The Hindu : National : Taming digital technology

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 22, 2005

National

National

Taming digital technology

Anand Parthasarathy

An `analog assault' in the United States

Bangalore: A piece of legislation introduced this week in the U.S. Congress can, if enacted, drastically curtail the freedom of customers worldwide in the way they use the TV programmes, digital movies and other recorded entertainment they buy.

Websites run by advocates of consumer choice were abuzz on Wednesday with postings reacting to the proposed Digital Transition Content Security Act 2005 which seeks to plug the so-called "analogue hole" — the ability of owners of personal computers fitted with television tuners to record TV content selectively in digital format. Similarly targeted are digital video recorders — also known as DVD read/write drives - which allow owners to create customised video disks by using material from DVDs, TV clips and their own video footage.

None of this will be possible if the law is enacted. Hardware sold in the future must incorporate technologies that will decide if a customer can or cannot copy his or her own disk even to store in another format.

The two sponsors of the legislation appear to have a similar agenda as the Hollywood studios, which have been vociferous about piracy. But in the history of entertainment electronics, attempts to restrict the buyer's options are not new. When the audio cassette arrived in the early 1970s, the spokesperson for the U.S. motion picture industry condemned "the growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology," talking about the recording option in the cassette machine. The industry ultimately lost its case against Philips, inventors of the recordable cassette system.

Setback for monitoring

In recent weeks, Sony-BMG had the embarrassment of having to undo technology it had embedded in 27 music CD titles issued in North America, to introduce a small piece of software on to the CD player's system to monitor its use, by invoking the concept of Digital Rights Management. When hackers used this software as a conduit for malicious software, two alert professors at Princeton University unveiled all and forced Sony to issue a fix and in many cases withdraw the offending CDs.

It remains to be seen if advocates of personal choice will prevail in Congress — or whether the legislation will be enacted and will then be tested in the courts in the lawsuits that will inevitably be triggered.

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