One form of digital rights management (DRM) technology that may be used to protect the content of digital audio transmissions from unauthorized distribution and reproduction is the audio flag. The flag has two primary aspects: a physical component and rules and standards that define how devices communicate with flagged content transmitted from digital audio sources. For instance, a satellite digital audio radio stream of a particular broadcast music program could contain an audio flag (the mechanism) that prohibits any reproduction or further dissemination of the broadcast (the standard). The audio flag, according to its proponents, would operate in a similar manner as the video broadcast flag that has been proposed for digital television transmissions. Functionally, the audio flag system