SSSCA Creeps Onward

Having watched the music recording industry go through digital growing pains, the movie industry is taking a decidedly more legislative angle on piracy. The recording industry may have the DMCA, but that only prevents people from cracking encryption standards that copy-protect music. Hollywood has its sights set on hardware, not software. While the DMCA protects even horrible encryption standards from being cracked legally…by Americans anyway, the SSSCA is an industry plan to enforce copy-protection in hardware for any device produced or distributed in the U.S. And you thought the time lag between release of technology in Japan and release in the U.S. was long now.

If you saw the Grammy’s this year, you saw Grammy organization president, Michael Greene, complaining about “those darn kids stealing music”. SlashDot has Greene’s Grammy Speech Debunked, covering a New York Times article called Downloading Files and Storms. The article debunks Greene’s claims of having downloaded 6000 files from public web sites. In fact, his little downloading crew mostly shared files from friends, whose actual ownership of the CDs was never ascertained and would be protected under fair use. For now.

The SSSCA would prevent a similarly embarassing moment for Jack Valenti (head of the MPAA) at a future Oscars. However, in their desperation to protect current revenue streams, even at the expense of current laws, the desires of customers, and common sense, the movie industry is ignoring the lesson of history. From Piracy bill could lock up computers at the Chicago Tribune:

“The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology civil liberties group, notes that the entertainment industry has repeatedly fought new technologies from the phonograph to the VCR, only to discover later that the technologies helped create new revenue.”

In the face of this rather obvious statement of free-market fact, Hollywood is scrambling to prevent new technologies from arising, which they have historically manipulated to their advantage and created ever-large profits. Senators talk tough on digital piracy on Yahoo News describes the SSSCA as:

“ … a bill that could require computer and device makers to install a government-approved anti-copying technology … [and] would prohibit people from removing or altering such technology. The bill would also make it illegal for someone to make a copyrighted work publicly available after its protections have been removed or altered.”

The New York Times has a yet more ominous vision in Taming the Consumer’s Computer, tying in the SSSCA efforts with the “trustworthy computing” mantra recently championed by Microsoft. Despite the laughable juxtaposition of the word “trustworthy” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence, the aim is the same as the SSSCA, except to provide the controls in software rather than in hardware and enforce it at the system level, rather than the chip level.

“But in the process of “improving” our PC’s, the manufacturers and their partners will be able to determine what software will and won’t be allowed to run, what we can and can’t do with the information to which we’re exposed, and what data about our online activities will be collected and sent to the manufacturer or content provider to assist in future marketing.”

Which devices does this include? Earthweb… has the editorial, Want To Back Up Your PC?… quotes a clause from the SSSCA itself:

“The term “interactive digital device” means any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form.”

Well, that’s pretty much everything, isn’t it? Hell, even my car made in 1984 probably qualifies. Can you imagine how much more technology items will cost if this law passes? Better buy your computer in Canada. No, wait, you might face “…a $500,000 fine and up to five years in the slammer, with any subsequent violations costing a million bucks and 10 years…” just for trying to bring it back over the border. And how does this affect foreign sales of U.S. technology?

“…the compliant products that would be mandatory (though wildly unpopular) in the States would be impossible to sell elsewhere — why a European or Asian business would choose to buy SSSCA hardware from a U.S. vendor, when standard-use alternatives would still exist, is beyond me. ”

What is the need for more control? Is the industry actually losing money or does it just want to lock in larger profits through legislating away consumer freedom? You would think with the coming of broadband on the Internet, Gnutella file-sharing clients, perfect VHS copies of current movies available in the street and VCDs making the rounds, the movie industry would be suffering horrible setbacks, right? You’d be wrong.

The Register points out that it is likely the desire for more profits never before imagined or enforceable that drives the intense lobbying efforts by big media. In Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM, they give examples of what can be expected in an SSSCA future. You’d no longer be able to rip a CD you bought to your computer; you’d have to buy a second license for that. In fact:

“This is of course the entertainment industry’s dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it’s entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content — one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It’s this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.”

This is, of course, only an abstraction for the folks at the Register since they are, for the most part, in Great Britain, which, to date, has not been subject to U.S. law. Perhaps that too will change, though.

How is it that some senators seem so hell-bent on protecting a booming business? A protection that will significantly affect U.S. technology manufacturers as people would be far less likely to buy a hard drive, for example, that balks at copying files when it deems that a violation has occurred. Content Spat Split on Party Lines at Wired News gives a breakdown of Hollywood’s campaign contributions as a good place to start when looking for motive. They mention that “…the entertainment industry gave Democrats a whopping $24.2 million in contributions compared to $13.3 million to Republicans, according to figures compiled by opensecrets.org.”

If you think the government will see what this is likely to do to foreign (and domestic) hardware sales and put a stop to it, don’t be so sure. You see, increasingly, the U.S. economy is based on experience rather than physical goods. The PC market is in decline, but movies are at an all time high. Perhaps they will elect to back the stronger horse and the obvious cash cow of the future by enforcing copyright law early in the U.S. Once U.S. movie distributors started supplying only encrypted movies that could be played on SSSCA compliant devices, worldwide demand for American media would create a similar demand for SSSCA hardware and the whole hardware industry would follow suit.