response 1 of 43:

Mar 22 17:33 UTC 2002

I have some serious misgivings about this bill.

For starters, legacy devices are probably doomed.  Let's say you have a 
$3,000 HDTV without this copy-protection system.  How are you going to 
watch your copy-protected video discs on it?  If the player outputs an 
unencrypted digital stream, it's creating an unprotected version of the 
content, which is illegal.  Likewise, your current CD player is 
probably doomed.

This bill could also put U.S. electronic manufacturers at a serious 
disadvantage.  They'd be prohibited from manufacturing devices for 
export that don't have the U.S.-mandated copy protection, and those are 
unlikely to be popular overseas.  They might be prohibited from 
exporting ones that do, for that matter, since they'd contain strong 
encryption technology.

Like the DMCA, this makes removing copy protection a crime even if you 
don't actually infringe anyone's copyright.  To me that's like banning 
bolt cutters and hacksaws because they can be used to remove padlocks.

Copyrights expire, but encryption is forever.  Under this law it'd be 
illegal to circumvent the copy protection to copy a work that was no 
longer under copyright!  This alters the whole idea of copyrights being 
for a limited time.

response 3 of 43:

Mar 23 04:07 UTC 2002

I think what we're likely to see is a huge train wreck and
lots of money lost, because nobody remembers the past.  Ergo,
we are doomed to repeat it.

Congress has been through this with other technologies before,
specifically the Digital Audio Tape, or DAT.  It was supposed
to be the next great thing, replacing the Phillips cassette
and offering recordability and wonderful sound quality.

For all that, tpryan is the only DAT owner I know.  So what happened?

What happened is that Congress listened to the record companies
moaning about how perfect digital copies would put them out of
business (pretty much the same argument they're making now to
Hollings et al).  In response, Congress mandated that something
called a Serial Copy Management System be placed in every DAT
machine.  The SCMS has at least 3 settings:  no copy restrictions,
copy-once (no second-generation copies), and no copies allowed at
all.  (There is a fourth possible value of the 2-bit permission
code, but I don't know if it's used or not.)  A copy of a "copy
once" recording is set to "no copies" by the SCMS hardware.

Here's the kicker:  to prevent people from recording music to
unprotected DAT and then making perfect digital copies until the
end of time, *everything you record on a consumer unit is set to
be copyable ONLY ONCE.*  You cannot make second-generation
digital copies even of your own material, unless you buy an
expensive professional unit.  Only the professionals are allowed
to designate their audio to be "free as in speech"; everyone
else is assumed to be a thief, and is prevented from doing so.

This, among other things, doomed DAT technology.  There is
essentially no consumer market for it.

So what can we expect from technology required to make computers,
video recorders and everything else safe for Hollywood's wet dreams?
Let me list a few:

1.)     Serial copy management at least as draconian as on DATs.

        You will probably not be able to transfer your digital
        video recordings of your vacation between computers,
        because that's a copy of a copy and the hardware can't
        tell the difference between your family on the beach
        and the latest Hollywood blockbuster.  And if you want
        to send a snippet to Aunt Mae, you're going to have to
        send the mail directly from the camcorder.

2.)     Watermarking everywhere.  Watermarked stuff just won't
        record, and woe be unto you if your material has some
        artifact which looks like a watermark to the hardware.
        Or *un*watermarked stuff won't record, to prevent you
        from stripping the watermark off someone else's stuff.
        Of course you won't be allowed to make watermarks without
        a license, limiting the recording business to enterprises
        big enough to afford them (bye-bye, free speech).

3.)     Globally Unique Identifiers in all hardware.  These will
        get attached to all material recorded or digitized and
        will allow infringing copies to be traced back to the
        hardware which made them (and presumably the infringer).
        It's also going to tag everything you make with those
        numbers so everything you say can be traced back to you.
        Tampering with or removing the GUIDs will be a crime.

If this isn't starting to sound "Nineteen Eighty-Four"-ish, you
haven't thought about it hard enough.

response 5 of 43:

Mar 23 06:07 UTC 2002

tipper gore and pat buchanan are probably giggling a bit over this.
  
e-gads! what a disaster.
  
mcnally is right on in #4, please do it, twice if necessary.

response 7 of 43:

Mar 24 03:26 UTC 2002

I wouldn't mind seeing the entertainment industry self-destruct, but this
is absurd.  As has been pointed out, they have no choice but to rig things
to that copies of un-watermarked stuff are impossible, without exception,
or they may as well not bother.  The provisions that sop to fair-use
cannot survive.  This means that it would be illegal/impossible to back up
your data, since it is not watermarked.

