (s) receiver is expressed.

Legal regulations

There are efforts (eg by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission ) to force manufacturers of ( HDTV ) receiver technology for the implementation of this technique to produce so only to the copy protection signal compatible (at least for certain markets) devices, which then follow the instructions evaluate properly and accordingly restrict the use. Some manufacturers do thereby by anticipatory obedience out or push "Hollywood" as a reason for missing or limited product functions before. In the U.S., an appropriate instruction was stopped in court shortly before its entry into force in August 2005.

In the proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty and legislative provisions for the protection of transmitter-specific restrictions on the receiver side should be required.

Although the broadcast flag is more or less under the safeguard provisions for copyright protection systems of the international WIPO agreements, but because, for example, the transmitter data stream at the latest after decryption by the smart card unencrypted present ( the pay-TV), here is the legal protection not as comprehensive, as would be the case with closed rights control systems.

Many pay-TV providers, including cable operators support ( officially ) only devices that meet the requirements set by them; this includes future also reinforces the analysis of a broadcast flag. In turn, so some device classes are supported, however, that were previously "forbidden" for fear of proliferation in the Conditions, such as hard disk recorders. The use of an unauthorized receiving device but may violate clauses in the contracts of the provider.