A federal appeals court ruled in May that the FCC lacked the authority to institute a broadcast flag, but it said that Congress could require broadcast flags. Congress, not one to turn down bribes from the motion picture and recording industries, is hard at work crafting legislation that turns your digital TV, TiVo, or PC tuner into a slave of the MPAA or RIAA.

Here's what Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA, has to say about the broadcast flag:

The broadcast flag does not inhibit copying, nor does it prevent redistribution of programming over a personal home network--it only restricts unauthorized redistribution of programming over the Internet and other digital networks.

Dan Glickman is lying to you! The broadcast flag is not a thing whose function will be determined by Congress. The broadcast flag is like a checklist of things that you can't do with a particular program, and this legislation would require that any device capable of receiving a digital TV signal must respect that checklist. So, if a content provider doesn't want you to be able to time-shift the content (something that is your right to do), you won't be able to tape a show and watch it later. If a content provider doesn't want you to be able to format-shift the content (something that is your right to do), you won't be able to copy a show to your hard drive or to a DVD. ABC, CBS, Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony, or whoever provides the content are the people who will check off within the broadcast flag what you can and cannot do with it.

So, in short, the broadcast flag inhibits whatever a content provider wants it to inhibit. And this can definitely (and will definitely) include copying and redistributing the programming over any network, whether it's local area network or Internet.

Do not believe what Dan Glickman says! Earlier in the year, legislators, having unsuccessfully introduced a broadcast flag law into Congress as a separate bill, tried to sneak it into an omnibus spending bill. Thankfully, it was removed by -- what's this? -- legislators who had some sense.

As EFF spokesman and Boing Boing contributor Cory Doctorow observed in a recent talk to engineers at Hewlett-Packard,

Copyright is a limited monopoly over the public copying, performance, display and adaptation of original works. Copyright governs the ability of commercial entities and a few noncommercial entities to make copies, dis-play them, etc.

Copyright does not confer the right to control “remote viewing” -- the ability to store a show in one place and watch it in another. It does not confer the right to control time-shifting. It doesn’t confer the right to control regional playback, as with DVDs that can only be viewed on a US player or a European players. Copyright does not confer the right to control re-sale or lending of lawfully acquired works.

In short, a broadcast flag would be a violation of copyright law. The intent of "preventing piracy" is a red herring. The real intent is to allow media companies to have complete control over a copyrighted work, as though copyright itself were a law of nature. (Turns out that copyright, not the absence of copyright, is the abnormality. Read Larry Lessig's Free Culture for a Brief History of Copyright Law.)