March 13, 2002

The Honorable Ernest F. Hollings

Chairman

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

SR-254 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C.  20510

Dear Chairman Hollings:

As the Co-Chairs of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery (USACM), we would like to take this opportunity to comment on the full committee hearing held on February 28, 2002, entitled, "Protecting Content in a Digital Age - Promoting Broadband and the Digital Television Transition."

We found certain aspects of your opening remarks encouraging - particularly when you stated, "I want to emphasize that we will work to preserve legitimate expectations of consumers and researchers."  Your commitment to work with consumers and researchers to preserve the legitimate use of copyright protected content is appreciated.  However, we continue to be concerned that attempts to protect content by requiring manufacturers to include copyright-protection technologies in products will have far-reaching and damaging effects.  Those effects may serve to interfere with our freedom to innovate, weaken our educational systems, and impede our technological dominance.

Although we were not invited to provide testimony at this particular hearing, we wish to associate ourselves with many of the views expressed in the testimony of Leslie L. Vadasz of the Intel Corporation.  We agree that interjecting government as regulators or gatekeepers of new technologies will politicize the standard-setting process, retard innovation, and reduce the usefulness of IT products for consumers.  IT products designed for the U.S. market with mandated limitations would likely be inferior in price and performance to others produced elsewhere in the world that do not have similar requirements.  Further restrictions on technological innovation will harm our overall economic growth.

Entertainment is only one, relatively minor use (compared to all uses) of networks and computing technology.  Robust, ubiquitous IT products and devices are used everyday for conducting a variety of lawful research and education purposes.  Mandating technology for managing digital rights unfairly limits the legitimate expectations of consumers and researchers.  Of further concern, any such restrictions on technology will result in significant reductions in computer security research and protection at a time when our nation attempts to enhance the safety of our infrastructure and prevent acts of terrorism.  Rather than constraining or outlawing technology, there needs to be more efforts made in enforcement of current laws, in education of consumers, and in deriving new models for e-commerce.  Legislating constraints on technology to aid the entertainment industry has the potential to cause widespread and severe damage to society at large.

USACM includes computing researchers and information technology professionals from academia, industry, and government.  We are pleased to offer our technical expertise to policy-makers and would welcome the opportunity to testify as your committee considers legislation intended to protect digital content.  Please contact Jeff Grove, Director of the ACM Public Policy Office at (202) 659-9711, if we can provide additional information.

Sincerely,

Barbara Simons, Ph.D.

Eugene H. Spafford, Ph.D.

Co-Chairs

U.S. ACM Public Policy Committee (USACM)

Association for Computing Machinery

Cc: Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation