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Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 18:16:49 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Forget MP3 players: Hollings' CBDTPA regulates software too Send reply to: declan@well.com
As a bonus, here's a section-by-section summary of the bill: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51275,00.html
And a collection of info on the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA): http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/
-Declan
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51274,00.html
Anti-Copy Bill Slams Coders By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
1:25 p.m. March 22, 2002 PST WASHINGTON -- America's programmers, engineers and sundry bit-heads have not yet figured out how much a new copyright bill will affect their livelihood.
When they do, watch for an angry Million Geek March to storm Capitol Hill.
A bill introduced this week by Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) would roil the electronics industry by forcibly embedding copy protection into all digital devices, from MP3 players to cell phones, fax machines, digital cameras and personal computers.
But the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) would also wreak havoc on programmers and software companies -- both those distributing code for free and those selling it.
No more than two years and seven months after the bill becomes law, the only code programmers and software firms will be able to distribute must have embedded copy-protection schemes approved by the federal government.
To put this in perspective: The CBDTPA would, if enacted in its current form, have the electrifying effect on computer professionals that the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore did to some Democratic Party members.
Legal experts said on Friday that the CBDTPA regulates nearly any program, in source or object code, that runs on a PC or anything else with a microprocessor.
That's not just Windows media players and their brethren, as you might expect. The CBDTPA's sweeping definition of "any hardware or software" includes word processors, spreadsheets, operating systems, compilers, programming languages -- all the way down to humble Unix utilities like "cp" and "cat."
"The definition will cover just about anything that runs on your computer -- except maybe the clock," said Tom Bell, a professor at Chapman University School of Law who teaches intellectual property law.
[...]
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