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October 22, 2002

Robotic Dogs and Singing Fish in Cross Hairs

From: New York Times
Oct. 2002

By DAVID F. GALLAGHER

When Senator Ernest F. Hollings set out to fight digital piracy, chances were he was not seeking to regulate the inner workings of digital hearing aids, robotic dogs or Shop With Me Barbie cash registers.

But a bill that Mr. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, introduced last spring would do just that, according to Edward W. Felten, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton.

The definition of a "digital media device" in Mr. Hollings's Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act is so vague, Mr. Felten said, that the legislation would require manufacturers to build copy-protection systems into products that pose very little threat to the entertainment industry.

To highlight the scope of the bill, Mr. Felten is using his Web site to compile "Fritz's Hit List" (Mr. Hollings is known as Fritz). The site, frequently updated, lists gadgets that record, play or transmit digital material and would potentially be affected if the Hollings bill became law (freedomtotinker.com/archives /cat_fritzs_hit_list.html). The seemingly innocuous products include a Philips baby monitor and Big Mouth Billy Bass, the animatronic singing fish.

"Once I started posting these, people started contributing more," Mr. Felten said, noting that he has a backlog of 100 items to post.

Andy Davis, a spokesman for Mr. Hollings, said the technology-minded critics of the bill were "missing the thrust of the senator's argument," which is that there is need for more protection of copyright works if online content and broadband Internet access are to flourish. Besides, Mr. Davis said, many details of the legislation remain to be worked out.

Mr. Felten said it would be a challenge for lawmakers to come up with a bill that addressed illegal copying on computers "but doesn't rope in a lot of these rather silly examples."

But he said that even a more limited bill was likely to discourage innovation and make electronic products more expensive.

"You couldn't build a new computing device," he said, "without hiring a bunch of lawyers."

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