Posted on Tue, Feb. 12, 2002
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2658555.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Dan Gillmor: Entertainment industry's copyright fight puts consumers in
cross hairs
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist
If the business people who rule the entertainment industry had been as
powerful 25 years ago as they are today, you'd be breaking the law if you
set your videocassette recorder to tape your favorite Olympic event for
later viewing. The VCR, assuming the entertainment industry would have
allowed a manufacturer to sell it, would not have a fast-forward button
because it would let you skip through the commercials without viewing
them.
As for tape recorders, you would not have been able to make a copy of the
music you just bought so you could play it in your car.
If all this sounds fanciful, you should note the latest news from the
copyright front. Hollywood has launched a new legal barrage against the
makers of personal video recorders, while the record companies are
getting ready to put copy protection on CDs.
Personal video recorders, also called PVRs, use computer hard disks to
store your favorite shows. They let you search listings electronically
and then set the devices to record programs based on your preferences,
such as genres or the names of shows or even actors.
In its latest example of gross interference with the rights of average
people, the big TV networks and Hollywood studios have sued several PVR
companies, including SonicBlue, the Santa Clara-based company that makes
the ReplayTV PVR. Replay is the most sophisticated of the current batch
of such devices, but the lawsuit is ultimately aimed at all the PVR
companies and their customers.
One of the new lawsuits is breathtaking in its arrogance. According to
the Los Angeles Times, MGM's lawyers whine that the ability of ReplayTV
customers to use the keyword function would ``cause substantial harm to
the market for prerecorded DVD, videocassette and other copies of those
episodes and films.'' To Hollywood, this is a massive bug in the system.
To customers, it's a fabulous feature.
The studios and TV networks are also whining about the feature that lets
users fast-forward through commercials or skip them entirely. The
entertainment companies are understandably worried about this trend, but
so what? My employer would like you to read the paper all the way through
and at least glance at every advertisement, but the fact that you don't
have to is one of the reader-friendly pieces of the transaction.
You may think Hollywood is overstepping with such tactics. Unfortunately,
the industry and its allies, including those in the software business,
are winning every legal battle they fight. They're winning because they
wield the infamous 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, a law
that gives producers of digital content nearly absolute control over how
it can be used.
It's what the record companies used to stomp out Napster, and a key
weapon in their new campaign to encrypt CDs or otherwise protect them
against what they consider unauthorized copying. Never mind that Congress
previously gave customers the explicit right to make personal copies of
the music they'd purchased. If you buy one of these turkey CDs, take it
back and demand a refund.
Give a hand to consumer-electronics manufacturer Philips
(www.philips.com)
for taking a stand on the side of customers. Philips, co-inventor of the
CD, has called the copy-protected CDs what they are: dysfunctional
goods.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., has asked the record companies
just what they think they're doing with the copy-protected CDs, which may
violate a law predating the DMCA. Boucher is one of an alarmingly few
members of Congress who understands just how far the entertainment
industry is willing to go in its greed.
Why should you care if you can't make a copy of a CD to play in your car?
Because the industry's attack is much wider. Your rights are intertwined
with scholarship, with the public commons of knowledge that the owners of
information want to close off. The damage will be far-reaching if they
succeed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Gillmor's column appears each Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday. E-mail
dgillmor@...; phone (408) 920-5016; fax (408) 920-5917.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2001 siliconvalley and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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