[Infowarrior] - IEEE: Death by DMCA

[Richard Forno]

Death by DMCA
By: Fred von Lohmann and Wendy Seltzer
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/3673

Illustration by David Plunkert
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.

Before the passage of the DMCA, entertainment and technology had, for the
most part, peacefully coexisted. Laws addressing the use and misuse of
copyrighted content targeted “bad actors” rather than complete classes of
technology. For example, when songwriters in the 1920s sued radio stations
for broadcasting live music performances without paying the songwriters, the
lawyers did nothing to the companies that designed and built the broadcast
transmitter towers. And in the early 1980s, when videocassette recorders
(VCRs) made it possible for consumers to record television broadcasts, the
U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark Betamax case, ruled that the
manufacturers of home video-recording devices were not liable for copyright
infringement.

By the 1990s, U.S. entertainment companies wanted not just compensation but
control. They went abroad to fight for in­ternational treaties that went
beyond punishing copyright infringement. These new treaties endorsed
copyright-protection technologies and prohibited the circumvention of these
technological barriers. Then the companies brought the treaties back home to
demand an update of the U.S. Copyright Act. And that brought about the DMCA.

The most controversial of the DMCA's additions to copyright made it a crime
to circumvent “technological protection measures” deployed on copyrighted
works. Under the DMCA, these measures mean any technology used to restrict
or prevent copying of or access to a copyrighted work. Thus, the DMCA makes
it illegal to bypass a password-control system and also prevents working
around an encryption scheme that might stop someone from copying a song to
an MP3 player. Other DMCA provisions outlaw the distribution of devices that
bypass these digital locks.

Copyright is being turned from a limited-term incentive designed to
encourage creative artists to a broadly scoped transfer of wealth from the
public to the private realm. As the industries that generate copyrighted
materials seek control over not only their works but also the devices on
which we watch, listen to, and remix them, copyright law is turning into
technology regulation.
Illustration by David Plunkert

ReplayTV 4000, an advanced digital video recorder introduced in 2001 by
ReplayTV Network Inc., of Cupertino, Calif., was an early victim of the
rising legislative tide. Like its competitor TiVo, from TiVo Inc., Alviso,
Calif., the ReplayTV 4000 recorded television programs to a hard drive and
allowed the viewer to watch the show at a later time—the kind of time
shifting the Supreme Court approved as a fair use of the Betamax. The
ReplayTV had two additional unique features: it could automatically skip
commercials, and it could also relay a recorded program to another ReplayTV
unit in the home or elsewhere on the Internet.

These new capabilities did not please Hollywood. Jamie Kellner, then CEO of
Turner Broadcasting System Inc., called skipping commercials “theft” and,
along with 28 entertainment companies including major movie studios and
television networks—such as Disney, Paramount, Time Warner, Fox, Columbia,
ABC, NBC, and CBS—sued ReplayTV for contributing to copyright infringement.
Though the company might have prevailed in the end based on the Betamax
precedent, ReplayTV ultimately ended up in bankruptcy before it could have
its day in court. The company that rescued ReplayTV from bankruptcy, D&M
Holdings Inc., Tokyo, settled the case in 2005 by pledging not to include
the commercial-skipping and the show-forwarding features in its future
models.

None of the DVRs on the market today, from TiVo, ReplayTV's successors, or
elsewhere, such as from cable companies, offer these features. Although
nothing currently stops a technically savvy hobbyist from turning a personal
computer with a TV tuner card into a ReplayTV 4000–like video recorder, the
legislative tide may soon threaten these tinkerers as well, as we'll
explain.

The DVD, introduced in 1996, quickly became one of the most successful
consumer products of all time. It revolutionized the market for home movie
viewing and enabled new, portable devices to be created; it also gave rise
to new distribution schemes like the Netflix subscription service and its
many imitators.

But for consumers, the DVD format left room for improvement. Copy-protection
schemes implemented in the DVD format at Hollywood's insistence made it
difficult to reproduce movies, in whole or in part. So DVD owners who wanted
to copy a few movies onto a laptop computer for a long trip—and to leave the
drive and discs themselves at home—couldn't. Furthermore, region codes
locked discs to specific areas of the world, blocking travelers from picking
up new discs or trying foreign selections.

In 1999, a team that included Jon Lech Johansen, a young Norwegian
programmer, cracked the DVD copy-protection technology. Johansen explained
how to do it on his Web site, and programs soon developed to enable direct
copying of a DVD. A group of movie studios complained to legal authorities
in Norway, and the Norwegian prosecutor charged Johansen with a crime. The
court cleared him after years of legal battles. However, Johansen's Web site
addressed technologically savvy users, not the average consumer looking to
make a quick copy of one of the Barney movies.

