Copyright holders turn to technology

From...

By Patrick Thibodeau

WASHINGTON (IDG) -- Federal legislation mandating copyright protection technology on PCs and other devices may change PC and software design forever and even block imports of machines that don't meet the proposed standard.

The bill, introduced by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), would require hardware and software makers, which are opposing it, to build copyright protection into their products (see "Copyright protection bill creates furor in high-tech industry," link below). The bill's initial goal is to create a voluntary technical standard to stop piracy. If the bill is passed and a standard isn't agreed upon within 12 months, the Federal Communications Commission would develop one.

"I think it's a very, very badly conceived idea," said David J. Farber, a professor of telecommunications systems at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a former chief technologist at the FCC. "The result of it would be to essentially emasculate the PC as a useful device."

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For corporate end users, this legislation would do more than that. For instance, the bill would make it illegal to import affected hardware or software that lacks the anticopying standard. For example, a New York-based firm that moved servers and PCs into the U.S. that it bought for and used in a Canadian branch office could be violating this law, said legal experts.

Using software downloaded from foreign servers could also be a problem if it didn't conform to the standard.

Performance could suffer. Whenever you tried to copy files, the system would check to see if you were allowed to do so, said Troy Baer, a systems engineer at the Ohio Supercomputer Center in Columbus. "It's one more thing you have to do every time you manipulate a file," he said. "It's one more thing to break."

Carey Sherman, general counsel for the Washington-based Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said the legislation's objective is to stop unlimited distribution of copyrighted material over the Web. RIAA estimates that worldwide piracy cost the U.S. entertainment software industry over $3 billion in 2001.

Sherman said the industry wouldn't be able to police open-source software or plug every technology hole. But, he said, the goal of the legislation "is to limit the extent of the damage" in the mass market.

The bill is seen primarily as a vehicle for voluntary standards. But based on initial reactions, it seems difficult to imagine how that will be achieved. Both sides on the issue have financial reasons to stake out strong positions. Recorded music sales were reportedly down 10 percent last year, in part because of pirating. But anticopying technology on PCs, handheld devices and other technologies could hurt those markets.

"It would probably crash the [PC] consumer market, given that being able to [copy] songs is one of the reasons that people are buying new machines," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif.

Other business models are possible, including offering content that's available to consumers who use copyright-protected machines, said Scott Draughon, a technology and intellectual property attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. He said the content industry "has to take responsibility for policing its own its own rights and cannot rely on another industry to step in and do it for them without paying these people."