Analog Hole Draft ‘Good Starting Point,’ Thomson Says

Thomson has talked with the MPAA on the need “for a legislative answer” to the analog hole and believes the proposed legislation “is a good starting point” for resolving debate on the matter, the executive, Vp Tom Bracken, told Smith in the letter. Another Thomson executive, Vp Dave Arland, said the CE and content industries had worked “harmoniously” to introduce digital content protection technologies, with 1394+DTCP and DVI- HDMI+HDCP. “So yes, it is possible to work together and implement solutions -- even when there are thorny technical and intellectual property issues” at stake, Arland said. That analog hole now has been incorporated into draft legislation addressed at last week’s oversight hearing finally “means the process is starting for analog content protection,” Arland said. But he cautioned: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

In the letter, Bracken said Thomson has “worked on many cross-industry efforts over the years to bring the benefits of secure digital technology to consumers.” He told Smith that Thomson acknowledges the analog hole “is a problem and one that has not been readily solved by voluntary effort.” Thomson, through its Grass Valley, RCA, Technicolor and Thomson brands, markets products that include “billions of finished DVD movies that are sold throughout the world, the management of digital signals through dozens of broadcast and cable networks and digital electronics products that are found in millions of consumer homes,” said Bracken, based at Technicolor’s Camarillo, Cal., hq.

Also speaking at the hearing, CEA Vp-Technology Policy Michael Petricone said CEA doesn’t oppose an analog hole solution, but it can come only through consensus among industries that isn’t evident in the legislative draft. On Petricone’s allegation that VEIL’s an unknown quantity, Glickman defended it as a technology that didn’t just come “out of nowhere,” but has come under intense review by industry discussion groups.

The multi-industry Analog Reconversion Discussion Group (ARDG) evaluated CGMS-A/VEIL over 2 years ago, the group’s proceedings show. Participating in the evaluation were groups such as Public Knowledge, which last week came out in opposition to the 3 legislative drafts debated at the oversight hearing, including the analog hole proposal.

CGMS-A/VEIL met the ARDG’s stated goal of plugging the analog hole, said a July 2003 “analysis matrix” summary. The CGMS-A portion is used carry digital rights data, while “V-RAM,” provided by VEIL and invisibly embedded in the active portion of the picture, adds system “robustness,” the summary said. While CGMS-A carries conditional-access copy-control information (CCI) in the picture’s vertical blanking interval (VBI), the V-RAM is “concealed in the visible portion of the image and indicates that CGMS-A must be present,” the document said.

Circumventing CGMS-A/VEIL is more difficult than defeating CGMS-A alone because VEIL’s V-RAM “is embedded and distributed throughout the active picture,” ARDG said. Defeating the system requires changing the CCI in CGMS-A or removing the V-RAM and CGMS-A stream, it said. But it said the V-RAM “is not trivial to remove in the analog domain,” a key attribute of any solution for the analog hole.

When the summary was written in July 2003, 3rd-party testing was under way to verify the V-RAM’s robustness against attempts to defeat it. Test results aren’t known because VEIL’s developer, St. Louis-based VEIL Interactive Technologies, hasn’t responded to our requests for comment. “At a minimum,” the combined CGMS-A/VEIL proposal is more reliable than CGMS-A, it said. CGMS-A carries the rights information, it said; V-RAM only becomes necessary “when the CGMS-A information is removed, either intentionally via circumvention or inadvertently,” as with some legacy devices, it said. Absence of the CGMS-A signaling would automatically cause the CCI to revert to “copy-never.”

Although much or all of CGMS-A is in the public domain, specs on V-RAM -- an adaptation of VEIL technology -- have been disclosed only within “channels associated with the MPAA and the ARDG,” the document said then. Other manifestations of VEIL have been disclosed publicly in patents, it said. The ARDG proceedings included scant mention of CGSM-A/VEIL’s licensing implications, except for one brief reference -- “terms to be discussed on an individual basis.”

It’s not known for sure why the ARDG proceeding -- presumably one such failed “voluntary effort” cited by Thomson in its letter to Congress -- was unsuccessful. There seems no assurance MPAA’s attempt to seek a congressional mandate will be any more successful, given opposition expressed by CEA and others at the House oversight hearing last week. There, the CEA’s Petricone said one of his group’s key concerns is that VEIL is “largely unknown as to its cost, operation and licensing status.” Petricone also said CEA found it troubling that all key decisions on CGMS-A/VEIL would be left up to the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). “With due respect, it is unclear how the PTO could make these decisions, or who would exercise oversight over its judgment.”