=========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #44 VTW BillWatch: A weekly newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is back in session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) (We're not the EFF :-) Issue #44, Date: Mon Apr 29 00:21:23 EDT 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction from the Editor (Shabbir J. Safdar) Why use AOL? (Steven Cherry) Three Whistlestop96 chat transcripts available (Shabbir J. Safdar) Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) RADIO FLEES TO THE NET This week I sat on a panel with Jonah Seiger (CDT) and Dave Farber (EFF) at a convention of college radio broadcasters. This was an amazing experience, as folks in radio have years of experience dealing with free speech issues. As you may know, the struggle for free speech the last year dealt with a question of regulatory models. Should the net be regulated more like radio, or more like print? The net is much more like a bookstore, and so the answer should be print. However those that support net censorship don't understand that. Enter the college radio broadcasters. Because of their proximity to universities which are often well-wired, they are some of the most net-savvy stations on the Internet. They're looking forward to using the Internet for netcasting, because of the more friendly regulatory environment. The arguments that have been used to censor radio are, hopefully for them, not true for netcast radio. The net isn't pervasive, and like all other net content, there are many ways of restricting children from it without resorting to censorship. Radio could enjoy the benefits of this new environment, and the possibility of this should urge us on. Remember when everyone thought, for a minute, about their own radio station? Like every other thing on the net, you could be your own radio broadcaster. As a good rule of thumb, anything that allows more people to publish and converse is a good thing. I'm looking forward to it. It's always nice to meet new allies in our fight, and I know this isn't the last time. This issue can be found in HTML form at URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.44.html ___________________________________________________________________________ WHY USE AOL? by Steven Cherry, VTW Board (Wayne, NJ) A number of people have written to us, both before and after our first major AOL event, to ask, why AOL, and to point out that many netizens, including many of our loyal vtw-announce subscribers, are not on AOL but would like to participate in the Whistlestop 96 chats. AOL has five million subscribers and chat facilities that are respected by all. Furthermore, they do very good promotion of AOL events. Finally, and this is very important, many AOL subscribers are otherwise disconnected from the community of activists and potential activists that exists on what some of our correspondents have called "the real net." We at VTW learned a very important lesson with the Paint It Black web page campaign. (This was the two-day protest after the Telecomm Bill was signed in February during which web page owners turned their page backgrounds black.) That lesson was that hundreds of thousands of people with web access were nonetheless learning about the Communications Decency Act for the first time, after a full year of us shouting at the top of our virtual voices on "the real net." Even "the real net" is a fragmented world and we need to do different things to reach out to different fragments. The AOL fragment is an important one, and this political season, is one that we have targeted for development, by no means to the exclusion of others. We already have other chats outside AOL scheduled, and will announce them as soon as we're publicly allowed. Beginning in May we have a number of great chats already lined up. So pay ten bucks for a few months and then cancel, or just grab a few of those free-10-hour coasters you've been setting your beer on and join us! ___________________________________________________________________________ THREE WHISTLESTOP96 CHAT TRANSCRIPTS AVAILABLE by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) The transcripts of three recent online chats are available for your perusal. The first is a transcript of our online chat with New York's own Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). You can pick up a copy at http://www.vtw.org/archive/960428_234038. Second is the transcript of an online chat from tonight with myself and Bruce Schneier, author of "Applied Cryptography". It's available at http://www.vtw.org/archive/960428_235051. Finally, we have available a transcript of a chat with Jonah Seiger, from the Center for Democracy and Technology. Jonah has been present throughout the trial to overturn the Communications Decency Act. You can read the transcript at http://www.vtw.org/archive/960428_235938. ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept donations at this time; money creates a dependence upon money. If you want to help, you are much more valuable as someone who reads our announcements-only list and contacts their legislators whenever it is important. Please do not offer us money. You can receive BillWatch via email, gopher or WWW: To subscribe via email, send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "subscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from BillWatch send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "unsubscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. Send mail to files@vtw.org to learn how to receive back issues of BillWatch. BillWatch can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ and in Gopherspace at: gopher -p1/vtw/billwatch/ gopher.panix.