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SSSCA Hearing
larsoncc writes: "According to this article on CNET, a Senate Bill will likely force the issue of adding copy protection to hardware. They are giving the industry 12 to 18 months to come up with a voluntary solution to the "problem" of copies, and if not... Well, you just have to read the article. Insane." Wired also has a story. The IP list published two interesting documents: an account of the hearing by an attendee, and a letter from Intel published immediately after the hearing. Read the letter carefully - note that the disagreement between the tech industry and Hollywood is not over whether or not copy protection will be implemented into every electronic device, but only whether or not this should be written into law. If the SSSCA isn't passed, Intel (and others) get a lot of leverage over Hollywood. If it is, Intel's leverage disappears. But since both sides want to build copy protection into everything, they only differ over the process, we're in trouble either way.
There is, basically. Try here. You will need to purchase some type of manufacturing line if you want to mass-produce them. Otherwise, you can just purchase an FPGA from here or here. The only problem is, the would be illegal too when assembled into a computer that could be used for storing movies, music, etc... Unless they had the copy protection built-in. If the SSSCA Bill doesn't pass or the h/w manufactures are allowed to do it on their own w/o law, then you Open Source h/w will be legal. Otherwise it wont be. If it does become law, I'm going to purchase as much h/w as I can and then never purchase again.
Is "lose" really that hard to spell?
LOOSE - From your friends at MW
LOSE - From your friends at MW
No can do...remember, the WTO is looking at harmonizing the legislation between all member countries.
Welcome to the new world order.
Yes, and the problem with most technological "solutions" is that they either seriously impede fair use by design, or make it cumbersome to excercise one's fair use rights. Horror stories of content being tied to particular hardware abound. What happens when the hardware breaks?
However, I think the hour is not as dark as it seams, and there may be a silver lining to this particular cloud. As Lawrence Lessig points out, code is becoming a proxy for law enforcement. By itself, this is ominous only because laws can be repealed, but code can't. But, what if every law had sunset clauses, and code to enforce it had to honour them? A copyright law enforced by code could also enforce release into the public domain at the appropriate time. No "Sonny Bono" act could change that, though, I suppose the act of benefitting from this "earlier law" enforcement could be made illegal. Still, I'd question the constitutionality of a law that made existing equipment functionality retroactively illegal.
I think, sadly, it's a given that we'll have hardware copy protection. Given public key cryptography, and an escrow mechanism for user-specific secret private keys within the equipment you own, it is technologically feasable. The challenge is for the public to standardize and control the depoloyment of same to ensure that the law it enforces reflects balance in copyright of digital content, as the constitution broadly intends.
I see a great potential here for crypto-hackers to ally with hardware manufacturers to produce a system with which we can live, and not one that enforces Hollywood's idea of maniacal control. While the best proportion of SSSCA-mandated hardware in a system is none at all, I'd settle for 1%, in playback or transcoding interfaces, espescially if I can leverage it to protect my own private content, and not in storage devices.
You could've hired me.
Here's a story from The Register about Hollings grilling Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz.
Full story below.
Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 01/03/2002 at 14:41 GMT
Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace.
"We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday.
An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense".
"Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology."
The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable.
This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.
Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'.
Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right.
The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected.
So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters.
Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, clearly, is an honest politician according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought.
Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy, and only rarely about honest fair use. But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use."
The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is the also official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them? ®
Just you're average nitpicker.
Actually as some of the other articles on the issue have pointed out, the Tech industry PAC that represents Intel has been in Washington far longer than the "Content Industry" people they just have not hed the need or the inclination (given their stated opposition to oversight) to buy politicians. See here for donations by Computer/Internet companies, and here for dontaitions by the (non-book) entertainment industries.
As to Microsofts donations as you can see here Microsoft was in the top 20 industry donators to congress back in 1992. You can do a more detailed search for All Microsoft soft-money, donations by Microsoft Employees, and other groups here
If you want to go Here you can look up everybody's two favorite Senators.
illegal to import any technological device which does not have "proper content control" in place
Too late, were already there; the DMCA catches this.
Wake up,
It's worse than that. If Linus doesn't build into the new Kernel copy protection then he and all his cohorts go to jail too. This would KILL Open Source.
First of all, not all of Congress are money- grubbing worms. And the others are afraid of losing support.
