Computer science professor Felten challenges new telecom legislation

Talking picture frames, Barbie cash registers and computer science homework all could be under new government control if Congress were to pass a broad telecommunications bill, computer science professor Edward Felten said.

During the summer, Felten created freedom-to-tinker.com to express a growing collection of his thoughts on tinkering with technology. On the website, Felten lists what he thinks are faults in the government's attempts to bring the nation's copyright laws into the digital age, sometimes with a mocking tone.

"[The bill is] an attempt to stop people from widespread copyright infringement, and the goal of preventing that kind of infringement is not a bad goal," Felten said.

He added that the telecommunications bill is excessive, harmful and a threat to the development of new technology.

The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, the bill that is the target of Felten's most recent comments, would put severe restrictions on all new devices that store copyrighted material in digital form — including portable MP3 players, computers, academic research in cryptography and even a "dog toy [that] lets you record a short message to your pet," as Felten noted on his website.

The bill would require all of these devices to include a government-approved security system to protect the copyrighted work.

The bill has not moved out of Senate committee action since March, but Felten said even if it does not pass this session, a similar bill will probably come to a vote.

The bill proposes what is often termed "digital rights management" — the thorn in the side of illegitimate and legitimate copying alike. On his website, Felten wrote, "Both parties in the transaction have rights that need to be protected."

Felten's website sprung from "a desire to have a conversation with other people who are writing and thinking about these issues," he said.

But Felten has been no mere observer in the evolution of digital-age copyright law.

In 2000, Felten and a team of researchers successfully completed a challenge from the music industry to break their new digital watermark technology. How they did it, however, was for many months taboo. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, made it illegal to circumvent a copy protection device, such as a digital watermark.

The Recording Industry Association of America then warned Felten's team to not publish their results. The RIAA later denied that their letter to the researchers was a threat.

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Felten said he has been working on a new book, tentatively titled "Freedom to Tinker," to talk about "the value of letting people take apart technological devices."

Most recently Felten has been researching security and privacy related technologies, including studying the effects of proposed copy-protection technologies.

Felten said he also has been studying wireless network security and how to use cryptography to prevent outside listeners from reading network traffic information.