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994-1996 Voters Telecommunications Watch. Permission is granted to copy and distribute this document for non-commercial purposes only, provided that the above banner and this copyright notice appear in all copies. For other uses, see our Copyright Policy at http://www.vtw.org/copyright.html ___________________________________________________________________________ =========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #45 VTW BillWatch: A weekly newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is back in session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) (We're not the EFF :-) Issue #45, Date: Mon May 6 00:38:28 EDT 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction from the Editor (Steven Cherry) Sen. Burns & Whistlestop96 on AOL 5/6/96 9PM EST (Shabbir J. Safdar) References from this issue (Shabbir J. Safdar) Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR by Steven Cherry, VTW Board (Wayne, NJ) As the absurdly front-loaded primary season concludes, we'd like to take a minute to point out that in many states the primaries for state and local elections are distinct from the presidential primaries, and in many cases haven't happened yet. In other words, don't wait until this fall. Register to vote, and vote in the primary if possible. If you're a college student, it's doubly important that you register before you leave the town you will be residing in in November. So before finals crunch starts (or even if it has!) register. When you register, you have a choice to register with a political party. Many people register with a party allegiance they don't feel, because, due to a preponderance of voters of one party in an area, that party's primary has all the significance of a general election. This has the unfortunate consequence of making "the rich get richer" (in other words, making the local dominance of that party a self-perpetuating matter, and putting the other party or parties in a Catch-22 from which there is little escape). However, it does allow your vote to have maximum impact. A tough choice in representative democracy, but one you only get to make when you are a registered voter. Student or not, registering has never been easier. Not only are forms available at Motor Vehicle offices and many other governmental facilities throughout the country, you can now go to http://netvote96.mci.com/register.html thanks to the Internet Caucus. If you forget to save that URL, you can always come to our site where you'll find http://www.vtw.org/ivoter . And of course throughout the year, we'll be putting up more and more information to help you make your choices informed ones. Steven Cherry (stc@vtw.org) This issue can be found in HTML form at URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.45.html ___________________________________________________________________________ SENATOR CONRAD BURNS & WHISTLESTOP96 ON AOL 5/6/96 by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) Whistlestop96 continues this week with Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) discussing the new encryption bill, PRO-CODE, of which he has been a major driving force. The bill would unrestrict the export of public domain and publicly available software, such as Phil Zimmerman's PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), make it easier for companies to export software that has encryption functionality in it, and make it harder for the Administration to introduce another Clipper-style solution. Some describe this bill as the "silver bullet aimed at the heart of Clipper", which is not inaccurate. The Senator is doing two chats online at AOL and Hotwired. These chats, which are a joint project with the CDT (Center for Democracy and Technology), represent a new phase of Internet politics. Never before has a legislator approached the Internet community so directly and in real-time, seeking feedback on an issue that is a core element of our agenda. Please take a moment to join us at one or both of the online chats, and show Senator Burns that the net appreciates when Congress sticks up for it. The first chat is Monday, May 6, 1996 on America Online at 9PM EST (or 7pm Montana time). You can connect to AOL over the Internet through a SLIP/PPP connection or by dialing up one of their services. Download the AOL client software from URL:ftp://ftp.aol.com/ and install it. The second chat is on Monday May 13, 1996 on HotWired, the online magazine, in their Club Wired at 9PM EST (or 7pm Montana time). To attend, simply go to the WWW page URL:http://www.hotwired.com/club/ and follow the instructions. Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir@vtw.org) ___________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES FROM THIS ISSUE Online copy of the PRO-CODE bill http://www.crypto.com/ HotWired's Club Wired http://www.hotwired.com/club/ AOL's FTP site ftp://ftp.aol.com/ VTW's Internet Voter Page http://www.vtw.org/ivoter MCI's Voter Registration Page http://netvote96.mci.com/register.html ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept unsolicited donations at this time; money creates a dependence upon money. If you want to help, you are much more valuable as someone who reads our announcements-only list and contacts their legislators whenever it is important. Please do not offer us money. You can receive BillWatch via email, gopher or WWW: To subscribe via email, send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "subscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from BillWatch send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "unsubscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. Send mail to files@vtw.org to learn how to receive back issues of BillWatch. BillWatch can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ and in Gopherspace at: gopher -p1/vtw/billwatch/ gopher.panix.