The following is the text of a letter I intend to send to my House Representative and Senators concerning the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or the CBDTPA, introduced yesterday in the Senate by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-SC.

[edited several times because it was just too long]

I am a software developer in Austin, in the 10th Congressional district. I am writing to express my strong objections to SB 2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or the CBDTPA. I am gravely concerned that this bill, if made law, would do great harm to the average American citizen. I believe the bill sacrifices the good of the American people for the good of a relatively small number of media corporations.

My most serious concern with this bill is the lack of protection it affords for the American citizen. While it contains language meant to protect individual consumers, I fear the protections as codified in this bill are neither strong enough nor explicit enough to guarantee my rights under the fair use doctrine, among other rights. Beyond simply stating that fair use should be protected, in order to make any sort of copyright control mechanism acceptable, Congress should pass a law affirming what the rights of consumers are. For example, as a result of Supreme Court ruling in 1986 in the Betamax case, the government cannot take away the right to "time shift" a recording of a television program. However, there is also nothing preventing the technology industry from taking that right away through technical means outside the scope of the law. Before any control mechanisms are implemented in technological devices, it is imperative that Congress guarantee the basic fair use rights of Americans.

By the provisions intended by supporters of the bill, all electronic devices would have mechanisms to verify that all content has been properly acquired. In effect, televisions, computers, compact disc players, and many other electronic devices will actively watching Americans as though they were criminals. These devices would implicitly assume that Americans are thieves and that theft can only be prevented by installing monitoring devices in every American home. This is contrary to American values. The device is not the crime, piracy is. In order to protect the interests of all parties, we must maintain the legality of electronic devices while prosecuting their misuse. Criminalize the deed, not the device. Appropriate laws already exist without compromising the rights of Americans. Furthermore, any digital rights management technology would require registration of individual users, an unprecedented invasion of privacy for entertainment.

We must also consider the impact to the nation's technology industry, widely recognized as one of the most important sectors of the United States economy. The entertainment industry grossed roughly on the order of $40 billion in 2001. By comparison, the combined software, electronics, computer hardware, and telecommunications industries are estimated to have grossed on the order of $500 billion last year, or over ten times the size of the entertainment industry. In spite of this tremendous disparity, we find the peculiar situation of the tail wagging the dog. This bill means considerable harm to the technology industry, as attested to the Senate by Leslie Vadasz, co-founder of Intel, one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the United States and the world. He testified as to the damage to the industry should the federal government mandate technological specifications to solve the problem of piracy. The American businessmen and women who have made this country's economy the strongest in the world will have to bear the cost of this technology, reducing the ability of American companies to compete both here and around the world.

Despite the claims of media conglomerates, it is not at all apparent that these measures are necessary. I have been using the Internet as a means for acquiring new music for several years, including using primitive precursors of the now infamous Napster. In that time, I have purchased nearly one hundred music albums as well as many DVDs. I would not have purchased many of the albums had they not been readily available through these illegal means. The reasons for my illegal acquisition of music were solely for evaluation of the music. In nearly every case, if, after sampling an album, I found it to my liking, I acquired it legitimately. While illegal, file sharing services satisfy a need in the market where the music industry has failed. Consumers do not want to steal music, but given the unrelenting blandness of standard music distribution methods, such as radio and television, we are forced to seek other avenues in order to satisfy our tastes. One attempt by the music industry to enter this market, known as Duet or PressPlay, has so far been a dismal failure due to a limited selection of music and draconian control mechanisms, not the cost. In addition, the laws currently in effect have been successfully used to prosecute pirates, including just recently when a counterfeit DVD operation in New York City was shut down.

One of the other arguments made in favor of this bill is that making rich media readily available for download is what is needed to create widespread customer demand for broadband technologies. However, with the existence of illegal content online, broadband nevertheless remains in the early stages of adoption. There is no reason to believe that legitimizing this process will accelerate its adoption. In addition, the federal government should not be influencing the market in this case; broadband Internet access is hardly of the same importance as electricity or a telephone. Any hurdles to broadband adoption are a result of telecommunications companies dragging their feet far more than a lack of demand.

Examining the history of the relationship between the entertainment and technology industries, we find in several instances the former expressed their concerns and fears over a technological advancement, be it the VCR or the audio cassette. In these cases, the fears of the entertainment industry were overblown. In fact, after embracing technologies they originally opposed, the movie studios and record labels managed to increase their revenues and profits, in spite of piracy. While no system is perfect, to some extent fraud is the cost of doing business. No mechanism that protects the rights of law-abiding citizens will be perfect in quashing fraud. The banking and credit card industries have managed to be profitable while still maintaining a fair degree of protection for the rights of consumers. The entertainment industry should be no different.

While I don't doubt that this type of measure would go a long way to stamp out piracy in the United States, it does so by intruding too greatly both on the consumer as well as business concerns. There is a solution to the piracy problem, but it cannot come out of treating Americans like common criminals or burdening the technology industry with further regulation. As such, I strongly urge you to oppose the CBDTPA and all similar measures that only benefit a privileged few to the disadvantage of both individuals and businesses. I would appreciate hearing your position on this issue. Thank you.

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