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--- Subject: CEI's C:Spin - 'Super DMCA' Bills: Cable Companies Could Control Consumers' Choices Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:14:33 -0400 From: "Richard Morrison" <rmorrison@cei.org> CEI C:\SPIN This issue: Super DMCABills: Cable Companies Could Control ConsumersChoices This week's c:\spin is by <http://www.cei.org/dyn/view_bio.cfm/212>Hanah Metchis, Research Analyst, <http://www.cei.org/>CEI, May 23, 2003. Lets begin with a little pop quiz. Suppose you are redoing your kitchen, and you hear about a fantabulous new electronic gadget. It attaches to your refrigerator and monitors the contents by scanning the barcodes and measuring the weight of each item. When youre running low on something, that item is displayed on a small screen, and an internal modem allows you to order more with the touch of a button using a grocery delivery service such as <http://www.peapod.com/>Peapod. Thrilled by this exciting new convenience, you rush out to buy one. Heres the question: Whose permission do you need to install this item? (a) The manufacturer of your refrigerator, (b) The phone company, or (c) None of the above. For most of us, the answer is none of the above. But if you live in Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or Wyoming, the answer is the phone company. And if you live in one of the <http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/superdmca.html>nine other states where super-DMCAbills are moving through the legislature, you might soon need to ask your phone or cable company for permission every time you buy a new piece of hardware and in some cases, software too. Despite the moniker, the super-DMCA bills are not much like the <http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_19981020_pl105-304.html>Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which became federal law in 1998. They do deal with the same issue the protection of copyright in an age when digital devices make piracy an easy task but the state bills use much broader language. (The state bills differ in their details, but are all based on the same <http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/states/mpaa_3apr.pdf>model legislation.) They outlaw any communications deviceused without the express consent or express authorization of the communication service provider.That means your phone company, cable company, and ISP get to decide whats legal and whats not. This is not a good idea for the future of tech competition. Internet providers are probably not particularly interested in barring the installation of hardware that monitors the content of your kitchen. Their most likely immediate target is digital video recorders. Cable companies have brought <http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/3531_929601>lawsuits against manufacturers of TiVo-like devices, but now they offer their own <http://www.timewarneraustin.com/services/cable_services/dvr.asp>proprietary products and services that do the same thing. Under a super-DMCA law, cable companies would have the power to declare all DVRs and even VCRs made by competing companies to be unauthorized devices. And the legislation is so broadly written that it could even let your cable company, phone company, or ISP decide what brand of computer you can have and what software you can run on it. This would give communication service providersunprecedented control over consumer choices and the fates of entire industries. In addition, provisions in some versions of the super-DMCA laws forbid users to conceal certain types of online activity. This could turn users and manufacturers of ordinary security and networking software, such as <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/5789219.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp>firewalls and <http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=40258,00.asp>routers, into criminals. Any law this <http://www.publicknowledge.org/reading-room/documents/policy/super-dmca-analysis.html>extraordinarily overbroad is certain to stifle innovation. The problem of protecting copyrights is a real one, and it is difficult to solve. But the super-DMCA bills, in their attempt to counter vague threats with vague language, create more problems than they solve. Theft, fraud, and copyright violation are already illegal. Making every communications devicesuspect and every consumer a possible criminal is not the way to prevent piracy. C:\SPIN is produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------