[DMCA-Activists] Tech Review on "IP" Protection Bill

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/wo_hellweg111904.asp?trk=3Dnl=20


Is 'Fair Use' in Peril?

The far-reaching Intellectual Property Protection Act would deny
consumers many of the freedoms they take for granted.


By Eric Hellweg
November 19, 2004


Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television
program you've recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to
jail if you're caught doing it? If a new copyright and
intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress's desk
passes, that may be the choice you'll face.

How can this be possible? Because language that makes
fast-forwarding through commercials illegal-no doubt inserted at
the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry-was inserted
into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past
objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already
thought that was OK). And that's but one, albeit scary, scenario
that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act
is enacted into law. Deliberations on this legislation will be
one of the tasks for the lame-duck Congress that commenced this
week.

In a statement last month, Senator John McCain stated his
opposition to this bill, and specifically cited the
anti-commercial skipping feature: "Americans have been recording
TV shows and fast-forwarding through commercials for 30 years,"
he said. "Do we really expect to throw people in jail in 2004 for
behavior they've been engaged in for more than a quarter
century?"

Included in the legislation are eight separate bills, five of
which have already passed one branch of Congress, one of which
was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and two of which
have merely been proposed. By lumping all the bills together and
pushing the package through both houses of Congress, proponents
hope to score an enormous victory for Hollywood and some content
industries.

Here's more of what's included: a provision that would make it a
felony to record a movie in a theater for future distribution on
a peer-to-peer network. IPPA would also criminalize the currently
legal act of using the sharing capacity of iTunes, Apple's
popular music software program; the legislation equates that act
with the indiscriminate file sharing on popular peer-to-peer
programs. Currently, with iTunes, users can opt to share a
playlist with others on their network. IPPA doesn't differentiate
this innocuous-and Apple sanctioned-act from the promiscuous
sharing that happens when someone makes a music collection
available to five million strangers on Kazaa or Grokster.

Not surprisingly, the bill has become a focal point for very
vocal parties. In favor of the legislation are groups such as the
Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture
Association of America, and various songwriter, actor, and
director organizations. "We certainly support it," says Jonathan
Lamy, spokesperson for the RIAA. "It includes a number of things
to strengthen the hand of law enforcement to combat piracy.
Intellectual property theft is a national security crime. It's
appropriate that the fed dedicate resources to deter and
prosecute IP theft."

Against the bill stand a number of technology lobbying groups and
public-interest organizations. "[IPPA] is a cobbled-together
package to which Congress has given inadequate attention. It is
another step in Hollywood and the recording industry's campaign
to exert more control over content," says Gigi Sohn, president of
Public Knowledge, a Washington, DC-based public interest group
that aims to alert the public to fair use and consumer rights
infringements, and fight those perceived infringements in
Washington.=20

Anyone attuned to the machinations of Congress the last two years
likely has become numb to the often overblown rhetoric on this
issue. Both sides use hyperbole-usually in the form of calling a
piece of legislation the death of an industry or the death of
individual rights. The 1982 statement to a congressional
committee by Jack Valenti, then head of the MPAA, that the VCR is
to Hollywood what the Boston Strangler was to a woman alone still
stands as the ne plus ultra of exaggerated claims. And civil
libertarians haven't met an affront that didn't equal a stake
through the heart of individual rights. But IPPA demands
attention not just from Hill watchers, but from regular
individuals. In part because IPPA is such a broad, encompassing
bill that could affect things as pedestrian as fast-forwarding a
commercial, but also because with Senator Orrin Hatch-a very
Hollywood-friendly pol-on his way out as the chair of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, to be replaced possibly by Arlen Specter,
many in the Hollywood community see this as an important, last
chance to get their demands made into law.