Hollywood Wants to Plug the "Analog Hole"

The Big Picture

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a "well-mannered marketplace" where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood's tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the "Content Protection Status Report" with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific, medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a "cop-chip" that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material -- your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.

The report shows that this ADC regulation is part of a larger agenda. The first piece of that agenda, a mandate that would give Hollywood a veto over digital television technology, is weeks away from coming to fruition. Hollywood also proposes a radical redesign of the Internet to assist in controlling the distribution of copyrighted works.

This three-part agenda -- controlling digital media devices, controlling analog converters, controlling the Internet -- is a frightening peek at Hollywood's vision of the future.
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thanks to Dan Gillmor

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Consensus at Lawyerpoint?
Being a true account of the undertakings of the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group

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Hollywood vs. High-Tech
Disney's Michael Eisner and others say Hollywood will defend its intellectual property at all costs. Silicon Valley eminences like Andy Grove say those are fightin' words -- if it means trampling consumers' rights and squashing innovation.

Then it was Vadasz's turn. As the lone representative of the computer industry, he might have been expected to say something accommodating. He didn't. In a quiet voice tinged with the accent of his native Hungary, Vadasz warned that if Hollings's bill became law, "innovation would come to a screeching halt. Investment would suffer. It would create irreparable damage to a vital industry." The time had come to focus less on the rights of media giants, he said, and more on the rights of media consumers.

Chairman Hollings was only slightly less infuriated than the two CEOs. "Where did you get all this nonsense about ... 'irreparable damage'?" he wanted to know. Eisner chimed in that Vadasz's comments were just a sample of the runaround his industry had been getting from tech companies. (Later, Eisner named names -- among them Apple (AAPL), Compaq (CPQ), Dell (DELL), Intel (INTC), and Microsoft (MSFT).) Maybe, Eisner suggested, they were making too much money from piracy to be serious about fighting it.
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thanks to Doc Searls

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Business 2.0 Live!: Is the Information Revolution Dead?
W. Brian Arthur, Andy Grove, and Lawrence Lessig speak at Business 2.0 Live! event in Silicon Valley.

"The PC upended the business architecture, to use that quote -- that phrase -- of the computer industry. And I think digitalization and digital distribution is going to change the order and, yes, there is going to be unhappiness just like there was unhappiness in the 'computer industry' watching the new upstarts -- the minicomputer and personal computer makers -- take a lion's share of the revenue pie. But it happened and it's going to happen again." -- Andy Grove
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thanks to Doc Searls