WASHINGTON — A political brawl over mandatory copy protection is about to spread to the U.S. House of Representatives.
A Democratic legislator from the home of the Walt Disney and Warner Bros. studios is drafting a bill to reduce online piracy by implanting strict copy controls in digital devices.
Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, California, said in an interview Thursday that his bill would take a similar approach as the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) that already has been introduced in the Senate.
“The piracy of intellectual property has reached such enormous and staggering proportions,” Schiff said, “we have to take action. We can’t wait any longer. And also we threaten the future creative potential of the country if people can’t protect their own property.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff circulated a letter on Capitol Hill seeking co-sponsors for his plan, which he said would be introduced in April.
“I plan to introduce legislation that would safeguard digital content by spurring the rapid development of copyright protection technology,” Schiff’s “Dear Colleague” letter said. “Similar legislation, S. 2048, has been introduced in the Senate…. I believe this is a necessary step and I encourage you to join me in this effort.
By introducing his measure in the House, Schiff hopes to accelerate the passage of digital rights management legislation: The House can move forward on it without waiting for the Senate to act first.
The Senate CBDTPA bill, introduced this month by Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), is the entertainment industry’s boldest attempt yet to compel the computer industry to adopt software and hardware standards aimed at reducing illicit copying.
Jack Valenti of the Motion Picture Association of America hailed it as a welcome measure that will bring about “the goal of a digital environment that is respectful of copyrighted creative works.”
But the computer industry and the programming community loathe the CBDTPA precisely as much as Valenti adores it. Technology lobbyists have denounced it, fax-your-congress-critters sites have sprouted to oppose it, and some of the more agitated opponents have already been talking about a Million Geek March on Washington.
“The whole high-tech industry will be disappointed with Adam Schiff for jumping ahead and introducing this bill,” said Brian Adkins, director of government relations for the Information Technology Industry Council. “Especially for doing it just the way that Hollings did.”
Because the CBDTPA regulates “any hardware or software” that could be used to copy digital content, it would roil the PC and consumer electronics industries, as well as limit the distribution of source code that does not sport copy-protection standards to be devised by the Federal Communications Commission.
It’s not clear what kind of future Schiff’s proposal will encounter. House Republicans said in recent interviews that they would oppose mandatory copy protection — which is viewed as more of a Democratic initiative.
But Schiff is a member of the House Judiciary committee, which oversees copyright laws. And even though he’s a freshman congressman, he’s a veteran at political infighting: He once headed the California State Senate’s Judiciary committee.
Schiff represents the 27th district of California, an area near Los Angeles that the local chamber of commerce has dubbed the “Media Capital of the World.” Among the studios: Disney, Warner Bros., NBC and ABC studios, Nickelodeon Animation Studios, Black Entertainment Television and DreamWorks SKG animation studios.
When asked about Silicon Valley firms, Schiff replied: “We’re soliciting their input as well. My guess is that the technology companies don’t like the approach generally of any government mandate. But there’s also less sense of the urgency of the matter.”
Schiff said that Disney supported his proposal, but AOL Time Warner did not. Disney’s Washington lobby office referred inquiries to its corporate headquarters, which did not immediately return phone calls.
On Thursday, representatives of the House Judiciary Republicans, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt said they had not taken a position on Schiff’s proposal.
A spokesman for House Majority Leader Dick Armeny (R-Texas), who has criticized similar proposals in the past, denounced Schiff’s approach.
“That’s not something we support,” Armey spokesman Greg Crist said. “You’re essentially putting bureaucrats in the driver’s seat to decide what the standards will be in protecting intellectual propoerty…. Armey has a general disagreement with government interferring.”
In an interview last Friday, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary copyright subcommittee said through a spokesman that he had not taken a position on mandatory copyproofing technology.
The spokesman for Rep. Howard Berman (D-California) said, “it’s always better for the industries to set technology standards.” But he acknowledged that “pressure is building in Congress” for new legislation.
In the 2000 election cycle, the entertainment industry handed Democrats a whopping $24.2 million in contributions compared to $13.3 million to Republicans, according to opensecrets.org.
In the Senate, joining Hollings as co-sponsors of the CBDTPA are one Republican and four Democrats: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisana) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). At a hearing this month, Feinstein showed her colleagues a pirated movie that she said an aide had downloaded from a file-trading service.
Robert Zarate contributed to this report.
