[IP] Personal Technology Freedom Coalition formed to oppose DMCA DRM p rovision
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Wong, Brian" <brianwong@xxxxxxx>
Date: June 22, 2004 1:02:18 PM EDT
To: "'David J. Farber (dave@xxxxxxxxxx)'" <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Personal Technology Freedom Coalition formed to oppose DMCA
DRM p rovision
Dave, FYI.
- Brian -
Tech heavies support challenge to copyright law
Last modified: June 21, 2004, 7:26 PM PDT
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
The copyright cold war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is about to
heat up.
Skirmishes between content-producing companies seeking expansive
copyright protections and hardware and telecommunications corporations
on the other side have resulted in a legislative deadlock on Capitol
Hill.
Some of the most influential technology companies are planning to
announce on Tuesday an alliance that they hope will end the impasse.
Called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition, its purpose is to
coordinate lobbying efforts in opposition--at least initially--to the
most controversial section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Currently, that controversial section of the DMCA broadly says no one
may bypass a copy-protection scheme or distribute any product that is
"primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing" copy
protection. The movie industry, record labels and many software
publishers are fiercely protective of that section of the law, saying
that digital rights management, or DRM, systems backed up by the law
are necessary to reduce piracy.
But members of the nascent coalition, including Intel, Sun
Microsystems, Verizon Communications, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and
BellSouth, are lending their support to a proposal by Rep. Rick
Boucher, D-Va., to rewrite that part of the DMCA. Boucher's bill says
that descrambling utilities can be distributed, and copy protection can
be circumvented as long as no copyright infringement is taking place.
<SNIP>
Other members of the coalition include: Philips Consumer Electronics
North America, the Consumer Electronics Association, the American
Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumers
Union, the Consumer Federation of America, Public Knowledge, the
American Foundation for the Blind, the United States Telecom
Association, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association.
Boucher's bill, called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, would
also grant the Federal Trade Commission new authority to regulate
copy-protected compact discs. It gives FTC bureaucrats the power to
police music sales by ensuring that copy-protected discs are labeled as
such and are not simply called "CDs," which could be misleading to
consumers. Such labels would have to say that the copy-protected discs
might not play properly in standard CD players, and that they might not
be recordable on PCs or other devices that can record standard CDs.
U.S. record labels have been slower than their European and Asian
counterparts to add copy locks to releases in the American market,
fearful of consumer backlash and complaints about incompatibility. But
the top seller in last week's stores, the debut album by hard rock act
Velvet Revolver, was wrapped in antipiracy technology.
<SNIP>
http://news.com.com/Tech+heavies+support+challenge+to+copyright+law/
2100-1028_3-5242774.html?tag=nefd.top
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