EFFector Vol. 11, No. 10 June 22, 1998 editor@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
See http://www.eff.org for more information on EFF activities & alerts!
Please distribute widely to appropriate forums, no later than July 1 (action deadline: June 24).
Date alert issued: June 22, 1998
IMMEDIATE ACTION ALERT
Consumer Project on Technology ( http://www.cptech.org )
Electronic Frontier Foundation ( http://www.eff.org )
Electronic Privacy Information Center ( http://www.epic.org )
For More Information, see the Digital Future Coalition
http://www.dfc.org
The House Commerce Committee will hold a markup (amendment) session on H.R. 2281, the "WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act", already approved over many objections by the House Judiciary Committee. Mark-up is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, June 24, 1998 (or possibly the 25th). The pressure from the other side (the US Patent & Trademark Office and large corporate intellectual property holders) remains high, and it is an uphill battle for us to get any concessions, but these concessions are finally coming.
Your activism is paying off, but needs to ramp up one more time! It is critically important that CALLS and FAXES, e-mails and letters cover the entire Commerce Committee (see list below), in support of fair use rights and digital copyright legislation that continues to balance the needs of information providers and users. It is important that our position not be seen as "obstructionist", but constructive, and conducive to the passage of some form of WIPO treaty implementation.
Some already-drafted amendments (to protect fair use, and the ability to circumvent copy-protection systems to protect privacy and for encryption & security research) may be viable, but they do not address all of the concerns with this bill. The bill's text was NOT replaced by the better, alternative bill last week, though the goal of fixing the problems with the bill, one way or another, is now much closer. Reverse engineering, ephemeral copying, and encryption will also be addressed at Wednesday's mark-up, and constituent calls and letters need to stress these points as well, along with the privacy and free speech concerns inherent in allowing service providers to ransack users' files and delete materials that "might" be infringing.
All privacy, encryption, fair use, and security supporters, especially supporters from states represented on the House Commerce Committee, are asked to IMMEDIATELY take JUST TWO MINUTES or so each to contact these key Representatives and ask them to work for amendment of H.R. 2281 to protect fair use rights, privacy, free expression, and encryption and softwre R&D. We must lend massive but polite support for the Klug-Boucher fair use amendment and for fixing the other problems in the bill. Then contact your own legislator and urge them to do the same should H.R. 2281 make it through the Committee intact. The effects of bad copyright law can last for years, even generations.
Most important to contact: Chairman Bliley, to subcommittee Chairman Tauzin, to ranking Democrat Dingell, to ranking Subcommittee Democrat Markey, and to all 50 members of the Commerce Committee. Even if you have written recently, it is important to again make contact with these lawmakers, preferably by mid-day Tue., June. 23.
If you are unsure who your legislators are or how to contact them, see
the EFF Congress Contact Factsheet at:
http://www.eff.org/congress.html
(includes links to Congressional e-mail addresses, but please focus on
calls, faxes and letters, as these are still taken more seriously by legislator than e-mail.)
Feel free to make use of the sample fax and phone "script" below. If you have time, please call/fax as many of the members of the Committee as you can.
If you are a constitutent of Rep. Boucher, Klug, Tauzin, Dingell or Bliley, please THANK them for their work to fix the problems in this legislation.
HOUSE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
ST PTY REPRESENTATIVE PHONE FAX
DIST
------------------------------------------ (Use 202 area code)--
VA 07 R Tom Bliley (chair) 225-2815 225-0011
MI 16 D John D. Dingell 225-4071 226-0371
LA 03 R W.J. "Billy" Tauzin 225-4031 225-0563
MA 07 D Edward J. Markey 225-2836 226-0340
FL 09 R Michael Bilirakis 225-5755 225-4085
NY 27 R Bill Paxon 225-5265 225-5910
PA 08 R James C. Greenwood 225-4276 225-9511
ID 02 R Michael D. Crapo 225-5531 225-8216
NC 05 R Richard Burr 225-2071 225-2995
CA 49 R Brian P. Bilbray 225-2040 225-2948
KY 01 R Ed Whitfield 225-3115 225-3547
IA 04 R Greg Ganske 225-4426 225-3193
GA 10 R Charlie Norwood 225-4101 225-0279
OK 02 R Tom Coburn 225-2701 225-3038
NY 02 R Rick Lazio 225-3335 225-4669
WY AL R Barbara Cubin 225-2311 225-3057
