CPSR/NetAction Letter Opposing CBDTPA

April 8, 2002

Dear xxxx:

As software developers, academics, and computer professionals, we are writing to express our serious misgivings regarding the S.2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). The copy-controls proposed in CBDTPA would effectively prevent the use of digital computers and other digital devices for data processing and other uses unrelated to proprietary content of the entertainment industries. The controls would effectively reduce all computer and information devices to television sets with modest interactive features, reduce the reliability and utility of computing tools, and require the computer and related industries and their users to incur costs that would have significant negative economic impact.

Implementation of the CBDTPA would lead to decreased reliability and security of computer systems and related digital media devices. Implementation of the standards would require the introduction of large amounts of new code into operating systems leading to new opportunities for bugs and system reliability problems, along with new targets for hackers. The result would be greater costs and reduced benefits to all users.

The CBDTPA would also pose a threat to the development of open source software, which has been a major force behind the development of key Internet technologies. The distributed nature of open source development would make implementation of the security standards difficult, perhaps threatening the vitality of open source software. This would reduce entrepreneurship, innovation, and competition in the computer industry. The requirements of CBDTPA could threaten the functioning of the Internet itself.

Intellectual property rights of content producers are clearly important to the US economy. However, a substantial body of existing law provides substantial protection for these rights. The CBDTPA would extend these rights effectively allowing the entertainment industry to determine how existing digital media devices and services would have to be redesigned and which technologies could and could not be developed in the US in the future. This would set a dangerous precedent. Computer and other digital technologies are used for countless purposes in addition to their use in relation to the proprietary content of the entertainment industry. The CBDTPA would enshrine the interests of the entertainment industries as more important than the interests all of these other industries and computing and other digital applications.

Given the importance of computing and other digital technologies to our economic, military, government, and financial systems, it would be most unwise to sacrifice the utility and reliability of these critical systems in order to enhance intellectual property safeguards for the entertainment industry. Different approaches to that goal must be found, possibly including innovative adaptations by the entertainment industry itself to fundamental changes that are occurring and will continue to occur in digital and related technologies.

Sincerely,

Coralee Whitcomb
President
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Audrie Krause
Executive Director
NetAction

Updated April 9, 2002, by Paul Hyland.
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