Raising the white (broadcast) flag

Endaget and Gizmodo (two of my favorite sites) report today on the possible death of the broadcast flag.

For those of you who don't know, the broadcast flag is a bit (on/off) that was supposed to accompany any digital TV broadcast. Copyright owners would have been able to use it as a switch to keep people from recording shows of TV (the way most of us now do with our TiVo's and VCR's) - and all digital recording devices would have legally had to honor it and not permit recording or time shifting... despite what the Supreme Court has long permitted in the Betamax case.

Don't expect the MPAA and other content owners to take this defeat sitting down... I believe that the fight to destroy fair use and the unconstitutional trend in extending copyrights into perpetuity won't end anytime soon.

(Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries - while the recent Sonny-Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was upheld... there's got to be some limit to "limited times" - some day even Mickey Mouse will belong to everyone)