Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 21:45:06 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <200204230145.VAA27667@mattababy.mit.edu>
From: belmonte@mit.edu (Matthew Belmonte)
To: john_kerry@kerry.senate.gov
Subject: oppose S.2048

Dear Senator Kerry

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose S.2048, the Consumer Broadband and
Digital Television Promotion Act.  This bill would require computers,
televisions, and audio and video players to include implementation of copy
protection standards, and would unnecessarily embroil the federal government in
the process of defining these standards.

The Content Scrambling System (CSS) for DVD encryption has demonstrated how
ineffective copy protection schemes generally are.  Rigid schemes inevitably
end up restricting or impeding legitimate use, and often are easily broken by
determined opponents, as was the case with CSS.  Rather than coercing owners of
digital media players to pay for an ineffective and cumbersome copy protection
system modelled on the media distribution technology of the last century,
lawmakers should allow the market to drive media producers to implement a model
more appropriate to digital distribution.

Again, I urge you to oppose S.2048, the Consumer Broadband and Digital
Television Promotion Act.

Sincerely,

Matthew Belmonte