You know those sci-fi movies about robots or androids, where a human is talking to an android, and it’s not clear yet whether the android is in fact alive or not, and then, in little increments, the android displays some flaw—a quick short circuit, or a metal lapse—and the line between human robot suddenly becomes clear?

(The classic one is one of the the opening sequences of Blade Runner.)

That’s the weird feeling I get when I read about the latest manifestation of secret DRM controls. You think you have comfortable, helpful appliances in your home. But it turns out they are something else—beings whose allegiance isn’t to us.

There’s talk on the tech sites about how some people who tried to record American Gladator on their computers the other night found that they couldn’t. Tivo owners were fine; it turns out that if you were using your Windows Vista machine as a TV recorder (which they are designed to do), the show didn’t record, and users got a message saying the broadcaster had prohibited the recording.

It seems as though NBC had activated a hidden digital switch in the signal that doesn’t allow the show to be recorded, though that’s not 100 percent clear:

The question of whether NBC Universal issued a flag for American Gladiator has yet to be answered. The network said last week that it needed time to look into the matter. Microsoft’s spokeswoman did not offer any information on whether NBC Universal activated a flag. The software company did, however, inform us that accidents do happen.

“In some cases content may be incorrectly flagged in the actual broadcast, which may affect the consumer’s TV experience,” Microsoft’s spokeswoman wrote.

My emphasis. Note how the borg spokeswoman talks like a robot, too. In this case, “affect the consumer’s TV experience” is being used instead of the human phrase “make our product not work the way we said it would.”

We can see here Microsoft being more concerned with its corporate partners than its customers. We can also see how Big Media’s senseless war on piracy hurts customers most of all. People who still want to see American Gladiators will just get it off the torrent networks. (Indeed, since they couldn’t get it the legitimate way, they will in effect be pressured into learning how to get it the illegal way. In this sense, the war on piracy is becoming another one of those wars the prosecution of which in itself creates new enemies.)

Discussion on Slashdot here.
Ars Technica story here.
Extensive consumer discussion here.

The Ars story has the best detailing of how insane this minor but telling incident is:

Both American Gladiators and Medium were affected, and Microsoft admitted to CNET that Windows does adhere to some sort of broadcast flag that is based on FCC rules. The problem with Microsoft’s explanation is that those “rules” were actually disarmed and then ignominiously butchered by the scissores of the DC Court of Appeals back in 2005, owing to the FCC’s lack of jurisdiction over the way that consumer electronics devices are manufactured. Various attempts of reviving the idea by passing it into law in Congress came to nothing over the years (does anyone but the National Association of Broadcasters really want the government defining feature lists for TV sets?) and mandatory enforcement of the idea has largely died the death it deserves.