In 2003, 321 Studios, of St. Charles, Mo., launched a software product
called DVD X Copy for these more typical DVD owners. The company built in
aggressive measures to prevent piracy, including an antipiracy splash screen
that appeared when viewing any copy and watermarks that would enable copies
to be traced back to those who made them. The management at 321 Studios
hoped that these cooperative measures would stave off Hollywood's wrath.

The company was wrong. Before the DMCA, 321 Studios would have been on
relatively safe legal ground. From the time of the Betamax case, U.S. courts
had made it clear that copying devices were legal so long as they had any
substantial lawful use. But the DMCA changed the rules. When the movie
studios sued 321 Studios, the Hollywood contingent did not argue that any of
their movies had been unlawfully copied. Instead, it said that the product
circumvented a “technical protection measure,” which in this case was the
Content Scramble System (CSS) on DVDs.

The CSS is the scheme Hollywood uses to encrypt movies on DVDs. Decryption
requires a key, which manufacturers of DVD players obtain by signing a
license with the DVD Copy Control Association, a consortium of movie
studios, including Fox and Warner, and technology providers, such as Intel
and Toshiba. This license, in turn, forbids licensed devices from making
digital copies of DVD content or from offering playback modes that the
studios disapprove of. (DVD recorders can copy only unencrypted digital
material, such as home movies.) The licensing rules and DMCA put companies
like 321 Studios in a quandary. If they signed the license in order to
obtain the CSS decryption keys, the document prohibited them from using
those keys in software capable of copying a DVD. If they didn't sign the
license and forged ahead anyway, deriving the CSS keys on their own, they
risked prosecution or a civil suit under the DMCA for circumventing the CSS.
After consideration, 321 Studios opted to go forward without a license. The
DMCA quickly washed away DVD X Copy. After the movie studios prevailed in
court in 2004, manufacturers pulled DVD X Copy and similar ripping tools off
the U.S. market.

Though DVD-copying software has been swept off U.S. retail shelves, plenty
of it escaped to higher ground. Freeware DVD-copying applications like DVD
Shrink, MacTheRipper, and HandBrake wander the Web. To escape the Hollywood
hunters, most live on Web servers located outside the United States.

Unencumbered digital television tuners are a bit higher up on the beach, yet
they represent another class of products that may be eliminated by
legislation. These peripherals slip into a computer's PCI card slot or hook
up to a USB port to enable it to receive digital television broadcasts,
turning a PC into a TV or video recorder. The cards, which cost from $100 to
$350, came to market in 2004 from a variety of manufacturers, including ATI,
Dvico, Elgato, and pcHDTV. With a tuner card, a hobbyist can build his or
her own DVR.

The entertainment companies do not like the flexibility of these home-built
machines—or, more significant to them, the flexibility of the machines that
consumer electronics manufacturers could offer under the current copyright
law and its Betamax rule.

Envisioning a world in which copyrighted works are indiscriminately
distributed on the Internet, the entertainment industry looked for ways to
force limitations into the design of these devices. Hollywood went first to
the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to demand a “broadcast flag
mandate,” that is, a requirement that every device capable of receiving
digital television broadcasts incorporate restrictions against
redistribution of those programs. Such a law would give Hollywood a say in
the design of all the new hardware consumers would need to make DTV work.
The mandate would require devices capable of receiving over-the-air DTV
signals to detect and respond to a flag, known officially as the
Redistribution Control Descriptor, in the broadcast stream. The flag
indicates that the owner of the rights to the transmission has imposed
restrictions on its copying or redistribution. The mandate required that the
technology designed to detect the flag and implement the restrictions be
embedded in every tuner that has digital outputs.

Hollywood lobbyists actually convinced the FCC to impose broadcast flag
regulations in 2003, but a U.S. Court of Appeals found that the Commission
lacked the authority to regulate the internal workings of televisions.
Hollywood is now asking Congress to give the FCC that legal authority by
passing the Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006, sponsored by Rep.
Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.).

If Congress does enact these broadcast flag regulations, existing tuner
cards will ignore the flag, but it will be unlawful to manufacture any new
cards without the feature. Products that would have to be redesigned in
response to the flag mandate would include the wide variety of inexpensive
tuner cards available today, as well as TV hard disk digital recorders, DVD
recorders, and any other hardware or software that would make it possible to
receive or view digital broadcast television. The broadcast flag law would
force designers of tomorrow's digital television devices to either implement
one of a limited list of approved content-protection technologies to
restrict flagged broadcasts or hire lawyers to seek FCC approval for any
newly developed content-protection mechanism. Neither option would ensure
backward-compatibility with existing high-definition televisions or
interoperability with the other digital media equipment consumers might have
already purchased. These requirements would inevitably mean higher costs for
technology developers and would handicap the introduction of new features.
And all this would happen without stopping those who are truly determined to
redistribute HDTV programming.

