IP: Tech CEOs oppose SSSCA, tell Hollywood to try "market solutions"
R. A. Hettinga
rah at shipwright.com
Wed Feb 27 20:23:33 EST 2002
--- begin forwarded text
Status: U
User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/10.0.0.1331
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 18:01:25 -0500
Subject: IP: Tech CEOs oppose SSSCA, tell Hollywood to try
"market solutions"
From: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>
To: ip <ip-sub-1 at majordomo.pobox.com>
Sender: owner-ip-sub-1 at admin.listbox.com
Reply-To: farber at cis.upenn.edu
"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03195.html
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 16:49:26 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
Subject: FC: Tech CEOs oppose SSSCA, tell Hollywood to try "market
solutions"
Politech archive on Sen. Hollings' SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca
Witness list for Thursday's hearing:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.sssca.hearing.022602.html
Draft text of the SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701.html
---
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50716,00.html
High-Tech: U.S. Out of Hollywood
By Declan McCullagh (declan at wired.com)
11:49 a.m. Feb. 27, 2002 PST
WASHINGTON -- America's largest and most powerful tech firms have
agreed on one point: Keep Congress far away from digital content
standards.
In a 600-word letter sent to movie studios on Wednesday afternoon, the
chief executives of IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and five other
corporations said they were eager to work with Hollywood to find
"technically feasible, cost effective solutions" for protecting
entertainment delivered in digital form.
The letter ostensibly went to the chief executives of Walt Disney, AOL
Time Warner, MGM, Sony Pictures and so on -- but the real audience was
Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), who is
convening a hearing Thursday morning on whether the U.S. government
should require that copy protection be embedded in nearly all PCs and
consumer electronic devices.
Hollings has drafted, but has not introduced, legislation called the
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). A draft of
the SSSCA obtained by Wired News prohibits creating, selling or
distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and
utilize certified security technologies."
[...]
---
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/sssca.opponents.letter.022702.html
February 27, 2002
Michael Eisner Sumner Redstone
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Chairman & Chief Executive
Offi
cer
The Walt Disney Company Viacom
500 South Buena Vista Street 1515 Broadway
Burbank, CA 91521 New York, NY 10036
Jean-Marie Messier Gerald M. Levin
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Chief Executive Officer
Vivendi Universal AOL Time Warner
375 Park Avenue 75 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10152-0192 New York, NY 10019
Alex Yemenidjian John Calley
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer Chairman & Chief Executive
Offi
cer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. Sony Pictures Entertainment
2500 Broadway Street 10202 W. Washington
Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404 Culver City, CA 90232
K. Rupert Murdoch
Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
News Corporation
1211 Avenue of Americas, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10036
Dear Sirs:
We write to you to urge inter-industry cooperation to ensure that
digital content can be distributed to consumers efficiently through a
variety of means. Each of our companies is in the business of
developing the hardware and software that will make e-commerce thrive.
Constant access to information, through comprehensive broadband
deployment and availability, we expect will in time be widely
available. It is clear that your companies' entertainment products
will form an important part of a thriving on-line economy. Digital
television is also an important development, and we expect it will
soon become widely available.
Business models are only beginning to be developed for supplying
consumers' on-demand entertainment. We recognize the critical
importance of effective anti-piracy tools in this changing market
environment, and that the absence of such tools may affect the
development of new product offerings. To address this concern, our
companies have worked diligently, voluntarily and cooperatively with
producers of entertainment content, as well as consumer electronics
companies, to develop systems that will foster the legitimate
distribution of digital content. The Copy Protection Technology
Working Group (CPTWG) and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) have
been highly productive fora for developing consensus among the many
disparate businesses that must work together to build a robust
infrastructure for the secure dissemination of digital content. We
have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to
be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions.
For instance, these voluntary groups have successfully formed
consensus on key technologies, making it possible to distribute movies
in protected environments such as in DVD format, and developing
effective technologies for protecting content distributed over cable
and satellite. An inter-industry group is now working diligently
within CPTWG to develop a consensus on a means to limit the unlawful
redistribution of digital content delivered through unprotected
over-the-air broadcast channels. This task force (the Broadcast
Protection Discussion Group, or BPDG) is working to identify the
workable technical and business solutions.
The information technology industry is committed to doing its part in
the shared multi-industry development and deployment of effective
solutions for the protection of digital content through a variety of
distribution channels and an array of settings. We understand this
will be an ongoing undertaking, requiring responses as distribution
methods and technology evolve and progress. Our goal is to work with
you in a consensus-based and cooperative fashion. We urge you to work
with us to find technically feasible, cost effective solutions.
We look forward to a fruitful collaboration to achieve our common goal
of providing consumers with new and exciting digital entertainment
products.
Sincerely,
Michael D. Capellas
Chairman and CEO
Compaq Computer Corporation
Michael S. Dell
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Dell
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Chairman of the Board and CEO
IBM Corporation
Craig Barrett
Chief Executive Officer
Intel Corporation
Steve Bennett
President and CEO
Intuit Inc.
Steven A. Ballmer
CEO
Microsoft Corporation
Christopher B. Galvin
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Motorola
John S. Chen
Chairman, CEO and President
Sybase, Inc.
Lawrence A. Weinbach
Chairman of the Board and CEO
Unisys Corporation
Cc: Jack Valenti
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
------ End of Forwarded Message
For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
--- end forwarded text
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at wasabisystems.com
More information about the cryptography
mailing list