EC SAYS BROADCAST FLAG PROCESS RAISES ‘POTENTIAL CONCERNS’
Saying it would have been “highly desirable” to let the issues of DTV content protection “rest in the hands of an open and international standardization process,” the European Commission (EC) told the FCC its Nov. broadcast flag order “raises a number of questions and potential concerns.”
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An international standards effort, done openly and properly, has “enormous potential to prevent trade barriers, increase market access for all players and foster the dissemination of technologies” to a wider audience, the EC said in its first comments on the broadcast flag. The comments were filed at the FCC Mon. in the broadcast flag proceeding (CD March 17 p6). The work of the Bcst. Protection Discussion Group (BPDG), upon which many of the FCC’s interim broadcast flag rules were based, doesn’t seem to meet the requirements of an open standards-setting body, the EC said.
Nevertheless, the EC said it agreed with the FCC that “it will be essential to guarantee the openness and transparency of the process” for choosing technologies that will “give effect to the flag.” At the same time, the process should be “sufficiently flexible as to adapt its criteria to accommodate other technologies than the flag, which may be substantially different, but equally effective,” the EC said. It cautioned that a system based on market criteria, as the MPAA and others have advocated, “might result in an unfair advantage to incumbent technology providers” or fail to provide “competitive safeguards.”
The Commission “got it right” last fall on the flag, Philips said in its reply. The FCC “established an open and transparent process for the approval of digital broadcast content protection technologies, safeguarding against undue influence by any one industry segment or a favored group of competitors,” Philips said. In the first round of comments in the proceeding, “some parties implore the Commission to abandon these pillars” of its Nov. order, “inviting the Commission to accept proposals it explicitly rejected less than four short months ago.” Philips also criticized the MPAA for seeking a “market-based” approach to selecting content protection technologies.