Death by DMCA

[Monty Solomon]

Death by DMCA

By:  Fred von Lohmann and Wendy Seltzer
IEEE Spectrum
June 2006

A flood of legislation released by the passage of the  Digital
Millennium Copyright Act threatens to drown whole  classes of
consumer electronics

In 1998, U.S.  entertainment companies persuaded  Congress to make
dramatic changes in its copyright code  by passing the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act. The  DMCA gave  copyright holders new
rights to control the way people  use copyrighted material and new
protection for  technologies designed to restrict access or copying.
The  movie and record companies argued they needed these new
restrictions to fight increased piracy threats in the  digital era.

In the eight years since the DMCA's passage, however,  piracy has not
decreased, and hurdles to lawful uses of  media have risen. The
Motion Picture Association (MPA),  the international arm of the
Motion Picture Association  of America (MPAA), estimated worldwide
losses because of  piracy to be US $2.2 billion in 1997 and $3.5
billion  annually in 2002, 2003, and 2004.

Meanwhile, entire consumer electronics categories have  been wiped
from retail shelves. If three or four years  ago you didn't buy a
digital video recorder that  automatically skips commercials, you're
out of luck;  that feature is not in such products today. Television
executives brought litigation that bankrupted the  company offering
DVRs with these user-friendly features,  because skipping commercials
potentially undermines  their ability to sell commercial time.

You're likewise out of luck if you're looking to buy  software that
lets you copy a DVD onto your laptop's  hard drive; it's no longer
for sale, at least not in the  United States. Even if you want to put
the movie you  bought onto a pocket-size video and game console, such
as Sony's PlayStation Portable, which allows users to  watch video
stored on flash memory or a miniature hard  drive, you can't legally
do so, because you'd have to  "rip," or decode, it to make the
transfer-and the studios claim that this action violates the DMCA.
When  you rip a CD, be it to an audiotape or an MP3 file,  you're not
breaking any laws. But to rip a DVD you need  to somehow get around
the encryption technology built  into a standard disc, and since such
circumvention is  forbidden by the DMCA, if you rip a DVD, you are
breaking a law. Under the DMCA, legality doesn't depend  on how the
copy will be used but rather on the means by  which the digital
content is copied.

Now, in an even more vexing situation, U.S.  entertainment companies
are successfully spreading the  copyright code changes established by
the DMCA around  the world. Laws similar to the DMCA now exist in
Japan,  Australia, and much of Europe. At least nine additional
countries, including Chile, Guatemala, and Singapore  have also been
pressured to enact DMCA-like laws as part  of a devil's bargain with
U.S. trade negotiators, who  say the copyright change is necessary to
secure free  trade pacts with the United States that would govern all
sorts of commerce. And in Europe, the body charged with  defining the
European digital television standards is  mixing in
content-protection obligations, responding yet  again to pressure
from major U.S. movie studios.

Emboldened by their successes, U.S. entertainment  companies are
pushing for another wave of even more  restrictive legislation.
"Broadcast flag" legislation  could require that all consumer
electronics devices  recognize protected television broadcasts and
potentially refuse to copy them; a so-called "radio  flag" bill would
prevent or restrict the manufacture of  hard disk recorders for
digital radio; and an "analog  hole" closure would restrict the
connections new digital  devices can make with analog devices.

As the entertainment industry expands copyright law,  the rising tide
threatens to completely wash away many  types of innovative gadgets.

...

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun06/3673




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