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It's time to sue Hollywood.

Author:   Matt Deatherage  
Posted: 5/24/02; 12:07:16 PM
Topic: It's time to sue Hollywood.
Msg #: 244 (top msg in thread)
Prev/Next: 243/245
Reads: 2216

Not the city, the industry the name represents. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was just the first salvo in a war by the entertainment industry on everyone else. They've already tried more, like the Consumer Broadband and Digitial Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), an odious proposal that would outlaw all computers and computing devices unless they contained government-mandated copy-protection technology. Every file you ever copied, uploaded, downloaded, or backed up would be checked in hardware for "copyright restrictions," disallowing duplication of anything marked as "copyrighted." Of course, this is completely technologically impossible, and would not only cripple all current technology but kill the US technology industry, since other countries (not subject to US law, despite Ashcroft's best tantrums) would not be subject to such asinine limits. EFF now reports that, as part of its ongoing attempt to pay Congress to outlaw any technology that might reproduce entertainment content, the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group is proposing that Congress outlaw all analog-to-digital converters ("ADCs") unless they contain similar copyright protection technology. That's right -- anything that samples an audio signal would have to check for copyright "watermarks" and shut itself down if it found them. CBDTPA has been proven worthless because, even if copying a DVD or CD is infeasible, all anyone has to do to make a digital copy is hook up the output of the DVD or CD player to video and audio inputs to redigitize the sound, albeit after an analog conversion that loses some quality. It's the same way people make pirate copies of today's hit movies -- they sneak camcorders into theater showings. Hollywood is very unhappy with people for being so clever. The industry thinks that restricting A-to-D converters solves the problem. Camcorders viewing first-run movies would shut down, and so would their microphones, both detecting embedded watermarks saying "this is protected." But, of course, this proposal would affect everything digital -- cell phones, scanners, tape recorders, dictation devices, mice, radios, modems, walkie-talkies, medical scanners -- anything that makes a digital copy of an image or sound. Imagine digital police radios that stop working because the officers are next to a boom box blaring the latest hip-hop CD. Or television news cameras that black out because the photojournalist scanned past a copyrighted movie billboard (they'd have to -- otherwise you could take a freeze-frame of the video and copy the protected image, horrors!). EFF phrases it more personally and less societally:
If ADCs are constrained from performing analog-to-digital conversion of all watermarked copyrighted works, you might end up with a cellphone that switches itself off when you get within range of the copyrighted music on your stereo; a camcorder that refuses to store your child's first steps because he is taking them within eyeshot of a television playing a copyrighted cartoon; a camera that won't snap your holiday moments if they take place against the copyrighted backdrop of a chain store such as Starbucks, which forbids on-premises photography because its fixtures are proprietary works. [...]Here, rather than making "unauthorized" and "illegal" synonymous, Hollywood is seeking to overturn the Betamax doctrine -- the principle that a technology is legal, provided that it can be used to accomplish legal ends. VCRs are legal, even though they can be used to make illegal copies of copyrighted works, because they can also be used to make legal copies of personal works and copyrighted works (in the case of time- and format-shifting).
DMCA started this war, but tries to avoid the betamax doctrine by outlawing technology whose "primary" purpose is to remove copy-protection or otherwise help disseminate copyrighted works. EFF and other groups are trying to get DMCA before the US Supreme Court, hoping the six justices who believe you have rights and aren't just a crook waiting to be caught (as opposed to Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas) will strike it down. The Betamax case that made VCRs legal, over Hollywood's strenuous objections and millions in lobbying efforts otherwise, says that if a technology has a substantial non-infringing use, it's legal even if some people may use it to infringe copyrights. Hollywood hates that with a passion. The entertainment industry, believing itself to be the center of the world and the reason all technology exists, wants control of everything you view. As noted in Extreme Copyright, the entertainment chief of AOL Time Warner says it's illegal for you to view TV programs unless you watch the commercials. Even though Hollywood has made billions from sales of VHS and DVD movies, sales that would not have been possible had it won the Betamax case, all the industry sees is the phantom billions more it thinks it could have if pirated movies weren't available. And this is just part of the goal. EFF's report details how Hollywood wants to rearchitect the Internet so that peer-to-peer file transfer is impossible without Hollywood-approved verification that you're not sending anything it cares about. Remember, none of these rules or laws will apply anywhere outside the United States, so all Hollywood wants to do is cripple the US technology industry (and all businesses that depend on US technology) to preserve its own bottom line. It's time to sue. It's time for some company whose business plans are impacted, or some individual whose freedoms are being restricted, to sue the entertainment industry pre-emptively for restraint of trade, collusion, and anything else they can find. However possible, it's time to get this in front of a court so a judge can rule that protecting Hollywood's copyrights is not the singular or even secondary goal of US technology. Just as cars are not illegal because you might drive them while drunk, nor photocopiers illegal because they might reproduce newspaper or magazine pages without permission, computers and software must not be prohibited because they might be used to duplicate entertainment. It is the behavior that is illegal, but Hollywood can't stop that and the police are far too busy with violent crime to chase the guy who uploads Metallica's CDs to the Internet, so Hollywood wants to alter the very fabric of technology instead. In fact, under DMCA, some of today's photocopiers may be illegal if they digitally scan the document before printing it. Of course, the photocopier industry has lots of money and probably got itself an exemption written into the law. You, of course, do not have money or influence, so you're stuck. How much support would Mothers Against Drunk Driving have garnered if the group's thrust had been to force changes to cars so that they shut down if there was a whiff of alcohol in the passenger compartment? This still comes up today, but always goes away when people point out that such technology would either be too weak to work or would shut down your car if you had an intoxicated passenger, prohibiting drunk people even from being transported by cars. Temperance advocates may like such a punishing idea, but it's legal to be drunk, just not to annoy other people with it. And that's the real point. The Betamax doctrine assures us that technology can continue to evolve, even if someone might use it illegally, because it has substantial legal uses. The entertainment industry, a superset of the RIAA, sees you as merely a criminal waiting to be caught, so restricting your actions now is just a pre-emptive strike. It's time to sue to make sure this crap doesn't destroy the US technology industry. If any of it passes, the three to four years it would take to be overturned would hamstring US companies while international firms could continue inventing without restrictions. Alas, the real solution is far more political: public financing of all elections. I'll rant on this another time, but take it seriously. As long as Congresscritters are dependent on outside money to get re-elected, and as long as Hollywood or the energy industry or any group has a lot of money to donate, those groups can buy legislation like DMCA and CBDTPA. If Hollywood didn't have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on Capitol Hill, every legislator would laugh at the notion of outlawing every PC existing today simply to protect one industry's enormous profits. When those profits go to help re-elect the legislators, though, the story changes. It shouldn't.
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