| The battle over digital media copyrights and the internet escalated in December with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) deadline for public comment on its digital TV plan. The technology companies and consumer groups asked the FCC to revise its proposal on the mandating of signal scrambling, while the DGA joined the other guilds and unions, along with the MPAA, in urging federal regulators to adopt new anti-copying controls.
At the heart of this debate over digital TV is the much larger question of whether copyright protections will apply to this emerging technology. The entertainment industry's concern is that piracy — and a repeat of the music industry's copyright woes — will be the inevitable result if the laws applied to emerging digital technology are compromised.
The FCC's digital TV copy-protection proposal requires all manufacturers of digital TV receivers at both the consumer electronic and PC level to do the encrypting themselves on any digital signals transmitted by broadcasters making the switchover from analog technology. Using that encryption technique prevents the unauthorized recording of films and TV shows and their redistribution over the internet for free download.
The Information Technology Coalition (ITC), a technology trade group whose members include Microsoft, Apple Computer, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel, urged the FCC to change gears on the stated requirement that digital equipment manufacturers have signal-scrambling technology built into their devices.
In addition to joining with the MPAA in an industry-wide filing, the DGA filed its own response in support of a "broadcast flag" to protect copyrighted works. The DGA filing makes clear that directors' economic and creative rights are dependent on the premise that their work will be protected from copyright infringement — whether from unauthorized editing or unauthorized copying and reuse. Recognizing that the digital broadcast of content provides a quantum leap in the potential for piracy through unauthorized redistribution, protection of directors' rights is a paramount issue for the Guild as the federal government and Congress begin to make decisions that could redefine copyright protections.
In the Guild's official "broadcast flag" response to the FCC, DGA National Executive Director Jay D. Roth argued that the "broadcast flag" is necessary since unauthorized copying and redistribution of DGA members' works directly threaten their economic right to payment for the works they create. The filing goes on to underscore the importance of the residual payment structure in the motion picture and television industry and how DGA members' compensation and pension benefits depend on residual revenues. Those residuals amounted in excess of $171 million in member payments in 2001 alone. The DGA has collected and distributed some $2.5 billion in residuals since 1960.
The DGA response stressed that, "unauthorized copying and redistribution of our members' work takes necessary income out of our members' pockets and their retirement plans ... We cannot afford to have their livelihoods weakened by individuals — or institutions — who think downloading and sharing our members' copyrighted work is their 'right.' "
The DGA further believes that digital broadcasts, if properly protected and policed, could well represent a new market and revenue stream of great benefit to DGA members. The flip side is the belief that failure to implement adequate security safeguards (as proposed with the "broadcast flag") will slow the implementation of digital broadcasting and jeopardize this vast and important new market.
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