The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

The Digital Transition Content Security Act (DTCSA, ) was a

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...

introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, on December 16, 2005. The bill was backed by Democratic Rep.

John Conyers John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929October 27, 2019) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. The districts he represented always included part of western Detroit. ...

. Its goal is " require certain analog conversion devices to preserve digital content security measures", i.e. plugging the

analog hole The analog hole (also known as the analog loophole or analog gap) is a perceived fundamental and inevitable vulnerability in copy protection schemes for noninteractive works in digital formats which can be exploited to duplicate copy-protected wo ...

. The bill effectively proposes mandating of the VEIL Rights Assertion Mark technology into new video-handling consumer devices. The bill was referred to subcommittee in 2006 and no further action seems to have been taken since then.

Advocates

MPAA The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...

Chairman

Dan Glickman Daniel Robert Glickman (born November 24, 1944) is an American politician, lawyer, lobbyist, and nonprofit leader. He served as the United States Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 until 2001, prior to which he represented as a Democrat in Congr ...

applauded the bill, saying it was a "''very important piece of legislation that will promote more consumer choice as it protects copyright owners in the digital age.''"

Critics

Public Knowledge Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group. Founded in 2001 by David Bollier and Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge is primarily involved in the fields of intellectual property law, competition and choice in the digita ...

President

Gigi Sohn Gigi Beth Sohn (born August 2, 1961) is an American lawyer who is the co-founder (with Laurie Racine and David Bollier) of Public Knowledge. She previously worked for the Ford Foundation. In 2013, Tom Wheeler hired her into a senior staff positi ...

testified before the

House Judiciary Committee The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, a ...

(

United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property United States House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property is a subcommittee within the House committee on the Judiciary. It has jurisdiction over the following subject matters: copyright, patent, trademark law, i ...

. Oversight Hearing on "Content Protection in the Digital Age: The Broadcast Flag, High-Definition Radio, and the Analog Hole") on November 3. She stated: ''"The broad, sweeping draft legislation to close the analog hole suffers from the same problem; it puts the government in the role of making industrial policy, and will severely limit consumers’ ability to make lawful uses of copyrighted content. Like the

broadcast flag A broadcast flag is a bit field sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include the inabili ...

, the legislation mandates a one-size-fits-all technology that has not been the subject of public or even inter-industry scrutiny. The prohibitions in the legislation would require redesign of a whole range of currently legal consumer devices, including DVD recorders, personal video recorders and camcorders with video inputs. Importantly, the existence of the analog hole has been touted as a "safety valve" for making fair use of digital media products where circumventing the technological locks has been rendered illegal by the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...

. Should Congress close that hole without amending the DMCA to protect

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

, consumers' rights to access digital copyrighted works will be eroded even further.'' ''There are better alternatives for protecting digital content than the heavy-handed technology mandates proposed here today. Those alternatives are a multi-pronged approach of consumer education, enforcement of copyright laws and use of technological tools developed in the marketplace, not mandated by government. The recent Grokster decision and the passage of the

Family Entertainment and Copyright Act The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, Pub. L. 109-9, 119 Stat. 218 (April 27, 2005), is a federal legislative act regarding copyright that became law in the United States in 2005. The Act consists of two titles or subparts: Title I is calle ...

, which you spearheaded, Mr. Chairman, are just two of several new tools that the content industry has at its disposal to protect its content."''

Secrecy

Ed Felten Edward William Felten (born March 25, 1963) is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he was also the Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy from 2007 to 2015 and fr ...

, a respected Computer Scientist, has criticized the law for its secrecy. He calls it a ''"secret law — a requirement that all devices that accept analog video inputs must implement a secret technical specification for something called a VEIL detector. If you want to see this specification, you have to pay a $10,000 fee to a private company and you have to promise not to tell anyone about the technology. It’s pretty disturbing that our representatives would propose this kind of secret law."''{{cite web , title=Analog Hole Bill Requires "Open and Public" Discussion of Secret Technology , url=http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=972 , accessdate=February 8, 2006 , author=Edward Felten

References

External links

Full text of the BillH.R. 4569: The Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005
from

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary News Advisory
(PDF), December 16, 2005

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

, December 18, 2005
Forum to discuss the digital transition

Criticism

"A Lump of Coal for Consumers: Analog Hole Bill Introduced"

EFF EFF or eff may refer to: Politics * Economic Freedom Fighters, a South African communist political party * Economic Freedom Fund, an American political organization * Election Fighting Fund, a British suffragist organization supporting the ear ...

, December 16, 2005
"Analog Hole Bill Requires “Open and Public” Discussion of Secret Technology"

Edward Felten Edward William Felten (born March 25, 1963) is the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he was also the Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy from 2007 to 2015 and fr ...

, February 8, 2006
"VEIL Technology: Four Patents & an Application"

Kathryn Cramer Kathryn Elizabeth Cramer (born April 16, 1962) is an American science fiction writer, editor, and literary critic. Early years Kathryn Cramer is the daughter of physicist John G. Cramer. She grew up in Seattle and graduated from Columbia Univ ...

, February 22, 2006 United States proposed federal intellectual property legislation Proposed legislation of the 109th United States Congress