Jim Dinda's apartment is a high-tech entertainment haven, but that could change if a bill that restricts how electronics devices work is passed into law. Dinda's DSL phone line connects his entire home entertainment network. His movies, music and personal files are stored on a Windows 2000 server. He uses his Dell computer for e-mailing and Web surfing. He's teaching himself programming using a Linux server. He built a Pentium 3 with a video card that links his VCR, DVD and TiVo. The final piece is a wireless base station that allows him to roam the house with an IBM ThinkPad laptop. He's invested several years and thousands of dollars building the system, but a controversial piece of legislation introduced by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) could soon render his setup obsolete once he begins upgrading the network. With the full support of Hollywood and the major music labels, Hollings introduced the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which would require all new hardware and software products be embedded with copy protections that limit how people are able to watch and listen to digital files. "The bill could very easily create a great divide in the home between the entertainment and computer aspects of your life," said Carl Howe, a principal analyst with Forrester. "There are (cable and phone) gateways into the home, and the technology allows for convergence, but the business model of the entertainment industry requires divergence." The law would allow Dinda to continue operating his current system, but as technological innovations hit the marketplace, he would be forced to integrate the restrictive devices into his home network. To make matters more unsettling, there is no promise that copy-protected devices would work with unsecured devices. The thought of adding those types of devices was understandably upsetting for Dinda. "The motivation to build this network was the flexibility it gives me, I couldn't imagine a world where I gave up any of this," said Dinda. "I would never upgrade to something that allowed me to do less than I can do now. That's not an upgrade, that's a downgrade." Several consumer groups and electronics companies aligned themselves against Hollings, saying consumers like Dinda would suddenly stop purchasing new gadgets. That would give the electronics industry less incentive to innovate. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also battled government-mandated copy protections as well, arguing that the security allows corporations to dictate how people watch movies and listen to music they have legally obtained. For instance, Dinda could make a digital recording of a television program on his TiVo. That one copy falls under "fair use" rights, which allow people to make a personal copy of media. He wouldn't be allowed to watch that television program on his laptop because that requires him to make a second copy, said Michael Petricone, the vice president of technology policy at the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade organization representing a vast array of manufacturers. Along with upsetting the 2 million people who have already purchased digital television sets, the bill also wipes away many of the legal uses people have become accustomed to, Petricone said. The CEA is also averse to adding taxes onto the cost of new devices that could be used to pay entertainment companies, something the Audio Home Recording Act forced on portable MP3 makers. "Consumers have the right to do things to make recordings of broadcast shows," said Petricone. "If you charge them extra, then it's not a right. If we're put in a position that we have to sell devices that don't allow people to do what they've always done, then nobody is going to buy any new devices." That isn't necessarily that case, said Dave Arland, director of public and trade relations at Thomson Multimedia, a member of the CEA that has voiced lukewarm support for the bill. VCRs come with protections meant to limit piracy. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act mandated that every VCR come with the Macrovision technology that keeps people from hooking two systems together so they can dub movies. The problem for entertainment companies is that nobody has developed an unbreakable digital protection standard for music and movies. Instead of waiting for the government, music labels are pressing ahead on their own. Two CDs, More Fast and Furious and Charlie Pride -- A Tribute to Jim Reeves, hit the retail market with restrictions that prevented the disks from playing in PCs. The Universal Music Group, which released Fast, announced it would begin selling CDs that won't play on Macintosh computers, DVDs or game consoles. The bold move to tether music -- or movies -- to certain devices has the potential to upset millions of consumers willing to pay for legitimate content. Despite talk that these solutions would destroy the movie studios and record labels, people have sympathy for the behemoths. Scott Matthews also has his house hardwired. His ThinkPad 600 sits in the corner of his house, top down, like a coffee table book. The computer holds all his MP3 files. The computer is connected to his stereo, a DSL line and a wireless transmitter, giving him access to his music from anywhere in the house. He's gotten so acclimated to the computer as his music hub, he listens to terrestrial stations through his PC instead of the radio. He programmed his own music organizer, called Andromeda, which he distributes freely on the Web. He does ask anyone who uses the software to pay for it, but so far he's had little luck. "I have thousands of people using this, and I ask them to pay if they like it," said Matthews. "Almost nobody is paying for this, so I have some sympathy for the record companies." Sympathy maybe, but Matthews, who doesn't own a television, still manages to catch his favorite shows by downloading them onto his laptop. Link: http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,51337,00.html
