May 2000 Public Policy Computer Graphics Column

Introduction

Bob Ellis

This column begins with a look at a very controversial subject: virtual violence and virtual pornography and computer graphics' contribution to the issue of free speech. Next we'll look at the possibility of establishing a SIGGRAPH experts database for policy issues. The National Research Council (NRC) is working on the issue of intellectual property and how it relates to computers, science and technology; we present a summary and comments with a reference to their report. It is with great enthusiasm that I announce that SIGGRAPH Public Policy Committee member Myles Losch will be providing regular updates on telecommunications, digital television standards and digital copy protection to readers of this column. For information on Myles please see the May 1999 issue of Computer Graphics. Finally there's a description of and reference to an ACM conference on usability which may be of interest to computer graphics researchers and practitioners.

Virtual Violence/Pornography

Bob Ellis

As the realism of computer generated motion and appearance of computer generated human figures improves, it becomes more nearly possible to provide a virtual version of these activities without actually using human subjects. In particular, child pornography is one of the few forms of expression given less than full free speech protection under the United States Constitution. Laws have been passed against both the creation and possession of child pornography because of the potential for harm to the human subjects. The Patrick Naughton case ("Net Star Held in Sex-Solicitation Case Sting: FBI Agents Accuse Infoseek Executive of Using the Web to Arrange Sexual Encounter with a Minor", San Jose Mercury News, September 18, 1999.) has given increased visibility to this issue.

It is likely that people who do not work in computer graphics believe that either the day is here or else it will never be here when completely realistic looking and acting human figures can be completely computer generated. But we know differently. With today's technologies, it is not really possible to make completely realistic looking and acting human figures, but in a few years it may indeed be possible. Without human subjects, one of the primary reasons for restrictions on child pornography may no longer be valid.

But even today, using motion capture, it is very reasonable to make computer generated human figures move and act very realistically. Note that the humans providing the motion do not have to be the same ages as those depicted in the resulting imagery. So is it reasonable to subject virtual child pornography to the same restrictions as classic child pornography? In December 1999 the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that part of the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act which outlaws the possession of "virtual child pornography" ("Appeals Court Ruling Could Impact Naughton Case", San Jose Mercury News, December 17, 1999). Also, while less of a free speech issue, other socially debatable activities, such as realistically depicted violence against human and other forms of living organisms, may become possible without actually injuring any of the subjects. Computer graphics professionals should be thinking about this issue and be prepared to respond to queries from the general public, policy makers and others.

Committee member Myles Losch further points out that laws such as this which define and outlaw possession of certain information material as contraband have a history of being difficult to enforce without intrusive actions from law enforcement as well as other forms of abuse. A reasonable defense, which was used in the Naughton case, is that the defendant might not have had knowledge that the outlawed material was in their possession. Who among us has complete knowledge of everything which was downloaded to our computer as part of visiting a particular web site?

Experts Database

Bob Ellis

From time to time SIGGRAPH gets asked to suggest knowledgeable experts in some technical area to provide advice and consultation on policy issues. SIGGRAPH Chair Judy Brown and I have discussed this and would be willing to create and maintain such a data base. On the important question of vetting potential individuals for the database, Judy and I will do this in consultation with others in the field of computer graphics. People who have comments or who are interested in participating in such an activity should contact me.

National Research Council Intellectual Property Study

Bob Ellis

Available on the National Academy Press (NAP) web site is a copy of the National Research Council's (NRC) report on "The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age" (http://books.nap.edu/html/digital_dilemma/). This report was produced by the Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure of the Computer Science and Telecommunication Board (CSTB) of the NRC. The report states that it is specifically directed to the U. S. environment although many of the issues will be of interest in other countries. Many computer graphics practitioners either create or use intellectual property (IP) and should be concerned with the issues associated with the use of digital information. The document is approximately 350 pages and costs approximately $40 for a printed version.

Another path to this document (http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064996/) leads to a parent directory where there are references to other formats. (http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064996/html/) leads to a rather unusual format. While full searching capabilities are available, the document's pages are all stored as images of approximately fax resolution and cannot be saved or printed as legible copies. (http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064996/pdf_image/) gives access to PDF for all the sections of the report. There is a statement which says "The Adobe PDF versions of the chapters of this book are provided without charge to National Academies members and staff. These PDFs are machine generated from scanned page images, and do not contain embedded text.". I am a member of neither class, but as of writing this (February 2000) the PDF versions were available to and printable by me.

The following comments are based on my quick reading of the executive summary and may not be a completely accurate summary of the report. According to the report, the origins of the problem follow from the easily accessed and copied nature of information in digital form. Compounding this is the fact that many people do not realize that the simple borrowing of a book from the library calls into play a complex interconnected set of laws, public policy, economics and technology. Ultimately, the number of copies of a piece of intellectual property which might be sold is one!

The report continues that this is a complex problem because there are many interested parties, each with different social and economic agendas including content owners whose interests range from achieving as widespread as possible distribution to those who wish to maximize their economic gain. In addition, laws and practices vary worldwide but networks are global in scope. The report concludes this section by noting that publication and private distribution are becoming blurred and recommends that the concept of publication be reevaluated.

The report continues with the observations that the use of licensing (as opposed to sale) and technical protection mechanisms for intellectual property are increasing. The report concludes that the use of these techniques means both greater opportunities and a negative impact on public access to information and recommends that all the affected parties should meet and discuss models for public access which are workable.

