WASHINGTON -- Sen. Fritz Hollings has fired the first shot in the next legal battle over Internet piracy.
The Democratic senator from South Carolina finally has introduced his copy protection legislation, ending over six months of anticipation and sharpening what has become a heated debate between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), prohibits the sale or distribution of nearly any kind of electronic device -- unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.
Translation: Future MP3 players, PCs and handheld computers will no longer let you make all the copies you want.
"A lack of security has enabled significant copyright piracy, which drains America's content industries to the tune of billions of dollars every year," Hollings, the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce committee, said in a statement on Thursday.
Hollings said that "any device that can legitimately play, copy or electronically transmit one or more categories of media also can be misused for illegal copyright infringement, unless special protection technologies are incorporated."
That's precisely why Hollings and the five senators who joined him want to embed copy-protection controls in all PCs and consumer electronic devices. Devices manufactured before the law takes effect can be resold legally.
Once known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, the newly named CBDTPA says that all "digital media devices" sold in the United States or shipped across state lines must include copy-protection mechanisms to be defined by the Federal Communications Commission.
"Digital media device" is defined in a breathtakingly broad way: Any hardware or software that reproduces, displays or "retrieves or accesses" any kind of copyrighted work.
Outcry from programmers already matches the protests heard during the era of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. And Silicon Valley lobbyists, who have objected to earlier versions of the CBDTPA, denounced it again on Thursday.
"We don't think this will help consumers use technology to enjoy movies or other content more," said Rhett Dawson, the president of the Information Technology Industry Council. "If it were enacted it could stand in the way of consumers enjoying the benefits of innovation by having the government make decisions that are best left to the marketplace."
Hollings' long-awaited introduction of his CBDTPA bill follows hearings before the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees, which highlighted the sharp rift between Silicon Valley, which advocates a laissez faire approach, and the Hollywood firms lobbying Congress to step in to prevent piracy.
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 last week, Feinstein showed her colleagues a pirated movie that she said an aide had downloaded from a file-trading service.
The entertainment industry desperately wants this bill, a version of which Disney and News Corp. endorsed as far back as last summer. But the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks snarled Congress' usual schedule, and only now has Capitol Hill's attention returned to online piracy.
On Thursday, the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America hailed the CBDTPA as the only way to prevent the continuing Napsterization of their businesses. MPAA's Jack Valenti said the measure will "serve the long-term interests of consumers," while RIAA's Hilary Rosen predicted that without it, "online piracy will continue to proliferate and spin further out of control."
The FCC would have a year from the date the president signs the CBDTPA to decide whether representatives of "digital media device manufacturers, consumer groups and copyright owners" have reached a reasonable compromise on copy protection standards. These standards have to comply with guidelines set by CBDTPA, including being reliable, resistant to attack, upgradable and not too expensive.
As an incentive for the negotiators to reach a deal, the FCC is required to send an interim progress report to Congress six months after the law is enacted, while talks are still underway. After one year has elapsed, if the FCC concludes a reasonable agreement has been reached, the agency will approve the standards and give them the force of law. Otherwise the FCC will come up with its own regulations.
One bright spot for free software advocates: Any software that implements the standards must be "based on open source code." Hardware copy-protection schemes can remain proprietary.
The CBDTPA does say the final "encoding rules" should take into account fair-use rights, such as making backup copies or reproducing short excerpts from books, songs or movies. Copies of TV broadcasts made for one-time personal use at home are also permitted.
But the CBDTPA also says that with those two exceptions, owners of digital content can encode their "directions" for use, copying and reproduction.
Anyone intentionally violating the CBDTPA would be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including prison terms.
