Digital TV Restrictions Alarm Viewers

[Gregg Lengling]

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Indianapolis, Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- While Jon Strayer is busy putting his 6-year-old son Eric to bed, his wife Chris tapes ``CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'' for him to watch later. Now Strayer says he's worried the government may end the tradition.

Strayer was one of more than 1,400 people who wrote to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission before a Dec. 6 deadline, protesting a proposal backed by News Corp. and other media companies to require software in digital televisions and recorders to limit the use of home recordings.

Public interest groups also say an FCC mandate may stifle innovation and eventually curb consumer rights to copy and save creative content. The companies say they need the technology to prevent distribution of digital TV shows on the Internet and promise they won't keep viewers from recording for personal use.

``They might change their minds later,'' Strayer, a 47-year- old computer programmer, said in a telephone interview from his home office in Indianapolis. ``I'm afraid that all the power is moving into the hands of the copyright holders and that the users are going to be left at their mercy.''

Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and other broadcasters say they need more protection as the industry shifts from the current analog TV to new digital signals, which are more easily copied.

Erick Gustafson, vice president of federal affairs for the free-market nonprofit group Citizens for a Secure Economy, said it's unfair to protect TV programming with technology that will raise the cost of TV sets and recorders.

The FCC risks stranding viewers with obsolete equipment once TV stations turn off analog broadcasts, set to happen when 85 percent of U.S. homes can receive digital TV, Gustafson and other consumer advocates say.

Protecting Content

Disney, Fox parent News Corp. and other movie and television companies want the commission to impose an industry plan based on anti-piracy methods developed by a group including Intel Corp. The proposal would merely prevent redistribution of digital TV on the Web, not curb home recording, supporters say.

Opponents give a distorted view of what the proposal would do to win public support, News Corp. lobbyist Rick Lane said.

The debate should focus on the substance of the plan, ``not the rhetoric and scare tactics by those who are trying to oppose protection of free over-the-air broadcasting,'' Lane said.

The other companies that developed the technology are Sony Corp., Hitachi Ltd., Toshiba Corp. and Matsu****a Electric Industrial Co. They stand to profit from a government mandate that it be used in all digital-TV devices and support the plan.

Other consumer-electronics and software makers voice reservations.

Software Makers

Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other computer and software companies want to be able to develop technologies and products that let people manipulate video content in new ways.

For instance, parents could e-mail a clip of their child on the evening news to grandparents or a student could splice part of a show into a video project to present at school, which are both legal uses.

The FCC proposal could block those innovations, said James Burger, an attorney for the Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project, with members such as Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.

Burger questioned whether the commission has jurisdiction to impose such technological requirements, a concern echoed by Beryl Howard, a lawyer for the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats, in a conference call sponsored by Warren Communications News Inc. last week.

``What people are legitimately concerned about is that it might increase the price of something that's already expensive and make it more complicated to use,'' Burger said.

Protection

Even though viewers may still be able to record TV shows, they may find that their existing TVs and video recorders are obsolete because they don't work with the new, copy-protected equipment, said Joe Kraus, co-founder of Digitalconsumer.org. So Strayer might be able to record ``CSI'' off Viacom Inc.'s CBS on a new digital recorder in his bedroom and be barred from playing that disc on his existing DVD player in the family room.

``The content companies are essentially locking in what future companies can and cannot do,'' Kraus said. ``That is a threat to what we see as innovation in the future.''

Without protection from piracy, movie and TV studios will stop putting their most valuable content on free broadcast television, Disney Executive Vice President Preston Padden said.

``Your home recording rights are not threatened in any way by this proposal,'' Padden said. ``As long as your goal is not to distribute `The Lion King' over the Internet, you're in good shape.''