Posted on Thu, Feb. 28, 2002
Intel backs consumers over Hollywood
By Dan Gillmor
Mercury News Technology Columnist
Does the technology industry need Hollywood's permission to innovate? Hollywood says yes. The tech industry, at long last, is emphatically saying no -- and saying so where it counts, in the halls of power.
Today, a senior Intel executive will tell a U.S. Senate committee that the entertainment industry's inflexible stance on digital copy protection threatens technological innovation and wounds the public interest. Intel's stance, given its size and clout, is a significant boost for those who want to preserve consumers' rights in the Digital Age.
So far, Congress has granted almost everything the movie and music industries have demanded -- including passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that gave copyright owners stronger control over digital content.
Now Hollywood and its allies want Congress to force the technology and consumer-electronics industries to build rigid protection into everything they sell. The idea is to prevent anyone from making copies of digital information, such as movies and music, without copyright owners' explicit permission.
Enough is enough, Les Vadasz, Intel's executive vice president, will tell the Senate Commerce Committee. The committee's chairman, U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., supports the new copy-protection requirements.
``Any attempt to inject a regulatory process into the design of our products will irreparably damage the high-tech industry,'' Vadasz says in prepared testimony. ``It will substantially retard innovation, investment in new technologies, and will reduce the usefulness of our products to consumers.''
Today's hearing follows a letter from eight tech-industry chief executives, including Intel's Craig Barrett and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, to the movie studio chiefs. The letter, released Wednesday, politely rejects federal regulation while seeking cooperation between tech and entertainment interests.
Vadasz' testimony is toughly worded, and it notes -- in a not-so-veiled assertion of strength -- that the technology industry is vastly larger than the entertainment business. Intel, taking the lead in the overdue tech rebellion, has considerable clout of its own.
Hollywood's arrogance continues to be amazing, but its paranoia is at least understandable.
In a world where digital content can be copied and then zapped around fast networks, the entertainment companies see every person with a personal computer and network connection as a potential thief.
To counter even the possibility that people might make unauthorized copies, the entertainment industry sneers at countervailing public interests. Under the DMCA, we are already losing the ``fair use'' rights that are part of the nation's law and tradition -- the right to make personal copies, for backups and playback on other devices, and to use small parts of copyrighted materials in other works without paying the copyright owner.
The entertainment companies want absolute control. They want veto rights over any new technology that even might be used to make unauthorized digital copies, even if there are perfectly legal other uses of the same technology.
For the computer industry, Hollywood's latest push boils down to something simple, Vadasz said before he left for Washington. The movie studios would turn powerful PCs into little more than expensive DVD playback machines, crippling PCs for other valuable uses.
Intel's toughened stance is actually something of a departure, even though Vadasz takes pains to note in his testimony that the company strongly supports intellectual property rights. The company has been a willing participant in an industry working group that would build some level of copy protection into some digital storage devices, perhaps even computer hard disks. A proposal along those lines more than a year ago was shelved after furious objections over its potentially customer-unfriendly aspects.
Neutering PCs is only part of Hollywood's plan. Its goals would inevitably turn the Internet into a variation on pay-TV.
Much of this fight is about money. Intel's position is closer to the public interest at this point, but Vadasz acknowledges Intel's vested interest. He also expresses discomfort that a company with a direct financial stake has become the default advocate of the public good in this war.
He's right. The vested interests are bargaining over our rights as much as their own.
We, the people, need a charismatic, high-profile champion with no stake other than the public interest. Who will take up the mantle?
In the end, of course, this issue may defy compromise. Then we'd have to choose between two painful alternatives -- total control or no control.
Vadasz isn't willing to write off a compromise. But he understands something fundamental.
``This technology is not going to be put back in the bottle,'' he said. ``They can slow down progress, but they cannot stop it.''
