Cory Doctorow has done a 3-minute guide to the broadcast flag.
"The Broadcast Flag technology mandate says that if you want to invent a better way to watch TV, you need to go to the entertainment companies for permission...
The entertainment companies don't like tools that give you more control. The movie studios boycotted TV because they thought it would clean out the movie theaters. Then they complained that the remote control would make it too easy to skip commercials. Then they freaked out over the VCR, saying it was the "Boston Strangler" of the American film industry and accusing the Japanese (i.e., Sony) of deliberately sabotaging the American economy by targeting the made-in-America film industry with their infernal VCRs. They're not fond of video-capture cards, sued into bankruptcy a personal video recorder company (like TiVo)...and the list goes on and on.
On to the Broadcast Flag. The Broadcast Flag says that if you want to build a device that can receive, pass along, or record a digital TV signal, you'll need to show that it won't disrupt the current entertainment company business. That's a test that the remote control, the VCR, the capture card, and the PVR all would have failed.
What's more, the Broadcast Flag demands that all digital TV devices be built so that people can't modify them. If you've ever come up with a cool way of repurposing some of your own gadgets, you can understand what you'll lose here. It's like a law ordering that every car sold in America have its hood welded shut. Sure, most of us never plan on fixing or modifying our own car, but very few of us would take a hood- welding law lying down. It's not fair for the government to tell us that we're not allowed to peek inside, fix, and improve our own property."
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