Danny O'Brien sez,

In the US, the movie and TV industry tried to get mandatory DRM into digital TV receivers by pressuring regulators and standards groups to enforce a "broadcast flag", a nonsensical "anti-copying" bit that would never have stopped piracy, but would have given the copyright industry a veto over new digital video technology.

Now they're trying the same tactic in the UK. The BBC has written to Ofcom telling them rightsholders want DRM, and asking them if they can implement a crazy scheme to require it.

Ofcom is taking responses to this plan UNTIL TOMORROW — if you don't want a broadcast flag in your country, read the proposal, and write to Ofcom!

The details include:

1) Taking the TV metadata in digital TV signals (which include TV listings), lightly scrambling it — and then demanding that any tech manufacturer who wants to unscramble it sign a contract with the BBC.

[Ed: it's worse than this — it's not just TV listings, it's the instructions for decoding the video streams, without which they can't be viewed. In other words, the BBC, which is prohibited from encrypting its TV signal, wants to encrypt its TV signal]

2) The contract itself requires the manufacturers to implement DRM.

3) Profit.

The only people will be affected will be companies and individuals who want to sell consumers settop boxes that do what *they* want, not rightsholders. That includes open source developers like the MythTV project, who'll never be able to get a license, because there's no-one to sign, and DRM demands that software and hardware be locked down and unalterable by end-users.