Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 22:24:03 +0200 (MEST)
Subject: The Hollywood Kremlin


> From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei-AT-rsasecurity.com>
> To: "'declan-AT-well.com'" <declan-AT-well.com>
> Subject: MPAA wants all A/D converters to implement copyright protection.
> Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:17:08 -0400
>
> My mind has been boggled, my flabbers have been ghasted.
>
> In the name of protecting their business model, the MPAA
> proposes that every analog/digital (A/D) converter - one of
> the most basic of chips - be required to check for US
> government mandated copyright flags. Quite aside from
> increasing the cost and complexity of the devices many,
> manyfold, it eliminates the ability of the US to compete
> in the world electronics market.
>
> If this level of ignorance, chuptza, and bloodymindedness
> had been around a hundred years ago, cars would be
> forbidden to have a range greater then 20 miles, to
> protect the railway industry, and transoceanic airline
> tickets would have a $1000/seat surcharge, to compensate
> the owners of ocean liners for lost revenue.
>
> I know that Tinsletown is based on dreams and fantasies
> (as well as the violation of Edision's movie patents), but
> someone needs to sit these people down and teach them
> the lesson that King Canute taught his nobles.
>
> Peter Trei
> [The above is my personal opinion only. Do not
> misconstrue it to belong to others.]
>
> ---
>
> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 16:06:08 -0700
> Subject: Hollywood wants to plug your analog hole
> From: Cory Doctorow <cory-AT-eff.org>
> To: Declan McCullagh <declan-AT-well.com>
>
> FYI
> --
> http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000113.html
>
> Hollywood Wants to Plug the "Analog Hole"
>
> *New MPAA report reveals chilling agenda*
>
> =The Big Picture>
> The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood
> has always dreamed of a "well-mannered marketplace" where the only
> technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its
> business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood's tune, the
> movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose
> technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and
> innovation.
>
> The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the "Content
> Protection Status Report" with the Senate Judiciary Committee last
> month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its
> own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital
> converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific,
> medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be
> controlled by a "cop-chip" that will shut it down if it is asked to
> assist in converting copyrighted material -- your cellphone would refuse
> to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted
> music coming from your stereo.
>
> The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda.
> The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a
> veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to
> fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to
> assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works.
>
> This three-part agenda -- controlling digital media devices, controlling
> analog converters, controlling the Internet -- is a frightening peek at
> Hollywood's vision of the future.
>
> =Hollywood Tips its Hand>
> The "Content Protection Status Report"
> (http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/content_protection.pdf) points to
> future where innovation and fair use rights are sacrificed on
> copyright's altar, where entertainment companies become *de facto*
> regulators of new technologies, deciding which mathematical instructions
> are mandatory and which are forbidden.
>
> The first part of the document details the efforts of the Broadcast
> Protection Discussion Group (BPDG: http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/), which
> will release its final standard for the regulation of digital media
> technology at the end of May. The BPDG's standard would ban the
> production of digital television devices that had not been approved by
> three Hollywood studios. Approved devices will only interoperate with
> other approved devices. The combination of legal restrictions on digital
> television devices and licensing restrictions on the computer
> technologies they can interface with gives Hollywood an absolute veto
> over all new digital media technology without the need for unpopular,
> sweeping legislation like Senator Hollings's Consumer Broadband and
> Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA).
>
> =Plugging the Analog Hole>
> But the most disturbing pieces of the Status Report comes later in the
> document. The second section, "Plugging the Analog Hole," reveals
> Hollywood's plan to turn a generic technology component, the humble
> analog-to-digital convertor, into a device that is subject to the kind
> of regulation heretofore reserved for Schedule A narcotics.
>
> Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the building blocks of modern
> digital technology. An ADC's job is to take samples of the strength
> (amplitude) of some analog signal (light, sound, motion, temperature) at
> some interval (frequency) and convert the results to a numerical value.
> ADCs are embedded in digital scanners, samplers, thermometers,
> seismographs, mice and other pointer devices, camcorders, cameras,
> microscopes, telescopes, modems, radios, televisions, cellular phones,
> walkie-talkies, light-meters and a multitude of other devices. In
> general, ADCs are generic and interchangeable -- that is, a
> high-frequency ADC from a sound-card is potentially the same ADC that
> you'll find in a sensitive graphics tablet.
>
> Hollywood perceives ADCs as the lynchpin of unauthorized duplication. No
> matter how much copy-control technology is integrated into DVDs and
> satellite broadcasts, there is always the possibility that some Internet
> user will aim a camcorder at the screen, always the shadowy fan at the
> concert wielding a smuggled digital recorder, always the audiophile
> jacking a low-impedance cable into a high-end stereo. These bogeymen
> plague Hollywood, and each one uses an ADC to produce unauthorized copies.
>
> Accordingly, the report calls for a regimen where "watermark detectors
> would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital
> conversions." The plan is to embed a "watermark" (a theoretical,
> invisible mark that can only be detected by special equipment and that
> can't be removed without damaging the media in which it was embedded) in
> all copyrighted works. Thereafter, every ADC would be accompanied by a
> "cop chip" that would sense this watermark's presence and disable
> certain features depending on the conditions.
