[ed. note: I was unable to provide links to all the outside references in the letter. I have included them in this version. The text you read here is identical to the text I submitted.]
I urge you to reject the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the "mini-CBDTPA" agreed upon by the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group for digital TV standards.
Forcing copy-prevention technology will not work. There is no such thing as an unbreakable lock, no matter how clever the designer or how frequently the lock is updated to keep up with those that get past the lock. Ultimately, the only people you are hurting with the CBDTPA are the people who legitimately obtain digital media because they have legitimate needs—backups, format-shifting, loaning, and selling digital content—that a digital lock cannot distinguish from a request to make an illegitimate copy. The majority of consumers don't produce unauthorized copies. Those that do will not be stopped by prison time, expensive fines, and digital locks. The CBDTPA will force American technologists to spend a lot of time and money developing locks that will not significantly decrease the unauthorized duplication but will anger legitimate consumers.
Unauthorized duplication is a market issue for everyone involved, and is best treated as such. You should compel content producers to change their business model to the new environment they find themselves in. Two strong disincentives to unauthorized duplication are lower prices and extras (physical extras like the crown that comes with some copies of Disney's "The Princess Diaries", nice color liner notes and cover art, as well as conceptual extras like admission to special events, etc.). Content producers will have to change their business model to reduce copyright infringement. Trying to slow down the evolution of technology to benefit the entertainment industry's business model is futile.
Contrary to its language, the CBDTPA does not give the impression fair-use was taken into account. Section 7(a) discourages fair-use by allowing offenders to be punished criminally—up to 5 years in prison for the first offense and not more than 10 years for any subsequent offense (US Code Title 17 Sec. 1204(a)(1)and 1204(a)(2)). Legitimate consumers of digital content will be scared into not invoking their fair-use rights. Furthermore, this bill is an attempt to get around the federal appeals ruling on the Diamond Multimedia Systems Rio case (which opened the market up for portable MP3 players) and the Supreme Court Betamax decision (that judges copyright infringement on the principle of "substantial non-infringing uses").
The CBDTPA causes Free Software—software written to build communities by allowing sharing and modification—to pay a particularly high price because Free Software developers rely on international cooperation. Free Software (such as GNU/Linux systems which run so many servers and desktop machines) is software Americans have grown dependent on. The CBDTPA disallows import or export of non-compliant software (section 5(a)(1)). This adversely impacts Free Software developers by cutting off Americans from developing internationally useful Free Software. For more information on Free Software, please see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.
Adding new design requirements will drive up the cost of digital technology, make foreign competitors goods more attractive by comparison, and (in turn) create a grey market for non-compliant digital goods while injuring acceptance of the digital goods the bill intends to promote. Technologists could reasonably conclude production of digital goods within the US isn't worth the price of compliance with the US Government and decide to move their production abroad. These are bad consequences for America in and of themselves. These are doubly bad when you consider America's current attempt to climb out of recession.
I strongly urge you to do the right thing for consumers, innovation, and all Americans by opposing the CBDTPA, DMCA, and "mini-CBDTPA".
J.B. Nicholson-OwensChampaign, Illinois
jbn@forestfield.org