While I am now back from the Consumer Electronics show, I want to do one more entry on the event. By and large, I saw once again that consumer electronics manufacturers are working to develop products that are partnered with licensed creative works. This is critical, because if we want a continued stream of new creative works for our devices, we need to preserve their rights. In addition, the Distributed Computing Industry Association held a partner conference in Las Vegas at which I spoke, and the room was filled with many P2P players looking to play ball with creators. That’s all good.

Then there is Netgear.

They make good products; I have a wi-fi router by them at home that is very reliable. But they debuted at CES a nifty device that is very consumer-friendly but is also designed to enable massive copyright infringement.

With an increasing amount of video available online, including from Copyright Alliance members, it makes sense to find ways to display that on one’s televisions. There have been numerous devices available for some time now to do that, and the Central Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center was filled with televisions that enable direct Internet connections.

What is unfortunate about the Netgear box is that it is specifically designed to search and display BitTorrent content. Now BitTorrent the company provides licensed creative works, but BitTorrent the protocol is essentially a pirate channel, offering unauthorized creative works. With the explosion of easy-to-access, high-resolution legal works on television, the rationale that “I can’t access this anywhere else” grows weaker every day, but what remains the same is that copyright law supports the creation of these works to begin with, and accessing and distributing works unauthorized erodes the incentives for new works.

The device also appears to disable country-specific tags and restrictions. Look, I understand the frustration of such blocks. I myself became addicted to snooker when I lived in the U.K. and it’s difficult for me to access video of snooker here in the U.S. But I also know as we move out of this nascent phase of digital video both online and offline, such barriers will fall. They serve as a way to ensure rightsholders are paid for performances and reproductions wherever they occur. As I know from my travels abroad and interactions with international IP officials, these are not always easy transactions despite international treaties being in place. But impatience with attempts to ensure creators get paid does not justify unauthorized viewing or distribution of creative works.

I know everything the Netgear box does can be done with existing (unauthorized) software and hacking tools, but there is no merit in taking illegal activity that is really only capable of being done by technophiles and empowering the average couch potato to do it by clicking a remote.

Netgear, in designing this box and promoting its infringing features, appears to be inducing copyright infringement. I use that word with some hesitation, because under Grokster such behavior is clearly illegal. But whatever its motives, the end result will be copyright infringement, and will harm creators who are already seeking legal, licensed ways to put these works before consumers. We don’t need any more law suits when it comes to CE products, so let’s hope Netgear addresses the concerns of rightsholders before this product hits the shelves.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 11:27 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under drm, events, internet, licensing, p2p, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.