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April 04, 2002

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Robert Perry interviewed

Robert Perry of Mitsubishi gave an interview talking about the "broadcast protection" issue, and 5C vs. 4C. Mr. Perry is now one of the three co-chairs of the BPDG.

Perry talked about why consumer electronics industries are supporting "broadcast protection" initiatives...

Basically, the negotiations are working on a broadcast protection system that does not affect current product, but at some point in the future would prevent a recorded digital broadcast from be transmitted or published on the Internet. In general, the CE industry supports such a protection, since Internet rebroadcast is not a consumer "fair use" issue.

(Emphasis added.)

The ability to publish recordings in their entirety on the Internet isn't a consumer fair use issue. However, the collateral damage associated with preventing republication certainly is a consumer fair use issue. In order to prevent movies from being "rebroadcast" after they are transmitted over the air, BPDG is prepared to do some violence to home recording.

In subsequent articles, we'll talk about whether there's really a credible threat addressed by the BPDG proposal, and about why Mr. Perry is mistaken when he says "consumers' 'fair use' home recording rights are very important [and] 1394 [5C/DTCP] preserves them".

Posted by Seth Schoen at 03:14 PM