The FCC's 2003 "broadcast flag" (see Wikipedia definition) rule was criticized by an appellate Judge this week, who informed the commission their anti-piracy plan "crossed the line", and that "Selling televisions is not what the FCC is in the business of." (BBC) The FCC plan was to embed all digital TV content with a code that would only be readable by FCC sanctioned hardware, in an effort to limit the volume of on-line film & TV trading and speed up digital TV adoption. DVR's and other gear are supposed to be "Broadcast Flag-compliant" by July 1.