MOVIE STUDIOS DEFEND WORKING WITH BROADCAST ON COPYRIGHT
Hollywood’s major movie studios are pressing FCC for govt. intervention to help establish common technological standards for copyright protection on digital devices. Studios also defended their decision to work with broadcast industry on issue, telling FCC Chmn. Powell that such collaboration didn’t pose antitrust concerns. Executives of Disney, Fox, Viacom, Vivendi Universal, Sony Pictures, AOL Time Warner (AOL TW) and MPAA met earlier this month with FCC Cable Bureau Chief Kenneth Ferree, Rick Chessen, chmn. of FCC’s DTV task force, and members of Office of Plans & Policy and Office of Engineering & Technology. Studios fear that, without adequate protection, their movies, music and other content could be copied and distributed over and over again on Internet without reimbursing copyright holder.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Among studios’ talking points was idea of common standards for digital consumer electronics. Absent such measures, they said, consumers, producers and distributors will face incompatible standards likely to “retard the rollout of new digital services.” Studios have been working with engineers on so-called “5C” technology to provide protection for audio and video signals among digital media devices such as DVD players, TVs, set-top boxes and VCRs. Studios said they were prepared to conclude license agreements as long as 5C included protections for broadcast content.
But studios and equipment manufacturers have remained divided. Latter have expressed worry that common technology would raise antitrust concerns and said they wanted to clear their technical proposal with consumer electronics industry. Manufacturers involved include Hitachi, Intel, Matsushita, Sony and Toshiba. Studios -- except AOL TW and Sony -- refused to sign a 5C license last year because it didn’t include broadcast protections. That’s key for studios because their content often is transmitted via broadcast, and lacking protections, that content could easily be pirated.
Cross-industry standards and licensing that serve to promote content protections, such as water-marking, on DTV signals, are “fully justifiable and legitimate activities under the federal antitrust laws,” attorney Daniel Swanson wrote to Powell on behalf of MPAA. Swanson said existence of consumer benefits “flatly rules out any contention” that negotiations and implementation of common standard for protection of intellectual property violate antitrust laws under DOJ and FTC guidelines. He said lack of alternative solutions was another major reason why Powell should look favorably upon studios’ efforts. Powell has said DTV transition would be one of FCC’s major priorities on his watch.