Jason Dunn
05-17-2007, 05:18 PM
The news post I did on my first experience having the broadcast flag stop me from recording a movie on TV touched a nerve - it seems there are a lot of you out there having this problem. A fellow posting under the name mrsheep posted a couple of very interesting messages (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=69209#69209) on this topic in the discussion thread, and I wanted to highlight one of them on the front page:
"There is a huge thread in the AskJessica forum (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/176207.aspx) on this growing problem over on TheGreenButton. It seems that the use of the CGMS-A flag is regulated in the US but not in Canada, and the Canadian cable companies appear to be abusing its use up here on this side of the boarder. There is a CRTC web site where some of us have gone and registered a complaint (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E) against our offending cable providers in hopes that the CRTC will consider regulating the cable companies here on this issue like the FTC does in the US.
As I understand it, Microsoft changed the way they handle the "Copy Never" flag in Rollup 2 and in Vista from a less restrictive approach in the original release of MCE 2005 to more closely reflect the US FTC description of when the flag is to be used (basically on things like premium PPV content). Over the last six plus months however, Canadian cable providers (or perhaps their content providers) have been broadcasting this flag with greater and greater frequency making the MCE experience less and less compelling for the growing number of users who are being impacted by this. Unfortunately it sounds like Microsoft sees it as a case where they believe they are doing the right thing and probably won't do anything to fix the problem which they don't see as a bug, but instead as a feature. People are complaining to Jessica and regularly asking if Microsoft has any news or a resolution, but as helpful as Jessica is trying to be, it doesn't sound like there is any news or a resolution around the corner."
I took a few minutes and went to the CRTC site to register a complaint (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E), and if you're living in Canada and reading this, I'd urge you to do the same.
"There is a huge thread in the AskJessica forum (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/176207.aspx) on this growing problem over on TheGreenButton. It seems that the use of the CGMS-A flag is regulated in the US but not in Canada, and the Canadian cable companies appear to be abusing its use up here on this side of the boarder. There is a CRTC web site where some of us have gone and registered a complaint (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E) against our offending cable providers in hopes that the CRTC will consider regulating the cable companies here on this issue like the FTC does in the US.
As I understand it, Microsoft changed the way they handle the "Copy Never" flag in Rollup 2 and in Vista from a less restrictive approach in the original release of MCE 2005 to more closely reflect the US FTC description of when the flag is to be used (basically on things like premium PPV content). Over the last six plus months however, Canadian cable providers (or perhaps their content providers) have been broadcasting this flag with greater and greater frequency making the MCE experience less and less compelling for the growing number of users who are being impacted by this. Unfortunately it sounds like Microsoft sees it as a case where they believe they are doing the right thing and probably won't do anything to fix the problem which they don't see as a bug, but instead as a feature. People are complaining to Jessica and regularly asking if Microsoft has any news or a resolution, but as helpful as Jessica is trying to be, it doesn't sound like there is any news or a resolution around the corner."
I took a few minutes and went to the CRTC site to register a complaint (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E), and if you're living in Canada and reading this, I'd urge you to do the same.