In its continuing summer campaign to underscore consumer interests in technology policy, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is calling for Congress to start over in its approach to dealing with the conflict between fair use rights and producer digital copyrights. Selecting the little known Broadcast Protection Discussion Group (BPDG) as its target of the day, the CFA sent letters to members of Congress expressing "deep concern over the direction taken in the efforts to develop copy protection for broadcast digital programming" by the BPDG.
A consortium of major electronics and media companies, including major motion picture studios and manufacturers Intel, Hitachi, Matsushita, Sony, and Toshiba, the BPDG has been in negotiations since November discussing a variety of technologies which attempt to control copying and playback of digital media.
The group was formed last fall in the aftermath of Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings' (D.-S.C.) threats to file legislation calling for digital hardware to be wired to prohibit copying if the media and hardware industries couldn't reach a compromise on the issue. The industries' response was the BPDG, which is now pushing a scheme to severely curtail home recording of free over-the-air digital broadcasts. Proponents of BPDG's approach contend that since there are no digital VCRs in the consumer market today, consumers won't miss what they've never had.
To work, the BPDG approach will have to be backed up by the government with a ban or regulations on "non-compliant" digital devices.
"On all counts, the efforts of the industry-dominated BPDG are off target. The BPDG seems to have started from the premise that all consumers are thieves and has set out to develop a hardwired anti-theft system that destroys consumers' abilities to make fair use of the programming that comes into their homes," said Dr. Mark Cooper, the CFA's director of research, said in the letter to Congress. "In the process, the BPDG approach will render obsolete tens of millions of dollars of electronic equipment that consumers have already purchased."
Although there are no DTV VCRs on the consumer market today, there are a small number of DTV personal video recorders (PVRs), the latest entries in a product category pioneered by TiVo. But, in general, PVRs don't allow recording onto removable media, as a VCR does.
Smaller video equipment companies are split in their reactions to entertainment industry demands. Some makers of PVRs, as well as some manufacturers of TV tuner cards for personal computers (which can allow PCs to receive DTV directly), fearing litigation from Hollywood, are intentionally limiting the capabilities of these products by incorporating "rights management" restrictions. Only a handful of manufacturers have continued to sell ordinary full-featured tuner cards, which can turn a computer into a digital television, PVR, and VCR in one.
"In the longer term, the BPDG licensing approach will stifle innovation. It puts a handful of companies in charge of approving recording and display devises. Gatekeepers such as these inevitably protect their private corporate interests at the expense of the public interest," Cooper said. "The design characteristics of the hard-wired antitheft system will be unnecessarily complex. In the consumer electronics industry, this typically imposes unnecessary monetary costs and severe reliability problems on consumers."
Cooper and other critics of the BPDG have frequently cited the motion picture industry opposition to VCRs in the mid-1980's. Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti insisted the technology would be the death of the movie industry. In a protracted court battle called Universal v. Sony, the industry tried to keep home recorders off the market. In 1984, the Supreme Court decided consumers would have the right to buy Betamax units. Video sales now account for almost 40 percent of movie studio revenues.
"The experience of consumers in the information age reaffirms our belief in the need to ensure consumer rights. Consumers and the economy are best served by open standards and networks that afford them maximum choice, encourage use and promote unfettered innovation by both consumers and producers," Cooper wrote. "These conditions can only be created by striking a balance between private incentives to impose proprietary standards and operate closed networks and public responsibilities to keep them open."
Cooper added, "It should not come as a great surprise that this group (BPDG) has moved toward such a recommendation. Consumer voices are virtually absent from the bargaining table. Worse still, the proposal would involve private entities taking on essential, public functions through licensing. Congress cannot abdicate its responsibility to the industry and expect consumer interests to be protected."