Concerned about possible difficulties in providing archival copies of digital information, the report recommends that a task force be chartered to determine a workable system for the deposit of digital files and that legislation should be enacted to permit copying for archival purposes. The trend towards the commercialization of access to government data leads to the conclusion that copyright protection is all right when commercial enterprises add value and recommends that government data should be available at a cost not greater than the direct cost to provide the data even if there's a commercial value added version.

In the complex area of public use versus private and fair use, the report concludes that such exceptions should continue to be permitted, but the public needs to consider these issues carefully and additional statutory limitations on copyright may be necessary. The report indicates that new business models such as low pricing to reduce incentives for copying, using advertiser support and selling related products and services should be considered.

The report suggests that rights holders consider distribution methods other than the network such as DVDs and special purpose equipment for particularly sensitive IP. As an aside let me point out that while this changes the context of the problems, it does not solve them because it only transforms them (see next section and past columns on digital copy protection). I believe that overly zealous use of such measures may well drastically limit the appeal of such products in the marketplace.

The report recommends that educational programs on the advantages of IP protection be provided to the public. It further recommends that research be carried out on economic impacts of copyright with special

attention to the impacts of illegal commercial copying as opposed to private, noncommercial copying. The report concludes with the recommendations that the notion of copying as the foundation for IP rights be reexamined in the context of U. S. Constitutional goals of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts" and that legal research is needed into the very important area of temporary reproduction to support the new information infrastructure.

Personally I don't feel that the report has broken any new ground, but it is a valuable contribution to have the issues addressed and recommendations made in a readily accessible place and by an organization with strong credentials.

Telecommunications, Digital Television Standards & Digital Copy Protection

Myles Losch

A year ago this column surveyed graphics-friendly broadband network access for homes and small businesses. Now we begin a series of updates to that topic, covering both progress and obstacles in a public policy context.

Wireless Internet access via cellphones has boomed in Japan (especially among fad-prone youth), based both on messaging and on websites customized for the phones' tiny displays. This success has encouraged imitation elsewhere, and prompted cellular carriers to speed the rollout of broadband ("3G") services based on global standards.

While more graphics-capable than today's cellphones, 3G models are still limited by screen size. But the wireless infrastructure to support them (at up to 2 Mbit/sec) will be widely available also for fixed links to homes and businesses. Radio frequency allotments vs. demand for these services will bear watching, as they grow over the next decade.

On another broadband front, fiber to the home (or at least to the neighborhood) is gaining new interest among telecom carriers. While all-fiber nets are mostly confined to new buildings, phone and cable operators are using optical fiber to remove broadband bottlenecks in their older infrastructure. A good survey is at (http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/hecht.htm).

The U.S.' cable television 'open access' controversy has been revived by the planned AOL-Time Warner merger. AOL backed away from its former demand that cable nets be open by law to all Internet providers, but offered a similar policy in its quest for merger approval.

To the north, Canada's 1998 open access policy is to take effect this year. It's a focus of one session (organized in cooperation with the ACM SIGGRAPH Public Policy Committee) at ACM's CFP2000 public policy conference (http://www.cfp2000.org) in Toronto. [Look for more on this in a future column.]

Back in the U.S., the FCC rejected a challenge (which we first noted in November 1999) to its standard radio signal format for terrestrial broadcasting of digital television. But the commission will monitor progress by digital TV set makers as they seek to fix the indoor reception flaws that the challengers demonstrated.

Motion picture executives, meanwhile, claimed that FCC chair William Kennard lacked authority to impose standards (as he threatened) for copy protection of digital TV on cable networks, if industry could not agree on this by April 1, 2000. Faced with a possible lawsuit, Kennard appeared to back down. But that left digital TV's prospects in doubt, since most Americans get TV over cable. [VCR and TV set makers' views of the controversy are at (http://www.hrrc.org)].

Finally, the music and movie industries launched a flurry of copyright litigation starting in late 1999, which could strongly influence the online multimedia environment. The issues include free expression, the right to program and to reverse engineer, and the extent of government power over the Internet.

Targets of these lawsuits, on which we plan to say more in future columns, include the iCraveTV video streaming service, MP3.com's online music library, the Napster music-sharing software, and DeCSS, a DVD-video decryption program which led vendors to delay the release of DVD-audio products.

Readers interested in these cases can find useful online background information in the National Academy Press book reviewed elsewhere in this column. Part of a recent law [the DMCA] used in the federal DeCSS suits is analyzed by UC Berkeley's Prof. Pamela Samuelson at (http://sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/Samuelson_IP_dig_eco_htm.htm).

ACM Conference on Universal Usability

Bob Ellis

On November 16 and 17, 2000, the ACM will hold a conference on universal usability. Quoting from the conference web site (http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cuu): "The starting trajectory of the next millennium can be characterized largely by the progress of computing and communications technology. Cheaper and faster processors, storage, and networks combined with better user interfaces, have now spawned the incredible growth of the Internet and related services. Too often, however, system complexity, incompatible software versions and file formats, confusing interfaces, and inadequate attention to diverse users lead to confusion, frustration, and failure. It's time to address this challenge." The conference is being sponsored by SIGCHI in cooperation with a number of other organizations including SIGGRAPH and will be held in the Washington DC area.

The conference is planned to be more than a technical conference with substantial public policy content and attendees. Accordingly, papers are being sought in the areas of:

• Solutions to address the politics, policies, and economics of universal usability and evaluations of those solutions,
• Solutions to accommodate variations in hardware, software, and network access as well as empirical evaluations of these systems,
• Proposed solutions to accommodate users who differ in attributes such as skill, knowledge, age, gender, disabilities, literacies, languages, cultures, and income and evaluations of such solutions and
• Solution processes for better understanding users, contexts, and tasks.