FC: Intel VP, bruised in hearing, dashes off letter to Senate

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The background here is that Intel's Vadasz got beaten up pretty badly
during the hearing today (see Mike Godwin's below). So Vadasz,
sensibly, felt compelled to try to lay out his arguments in a more
careful manner in the letter below.

It is a mark of how poorly the hearing went for opponents of
SSSCA-style legislation that Intel chose to do this nearly
unprecedented step. Often witnesses extend their remarks. Rarely is it
done so quickly, forcefully, and publicly. (Intel's PR department
immediately sent this to reporters.)

Politech archive on Sen. Hollings' SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca

Prepared testimony from the hearing:
http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/hearings.htm

Draft text of the SSSCA:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701.html

-Declan

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http://www.politechbot.com/docs/intel.hollings.letter.022802.html

        February 28, 2002

        Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
        508 Dirksen Senate Office Building
        Washington, DC  20010

        Dear Chairman Hollings and members of the Committee:

        I write to thank you for the opportunity to testify today
        before the committee on the important issues of content
        protection for digital media. After my appearance today, I
        received a number of questions from members of the press about
        a few key points and I wanted to convey to the members of the
        committee my answers to those questions to be included in the
        record of the hearing, with the Committee's permission. I
        believe this additional information will help the committee
        understand more fully the IT perspective.

        I reiterate that the CPTWG cross-industry working group has
        developed effective technology that is available today that
        can and will protect new digital, secured content from being
        pirated on the Internet. If it is protected "at the source" it
        will always be protected from the illegal activities of
        Internet pirates. Sony Pictures and AOL-Time/Warner have in
        fact licensed this technology.

        However, there was a point of confusion injected before the
        Committee by Mr. Eisner and Mr. Chernin, specifically: the
        securing of unprotected content from Internet piracy. It is
        important for the Committee to understand that content, once
        captured in "unprotected" form, can never be put back in the
        "bottle" and protected against copying on the Internet. This
        is because this unprotected media looks no different to
        digital devices than a home movie that you would send to a
        relative or friend. There is no watermark, chip device, or
        screening system that will ever effectively put an end to this
        problem. Only the passage of time - as new content is released
        with the required protection technologies - will eventually
        solve Internet piracy. Mr. Perry, who co-chairs the relevant
        working group within the CPTWG, also made this clear.

        Another major point of misunderstanding is our differing
        perspectives on the role of the PC in the hands of the
        consumer. Mr. Eisner's characterization of the phrase "rip,
        mix, burn" as emblematic of our industry's perspective on
        piracy is utterly false. What the content community fails to
        recognize is that these utilities - the ability to copy
        content, remix and manage it and port it to other storage
        media for personal use in a protected fashion - are features
        that consumers have come to expect. The ability to rip, mix
        and burn in a protected manner is not piracy, it is simply
        fair use of content as permitted by law.

        As I said, we will continue to work with all interested
        parties on these important issues, as they are vitally
        important to our industries and the nation's economy. Thank
        you again for the opportunity to present our position on these
        important matters.

                
        Sincerely, 

        Leslie L. Vadasz
        Executive Vice President
        Intel Corporation      

---

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic () well com>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 17:11:32 -0500
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: mnemonic () well com
Subject: Re: IP: intel backs consumers in copyright war


Hi, Dave.

I was in the hearing room, and I thought Vadasz's testimony made
important points. But the senators were not terribly receptive to his
arguments, and in fact came close to (effectively) ordering the IT
industry simply to comply with Hollywood's demands (or else they'd be
forced to by legislation). It was clear to me and to other
technically knowledgeable people in the room that neither the
senators nor most of the copyright-company witnesses grasped the
scope of what Disney's Eisner and others were asking for.

The IT community has a formidable task ahead of it when it comes to
educating policymakers about the problems and costs of proposals like
the one Senator Hollings floated prior to this hearing. Because a
central goal of Hollywood's lobbying effort this time is to prevent
unencrypted and unwatermarked content from being circulated on the
Net, and the only kinds of measures that could do this require
top-to-bottom rearchitecting of every aspect of the digital world.
This rearchitecting would, among other things, require first the
labelling of all coprighted content and secondly a redesign of all
digital tools (from PCs to OSs to routers to everything else) to look
for the labels and permit or deny copying accordingly. But few
speakers at the hearing seemed to be aware of this.

Consumer and civil-liberties groups were not represented on the
witness list, but they were in the room, as were representatives of
many companies that would be affected by schemes like the one that
might be mandated by Senator Hollings.  Most audience members were
visibly amused or distressed when Eisner confessed that the only
reason he could think of for Michael Dell not to build in ubiquitous
copyright-policing functions in his products was that Dell wants to
sell his products to infringers.

The central thing I took away from the hearing was that too many of
the players and decisionmakers in this area lack the basic technical
understanding necessary to make intelligent copyright-policy and
IT-policy decisions. It was disheartening.


--Mike


For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

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