[opendtv] Re: Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play By?

It is good to get all this out in the open since then consumers can choose to purchase either TV recorders that can record TV or those that cannot.
And I personally consider it extremely unlikely that (pending other legislation by Congress) any court would hold that any recorder manufacturer would have a legal obligation to honor the current broadcast flags on OTA TV. After all, if the courts have already said even the FCC does not have the power to enforce that flag then it is fairly sure that NBC doesn't either.
M$FT was voluntarily pandering to Hollywood and I hope it costs them market share. 

- Tom


John Willkie wrote:

this posting is specious and foolish.  NBC -- and CBS o&o's by the way -- 
asserts the broadcast flag.  The former appears to not know that they are doing do. 
 That's their bad.

Microsoft's Media Center/Vista simply follow the language of the ATSC A/65 spec in the presence 
of the broadcast flag, which means -- simply that "“technological control of 
consumer redistribution is signaled."

The court's decision was that the FCC could not make this language a mandate 
against receiver manufacturers.  (Sorry, but I ACTUALLY read and UNDERSTAND 
[for the most part] court decisions.)

The decision didn't say that manufacturers couldn't respect the flag (it said 
the opposite), just that the FCC didn't have the jurisdiction to force them do 
so so.

MS is an ATSC member.  They are simply following the instructons that NBC puts 
in their transport stream.

We had a "somewhat higher level" discussion of this on my PSIP list earlier in 
the week, and used the CNET posting.

There is a pending question as to whether ignoring the flag is a violation of 
the Copyright Act.  That is too complicated for a CNET article, of course.

John Willkie
EtherGuide Systems

-----Original Message-----

From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: May 23, 2008 4:47 AM
To: undisclosed-recipient@null, null@null
Subject: [opendtv] Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play 
By?


May 19th, 2008
Microsoft's Masters: Whose Rules Does Your Media Center Play By?
Posted by Danny O'Brien
While its customers are still puzzling over why Vista Media Center is suddenly refusing to record over-the-air NBC digital TV, Microsoft has come out with an astounding admission, courtesy of Greg Sandoval at CNet News:
"Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set forth by the (Federal Communications Commission)," a Microsoft spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail to CNET News.com. "As part of these regulations, Windows Media Center fully adheres to the flags used by broadcasters and content owners to determine how their content is distributed and consumed."
Microsoft's statement shines light on how Microsoft expects Media Center to behave. If this is the company's explanation for what users are seeing when attempting to record digital NBC broadcasts over-the-air, then Microsoft is saying Vista obeys the broadcast flag: a requirement rejected by courts and Congress. 

...

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/microsofts-masters-whose-rules-does-your-media-cen



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Tom Barry                  trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx  




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