Like the DMCA's provisions, broadcast flag legislation, if established in
the United States, is likely to proliferate around the world.
Illustration by David Plunkert

Hollywood is no longer waiting for products to actually be invented,
manufactured, and shipped to retailers before trying to bar them from the
market. Instead, the entertainment industry has already begun attacking some
consumer electronics devices before the manufacturing process begins. That's
happening to products that would give consumers the ability to record
digital radio in the same way we “TiVo” television shows.

In the United States, 3000 FM broadcasters have committed to augmenting
their traditional analog AM and FM broadcasts with digital signals using a
technology called In-Band On‑Channel Digital Audio Broadcasting, more
commonly called HD Radio, which debuted around 2004. Some 700 of these
stations already have HD Radio on the air. Europe has deployed a similar
digital radio system. HD Radio promises increased fidelity for AM broadcasts
and increased capacity for FM broadcasts: using digital radio, broadcasters
could transmit as many as three compressed digital programs in the same
width of spectrum that supports only one analog program today, albeit at
lower fidelity than with analog FM.

For decades, music fans have been recording analog music from radio
broadcasts. The recording industry never liked this home taping, and in the
1970s and early 1980s it repeatedly tried but failed to convince legislators
to tax analog tape. In 1991, the music industry took the issue to the
courts, suing to block the first digital audio tape recorders, asserting
that digital music is different from analog because digital copies are as
good as the originals, whereas analog copies are not. Congress brokered a
compromise between the music industry and the consumer electronics
manufacturers and enacted the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Among other
items, the law resolved the question of taping off the radio, making it
clear that analog taping for noncommercial use was perfectly legal but
digital taping would be legal only if the recording devices and blanks
included a small royalty, for example, 3 cents on a $1.00 recordable audio
CD, payable to the music industry. The law also required that covered
digital audio recorders include a primitive copy-control system known as the
Serial Copy Management System.

With the advent of HD Radio, the recording industry wanted to reopen the
issue. The industry, represented by the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA), is trying to renege on the bargain struck in the Audio Home
Recording Act, in which it agreed to accept the royalty in exchange for
permitting digital radio recording. The RIAA is urging the FCC and Congress
to impose design restrictions on any future HD Radio recorders to stave off
a successful new mutation: a digital hard disk recorder that allows easy and
flexible archiving of radio broadcasts. As similar devices have appeared for
satellite radio, the recording industry has also begun pushing for
legislation to restrict them, such as S. 2644, the Platform Equity and
Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act of 2006, introduced by
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.).

The restrictions sought by the RIAA would prevent users from storing
individual song tracks, searching by title or artist, or creating playlists.
What the RIAA wants, according to documents it filed with the FCC, are
digital recorders that record only in segments at least 30 minutes long.
This action would prevent users from splitting the 30-minute segment into
individual songs or skipping to the beginnings of songs. Limitations such as
these would make off-the-air recordings less desirable and therefore, the
industry hopes, prevent them from cutting into record sales, and they would
also deny users key benefits of the new technology.

The industry argues that the regulations should also require that recordings
be cryptographically bound to the recording device, thereby making them
nontransferable to iPods, MP3 players, or computers. Further, the
regulations should also limit the use of metadata—that is, identifying
information that may supplement the audio file—and so deny users the
convenience of setting up devices to record only favored artists or genres.
In essence, these rules would force future digital recorders to ape the
analog cassette recorders of decades past. The regulations would ban all
“noncompliant” recorders from the marketplace.

The good news for radio fans is that the recording industry's proposal met
with a chilly reception both at the FCC and at a Senate hearing this past
January. The bad news is that the recording industry continues to push hard
for it.

While some gizmos in the eye of the storm are exotic or newly evolved, one
is, today, as common as a house cat. This is the type of device that
transforms analog signals into digital ones: the analog-to-digital
converter.

The MPAA has made plugging the “analog hole” a top legislative priority. The
concept is simple: most of today's digital entertainment devices, whether
they are DVD or CD players, hard disk recorders like TiVo, or television
tuners, have analog as well as digital outputs. The analog outputs include
composite video (a single yellow RCA jack), component video (a trio of RCA
jacks, usually green, blue, and red), and S-video (a multipin jack). These
jacks let consumers easily connect modern digital products to home
entertainment devices that predate the digital era. Hundreds of millions of
consumers worldwide use these jacks to enjoy DVDs and other digital media
without having to run out and replace all their existing consumer
electronics.

