Does the Broadcast Flag Work?
There are many groups that believe that it will not work, for a number of reasons. Primarily, there is the problem of “legacy” equipment, which is equipment that is available before the implementation of the flag. This equipment will not be affected by the flag, and will pass on the signal to any equipment. As well, it has been argued that the flag could be relatively easily circumvented, because analogue signals do not preserve the flag. Processing a flagged DTV signal through a widely available digital-to-analogue signal converter would strip the flag, and then processing the signal through an analogue to digital converter would result in a clean digital copy of the signal ready for P2P distribution. As well, relatively high quality analogue content can be captured directly from receiving equipment that has component analogue outputs. The FCC recognizes this potential ineffectiveness, but argues that the broadcast flag is not meant to be bulletproof, but rather a ‘speed bump’ that wi
