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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
The background here is that Intel's Vadasz got beaten up pretty badly during the hearing today (see Mike Godwin's below). So Vadasz, sensibly, felt compelled to try to lay out his arguments in a more careful manner in the letter below. It is a mark of how poorly the hearing went for opponents of SSSCA-style legislation that Intel chose to do this nearly unprecedented step. Often witnesses extend their remarks. Rarely is it done so quickly, forcefully, and publicly. (Intel's PR department immediately sent this to reporters.) Politech archive on Sen. Hollings' SSSCA: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca Prepared testimony from the hearing: http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/hearings.htm Draft text of the SSSCA: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701.html -Declan --- http://www.politechbot.com/docs/intel.hollings.letter.022802.html February 28, 2002 Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee 508 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20010 Dear Chairman Hollings and members of the Committee: I write to thank you for the opportunity to testify today before the committee on the important issues of content protection for digital media. After my appearance today, I received a number of questions from members of the press about a few key points and I wanted to convey to the members of the committee my answers to those questions to be included in the record of the hearing, with the Committee's permission. I believe this additional information will help the committee understand more fully the IT perspective. I reiterate that the CPTWG cross-industry working group has developed effective technology that is available today that can and will protect new digital, secured content from being pirated on the Internet. If it is protected "at the source" it will always be protected from the illegal activities of Internet pirates. Sony Pictures and AOL-Time/Warner have in fact licensed this technology. However, there was a point of confusion injected before the Committee by Mr. Eisner and Mr. Chernin, specifically: the securing of unprotected content from Internet piracy. It is important for the Committee to understand that content, once captured in "unprotected" form, can never be put back in the "bottle" and protected against copying on the Internet. This is because this unprotected media looks no different to digital devices than a home movie that you would send to a relative or friend. There is no watermark, chip device, or screening system that will ever effectively put an end to this problem. Only the passage of time - as new content is released with the required protection technologies - will eventually solve Internet piracy. Mr. Perry, who co-chairs the relevant working group within the CPTWG, also made this clear. Another major point of misunderstanding is our differing perspectives on the role of the PC in the hands of the consumer. Mr. Eisner's characterization of the phrase "rip, mix, burn" as emblematic of our industry's perspective on piracy is utterly false. What the content community fails to recognize is that these utilities - the ability to copy content, remix and manage it and port it to other storage media for personal use in a protected fashion - are features that consumers have come to expect. The ability to rip, mix and burn in a protected manner is not piracy, it is simply fair use of content as permitted by law. As I said, we will continue to work with all interested parties on these important issues, as they are vitally important to our industries and the nation's economy. Thank you again for the opportunity to present our position on these important matters. Sincerely, Leslie L. Vadasz Executive Vice President Intel Corporation --- From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 17:11:32 -0500 To: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Cc: mnemonic@well.com Subject: Re: IP: intel backs consumers in copyright war Hi, Dave. I was in the hearing room, and I thought Vadasz's testimony made important points. But the senators were not terribly receptive to his arguments, and in fact came close to (effectively) ordering the IT industry simply to comply with Hollywood's demands (or else they'd be forced to by legislation). It was clear to me and to other technically knowledgeable people in the room that neither the senators nor most of the copyright-company witnesses grasped the scope of what Disney's Eisner and others were asking for. The IT community has a formidable task ahead of it when it comes to educating policymakers about the problems and costs of proposals like the one Senator Hollings floated prior to this hearing. Because a central goal of Hollywood's lobbying effort this time is to prevent unencrypted and unwatermarked content from being circulated on the Net, and the only kinds of measures that could do this require top-to-bottom rearchitecting of every aspect of the digital world. This rearchitecting would, among other things, require first the labelling of all coprighted content and secondly a redesign of all digital tools (from PCs to OSs to routers to everything else) to look for the labels and permit or deny copying accordingly. But few speakers at the hearing seemed to be aware of this. Consumer and civil-liberties groups were not represented on the witness list, but they were in the room, as were representatives of many companies that would be affected by schemes like the one that might be mandated by Senator Hollings. Most audience members were visibly amused or distressed when Eisner confessed that the only reason he could think of for Michael Dell not to build in ubiquitous copyright-policing functions in his products was that Dell wants to sell his products to infringers. The central thing I took away from the hearing was that too many of the players and decisionmakers in this area lack the basic technical understanding necessary to make intelligent copyright-policy and IT-policy decisions. It was disheartening. --Mike For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------