/. and make your case logically. Don't be threatening, just make it clear that this is important to your vote. Yes, you may get a "we need to protect copyrights...blah...blah" response, but I guarantee that if you got a chain of messages going to them, they will listen. You call. Then, have your spouse, mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, whatever, call. And get as many of your friends to do the same as you can.
I suggest contacting people like Rick Boucher(info here). He seems to have a clue. Get ahold of his office, and find out who else could help out. Then help them organize resistance to this bill.
It's been said a thousand times, but listen anyway: contact your state's Congress memebers. Write down your comments before hand, making them concise and lucid. Leave the vitriol and belly aching on
Creedo
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Here's a link to a testimony concerning some researchers outrage to the SSSCA - (I don't think this was directly linked to or discussed as of yet)
As an aside, what this is turning into is like a hybrid of Brave New World/1984/Grapes of Wrath/etc...
I don't think this shall end well... but we can do more than hope - we can do something about it
Oh, but it is educational. As long as we're cutting-and-pasting quotations...
A generation raised on Britney "Look at my tits" Spears is much easier to control than one raised on, say, Clock DVA. Which leads me to plug my favorite lyric of all time:
(I also lament the demise of Heathkit. They were a little before my time, but I got my hands on some surplus kits, and that's where I caught the hardware bug. That, and catching the software bug from an Apple ][ sitting idle with no games, just a programming manual, was arguably the start of what I eventually turned into a successful career. Had that Apple been an SSSCA-compliant PC (i.e. a movie/game console), I'd never have discovered "the language of machines" and would probably be flipping burgers.)
> And I hope you don't mind... but your post just went into my ``quotes'' file.
Cut-and-paste away, and feel free to fix my guesstimated tech-vs-hollyweird revenue figures when and as you find the data.
Dear Senator Feinstein,
I am a constituent writing to you regarding the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's hearings on 2/28/2002 regarding intellectual property protection requirements for computers and digital devices, and the draft Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) by Senator Hollings.
Few would argue against Hollywood's goal of preventing the distribution of reproduced copies of copyright-protected content. However adopting the proposal in the draft SSSCA would be terribly destructive because in pursuit of this goal it both forecloses digital viewing of independently created content, and takes all reasonable control away from the content purchaser. It is not my place to suggest possible alternate means of achieving their goal, however I would like to point out some of the problems in the proposal, in hopes that you will come to agree with me that significant further study is needed before the concept of any Federally mandated measure could begin to be entertained.
To understand the problems with draft SSSCA, some background facts need to be appreciated.
First, it is important to understand that the Internet to date has been a medium of free exchange of expression. Its technical architecture is fundamentally based on the assumption that getting information from sender to recipient is the goal. This assumption is so deeply-seated that if communication is ever blocked, the Internet itself seeks out another route. In this regard, the Internet is like an error-resistant Post Office, faithfully delivering messages with admirable determination. Together with nearly universal access, it is this highly democratic, forum-like characteristic that has made the technology, culture, and, yes, the business boom of the Internet possible -- marking one of America's great modern achievements.
Second, as computers have spread throughout society, the creativity of private US citizens has increasingly transpired not on paper or canvas or in the concert hall, but on the computer. People are making media, from children at school, through to neighborhood rock bands recording albums at home, to artists creating digital paintings and collage works. Digital photography, for example, is a creative medium intimately linked to the computer in the home.
Third, in the world of computers and the Internet, every creation takes the same essential form -- a file (sometimes called a 'stream') is a sequence of 1's and 0's. All digital content, whether music recording, love sonnet, or home movie, is stored on a hard drive and transmitted over the Internet as a file. Due to the nature of computers, there is no other possibility.
Let us also quickly review the essential legal nature of copyright:
1. Not all content is protected by copyright.
2. All copyrighted content may be legally used in numerous ways that its publisher would prefer not to occur.
3. Copyright is temporary, not permanent, per the US Constitution.
4. After copyright expires, works are intended to pass into the public domain for use by all citizens.
5. Because of 3, all content eventually becomes unprotected by copyright.
Now then. The draft SSSCA would change all computers -- indeed, all digital devices -- to reject all digital content that is not stamped with information telling how the publisher says it can be used. This turns the free transmission principle on its head, utterly. Rather than a medium of free communication, it would make the Internet and all the computers attached to it a place where only certain, specifically authorized, pieces of content could be found.
