Before I took my daughter to school today, she was intently watching one of her cartoons. To get her out the door with minimal fuss, I had to promise that I'd record the show so she could watch it after school. So, I hit 'record' on the PVR (personal video recorder, also known as digital video recorder) and left the house. When I got back home, I heard the device beep, which means that it stopped recording from lack of hard drive space or a timer program ended. I flipped on the TV to see what the issue was to find a message saying something to the effect of, "Copyrighted content detected. Recording paused".
I did a little digging, I realized that I was possibly experiencing the effects of a Broadcast Flag encoded in the signal to prevent digital recording devices from being able to capture copyrighted content. Now, from what I can tell, the broadcast flag regulation has not been mandated. Either my experience was a legitimate DRM (digital rights management) measure, or my PVR mistakenly detected some form of what it considered to be a broadcast flag.
Either way, once again, DRM has only served to negatively impact legitimate, paying customers instead of the "pirates" for which it was devised. It has also made my daughter very sad that she can't watch the rest of her favourite show. Way to go DRM jerks!! First you sue 12 year-old kids, and now you make a 4 year-old girl cry with your digital bullying!!!! Let me know when the corporate and government morons finally get it right.
Until then, I'm off to download a torrent of the show...