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994-1996 VTW: http://www.vtw.org/copyright.html ___________________________________________________________________________ =========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #46 VTW BillWatch: A weekly newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is back in session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) (We're not the EFF :-) Issue #46, Date: Mon May 13 00:00:20 EDT 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction from the Editor (Steven Cherry) Sen. Burns on HotWired 5/13/96 9PM EST (Shabbir J. Safdar) Another Encryption Antidote (Shabbir J. Safdar) References from this issue (Shabbir J. Safdar) Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR by Steven Cherry, VTW Board (Wayne, NJ) VTW had the opportunity this week, courtesy of ACM/The Association for Computing Machinery, to hear Allen Adler, of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), on the subject of copyright legislation, recently introduced into Congress. The AAP, like many media industry groups, is a supporter of this legislation. At the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference this past March, VTW heard a panel chaired by Pam Samuelson of the University of Pittburgh and Cornell University. While there was no legislation at that time, We heard Prof. Samuelson disagree with conclusions the NII White Paper upon which the current legislation is partly based (her panel presented all sides of the copyright issue). It is fair to say that big media interests support the legislation, which expands current copyright protections (though the two sides disagree to what extent). Authors and smaller publishers are divided, while many "users," and consumers, are opposed. Librarians particularly seem strongly opposed as a group. VTW has not as yet taken a stance on this legislation, though we may. We note the convergence of computers, telecommunications, publishing, entertainment, and art as the larger digital revolution spawns our much-touted information revolution, and we are skeptical on technical and social grounds that legislation, unless intrusive and extreme, can do very much more than delay the sea-change or its consequences for intellectual property, especially copyright in software, the arts (especially nonperforming arts), entertainment, and scholarly publishing. This week, we would like to merely introduce copyright as a topic for our readers' attention. In subsequent weeks, we will begin giving you more background information, including pointers to important web resources and some summaries of key arguments. We will also begin to track this legislation. We welcome comments from informed subscribers concerned about this issue and will summarize the most worthwhile. The bill is not easily searched for on Thomas (http://thomas.loc.gov), but can be found by searching "Senate bills" for "s 1284" (no quotes). There is a companion bill in the House (currently identical to the Senate version), but the Senate bill has a slightly shorter road to travel, as it will be considered by a full Senate committee, while in the House it will start in a subcommittee. Some experts we've talked to do not think Congress will pass a copyright bill at all this year. Copyright will be one of the topics we will touch upon with with our AOL guest this week. Mark Eckenwiler is an attorney at Gordon & Glickson, a Chicago law firm specializing in intellectual property issues, as well as a VTW advisory board member. He recently completed a stint as a columnist for NetGuide magazine. Mark will also talk about some court challenges to cryptography regulation, as well as the challenge to the Communications Decency Act. Join us at 9:00 EDT on AOL -- just Goto the ROADSIDE area. Steven Cherry (stc@vtw.org) This issue can be found in HTML form at URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.46.html ___________________________________________________________________________ SENATOR CONRAD BURNS ON HOTWIRED 5/13/96 9PM EST by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) Senator Conrad Burns returns to the Internet to stump for better Internet security and his PRO-CODE bill, which would free PGP and unrestrict much encryption software that is currently under export restrictions. Allowing the export of such software will mean better security and privacy in every way you communicate electronically. This is a rare chance to sit and talk with the Senator on these issues, as directly as humanly possible in a moderated forum. The chat is on Monday May 13, 1996 on HotWired, the online magazine, in their Wireside Chat are at 9PM EST (or 7pm Montana time). To attend, simply go to the WWW page URL:http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ and follow the instructions. Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir@vtw.org) ___________________________________________________________________________ ANOTHER ENCRYPTION ANECDOTE by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) I picked up the London Sunday Times today without thinking I would find a story about encryption, but right there on p.1 was the best example of why U.S. encryption export laws are preventing the right people from obtaining effective encryption. Below the fold, underneath the picture of O.J. Simpson going to play golf in Britain, on page 1 of the Sunday Times (12 May 1996) is a story about how a group of radio scanner fans in the UK have compiled a hundred-page list of the frequencies used by specialist police units, "such as the royal and diplomatic protection squads and others involved in anti- terrorist and firearm operations". The threat of actual terrorist groups using the ability to monitor such frequencies is played up in the article. As I read this, I was appalled. A country such as Britain, that has been forced to acknowledge security in almost every facet of life after a history of warfare, doesn't even have technology that could prevent hobbyists from tracking their activities. Is it because they don't have the funds to obtain such equipment? Not likely. Who would object to the purchase of such equipment to protect from such an obvious risk? Nobody, of course. The answer to why they don't already have such equipment is found in the pages of any catalog of radio or telephone equipment. It's an easy exercise you can do yourself. Simply go find all the catalogs in your home that sell radio equipment or cellphones. Now, look for the strong encryption built into every one, because it's so obvious a feature that would handle the situation described above. Wait, did you miss it? Of course you did. Except for encryption done by cell phone carriers in Europe, strong encryption for the end user is not generally available in many commecial products. By doing everything they can to suppress the propagation of encryption in commercial products, they have limited the market from which you and I (and the British police, apparently) can purchase communications technology with effective encryption. It is hoped that the recent spate of encryption bills will correct this state. Stay close to BillWatch, and especially to the Encryption Policy Resource Page http://www.crypto.com as well as VTW's own home page http://www.vtw.org Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir@vtw.org) ___________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES FROM THIS ISSUE http://thomas.loc.gov Online copy of the PRO-CODE bill http://www.crypto.com/ HotWired's Wiredside chat http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ AOL's FTP site ftp://ftp.aol.com/ ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept unsolicited donations at this time; money creates a dependence upon money. If you want to help, you are much more valuable as someone who reads our announcements-only list and contacts their legislators whenever it is important. Please do not offer us money. You can receive BillWatch via email, gopher or WWW: To subscribe via email, send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "subscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe from BillWatch send mail to majordomo@vtw.org with "unsubscribe vtw-announce" in the body of the message. Send mail to files@vtw.org to learn how to receive back issues of BillWatch. BillWatch can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/ and in Gopherspace at: gopher -p1/vtw/billwatch/ gopher.panix.com ___________________________________________________________________________ Copyright 1994-1996 VTW: http://www.vtw.org/copyright.html ___________________________________________________________________________ End VTW BillWatch Issue #46, Date: Mon May 13 00:00:20 EDT 1996 ___________________________________________________________________________ This file provided by: Voters Telecommunications Watch *** Watching out for your civil liberties *** Email: vtw@vtw.org (preferred) Gopher: gopher -p1/vtw gopher.panix.com URL: http://www.vtw.org/ Telephone: (718) 596-2851 (last resort) Copyright 1994-1996 (commercial use without permission prohibited) =========================================================================== =========================================================================== VTW BillWatch #47 VTW BillWatch: A weekly newsletter tracking US Federal legislation affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is back in session) BillWatch is produced and published by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) Issue #47, Date: Mon May 20 01:03:38 EDT 1996 Do not remove this banner. See distribution instructions at the end. ___________________________________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction from the Editor (Shabbir J. Safdar) Sen. Patrick Leahy on HotWired 5/22/96 (Shabbir J. Safdar) The new slate of copyright bills (Steven Cherry) Clipper III: has the White House learned anything? (Shabbir J. Safdar) References from this issue (Shabbir J. Safdar) Subscription Information and donation policy (unchanged 2/18/96) ___________________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR by Shabbir J. Safdar, VTW Board (Brooklyn, NY) In this issue we present a second essay on copyright from VTW co-founder Steven Cherry. Although VTW currently lacks the resources to track the copyright issue as closely as we would like to, Steven has long felt the need to ensure that the details of the debate get as much attention as possible. In a medium where the basic form of reading and skimming involves copying the very item you wish to peruse, the legal issues surrounding the act of copying a piece of work become thorny, problematic, and yet extremely important in shaping the future of the medium. Readers unfamiliar with the copyright debate should look forward to more information from Steven. Anyone that knows him well also knows that this debate has been his passion for many years, and the energy and concern he brings to it are refreshing. Shabbir J. Safdar (shabbir@vtw.org) This issue can be found in HTML form at URL:http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/issue.47.html ___________________________________________________________________________ SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY ON HOTWIRED 5/22/96 4PM EST The long parade of legislators to the online chat world continues this week as cyber-Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) comes to HotWired's Wiredside chat to discuss net issues. Sure to be a popular topic is S.1726, Pro-CODE, the latest iteration of a series of bills aimed at toppling the White House's disastrous encryption export policy which has resulted in such disasters as the Clipper Chip and the Clipper II (and now Clipper III) schemes. Senator Leahy, the first member of Congress to publish a statement on the Internet signed with a PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key, strived to kill the Internet Censorship legislation throughout last year. He has also introduced two pieces of legislation designed to attack the wrong-headed, antiquated Cold War restrictions that hurt businesses who want to add strong, effective encryption technology to their products. The Senator's chat is at 4pm, Wednesday May 22, 1996 on HotWired in the Wiredside Chat area. If you have never been to a Wiredside chat, you are missing out. While using telnet to access a "room" where questions are passed to a moderator, you listen to a RealAudio feed of the interview. It's like talk radio without the annoying commercials. To attend, simply go to the WWW page URL:http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ and follow the instructions. ___________________________________________________________________________ THE NEW SLATE OF COPYRIGHT BILLS by Steven Cherry, VTW Board (Wayne, NJ) In BillWatch #46 we briefly discussed some copyright legislation that has been around since last fall but seems be ready to begin moving through Congressional committees and subcommittees. Opinion ranges along a continuum that has "just a small tweaking of existing law" at one end, and "greater threat to the Net than the CDA" at the other. VTW has therefore begun to track this legislation. This week's discussion should provide us all with some needed background and status information. For those who feel a need for a more general background on copyright, one could hardly do better than Terry Carroll's six-part Copyright FAQ, found on the , in news.answers, or by sending email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the message: send usenet/news.answers/law/Copyright-FAQ/part* To get up to speed on basic legal issues, we commend readers to Mark Eckenwiler's two-part Legal Research FAQ, obtained by , on news.answers, or through email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu -- the email message is: send usenet/news.answers/law/research/part* //Brief history of S.1284 / HR.2441 In July, 1994 a government task force released a preliminary report on copyright, popularly known as the NII Green Paper. After further deliberation, including some public comment and testimony, the committee released a final report (the NII "White Paper"), in September, 1995. By the end of September, 1995, identical legislation had been introduced in the Senate and House embodying a limited subset of the recommendations of the White Paper. The Senate bill's sponsor is Hatch (R-UT), who, as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had the bill referred to the full committee. In the House, the bill was referred a subcommittee of the the House Judiciary Committee, its Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property. The two held joint hearings in November. In early May the Senate committee held additional hearings. The House subcommittee is expected to report out the bill sometime in May. //Summary of what is at issue in S.1284 / HR.2441 Proponents of the legislation hold that it makes only minor changes in existing law, to help copyright law adjust to certain differences in digital media. Proponents primarily consist of large publishing, entertainment, and other media companies, some authors. Opponents tend to attack the NII White Paper, on which the bills are based, rather than the legislation. Clearly, the legislation does not implement all the sweeping changes to copyright law the White Paper advocates. Opponents seem to think that this legislation is merely an initial point of attack and that the Administration and their large media backers will continue their assault on copyright law until the entire program of the White Paper is enacted. In this issue of BillWatch, we will give only the briefest summary of concerns about the legislation, and some pointers to analyses and source documents. . Reproduction and Transmission Reproductions that seem incidental to the ordinary transmission and use of documents and other works may be copies that violate the new copyright law. Some good analyses along these lines can be found at http://www.acm.org/usacm/nii.html and at http://www.ari.net/dfc/libraries.html#ARL ACM, The Association for Computing, is an organization on both sides of the copyright fence, as both a publisher of thousands of pages of scientific and other technical information each year, and as a scientific and educational society with tens of thousands of members who need free and open access to information, much of it on-line. DFC is the Digital Future Coalition; this particular URL is a statement on behalf of a number of major library associations, which was filed with the House subcommittee. . Digital copying devices The bill outlaws devices whose primary purpose or effect is to circumvent any system designed to inhibit copyright violation. Even though courts have found that there are a number of perfectly legitimate