WASHINGTON -- Sen. Patrick Leahy says a controversial proposal to embed copy protection in electronics gear will not become law this year.
Since Leahy is the powerful chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, his opposition instantly boosts the difficulty Hollywood studios will encounter in their attempts to enact sweeping copyright legislation.
The Vermont Democrat said through a spokesman that he "does not" support the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), which Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) introduced this month.
Leahy had said during a hearing March 14 that he would block an earlier measure -- the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act -- that Hollings had circulated privately. But that was before Hollings had introduced the revised CBDTPA, which is not as far-reaching.
Now spokesman David Carle says that Leahy is just as critical of Hollings' CBDTPA, and has the same plans to prevent it from being enacted this year. Since Leahy's committee has jurisdiction over the bill, he may be in a position to do it.
Also this week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) told Wired News he was drafting a House bill that would be similar to the CBDTPA.
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A copyright campaign: Notice how all the champions of Hollywood's copy-protect-everything legislation are Democrats?
Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee better known as the "Instapundit," says that hands Republicans a competitive advantage.
Reynolds wrote in a column this week: "If the Republicans have any sense, they'll be making an issue of this in the next elections, painting the Democrats as hypocrites who have sold out to Hollywood, and who are trying to reach, Big Brother-like, into the hearts of American televisions and computers. But even if they don't, a lot of Web denizens will be saying it, and it's likely to have a lot of resonance. Because it's true."
It's not unanimous, of course. Leahy is a Democrat, and one of the CBDTPA's sponsors is a Republican. But it's a pretty good rule of thumb.
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Carnivore update: The FBI lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit seeking details about the bureau's Carnivore surveillance system.
This week, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the FBI should have turned over documents relating to the spyware and ordered a 60-day "further search." Robertson rejected the FBI's request for summary judgment.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the lawsuit two years ago after its Freedom of Information Act request had been rebuffed.
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For your eyes only: The Federal Trade Commission thinks you should have the right to buy contact lenses online.
Some states, like Georgia and Texas, have bowed to lobbying from optometrists who enjoy fat markups -- and have prohibited online purchasing.
The Connecticut Board of Examiners for Opticians is currently drafting regulations, which the FTC urged should be reasonable.
The FTC's letter to Connecticut said: "An overly narrow interpretation of Connecticut law on these issues will likely have two significant detrimental effects: (1) it will restrict the choices available to Connecticut consumers, raise their costs and reduce their convenience unnecessarily, and (2) it will serve as a barrier to the expansion of Internet commerce in the State of Connecticut."
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Filtering trial: The library filtering trial resumes on Monday, with the Justice Department scheduled to offer testimony from a librarian who has no problem using the software.
Don Barlow, the director of the public library in Westerville, Ohio, will testify that the "filtering policy is consistent with (the library's) mission and collection development policies," according to the government's pre-trial brief.
Cory Finnell, a partner at Certus Consulting Group, also will testify on Monday that "the filtering products used by the libraries accurately blocked approximately 90 percent of the content that they were enabled to block."
On Tuesday, Ben Edelman from Harvard Law School will testify on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union that filtering software is problematic. Of 6,777 sites he reviewed that were marked as verboten by filtering software, many were valuable sites that were erroneously classified, Edelman says.
Rebuttal witnesses will appear on Wednesday, and closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m. EST.