CA 29 D Henry A. Waxman 225-3976 225-4099
TX 04 D Ralph M. Hall 225-6673 225-3332
NY 10 D Edolphus Towns 225-5936 225-1018
NJ 06 D Frank Pallone Jr. 225-4671 225-9665
OH 13 D Sherrod Brown 225-0123 225-2256
OR 01 D Elizabeth Furse 225-0855 225-9497
FL 20 D Peter Deutsch 225-7931 225-8456
MI 01 D Bart Stupak 225-4735 225-4744
OH 06 D Ted Strickland 225-5705 225-5907
CO 01 D Diana DeGette 225-4413 225-5657
OH 04 R Michael G. Oxley 225-2676 n/a
CO 06 R Dan Schaefer 225-7882 225-3414
TX 06 R Joe Barton 225-2002 225-3052
IL 14 R J. Dennis Hastert 225-2976 225-0697
MI 06 R Fred Upton 225-3761 225-4986
FL 06 R Cliff Stearns 225-5744 225-3973
OH 05 R Paul E. Gillmor 225-6405 225-1985
WI 02 R Scott L. Klug 225-2906 225-6942
CA 47 R Christopher Cox 225-5611 225-9177
GA 09 R Nathan Deal 225-5211 225-8272
OK 01 R Steve Largent 225-2211 225-9187
WA 01 R Rick White 225-6311 225-3524
CA 27 R James Rogan 225-4176 225-5828
IL 20 R John Shimkus 225-5271 225-5880
VA 09 D Rick Boucher 225-3861 225-0442
TN 06 D Bart Gordon 225-4231 225-6887
NY 17 D Eliot L. Engel 225-2464 225-5513
OH 14 D Thomas C. Sawyer 225-5231 225-5278
NY 07 D Thomas J. Manton 225-3965 225-1909
IL 01 D Bobby L. Rush 225-4372 226-0333
CA 14 D Anna G. Eshoo 225-8104 225-8890
PA 04 D Ron Klink 225-2565 225-2274
MD 04 D Albert R. Wynn 225-8699 225-8714
TX 29 D Gene Green 225-1688 225-9903
MO 05 D Karen McCarthy 225-4535 225-4403
If you would like to both call and send a fax, this extra action would certainly help.
For best results, try to put this in your own (short!) words, and be emotive without being hostile.
IF YOU ARE A CONSTITUENT (i.e., you live in the same district as the Rep. you are contacting) make sure to say so. For example "I am a constituent, and I'm calling/writing because...."
IF YOU REPRESENT A COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION, say so: "I'm Jane Person from Personal Technologies Inc. of Austin. I'm calling on behalf of Personal Technologies to ask the Representative to...." Business interests carry a lot of weight with many legislators, especially if they are in the legislator's home district. Legislators also generally heed organizational voices over individual ones.
You: [ring ring]
Legislative staffer: Hello, Representative Lastname's office.
You: I'm calling to urge Representative Lastname to support amendment of the WIPO bill, H.R. 2281, with the Klug-Boucher fair use amendment, the Markey encryption amendment, and further revision to protect privacy, security, free speech, and currently-legal reverse engineering. Internet service providers must not be given license to violate customer privacy and free speech. Thank you.
Staffer: OK, thanks. [click]
It's that easy.
You can optionally ask to speak to the legislator's technology & intellectual property staffer. You probably won't get to, but the message may have more weight if you succeed. The staffer who first answers the phone probably won't be the tech/i.p. staffer. If you are not successful, try contacting your legislator's home-state office (contact info should be available from the legislator's home page at http://www.house.gov), and ask them who the appropriate staffer is. Then call the DC office and ask for this person by name.
Relevant Congressional fax numbers are in the contact list above. Please, if you have the time, write your own 1-3 paragraph letter in your own words, rather than send a copy of this sample letter. (However, sending a copy of the sample letter is far better than taking no action!)
Dear Rep. Lastname:
I am writing to ask you to support, at the upcoming Commerce Committee markup, amendment of H.R. 2281, the "WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act". The Act has several troubling provisions that would impose a variety of civil and criminal penalties for the use, manufacture or sale of technologies, including multi-purpose computers, home electronic devices and software programs, that "could" be used to overcome technological safeguards on copyrighted works, even though not intended for such use. This bill would impede encryption research that helps ensure secure networks, prevent legitimate reverse engineering in the development of new software, and effectively overrule the Supreme Court's decision in Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), which permitted the home taping of television broadcasts. It also could jeopardize education and research by allowing copyright owners to "lock up" public domain materials, frustrating the fair use rights of information consumers. Worse yet, it would allow Internet service providers to censor and invade the privacy of their customers with impunity, and would criminalize almost any circumvention of copy-protection systems, even perfectly legitimate and necessary circumventions permissible under current law.
