Hollywood anti-P2P plan 'unworkable'

Plans by a number of Hollywood studios to prevent the unauthorised redistribution of digital TV programming over the internet are doomed to fail, according to a leading consumer electronics executive.

The Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA's) plan, which is currently before US regulator the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), would require all devices to recognise a data bit in their digital TV signal - the "broadcast flag" - and encrypt the content using only "authorised technologies".

But Lawrence Blanford, president and chief executive at Philips Consumer Electronics, said that it will "hurt consumers, impede innovation and be impossible to implement".

The problem, according to Blanford, is that the plan would not prevent the unauthorised redistribution of digital broadcast content over the internet, as the MPAA recently acknowledged to the FCC.

"The bottom line is that it leaks like a sieve," Blanford warned.

He also insisted that the plan would force consumers to replace (and the FCC to regulate) "virtually every single device in the home network".

In addition, it would severely restrict consumers' "fair use" and reasonable expectations by stopping workers from sending digital broadcast content from their homes to their offices, students from sending it to teachers, and people from sending it to their parents.

Thirdly, according to Blanford, the plan would give a small group of consumer electronics and computer companies, through their control of "authorised technologies", the incentive and opportunity to restrain competition on digital content protection technology and digital consumer electronics products.

Blanford added that current technological limitations in redistributing digital content over the internet give US lawmakers "plenty of time to consider the issue fully".

He went on to express hope that a "watermarking" system could address the problem without causing harm to consumers, and he offered to work with the studios on such an approach.