>
> This is meant to work like so: You point your camcorder at a movie
> screen. The magical, theoretical watermark embedded in the film is
> picked up by the cop-chip, which disables the camcorder's ADC. Your
> camcorder records nothing but dead air. The mic, sensing a watermark in
> the film's soundtrack, also shuts itself down.
>
> The objective of a law like this is to make "unauthorized" synonymous
> with "illegal." In the world of copyright, there are many uses that are
> legal, even -- *especially* -- if they are unauthorized, for example,
> the fair-use right to quote a work for critical purposes. Any critic --
> a professor, a reporter, even an individual with a personal website --
> may be lawfully copy parts of copyrighted works in a critical
> discussion. Such a person may scan in part of a magazine article, record
> a snatch of music from a CD or a piece of a film or television show in
> the lawful course of making a critical work.
>
> And you don't need to be a critic to make a lawful, unauthorized copy!
> You might be someone who wants to "format-shift" some personal property
> -- say, by scanning in a book or transferring an old LP to MP3 so that
> you might take it with you while travelling with your computer. This is
> absolutely lawful, but under the "analog hole" proposal, providing the
> tools to make such unauthorized uses would be illegal.
>
> =Unintended Consequences>
> It's outrageous that Hollywood would demand a law that intentionally
> breaks technology so that it can't be used in lawful ways, but the
> unintended consequences of this regime are even more bizarre.
>
> Virtually everything in our world is copyrighted or trademarked by
> someone, from the facades of famous sky-scrapers to the background music
> at your local mall. 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.
>
> As was mentioned, ADCs are fundamental, generic computing components,
> found in medical and scientific equipment, computers, and a variety of
> consumer electronics. Surely Hollywood doesn't mean to suggest that
> geologists will have to equip their seismographs with cop-chips (lest
> they should accidentally record a copyrighted earthquake)?
>
> It seems likely that they do. The primary difference between most ADCs
> is the frequency at which they run. Two ADCs of like frequency and
> bitrate can be interchanged. If any "free" ADCs are allowed into the
> marketplace, they will surely find themselves repurposed in camcorders,
> samplers, and scanners (oh my!).
>
> =The Scourge of P2P>
> Hollywood's report to Congress includes its third legislative goal:
> "Putting an end to the avalanche of movie theft on so-called
> 'file-sharing' services, such as Morpheus, Gnutella, and other
> peer-to-peer (p2p) networks."
>
> 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).
>
> P2P networks -- such as the Internet -- are not infringing in and of
> themselves. "P2P" describes a technology where the system's control is
> largely or entirely decentralized. P2P application networks are turned
> to all manner of ends, from sharing classroom materials and
> independently produced media to distributing large scientific problems
> associated with the search for a cure for AIDS to providing a
> distributed proxy service that allows Chinese Internet users to
> circumvent China's national firewall and read uncensored news. True,
> they can also be used to make unauthorized -- and even illegal -- copies
> of copyrighted works, but the Betamax doctrine does not establish as its
> standard that no illegal uses be possible with a technology; only that a
> technology have some legal use.
>
> What's more, thoroughly decentralized networks like Gnutella have no
> control-point. There is no central server, no standards-body, no
> exploitable point where leverage can be applied to control what is and
> is not available on the network. The Internet is fundamentally
> constructed to permit any two points to communicate, and as long as this
> is true, Gnutella and its brethren will thrive.
>
> Which begs the question: How will Hollywood put "an end to ... movie
> theft on ... p2p networks?" Short of dramatically re-architecting the
> Internet it seems inconceivable that P2P will ever controlled or
> eliminated.
>
> But dramatic redesigns of the Internet are well within Hollywood's
> stated desires. In 1995, Hollywood's representatives in government
> penned "The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property
> Rights," calling for a neutered Internet whose functionality had been
> magically constrained to "permit [rights-holders] to enforce the terms
> and conditions under which their works are made public."
>
> We can only guess at where these delusional technological speculations
> have wandered in the intervening years, and this "Content Protection
> Status Report" is a good and grim indicator.
>
> =Take a Stand>
> Hollywood's legislative agenda may be ridiculous, but it is hardly
> unlikely. The BPDG is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on new
> technologies to Hollywood. They are doing so with the cooperation of the
> technology companies that are willingly participating in the BPDG
> process. If just one major computer company would step forward in the
> press and in Congress and object to the BPDG's mandate, the entire
> rubric of a "consensus" upon which the BPDG depends would collapse.
>
> The BPDG mandate is critical to Hollywood's legislative agenda. With the
> BPDG mandate in place, an ADC control law and a radical Internet
> redesign are attainable goals.
>
> If you work for a technology company, please ask your favorite senior
> manager or corporate officer to contact the EFF. We'd be delighted to
> deliver a briefing on this and help make the decision to stand up.
>
> As an individual, write to the companies you are a customer of. Take a
> look at your computer and your consumer electronics: they have been
> built by companies that are either willingly participating in the BPDG
> or have not come forward to oppose it. Only once these companies realize
> that their customers care about liberty will they find the courage to
> oppose Hollywood's powerful Congressional representatives, like Senator
> Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-Disney).
>
> Show this article to your friends and co-workers. Hollywood's perverse
> obsession with plugging the analog hole must be brought to light, as
> must the likely outcome of its agenda.
>
> --
> Cory Doctorow
> Outreach Coordinator, Electronic Frontier Foundation
> 415.726.5209/cory-AT-eff.org
>
> Blog: http://boingboing.net
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------