H.R. 2281 goes much farther than is necessary under the WIPO treaties. H.R. 2281 needs to be revised with more balanced and rational provisions offered in the Markey encryption amendment and the Klug-Boucher fair use amendment, plus other public interest protections (many of which can be borrowed from the alternative WIPO bill H.R. 3048, the Boucher-Campbell "Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act"). The goal of the final version must be providing protection from and legal remedies against the act of circumvention itself when that circumvention is undertaken for an unlawful purpose, while also protecting privacy and other rights of the users of information & communication technologies. The bill as currently drafted is not balanced.
Please work for H.R. 2281 to be amended to focus away from banning technology or undermining privacy and fair use, and toward punishing genuine wrong-doing. Thank you.Sincerely,
My Name Here
My Address Here
(Address is especially important if you want your letter to be taken as a letter from an actual constituent.)
For brief tips on writing letters to Congress, see:
http://www.vote-smart.org/contact/contact.html
The most important tip is to BE POLITE AND BRIEF. Swearing will NOT
help.
After calling/faxing members of the House Commerce Committee, please contact your own Representatives and urge them to oppose H.R. 2281, the WIPO Copyright Treaties Implementation Act.
You may also wish to follow up your calls and faxes with e-mail.
HOUSE LEADERSHIP
ST PTY REPRESENTATIVE PHONE FAX DIST ---------------------------------------- (Use 202 area code)--- GA 6 R Gingrich, Newt 225-4501 225-4656 TX 26 R Armey, Richard 225-7772 226-8100 MO 3 D Gephardt, Richard 225-2671 225-7452 TX 22 R DeLay, Tom 225-5951 225-5241 MI 10 D Bonior, David 225-2106 226-1169 OH 8 R Boehner, John 225-6205 225-0704 CA 47 R Cox, Christopher 225-5611 225-9177 CA 3 D Fazio, Vic 225-5716 225-5141 MD 5 D Hoyer, Steny 225-4131 225-4300 _______________________________________________________________
House leaders are, respectively: Speaker, Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Maj. Whip, Min. Whip, Republican Conference Chair, Rep. Policy Committee Chair, Democratic Caucus Chair, Dem. Steering Cmte. Chair.
Action for concerned people outside the US is somewhat limited, since Congress considers US competitiveness to be a top priority, and sees protecting US copyright interests as very important for this competitiveness. Foreign correspondence about this issue may backfire if not carefully worded. The same goes for the encryption issue - US legislators are largely sympathetic to American law enforcement & intelligence agencies' desire to hinder foreign encryption development. Probably the best tactic to take is to observe that the bill does NOT implement the WIPO treaties as they were finalized, but goes too far - the end result of which is a continuation of the very clashes in inter-jurisdictional intellectual property laws that WIPO treaties exist to minimize or eliminate. You might also ask your own government officials to raise similar concerns and contact US lawmakers and the Clinton Administration about these concerns. US policymakers are right now fairly concerned about EU and other trade & commerce conflicts with the US.
As currently written, H.R. 2281 would dramatically alter the time-honored balance between content owners and the user community. The legislation will also seriously erode the leadership that the United States currently enjoys in research and development of encryption algorithms, cryptographic products, and computer security technology. And the bill seriously threatens privacy online.
Three sections of the bill are extremely threatening to privacy, free speech, fair use, security and software development: Section 1201 punishes the manufacture or sale of any technology that "can" circumvent copyright protections, and also prohibits defeating such protections by any person for any reason (even a perfectly legitimate one under current law); it more properly should address infringing BEHAVIOR. 1201 is poorly drafted and would undermine encryption research and reverse engineering as well. Section 1202: allows content owners to collect personally-identifiable information about users who access their copyrighted works. This provision needs to be removed. Section 201: Exempts Net service providers from liability if they remove allegedly infringing but potentially protected speech (e.g. users' web pages) without any real proof of infringement. It also allows providers to violate users' privacy by sifting through customers' electronic files, documents, even e-mail looking for potential infringements. A more detailed analysis is available at: http://www.eff.org/effector/HTML/effect11.08.html
In the Telecommunications Subcommittee markup last week, a fair use amendment (the Klug-Boucher amendment) to the bill was considered, but rejected in favor of some as-yet-undecided fair use compromise. The amendment said, in part: "All rights...including but not limited to fair use, shall apply to all actions arising under this section." The amendment did not address the security, privacy and other concerns directly. Other issues, such as more privacy problems, free speech, temporary copies, encryption, and reverse engineering remain to be resolved.
An amendment introduced by Rep. Markey DID pass the Subcommittee, allowing for circumvention for the purposes of protecting personal privacy. Another Markey amendment to allow circumvention for system security and encryption research has been considered (but at least temporarily tabled). Neither will resolve all of the privacy concerns, or the threat the bill poses to the software industry and research community, or the concerns of the average user, since the amendments only provide narrow "carve-outs", still in disharmony with current fair use and other rights.
[end of alert]
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