Felten predicts intense legal battle over digital media rights

Edward Felten, a professor of computer science, spoke about the fight to control digital media Tuesday, the first of three speeches in the President's Lecture Series.

Because of the convergence of all types of media into an easily-duplicated, digital form, there will be "a great earthquake in the media business," Felten said.

Felten returned to the earthquake metaphor throughout his presentation, in reference to the growing conflict between protection of digital media and freedom of speech.

"The ground is rumbling, but the big one is still coming," Felten said. "A great battle is likely to be fought."

He discussed the current debate surrounding the legality of digital copying.

Beginning with the VCR, he said, broadcasters have fought to prevent individuals from making copies of their media.

Felten's lecture maintained a clear and logical tone to allow even the computer-ignorant to grasp his concepts.

After the speech, President Tilghman said she better understood digitization.

An expert in the field of digital media, Felten has testified in the Microsoft antitrust cases and has consulted for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, an online free-speech group.

His speech in the Friend Center kicked off this year's President's Lecture Series.

Tilghman proposed the lectures in 2001 after a suggestion from Professor Alan Krueger in the economics department. The University had traditionally brought in outside lecturers, but Krueger thought there were not enough opportunities to hear his own colleagues.

"We have a very distinguished faculty and it would be nice to hear what they were doing," Krueger said.

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This was a "terrific idea," Tilghman said in an email, and since 2001 she has chosen three professors to speak each year, including Felten, Krueger and Claudia L. Johnson of the English department this year.

Since Tilghman was not sufficiently familiar with the entire faculty at the beginning of her administration, a faculty committee helped select qualified professors from diverse fields.

She now consults with the provost and dean of faculty.

"This is an opportunity for those of us who live in the Princeton community to hear from the brightest stars," Tilghman told the audience.

On Dec. 2, Krueger will speak on social science and terrorism. He has researched whether poverty and lack of education lead to terrorism, and he will speak about his surprising finding that these, in fact, do not play a role, he said.

To conclude the series, Johnson will discuss Jane Austen's wartime significance. For many, Austen might seem to be "too soft and girly" because she avoids painful subjects, Johnson said in an email, but she said she hopes to change popular opinion by showing that Austen was read in the early twentieth century as a war novelist.

Tilghman said she finds the speeches successful. "Faculty make a real effort to make their work accessible to a broad audience, and to chose topics that will attract people from multiple fields," she said.