New and emerging products are increasingly encrypting their digital outputs.
The list includes DVD-Audio players and the new Blu‑Ray Disc and HD DVD
players, the much-hyped high-definition successors to DVD players, the first
examples of which are just reaching the market. In contrast, device
designers can't encrypt or scramble analog outputs, at least not if they
intend the products to continue to work with older devices. This means that
users can freely record and manipulate analog signals, using an old VCR, for
example.

Nevertheless, what really bothers Hollywood about standard, unencrypted
analog interfaces is that it cannot use licensing to impose restrictions on
the makers of analog devices; unlike digital devices, most analog interfaces
do not need decryption keys. If such interfaces are eliminated, however,
then when analog devices wear out and consumers replace them with digital
devices, Hollywood will have tighter control over the evolution and
interconnection of consumer entertainment technologies than it did in the
analog era.

Hollywood, therefore, is going on the attack against devices that convert
analog content to digital. This category covers an incredibly broad array of
products, from basic components found on RadioShack shelves to fully formed
gadgets ubiquitous in the marketplace. For example, for just a few hundred
dollars consumers can buy video capture cards and use them in their personal
computers to digitize old home movies. With a video capture card, you can
make a copy of a movie for your video iPod, excerpt video for a school
project, or take a clip to remix with your own footage.

In an attempt to put an end to all that, Hollywood has drafted the Digital
Transition Content Security Act, introduced as H.R. 4569 in December 2005 by
Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).
This legislation, better known as the Analog Hole Bill, would impose a
design mandate on any “analog video input device that converts into digital
form an analog video signal.”

The act would require digital recorders, video capture cards, and other
devices that can convert analog signals into digital data to detect and
respond to two different analog signaling technologies. One of them, the
Copy Generation Management System for Analog (CGMS-A) would set a flag in a
television transmission that would identify whether or not the show being
broadcast has copy restrictions on it. If it does, the flag would identify
the generation of the recording and the number of times it could be copied:
not at all, once, or some preset number. The television broadcaster would
transmit this identification during the video-blanking interval of the
analog transmission, that moment in which the electron gun that paints the
pixels on a television screen jumps from the bottom to the top. The second
signal, called Video Encoded Invisible Light (VEIL), would be inserted into
the video picture itself and, like CGMS-A, would not be visible to the eye.
Originally developed to trigger responses by toys to daytime cartoons, VEIL
would operate as a backup for CGMS-A and would be present in every
content-controlled broadcast. If a device covered by the legislation
detected a VEIL signal without accompanying copy-control information, the
mismatch would tip off the device that the copy-control flag had been
stripped or tampered with.
Hollywood is going on the attack against devices that convert analog content
to digital

The Analog Hole Bill is Hollywood's attempt to control an even broader range
of devices than the DMCA does. The chips used to convert video from analog
to digital are in today's digital cameras, camera phones, and personal media
players. A host of future new devices are likely to include this basic
technology. The Analog Hole Bill would require that all these products
incorporate content-protection technologies certified by federal regulators
and include hardware and software to block any end-user modifications. The
days of hardware “tweaking” would end. The legislation would also dictate
the kinds of video outputs permitted, potentially orphaning generations of
older products, including television sets, stereo speakers, and VCRs. Such
legislation, combined with other laws already passed and pending, would lead
to a world in which federal regulators, not creative engineers, would
dictate many product features and design decisions. In place of the new
era's digital developments, Hollywood's vision takes us back to the Stone
Age.

Hollywood is good at telling stories. The one it has been screening in
Washington—that music and movies will perish if the regulators don't kill
the dangerous gizmos first—is powerful drama but has about as much basis in
reality as Lord of the Rings. Killing off gizmos and subjecting
technological development to the whims of federal regulators will ultimately
hurt not just consumers but also tomorrow's creative industries—both
technology and entertainment.
About the Author

FRED VON LOHMANN is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco that is devoted to
protecting civil liberties and free expression in the digital world. He
handles various areas of litigation involving copyright and new
technologies, and he advises policymakers about the importance of protecting
the public interest when enacting intellectual property laws and
regulations.

WENDY SELTZER is a visiting professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, where
she teaches Internet Law and Information Privacy and writes about free
speech online. Previously, she was a staff attorney with the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. As a fellow with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center
for Internet & Society, Wendy founded and leads the Chilling Effects
Clearinghouse (http://www.chillingeffects.org), which helps Internet users
understand their rights in response to cease-and-desist threats.
To Probe Further

Freedom-to-Tinker (http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com), a blog by Princeton
computer science professor Edward W. Felten, discusses technical and policy
issues, including digital rights management.

