Studios Take Piracy Battle to the States

Movie studios are taking their battle against piracy to state capitals across the country, urging local lawmakers to give Hollywood yet another weapon against those who pick the electronic locks on digital programs.

The studios’ goal is to expand state laws against the theft of cable and phone services to cover a new generation of digital devices and Internet-based offerings, said Vans Stevenson, senior vice president of state legislative affairs for the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Although federal copyright law covers much of that ground, the state laws would give the MPAA “an additional way to protect the studios’ private property,” he said.

The effort, which already has succeeded in half a dozen states, triggered a wave of protests from technology companies, electronics manufacturers, libraries, academics and consumer advocates. The studios’ proposal was so broad, Princeton University Professor Edward Felten said, that it would outlaw computers and any other multipurpose device capable of circumventing such locks -- even if the circumvention were for legal purposes.

Stevenson said those concerns are exaggerated. “There are a lot of people seeing demons where there are no demons.”

Nevertheless, the studios agreed to limit the proposed bills more specifically to people and companies “with the intent to defraud” a service provider, and to devices designed primarily for that purpose. The changes mollified some technology and electronics groups, but other critics remain strongly opposed.

For example, attorney Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the additions were “a step in the right direction” but that it’s still “incredibly unclear what ‘intent to defraud’ means in this context.” He added, “All of the [state] acts appear to be aimed at regulating what the American consumer can connect in the living room.”

The conflict over state laws is just the latest battle among the studios, technology companies, electronics manufacturers and consumer advocates over how to deter piracy without interfering with legitimate uses of the digital devices transforming communications and entertainment.

Cable TV operators, programmers and equipment suppliers started pushing to update state theft-of-services laws in Pennsylvania in 1999, but the MPAA soon joined in and broadened the proposal to cover more sources of programming. Bills based on the group’s proposal have passed in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and Michigan, according to the Consumer Electronics Assn., and similar measures are pending in nine other states.

No such bill has been introduced in California, the association reported.

The original proposal would make it a crime to possess, use, build or sell any communications device to steal a phone, cable TV, satellite or Internet service, or to receive, decrypt or retransmit such services without the provider’s authorization. It also would outlaw possessing, using or distributing the instructions for building those devices.

Critics said the prohibitions were so broad that they could be used to outlaw legitimate activities and devices, such as computer-security research and private data networks. Although the MPAA disagreed, it met last week with representatives of several consumer-electronics and technology companies, software manufacturers and librarians to discuss ways to clarify that legitimate devices and activities wouldn’t be affected.