Copy protection illegal?

From:
Date: Mon Jan 07 2002 - 14:22:34 EST

  • Next message: ytsejam@torchsong.com: "YTSEJAM digest 6073"

            Not to start another debate, but I thought the Ytsejammers might
    find this interesting. It's a letter from Congressman Rick Boucher to
    the RIAA regarding their "copy-protection" of CDs and other media.

                                    Steve

    -------------------
    Subject: Letter to RIAA & IFPI heads from Congressman Rick Boucher - Jan.
    4, 2002
    Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 08:36:32 -0500

    http://www.dotcomscoop.com/article.php?sid=80

    January 4, 2002

    Ms. Hilary B. Rosen
    President and Chief Executive Officer
    Recording Industry Association of America
    1330 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
    Suite 300
    Washington, D.C. 20036

    Mr. Jay Berman
    Chairman and Chief Executive
    IFPI
    54 Regent Street
    London W1B 5RE
    United Kingdom

    Dear Hilary and Jay:

    According to many published reports, record labels have begun releasing
    compact discs into the market which apparently have been designed to
    limit the ability of consumers to play the discs or record on personal
    computers and perhaps on other popular consumer products, such as DVD
    players, video game consoles, and even some CD players, for traditional
    fair-use purposes such as space shifting. I am particularly concerned
    that some of these technologies may prevent or inhibit consumer home
    recording using recorders and media covered by the Audio Home Recording
    Act of 1992 (AHRA).

    As you know from your personal involvement in its drafting, the AHRA
    clearly requires content owners to code their material appropriately to
    implement a basic compromise: in return for the receipt of royalties on
    compliant recorders and media, copyright owners may not preclude
    consumers from making a first-generation, digital-to-digital copy of an
    album on a compliant device using royalty-paid media. Under the AHRA,
    any deliberate change to a CD by a content owner that makes one
    generation of digital recording from the CD on covered devices no longer
    possible would appear to violate the content owner's obligations under
    the statute.

    To understand better the implications of this new technology for
    consumers, I would appreciate your providing answers to the following
    questions:

    1. What methods have been used or are planned for use by your member
    companies to alter CD content or ancillary encoding so as to constrain
    functions of personal computers or other devices? Do these methods
    involve the injection of intentional errors? Do these methods involve
    compressed audio files separate from the CD-quality tracks?

    2. Based upon your knowledge and upon any consumer contact received by
    your member companies, have any discs entered the U.S. market that may
    not be copied on a device or on media for which a royalty has been paid
    under the AHRA?

    3. What steps, if any, have your member companies taken to inform
    consumers, retailers, or device manufacturers about the restrictions and
    which of their discs have been or will be altered?

    4. What steps, if any, have been taken by your member companies to
    assure that the introduction of intentional errors as to encoded music,
    or other technical means to block copying, will not detract from sound
    quality or cause responses in equipment that could damage speakers?

    5. Would you and your member companies support independent testing of
    the effect on sound quality, on listening behavior, and on the
    performance and operation of home networks, before these technologies
    appear more widely in the U.S. market? Assuming you and your member
    companies support such testing, are you prepared to provide assurances
    that no assertion would be made that these tests and any peer review of
    the tests would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?

    Given the recent announcements from some record companies that they
    intend the broad introduction in 2002 of copy protected discs, I would
    appreciate a prompt response to this inquiry.

    Thanking you for your time and attention to this matter, I remain

    Sincerely,

    Rick Boucher
    Member of Congress

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