CNET: FCC mulls digital 'flag' to sink TV pirates

Showing equal competence to the recording industry, the television broadcast industry is pushing its captured regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to introduce by legal fiat a copy protection system that would prevent Internet users from sending television video over the net without first paying for it and buying new video hardware. FCC officials indicated that they would publish just such a measure within a week.

TV programmers have been demanding the government give them rights to approve or disapprove technologies that would be allowed to carry television video, but tech firms like Microsoft have countered that those companies may have other agendas, such as shutting out new forms of video distribution that threaten their home markets. That and the fact that the industry is populated in part by venal nincompoops.