Wired: Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill

[Owen Blacker]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,46671,00.html

| Hollywood Loves Hollings' Bill 
| By Declan McCullagh 
| 2:00 a.m. Sep. 11, 2001 PDT 
| 
| WASHINGTON -- Entertainment industry lobbyists say programmers and
| open-source activists should not be alarmed by a controversial proposal
| to embed copy-protection controls in nearly all PCs and consumer
| electronic devices.   
| 
| In interviews Monday, representatives of the Walt Disney Company and News
| Corp. defended a draft of the Security Systems Standards and
| Certification Act (SSSCA)
| <http://216.110.42.179/docs/hollings.090701.html> as a reasonable
| compromise that will spur high-speed Internet access and boost hardware
| sales.  
| 
| "This is an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach," said Preston
| Padden, executive vice president of the Walt Disney Company
| <http://disney.go.com/park/homepage/today/html/index.html?clk=1004399>,
| which helped to craft the legislation.   
| 
| Wired News has obtained a draft of the SSSCA, which Sen. Fritz Hollings
| <http://hollings.senate.gov/> (D-South Carolina), chairman of the Senate
| Commerce committee <http://commerce.senate.gov/>, plans to introduce this
| month.   
| 
| "We think it's likely to jumpstart the broadband revolution, because
| entertainment content will create consumer demand," Padden said. "If
| you're a computer company or if you make hubs and routers or if you're
| trying to build a broadband network, you want this bill."   
| 
| "This bill is going to speed the entertainment content into the online
| broadband environment, create consumer demand and get broadband going."  
| 
| Padden and his allies in the content community view the SSSCA as a kind
| of supplement to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act
| <http://www.educause.edu/issues/dmca.html> (DMCA), which increased legal
| protections for digital content.   
| 
| Additional support for Hollings' bill is expected to come from the Motion
| Picture Association of America <http://www.mpaa.org/> and the Recording
| Industry Association of America <http://www.riaa.org/>.   
| 
| But the DMCA has already spawned lawsuits, prosecutions and geektavists
| marching against it in the streets, and its successor promises to be no
| less divisive.   
| 
| "Whatever tiny gaps may have existed in the DMCA are now plugged," said
| Peter Jaszi <http://www.wcl.american.edu/pub/faculty/jaszi/bio.html>, a
| professor of law at American University who helped to organize an
| anti-DMCA alliance called the Digital Future Coalition
| <http://www.dfc.org/>.   
| 
| "If this would go forward, it would be a huge gift for the fair-use
| community. It would be right up there with Sklyarov," says Jaszi, talking
| about the outcry the DMCA prosecution of Russian programmer Dmitry
| Sklyarov has caused. "It would be an amazing mobilizing tool."   
| 
| The polarization has already begun. 
| 
| An anti-SSSCA petition
| <http://www.petitiononline.com/SSSCA/petition.html> is underway. MIT
| professor Ron Rivest <http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/>, one of
| cryptography's leading lights, has dubbed the SSSCA the "Digital Rectal
| Thermometer Security Act." And the outcry among programmers matches the
| protests heard during the era of the 1996 Communications Decency Act
| <http://www.epic.org/cda/cda.html>.  
| 
| A person close to the Senate Commerce committee said that discussions
| with industry groups over the past few weeks will continue and that the
| final bill could change. The source said, however, that "not much" has
| been rewritten since the Aug. 6 draft obtained by Wired News.   
| 
| "What I do bristle at is some tech companies' suggestions that we're
| going to force the re-engineering of products," the source said. "This
| doesn't contemplate a single change to any product that's on the shelf or
| for any product probably in the next two to three years. We're talking
| years from now before this will even have an effect." (The draft
| legislation grandfathers existing products.)   
| 
| The draft SSSCA says it is illegal to create, sell or distribute "any
| interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified
| security technologies" to be approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. If
| industry groups cannot agree on a security standard after one to two
| years have elapsed, the Commerce Department will step in.   
| 
| "We believe that legislation will be necessary to fill some of the gaps
| that cannot be negotiated, or to implement a negotiated agreement," said
| Rick Lane, a lobbyist for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp
| <http://www.newscorp.com/>. "Those talks are ongoing right now."   
| 
| "We want to work on a solution that helps us stymie what we consider
| illegal distribution of our product across the Net," said Lane, who also
| said that illicit copies of the Planet of the Apes movie
| <http://www.planetoftheapes.com/>, created by News Corp.'s 20th Century
| Fox studio, are already circulating online. "We're willing to discuss
| options -- realistic options -- with folks to achieve our goal."   
| 
| The draft SSSCA also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five
| years in prison and fines of up to $500,000, for "anyone who distributes
| copyrighted material with 'security measures' disabled or has a
| network-attached sever configured to disable copy protection."   
| 
| That doesn't satisfy Jonathan Potter, the executive director of the
| Digital Media Association <http://www.digmedia.org/>, who says he's
| stridently opposed to the measure.   
| 
| "It's about as egregiously an anti-technology bill, in its draft form, as
| anything I've ever seen," Potter said. "It would have the United States
| government approving or disapproving every semiconductor, every server
| and essentially any digital information technology device prior to coming
| to market."   
| 
| Disney's Padden downplays the differences between his position and those
| of groups such as Potter's.   
| 
| "Unlike earlier drafts, this draft defers hugely to the private sector
| and the high-tech firms," Padden said. "In earlier drafts, the government
| just set a content protection standard. In this draft, the high-tech
| industry is given 18 months to negotiate with each other. It even
| provides the high-tech companies with antitrust exemptions."  
| 
| Copyright (c) 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved. 
| <http://hotwired.lycos.com/home/copyright.html>
| 
| [ends]

- -- 
Owen Blacker
Senior Software Developer / InfoSec Consultant    Wheel: Clerkenwell
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
Sig  0x3e2056b9 | 18cd 92aa 32aa 81b9 f5e8  c520 6475 6239 3e20 56b9

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.4
Comment: Due to RIP, pls check for revocation before using this key!

iQA/AwUBO59pumR1Yjk+IFa5EQILJwCg1H+ZKUnoL/dY4QUhECPlqk1fz+0An2Z7
zg/I7qgkgv5t4XOPfZojGWNB
=jfll
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

_____________________________________________________________________
This message has been checked for all known viruses by UUNET delivered 
through the MessageLabs Virus Control Centre. For further information visit
http://www.uk.uu.net/products/security/virus/