The risks of FCC regulation over consumer electronics: 'Selectable Output Control'

Every couple of years, members of various content industries approach the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to engage in a dialogue about ways to regulate access to media. In particular, groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) see the FCC as a vehicle for controlling both what new technologies consumers can buy and how they can use them.

While much of the rhetoric used to justify these regulations is couched as preventing the “theft of intellectual property” or “piracy,” many of the regulations proposed restrict legitimate and otherwise legal uses of content, often by consumers who have purchased the actual movie or song directly from the movie studio or record label.

Recently, the MPAA approached the FCC to ask for permission to engage in “selectable output control” (SOC). Under SOC, whenever consumers purchased special video-on-demand movies over cable, the MPAA and its member companies would be allowed to “turn off” parts of the consumer’s TV or digital video recorder that might allow them to record the movie for later viewing — a practice often called “time-shifting” and one that the United States Supreme Court has held is legal under the Fair Use doctrine of copyright law. Thus, even though consumers would have a legal right to make these recordings, the FCC and the MPAA would restrict the technology available to the public so that no one could exercise this right, even if they wanted to.

More on SOC and the battle over it can be found here.

Public Knowledge, a DC-based non-profit that represents consumer interests in technology, has also put together a nice two-minute video on the subject: