Well, that didn’t take long.
Just hours after SiliconDust urged multiple broadcast television station owners to disable Digital Rights Management encryption one week before a November 17 Emergency Alert System test, the NAB has told the FCC via an ex parte brief that the Glendale, Ariz.-based technology company’s concerns are inflated.
As the company best known for creating the HDHomeRun line of network-attached digital television tuners sees it, the disabling of DRM encryption on ATSC 3.0 services is a move that would insure messages are fully distributed and received by viewers.
The NAB says otherwise, contending that the November 17 Emergency Alert System test at 2:20pm Eastern will go on just fine without the need to heed such a request. In fact, it says the SiliconDust USA request “is both unnecessary and counterproductive to the purpose of a nationwide EAS test.”
NAB VP of Innovation and Strategy in the Legal and Regulatory Affairs department, Alison Martin, tells the Commission:
The purpose of the nationwide EAS test is to assess whether the system will function as
intended in an actual emergency. In adopting the national testing regime, the Commission
explained that the test should assess the EAS “from top-to-bottom,” from origination of an
alert through reception by the public, and should replicate actual national alert conditions as
closely as possible. Silicondust’s proposal would cut against that purpose. Asking broadcast
stations to disable content protection before and during the test would create artificial
conditions that do not reflect how those stations would operate during an actual emergency.
If content protection creates an actual impediment to EAS operation on ATSC 3.0 services,
the national test should reveal that issue under ordinary operating conditions – not mask it by
changing broadcasters’ configurations for purposes of the test.
Moreover, Martin contends, “Silicondust’s proposal rests on a mistaken premise about the significance of a receiver that cannot decrypt a particular ATSC 3.0 service. Broadcasters insert and transmit EAS messages on both their ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 services, consistent with the Commission’s rules. The limitations Silicondust identifies result from receiver manufacturers’ design choices, not from any EAS-specific problem; the receivers in question cannot display the encrypted television programming, whether or not an EAS message is being transmitted.”
According to the NAB, “the overwhelming majority of ATSC 3.0 receivers support content-protected programming, and viewers whose devices do not would ordinarily be tuned to services their devices can display. Temporarily disabling content protection to accommodate those receivers would only make the test less representative of the circumstances under which an actual alert would be broadcast.”
Martin concludes by stating Silicondust’s letter “also repackages broader objections to ATSC 3.0 content protection as a concern about the nationwide EAS test.” However, she says, “Those objections are not new. NAB and others have already addressed claims concerning the interaction between content protection and emergency alerting, as well as broader assertions that content protection is inconsistent with
free over-the-air broadcasting.4 Nothing about the nationwide EAS test changes that analysis or provides a reason for broadcasters to temporarily alter their ordinary operations. Broadcasters take seriously their obligation to transmit EAS messages on their program
streams. The upcoming nationwide test should proceed under ordinary operating conditions, without broadcasters being encouraged to make temporary changes that would make the test less representative of actual EAS operation.”
