Regulating radios: broadcast flag at half-mast.

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Citings - Brief Article

CONSUMER GROUPS and consumer electronics companies are already up in arms over federal "broadcast flag" regulations, which will require that, as of mid-2005, new digital video recorders must recognize a copyright watermark in digital television broadcasts and prevent users from copying or sharing content without permission. Now the Recording Industry Association of America is pushing a broadcast flag for digital radio. The industry fears a radio equivalent of TiVo, a high-tech version of the old practice of taping songs off the radio.

A radio TiVo sounds great to Mike Godwin, senior technology counsel for Public Knowledge, one of several groups that has challenged the video broadcast flag. Godwin, a reason contributing editor, argues that all forms of the broadcast flag would limit the longstanding right of consumers to save and copy content for personal use and that the case for the radio flag is especially weak. "There is no evidence," says Godwin, "that broadcasters are...