IP: more on Dan Gillmor: Entertainment industry's copyright fight puts consumers in cross hairs

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic () well com>
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2002 10:18:04 -0500
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: dgillmor () sjmercury com
Subject: Re: IP: Dan Gillmor: Entertainment industry's copyright  fight puts
consumers in cross hairs


Dave,

Dan Gillmor is absolutely right that the current lawsuits against the
makers of personal video recorders like ReplayTV signify a
longstanding opposition from Hollywood content companies to consumer
recording and copying technologies (dating back to VCRs and various
audiotaping tech).

What really scares them about ReplayTV, though, is something new: the
fact that the resulting copies are (a) digitally "perfect" copies of
TV content that themselves can be perfectly copied, and (b)
transmissible over the Internet. (A similar fear, based on the
Napster phenomenon, is also the explanation for music companies'
efforts to develop and sell noncopyable audio CDs.)

The court pleadings in the latest ReplayTV case may focus on the
technology's keyword-search functions and commercial-skipping
features, but those are side issues -- the content companies are
willing to concede to home viewers some degree of personal copying,
for example. What freaks them out is the ability of ReplayTV viewers
to forward favorite shows to other viewers over the Internet. Any
legal strategy that might slow or block the deployment of ReplayTV
and similar PVRs is thus worth pursuing, they believe, if it helps
prevent more consumers from forwarding (and trading, and duplicating)
copies of digital content.

All this is part of a larger content-company opposition to the ways
in which digital technologies and the Internet empower consumers. I
discuss this larger war (the ReplayTV case is only one small battle
in that war) in an article I've posted at
<http://cryptome.org/mpaa-v-net-mg.htm>.

Dan is also right that the content companies have been winning their
court fights. What this likely means is that there will be renewed
effort in Congress, sooner rather than later, to address the balances
of copyright law in the digital age. Some content companies will seek
further legislative restrictions on digital copying technologies,
while other players, including some IT and consumer-electronics
companies and public-interest groups, will labor to protect what they
say as consumers' fundamental rights to engage in some degree of
copying -- a right they believe is well-grounded in the law and
public policy of copyright.


--Mike Godwin


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Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-637-9800
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