This is where a world of complicated problems enter the picture, and is why the draft SSSCA cannot be accepted.
There are more problems than I can list with the draft SSSCA, so let me concentrate on a 'Top 10' list of the worst ones that I can see:
1. It would end the Internet's value as a public commons for speech, since only 'authorized' speech bearing the stamp could take place there. The importance of this factor cannot be overstated, and should make the draft SSSCA an affront to any guardian of the public sphere, not to mention vulnerable to Constitutional challenge.
2. No computer (or device) would be able to play any piece of digital media lacking the stamp. This has many serious implications, the most obvious of which is that no computer or device would be able to play such common locally-created items as children's movies or animations created in school, home photographs, and so on. Only 'brand-name' entertainment would be possible. While this is a laughable scenario, close reading of the draft SSSCA would appear to require it.
3. In the proposed scheme, any hobby or volunteer art, or promotional content, created with the intention of being shared freely (e.g. not stamped) would be excluded. For example, music directly published for sharing by the artists who created it, unaffiliated with any major publisher. This is not only undemocratic and a governmental interference with free speech, it also raises serious issues of government-sanctioned market protectionism by keeping independent content away from the digital audience.
4. In the proposed scheme, the stamp becomes equivalent to permission to publish expression to the American public. This is fundamentally against the free speech principle. Speech must not require permission.
5. Requiring a stamp sounds suspicious enough, but much more so when we ask: Who issues the stamp? Will there be a cost? What should the cost be? Will all applicants be treated fairly? Since the stamp is prerequisite to -any- display on -any- computer or device, these questions are crucial. Can an entertainment industry entity be trusted with this gatekeeper duty? Is it wise or appropriate to have such a universal gatekeeper at all? How can having a designated universal gatekeeper be consistent with free speech?
6. Currently any challenges regarding the originality of a work are brought to civil court under the Copyright Act, after publication of the work. Under the SSSCA scheme, stamp denials could occur before publication. So if stamps were to be issued by the Government, there would be Constitutional questions of governmental prior restraint. Troubling questions, too, since the question of originality is frequently ambiguous, making the process vulnerable to charges of censorship under color of authority.
7. No computer (or device) would be able to allow the owner unprotected access to any piece of digital media containing the DRM stamp. This has many serious implications, including preventing wholly reasonable and otherwise legally sanctioned 'fair uses' of the content by the customer. For example, space-shifting (making an MP3 file from an album for listening while exercising) or format-shifting (copying onto a laptop computer for listening during a business trip) or making a back-up copy in case the purchased copy is ever damaged.
8. The proposed scope of 'All interactive digital devices' is indefensibly broad, not to mention the fact that it indicates a troublingly naive picture of the digital world. Despite having no way to receive files, typewriters and thermometers are digital and interactive and so could be required to implement useless and expensive content management technology. Similarly, there are any number of interactive digital devices and components not intended as media players whose technical functionality and/or cost would simply be made unfeasible by attempting to add rights-management features. So a certain quality of 'magical thinking' about how technology works and what is in fact possible is in evidence. We can be certain that the SSSCA was not drafted with the involvement of anyone who ever engineered any digital device, and this alone is reason for much further study.
9. The required access control mechanism would survive the copyright's expiration, therefore none of this content will be able to pass into the public domain. This allows publishers to cheat the public out of the Constitutional 'copyright bargain' by hoarding the work after having already harvested the financial benefits of selling it.
10. The draft SSSCA has a bad synergy with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA criminalizes the existence and possession of any measure allowing circumvention of access control technologies, irrespective of copyright validity or infringing intent. This cements two of the above SSSCA problems: content that will never pass into the public domain, and content that cannot be reasonably re-used by the legitimate customer. Also, like the DMCA, the penalties are unnecessarily draconian ($500,000/5 years imprisonment), are redundant to the penalties available under the Copyright Act for intentional infringement, do not require an intent to infringe. The SSSCA penalties would also appear to be wholly redundant to the DMCA.
Given all the serious problems listed above, it is extremely distressing that the Committee has entertained the draft SSSCA at all. Please, I would ask you to consider the matter of the SSSCA carefully, and I would urge you to call for further study and a more reasonable, less destructive proposal before further discussion of any possible legislation in this area.
Sincerely,
-- Snogwozzle