CEA Calls On FCC To Promote Fairness To Consumers And Level Playing Field In Broadcast Flag And Plug-And-Play Proceedings

17-Feb-04

Calling on the Federal Communications Commission to allow competition, innovation and consumer choice to flourish in the digital television, and home networking marketplace, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) today submitted separate filings in response to the Commission's Further Notice of Proposed Rulemakings(FNPRM) in the broadcast flag and cable plug-and-play proceedings.Characterizing the importance of the FCC's plug-and-play proceedings and the momentous ruling last fall that opened the floodgates to navigation device competition, CEA wrote, ìAlthough CEA's members account for more than $100 billion in annual sales, it is only through this proceeding that consumer electronics products are finally eligible - after five decades - to connect to the digital cable systems that ultimately serve 70 percent of our customers' households. It is now up to the Commission whether this competitive entry will be meaningful.îSpecifically, CEA urged the Commission to rule on the issue of downresolution with the early DTV adopter in mind. CEA also noted the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) stated intention is to drive consumer purchases toward secure digital interfaces, only then to seek selectable-output-control (SOC) authority upon their whim. Rebuking this approach, CEA noted that downresolution is not a viable copy protection scheme or a restriction to Internet redistribution. Additionally, the move toward secure digital interfaces has already begun in the consumer electronics marketplace.ìDownresolution's primary effect will be to punish consumers for making an early investment in HDTV displays when only the 'wrong' interface was available,î CEA wrote. ìTo the extent ëdownresolutioní is justified as punishment for the sins of the manufacturers who sold them these products misses the mark.î Regarding both downresolution and SOC, CEA argued, ìThe FCC should not be complicit in this one-two punch to consumers. By allowing high-definition television downresolution, it will not be disappointing and conferring a disadvantage on all consumers equally - only on those who first responded to the Congress's and the Commission's promotion of DTV and HDTV.î CEA continued, ìThe choice before the FCC is now clear and stark - it can allow the use of 'downres triggers' and break faith with its early adopter consumers, or it can choose not to do so.îCEA further cautioned the FCC on unilateral device revocation rules and encouraged a device-specific certification revocation process rather than model line revocation, which potentially disenfranchises a consumer mass. Drawing a parallel to the plug-and-play ruling in its broadcast flag response, CEA wrote that, ìThe Commission should not accept new regimes - particularly highly specific digital rights management (DRM) controls - without at the same time ensuring there are alternatives that are consistent with the Encoding Rules adopted in the plug and play proceeding. While the two dockets share similarities, competition is important to both, but competitive entry is the primary purpose of one.îRejecting encryption of the digital basic service tier, CEA argued, would simply allow multiple service operators (MSOs) to extend their unique and conditional access systems - designed and employed to protect signals during their transmission to the home - into a home networking backbone system from which all other technologies are excluded. ìThis,î CEA wrote, ìis not what the Congress had in mind in passing Section 304 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.îIn commenting on the ways these two proceedings are linked, CEA observed that they need ìto be administered with the fact in mind that the [Plug & Play] device market to be opened to competition is one that has been reserved exclusively to the service providers for five decades, and in which they have distributed the first 30 million digital products.î

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