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that there was DRM on broadcast signals, receiving them and immediately squirreling them away in encrypted form.

The Broadcast Flag was hammered out in a group called the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) a sub-group from the MPAA\'s \"Content Protection Technology Working Group,\" which also included reps from all the big IT companies (Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and so on), consumer electronics companies (Panasonic, Philips, Zenith), cable companies, satellite companies, and anyone else who wanted to pay $100 to attend the \"public\" meetings, held every six weeks or so (you can attend these meetings yourself if you find yourself near LAX on one of the upcoming dates).

CPTWG (pronounced Cee-Pee-Twig) is a venerable presence in the DRM world. It was at CPTWG that the DRM for DVDs was hammered out. CPTWG meetings open with a \"benediction,\" delivered by a lawyer, who reminds everyone there that what they say might be quoted \"on the front page of the New York Times,\" (though journalists are barred from attending CPTWG meetings and no minutes are published by the organization) and reminding all present not to do anything that would raise eyebrows at the FTC\'s anti-trust division (I could swear I\'ve seen the Microsoft people giggling during this part, though that may have been my imagination).

The first part of the meeting is usually taken up with administrative business and presentations from DRM vendors, who come out to promise that this time they\'ve really, really figured out how to make computers worse at copying. The real meat comes after the lunch, when the group splits into a series of smaller meetings, many of them closed-door and private (the representatives of the organizations responsible for managing DRM on DVDs splinter off at this point).

Then comes the working group meetings, like the BPDG. The BPDG was nominally set up to set up the rules for the Broadcast Flag. Under the Flag, manufacturers would be required to limit their \"outputs and recording methods\" to a set of \"approved technologies.\" Naturally, every manufacturer in the room showed up with a technology to add to the list of approved technologies -- and the sneakier ones showed up with reasons why their competitors\' technologies *shouldn\'t* be approved. If the Broadcast Flag became law, a spot on the \"approved technologies\" list would be a license to print money: everyone who built a next-gen digital TV would be required, by law, to buy only approved technologies for their gear.

The CPTWG determined that there would be three \"chairmen\" of the meetings: a representative from the broadcasters, a representative from the studios, and a representative from the IT industry (note that no \"consumer rights\" chair was contemplated -- we proposed one and got laughed off the agenda). The IT chair was filled by an Intel representative, who seemed pleased that the MPAA chair, Fox Studios\'s Andy Setos, began the process by proposing that the approved technologies should include only two technologies, both of which Intel partially owned.

Intel\'s presence on the committee was both reassurance and threat: reassurance because Intel signaled the fundamental reasonableness of the MPAA\'s requirements -- why would a company with a bigger turnover than the whole movie industry show up if the negotiations weren\'t worth having? Threat because Intel was poised to gain an advantage that might be denied to its competitors.

We settled in for a long negotiation. The discussions were drawn out and heated. At regular intervals, the MPAA reps told us that we were wasting time -- if we didn\'t hurry things along, the world would move on and consumers would grow accustomed to un-crippled digital TVs. Moreover, Rep Billy Tauzin, the lawmaker who\'d evidently promised to enact the Broadcast Flag into law, was growing impatient. The warnings were delivered in quackspeak, urgent and crackling, whenever the discussions dragged,
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