TV execs don't care whether or not the Broadcast Flag makes watching TV more frustrating
It's no secret that the networks are hell-bent on pushing through the Broadcast Flag, which they think will help prevent piracy of digital TV shows, but you won't believe how a TV industry exec responded to Mike Godwin from Public Knowledge, one of the groups fighting the rule, during a talk he was giving about the rule. Godwin complained that one of the more negative implications of the Broadcast Flag (besides hindering innovation) is that it will make different devices (like TVs, digital video recorders, and personal video players) incompatible with each other and lead to lots of consumer confusion and frustration. So rather than try and alleviate those fears, or promise that the industry will make interoperability a priority under the Broadcast Flag, Rick Lane, vice president of government affairs at News Corp, gets up and declares flat out that "compatibility is not a goal," and then goes on to talk about how lots of different consumer electronics aren't interoperable. Yeah, you can't play songs you bought from the iTunes Music Store on your new Creative Zen Micro, but we're talking about TV here, and when it comes to TV, people in America just expect things to work. The last thing the current (uneasy) transition from analog to digital television broadcasting needs is a lot of confusing crap that makes it impossible for people to use that TiVo they just bought with their new HDTV. Besides, at the end of the day consumer confusion and frustration is going to end up only hurting the broadcasters themselves.
[Via TechDirt]
