FC: U.S. House not willing to endorse mandatory copy protection

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50784,00.html

   House Cool to Copy Protection
   By Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com) and Robert Zarate
   
   2:00 a.m. March 4, 2002 PST
   WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives doesn't seem willing
   to intercede in an increasingly bitter dispute over embedding copy
   protection controls in all consumer electronic devices.
   
   Key legislators in the House have indicated they're skeptical of the
   government mandating anti-piracy technology, an approach that
   Democrats of the Senate Commerce Committee endorsed during a hearing
   last Thursday.
   
   Fretting that online piracy of digital content will imperil sales,
   Hollywood studios have asked Congress to bypass their negotiations
   with Silicon Valley firms by requiring that all PCs and consumer
   electronics sport technology to prohibit illicit copying. Senate
   Commerce Chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) has championed
   this approach.
   
   "Mr. Coble believes Hollings' approach would have the government
   mandate specific software standards governing encryption or access
   to copyrighted works, which are transmitted digitally in lieu of
   negotiated industry standards," said a spokesman for Rep. Howard
   Coble (R-North Carolina), the chairman of the House Judiciary
   Subcommittee on Intellectual Property.
   
   Spokesman Terry Shawn said: "He is concerned that this approach is
   too interventionist and could lead to standards which favor certain
   brands of software over others, and which could quickly become
   obsolete as technology improves or changes." [...]
   
   "Hollings' bill would mandate copy protection chips on all sorts of
   hardware and machines in the same way that the V-chip was mandated
   on television sets," said Richard Diamond, a spokesman for House
   Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas).
   
   Diamond said his boss, one of the more vocal members of the
   Republican Party's free-market wing, doesn't like the government
   requiring standards: "Rep. Armey found the V-chip inappropriate
   too."

   [...]



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