[Rumori] Move to outlaw fastforwarding past ads (fwd)

Mon Nov 22 08:42:21 PST 2004

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, technologyreview.com

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/wo_hellweg111904.asp?trk=nl

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.

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.

[Eric Hellweg is a technology writer based in Cambridge,
MA.]

[For additional information about this legislation, see <
http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr2391> -- moderator]

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