and legal uses for a VCR that record, for example, a court could find that the primary *effect* is to violate copyright. An analysis largely devoted to this issue has been given by the American Committee for Interoperable Systems. Their comments on HR 2441 were filed with the House subcommittee on February 15, 1996, and can be found at http://www.sun.com/ACIS/HR2441.html . Intermediaries (libraries, service providers, et al.) The bill places onerous burdens upon libraries, universities, on-line services, Internet service providers, and corporate and other intranet network service providers with respect to compliance; liability for copyright violations extends to them. See the DFC URL above, especially the comments by the librarian associations, for the best statement of this objection. . Rules governing enforcement of potential copyright violations The bill defines several groundrules for how law enforcement and the courts may proceed in reacting to a potential copyright violation. These rules seem to place an onerous burden on on-line services and service providers. Moreover, the good-faith exception for providers and end-users is entirely at the judge's discretion, after a person is found to have been in violation. VTW has not as yet found an analysis of the bill which addresses this objection in detail. //Slightly longer history of S.1284 / HR.2441 Before the advent of digital formats for information and entertainment, copyright protection in part relied, sometimes tacitly, sometimes explicitly, on the difficulties and expenses of physically copying copyrighted works. (It is commonly observed that the binding of a book, for example, is a great barrier to copyright piracy because it makes copying a book physically difficult, impedes the readability of the copy, and makes the original easier to use than the copy.) Copyrighted information in digital form has been with us for many years now, initially in the form of searchable legal and other information stored in proprietary databases by companies who charged for access. LEXIS/NEXIS, Westlaw, and the various legal, medical, and business databases on such services as Dialog and Genie are early and continuing examples. Until the early 1990's and the emergence of the Internet as, among other things, a popular platform for the exchange of digital documents, publishers and other owners of these databases did not cry out for a change in copyright laws to accommodate the differences between digital information and printed documents. With the emergence of local, wide-area, and global public networks, these providers of specialized information became more concerned that their documents, and, they felt, their entire databases, were at risk. At the same time, general publishers and entertainment companies saw an opportunity to use these networks, in particular the Internet, to broaden distribution, increasing both revenue and profits. Early on we saw a number of Clinton Administration technology initiatives. One of these was an Information Infrastructure Task Force, chaired by the late Ronald H. Brown, who was then Secretary of Commerce. The Task Force created a Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. The Working Group was chaired by Bruce A. Lehman, then and now an Assistant Secretary of Commerce and the Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. Lehman, as head of Patents and Trademarks, was hardly ideally positioned to have anything to do with copyright, an area over which he had little authority. But as both a former Congressional aide and a former lobbyist for the copyright industry he was ideally positioned to represent traditional media and entertainment interests and to design and then shepherd legislation through Congress. //Current status of S.1284 / HR.2441 as of May 17, 1996 S.1284 is currently in the Senate Committee on Judiciary. HR 2441 Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property. Markup is intended for next week but not yet scheduled. //Chronology of S.1284 / HR.2441 May 15 96.....HR 2441 has a scheduled markup in the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property but it is deferred for one week. May 7 96.....S 1284 has Hearings held in the full Committee on Judiciary. Feb 27 96.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Luther Feb 27 96.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Jacobs Feb 7 96.....HR 2441 has subcommittee Hearings Held. Feb 1 96.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Burr Feb 1 96.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Minge Nov 15 95.....S 1284/HR 2441 joint hearings: Senate Committee on the Judiciary, House Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property (subcommittee of House Judiciary Committee) Nov 6 95.....HR 2441 is referred to the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property. Oct 24 95.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Bono Sep 29 95.....HR 2441 is introduced by Rep Moorhead and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. Sep 29 95.