I'd love to see the industry come up with bulllett-proof copy protection
without having to cripple all technology to do it.  They would be defuct
quickly, and the new blood that sprang up to replace them would have
learned some lessons.

{Will likely be dismissed as crazy ranting here...}
Observing the world around me has lead me to conclude that what the
studios call piracy is essential to the industry as we know it.  If the
materials were not trivially easy to copy, the worldwide entertainment
market could not support ONE of the big entertainment companies at present
size, and very few of any size.

What information I have been able to gather says that the entertainment
industry gets a boost with every easy-copy technology that comes out.
Take away the easy copies, and the sales dry up quite a bit.  I can't
prove this to anyones satisfaction who has not reached this conclusion on
thier own, but I figure if I mention it, maybe some more people will go
looking and learn for themselves.

response 9 of 43:

Mar 25 04:21 UTC 2002

I guess its back to taping the radio again.  :)

response 11 of 43:

Mar 25 14:25 UTC 2002

Because Hollywood is a much older, more politically astute industry.  They
know who to buy, and the glamour of the movie business also helps win support.

response 15 of 43:

Mar 26 10:00 UTC 2002

More about the CBDTPA from Declan McCullagh of "Wired":


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 23:00:02 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@politechbot.com
Subject: FC: CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs

Just in case folks haven't figured out how sweeping the Hollings-Feinstein
bill, aka CBDTPA is, well, keep reading.

The CBDTPA says that if I were to write and sell this BASIC program...

10 INPUT A$
20 PRINT A$

...after the regulations take effect, I would be guilty of a federal
felony. That's up to five years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine.
Distributing my two-line application without charging for it, either via
handing out floppies or by posting it on a website would be at least a
civil offense and, depending on the circumstances, a crime as well.

It's no joke. CBDTPA regulates "any hardware or software that reproduces
copyrighted works in digital form." My program above does that, especially
if my BASIC interpreter permits arbitrarily long strings.

The business end of the CBDTPA says that "a manufacturer, importer, or
seller" of such software cannot "sell, or offer for sale, in interstate
commerce, or cause to be transported in, or in a manner affecting,
interstate commerce" their code unless it "includes and utilizes standard
security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted
under section 3."

The FCC gets to invent those. But I can't see how my two-line program is
going to incorporate such standards. If I'm using C, must I "#include
<sys/copycheck.h>?" In Perl, will I "use Parse::DRMVerify?" If so, who at
the FCC will ensure that these modules are available for the languages I'm
using? (It is true that folks at the FCC are smarter than the folks in
Congress, though that is not saying much. FCC staff will try to make the
standards workable. But the CBDTPA gives them -- and the public -- precious
little wiggle room.)

By design, programming languages are terribly flexible. The only way to
prevent software from removing do-not-copy bits from digital content would
be for Congress to ban the programmable PC. And replace it, perhaps, with
WebTV television-top boxes.

In case you're curious, the felony penalties kick in when you try to sell
your post-ban BASIC program -- not to mention any commercial software --
and perhaps even if you're a free software developer hoping to gain
reputation capital from your code.

They say that violators "shall be fined not more than $500,000 or
imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and
shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10
years, or both, for any subsequent offense." 
(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1204.html) 

Yes, this is silly. No, it is probably (I hope) not what senators Hollings
and Feinstein and their colleagues intended. Yet it is what the text of
the bill says. And this is after the good senators had seven months of
correspodnence from computer scientists and industry representatives
worried about the scope of the legislation after it was widely circulated
in August 2001. 

Don't believe me? Read it for yourself:

Text of CBDTPA:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/

Politech archive on the CBDTPA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cbdtpa

-Declan




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response 17 of 43:

Mar 29 07:05 UTC 2002

The tech CEOs might be taking this step in order to demonstrate their 
willingness to work toward a "solution" only as a means to derail 
legislative action and regain a negotiating position from which they can 
preserve some sanity in the end result.

response 19 of 43:

Mar 29 14:54 UTC 2002

Is it illegal to own an older VCR which can copy copy-protected video tapes?
These were popular items, used.  The old top-loaders.  Keesan does not buy
new hardware or even old hardware.  Once was enough.