[DMCA-Activists] Brownback Hearing Press Release

[Seth Johnson]

(Forwarded from Pho list.  Text of Press Release pasted below.  -- 
Seth)

-----Original Message-----
From: tom barger <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 10:53:45 -0400
Subject: pho: Brownback Hearing Press Release

Senator Sam Brownback ress rewlease on Digital rights Management


http://brownback.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=211708

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Brownback Chairs Hearing on Digital Rights Management
Wednesday, September 17, 2003 


WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback today chaired a full Senate 
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on Digital 
Rights Management. Brownback yesterday introduced legislation vital 
for American consumers and our nation’s educational community in the 
21st century digital media marketplace - the Consumers, Schools, and 
Libraries Digital Rights Management Act of 2003. 

“Today’s hearing focuses on two timely issues for consumers in the 
information age: new challenges to their privacy, and an ongoing 
Federal Communications Commission proceeding that raises the specter 
of depriving them of their customary and legal uses of broadcast 
television content. 

“Our first panel will discuss the merits of the Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act’s information subpoena, included in section 512(h) of 
the Act. Recently a federal court has held that copyright owners may 
use the subpoena to compel Internet service providers to disclose to 
them the names, addresses, and phone numbers of their subscribers 
suspected of piracy. This occurs when an ISP’s service acts as 
a “conduit”, or the transport, over which the subscriber sends and 
receives data. This subpoena process includes no due process for the 
accused ISP subscribers. 

“This past July, a hardcore pornographer, Titan Media, filed a 
subpoena against SBC Communications seeking the identifying 
information of 59 SBC Internet subscribers. Since that time, Titan has 
offered a most generous amnesty program: those ISP subscribers it 
suspects of piracy can go to their website and buy porn, and in 
exchange Titan won’t identify them. Gracious indeed. 

“I support strong protections of intellectual property, and I will 
stand on my record in support of property rights against any 
challenge. But I cannot in good conscience support any tool such as 
the DMCA information subpoena that can be used by pornographers, and 
potentially even more distasteful actors, to collect the identifying 
information of Americans, especially our children. “Yesterday I 
introduced the Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights 
Management Awareness Act of 2003, in part, to eliminate the results of 
the RIAA’s case against Verizon to ensure the DMCA information 
subpoena cannot be used in this manner. 

“The Consumers, Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management 
Awareness Act of 2003 also addresses other issues vitally important 
for consumers in the digital environment. This legislation seeks to 
preserve consumer and educational community customary and legal uses 
of content, and to create minimum protections for them as digital 
rights management technologies are increasingly introduced into the 
marketplace. 

“Digital rights management, otherwise known simply as DRM, refers to 
the growing body of technology - software and hardware - that controls 
access to and use of information, including the ability of individuals 
to distribute that information over the Internet. 

“Today’s hearing seeks to answer the question of whether government 
should mandate DRM solutions to combat piracy, and whether such an 
action can be achieved without limiting the public’s customary and 
legal uses of content. 

“Two days ago AT&T labs issued a report estimating that 77 percent of 
the pirated movie content available through peer-to-peer file sharing 
software has been made available by movie industry employees, not 
unaffiliated consumers. This report raises strong questions about 
whether digital video piracy occurring today is primarily a 
governmental or intra-industry issue to be dealt with at this point. 

“Currently the Federal Communications Commission is considering how to 
implement Hollywood’s proposal for the Broadcast Flag, a DRM proposal 
designed to protect digital television programming. The proposal would 
require that a flag be attached to DTV programming, which would in 
turn inform consumer electronics devices that the DTV content cannot 
be redistributed over the Internet. 

“The Flag as envisioned by Hollywood is clearly problematic. Today 
consumers and the educational community are empowered to use content 
in a host of ways, none of which require the permission of the 
copyright owner. By including a complete ban on Internet 
redistribution of DTV programming, Hollywood’s Broadcast Flag proposal 
will artificially limit the way consumers may take advantage of the 
Internet to make these customary and legal uses. In fairness to 
Hollywood, I am not aware of an existing DRM technology that both 
prohibits piracy, yet also allows consumers to redistribute content 
over the Internet in legal ways. 

“To the degree that digital piracy of video content is a real issue, I 
have proposed a different way to address the protection of DTV content 
from piracy in the Act. Instead of mandating specific technologies, 
and giving one set of stakeholders a veto over others, my bill would 
create a self-certification environment, where hardware manufacturers 
may use whatever technology they determine meets the requirements of 
the Flag. In addition, the flag itself imposes a rule that DTV content 
cannot be illegally redistributed to the public over the Internet, 
which is a more flexible anti-piracy policy that the one in 
Hollywood’s proposal. In my bill it is the FCC that will resolve any 
disputes that arise in determining if a self-certified technology does 
not comply with this anti-piracy safeguard. 

“These are important issues for our nation’s transition to digital 
television, as the content community has threatened to withhold 
digital content unless the issue of digital piracy is addressed.” 

Sen. Brownback is a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, and is 
chairman of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.