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Schroeder Sep 29 95.....HR 2441 cosponsored by Rep Coble Sep 29 95.....S 1284 cosponsored by Sen Leahy Sep 28 95.....S 1284, sponsored by Sen Hatch, is read twice and referred to the Committee on Judiciary. Sep 1995.....NII White Paper (Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, Information Infrastructure Task Force. Green paper: Intellectual property and the national information infrastructure) Jul 1994.....NII Green Paper (Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights, Information Infrastructure Task Force. Green paper: Intellectual property and the national information infrastructure, preliminary report) //URLs NII White Paper http://www.uspto.gov/web/ipnii/ipnii.txt S.1284 ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c104/s1284.is.txt HR.2441 ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c104/h2441.ih.txt In favor of the legislation: http://www.cic.org/message.html Statements and analyses in opposition: http://www.acm.org/usacm/nii.html, http://www.sun.com/ACIS/HR2441.html, http://www.ari.net/dfc/libraries.html#ARL Other useful sites http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9605/11/cyber.pirates/index.html ___________________________________________________________________________ CLIPPER III: HAS THE WHITE HOUSE LEARNED ANYTHING? (Shabbir J. Safdar) [For more information on the encryption debate, see the Encryption Policy Resource Page at http://www.crypto.com/ ] Interactive Week (http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/ has an exclusive story today by Will Rodger about the revival of the Clipper plan for key escrow. For those of you not up to speed on the encryption debate, here's a quick summary. Encryption is a technique for scrambling your email or phone conversations in such a way as to prevent eavesdroppers from listening in. Using one or more decryption "keys" that are kept very secret, two people can communicate in a way that ensures their privacy not through laws, but through the strength of the underpinning mathematics. This thrills most people, as privacy is as old as apple pie, and many people take it for granted when communicating with their doctor, spouse or partner, their business partner, or their lawyer. However law enforcement advocates claim that encryption will eliminate their ability to perform wiretaps in the future. They claim a vision of a dystopian world where criminals plan crimes freely without regard for police investigations. Neither the privacy advocate's utopian world of total privacy, nor the nightmare surveillance world of Hoover's "old-style FBI" is something our society is likely to be comfortable with. However it is not unreasonable that individuals who wish to have a private conversation be allowed to have them, without forcing the public and an entire industry to jump through technical and social policy hoops. This brings us, rather quickly, to the key escrow and Clipper debates. All three Clipper programs are somewhat different, but all three possess a major similarity: the decryption keys which one usually holds very secret are given to a third party. This would allow law enforcement to decrypt and read your communications at will without your knowledge, provided they had already obtained a copy through some other means. The best analogy to this involves real life keys, such as your house keys or your car keys. For example, most of us don't give a copy of our house keys to the police, just in case they need to execute a search warrant in the future and you've locked the door. If we were expected to do that, the justified public outcry would be deafening. Clipper advocates such as Prof. Dorothy Denning have argued that it's crucial that individuals and corporations have such an emergency recovery system, and that the government is here to help give it us. I say no thanks, I can find someone I trust to hold a spare key. I don't need the Federal government telling me who to choose. My lock, my key. To both industry, the public, and apparently Congress, the past two Clipper plans are unacceptable. They have been met by a whirlwind of public outrage that has done more to bring the American net-civil liberties privacy community together than any other issue in the last three years. Judging from the indications in the Interactive Week article, we're in for another round of the same old warmed over arguments. This time, it's likely to be done without the benefit of Mike Nelson, the previous spokesperson for the Administration on this issue. Although his boss has been consistently on the wrong side of this issue, his approach has always been professional in portraying what is an extremely unpopular view in the real world. Rumors about him being shuffled out of the position of encryption policy spokesperson have been in the air since this year's Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Cambridge. If this has been a move to change the public relations tactics of the Clipper suite of proposals, the White House seems to have learned nothing from Nelson's previous adventures. The current proposal was floated as a trial balloon past members of the House of Representatives. Like kids at a carnival with BB guns, the response was a strong letter to the White House from Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA) and twenty-six other members, urging the President to abandon key escrow schemes altogether. It's nice to see Congress on the right side of one of our issues without the usually necessary public outcry. This surely won't be the last time. The Interactive Week story can be found at: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/daily/960518y.html ___________________________________________________________________________ REFERENCES FROM THIS ISSUE Encryption Policy Resource Page: http://www.crypto.com/ HotWired's Wiredside chat http://www.hotwired.com/wiredside/ Clipper III: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/daily/960518y.html ___________________________________________________________________________ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION AND DONATION POLICY We do not accept unsolicited donations at this time; money creates a dependence upon money. 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