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.

Comments

Re:THE BIG FREAKING POINT.

[renehollan]

I'm all for REAL copyright that still provides for fair use.

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 By itself, this is ominous only because laws can be repealed, but code can't. But, what if every law had sunset clauses, and code to enforce it had to honour them?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.

Hollings lashes Intel rep for resisting CPRM

[Gopher971]

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? ®

Re:Foregone conclusions

[Irvu]

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.

Then DO Something! Here are some IDEAS!

[Creedo]

First of all, not all of Congress are money- grubbing worms. And the others are afraid of losing support.

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 /. 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.

Creedo

Re:There's alway a way to break copy protection

[Tackhead]

> Heck, even Bill Nye the Science Guy (aka `science for the ADD afflicted') doesn't have a show anymore. But we do have Winnie the Pooh educating children that it's good to be nice to each other. Not that that's bad but it hardly qualifies as educational.

Oh, but it is educational. As long as we're cutting-and-pasting quotations...

...I recently came across a memorable rant that touches on this subject.

Even if schools don't teach literacy or thinking skills, they teach everyone to watch the clock constantly, to be sedentary most of the day, and do activities they have no interest in. They teach about pecking orders, that any weakness will be exploited, and that going against the grain will have very negative consequences. They teach you to wake up not when your body tells you to, but when the alarm goes off. They teach you to respond to bells and orders. They teach that displaying any extraordinary skills or talents will result in persecution.

Most people don't benefit from a society "educated" this way, but certain key people do. A critically-thinking, educated public would be very hard to control. A society of passive consumers and docile workers maintains the status quo.

- Nina Paley

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:

"Learn now or be cut down."

- Clock DVA, The Hacker.

(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.