The FCC is going to rule whether HDTV's must come with a decoder for a 'broadcast flag' or signal that tells the TV to disable digital recording of any TV show with the flag.
Who's pushing the rule? The TV and film industries of course. Will the bill pass? My guess is yes. What does that mean for piracy? Nothing - the provision only blocks digital recordings- so the 'analog hole' is still wide open.
Not only that, but whatever decoder system is put into place, firmware hacks will probably be made widely known by many firms themselves - because replication is a key part of HDTV's value proposition. This is exactly what happened, of course, with Macrovision's idiotic region-protection scheme for DVD's.