RIAA Wants CPRM2, tougher DMCA

In an acronym-filled room in Washington, filled with CEOs from TW-AOL, IBM, EMI, MPAA and a host of others that use real names, the large media companies of the U.S. started in again on their battle against file-sharing. The Register has a quick article with some of the minutes from the meeting. What are they doing? Bringing back CPRM (a copyright-protection mechanism built into storage media) is on the list, for sound-cards now as well as hard drives.

<q>we are working with sound card manufacturers to implement technology that will block the recording of watermarked content in both digital and analogue form. … The failure of the CPRM specification to be applied to computer hard drives was a giant step back for the publishing, music and entertainment industry, … [We will] develop a new specification that accomplishes what CPRM would have done.</q>

The DMCA also doesn’t appear to be strict enough, so provisions that protect ISPs from the actions of its subscribers are under attack:

<q>If the RIAA gets its way, ISPs will be as guilty of copyright violation as their subscribers. ‘Because of the magnitude of the problem, ISPs can no longer be shielded from the wrath of the law…’</q>

In the same vein, “Disney chief Michael Eisner pointed out … that ‘privacy laws are our biggest impediment to us obtaining our objectives’.” and “Sony Music Entertainment’s Steve Heckler [said] ‘Once consumers can no longer get free music, they will have to buy the music in the formats we choose to put out.’”