Deep Links (http://www.eff.org/deeplinks), the official blog of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, follows legal and policy issues surrounding
copyright, digital rights management, and the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act.

Public Knowledge (http://www.publicknowledge.org), a nonprofit group based
in Washington, D.C., follows legislative developments relating to copyright
and digital rights management.



Sidebar 1
DMCA Brings Good Things to Life

Few single pieces of legislation have done more to spur technological
innovation and expand the supply of movies and other entertainment than the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Photo: Thomas Del Brase/Getty Images

When Congress passed the DMCA in 1998, neither consumers nor innovators in
the technology and entertainment industries imagined that just eight years
later people would be viewing movies and TV shows on their computers, their
video iPods, their PlayStation Portables, and even their cellphones. During
these years, innovators were not only able to imagine new ways to provide
movies to consumers but were also able to deliver them. They could do so
because they knew that the products of their creativity would be protected
from theft and abuse by a fair set of rules.

The DMCA put into law a common-sense proposition: that it is wrong to break
through technical “locks” that keep digital content from being stolen or to
market devices that do so. The DMCA gave innovators and creators an
effective means of protecting themselves against thieves who try to beat the
system by unlawfully making copies and redistributing movies and other
entertainment.

Perhaps the best example of the innovation that the DMCA is bringing home to
consumers is the DVD. DVD players are the most successful consumer
electronics devices in history. Since the passage of the DMCA, tens of
millions of consumers have enjoyed a wide variety of entertainment in this
high-quality format. We at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
attribute the triumph of the DVD directly to the DMCA, because in providing
some protection against unbridled theft, the DMCA empowered entertainment
companies to release their products in digital format.

Although critics have accused the DMCA of damping technological innovation
and preventing the “fair use” of copyrighted works, recent history supports
the opposite conclusions. (“Fair use” is a legal concept that permits the
reproduction of copyrighted works for certain purposes without permission or
payment.)

Rather than discouraging innovation, the DMCA has fostered an innovative
environment that has given consumers greater access to movies, TV shows, and
other copyrighted material than ever before, advancing new technologies as
well as new business models.

The DMCA recognizes the historical importance of fair use. In fact, under a
DMCA requirement, the U.S. Copyright Office is conducting its third
investigation into fair use practices. It has found no evidence to support
claims that the DMCA diminishes consumers' ability to fairly use copyrighted
materials.

Although the DMCA has greatly expanded consumers' viewing choices, threats
to the future expansion of these choices still remain, especially in the
realm of over-the-air broadcast television. Cable and satellite subscription
services can protect their high-quality programs from being illegally copied
and infinitely transmitted over the Internet, but over-the-air broadcasters
cannot. The broadcast signal must be unprotected so that all consumers can
receive it on their existing televisions. Congress can help ensure the
future growth of viewing choices for over-the-air viewers by enacting
“broadcast flag” legislation. This law would allow broadcasters to invisibly
protect their programs from copying and redistribution in the same way that
satellite and cable providers do, so broadcasters will not be forced to
limit new television programs to fee-based subscription services to make
them safe from theft.

But neither protecting digital programs nor inserting broadcast flags in
analog programs is enough to ensure that everyone enjoys the benefits of new
and expanding entertainment options. As we make the transition to the
digital television, we must keep in mind that the majority of U.S. consumers
still use analog TVs. Therefore, digital programs still must be converted
into analog for viewing on these nondigital TV sets. When such programs are
converted back to digital, say, for use with a DVD recorder, they lose their
original digital protections and are exposed to unlimited illegal copying
and redistribution. It is not hard to understand why producers would choose
not to expand viewing options in a realm with such vulnerability to theft.

Hence, we at the MPAA are urging Congress to enact the “Analog Hole”
legislation. This law can help ensure that consumer choices are not
undermined by the risk of theft—by laying out simple rules of the road for
programming and equipment.

While these issues remain to be resolved, the DMCA and related legislation
have fostered a climate of unbridled innovation and development and an
explosion of consumer entertainment choices. No one exposed to today's video
marketplace could possibly argue that consumers do not have more and better
viewing choices now than they did before the DMCA. Enacted on the eve of the
21st century, it has truly ushered in a digital millennium of incredible
achievement and infinite promise.

—Fritz Attaway,

Executive Vice President and Special Policy Advisor, Motion Picture
Association of America