According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)

The entertainment industry loses more than $3 billion annually to the ale of illegally copied videotapes. Now, with an estimated 350,000 digital movie files being downloaded daily for free, and with that number expected to climb to a million by this years’ end, digital film piracy is Hollywood’s newest nightmare.

The film community watched closely as the music industry challenged and ultimately shut down Napster, the Internet music file sharing site. Not only does the absence of a universally agreed upon solution for digital piracy threaten the economic health of the movie industry, but worries about wholesale theft hamper the rollout of new digital technologies. Examples would be high quality digital cinema in movie theatres and digital broadcasting on television.

Hollywood has marched on Washington to seek relief. At the end of March, Senator Ernest Hollings (D) of South Carolina introduced the "Consumor Braodband and Digital Television Promotion Act" which demands new hardware and software, from TVs to CD players to computers, to block unauthorized copying of copyrighted works.

But more than Hollywood studios have something in stake in the debate over digital video piracy. Consumers are losing personal use rights that they expect and cherish. The most comprehensive legislation passed has been the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The 1992 Audio Home Recording Act legalized the right to copy music for personal use, but the 1998 act makes it a crime to extract music from copy protected CDs. Thus, you can not duplicate a CD to create an extra copy to play in your car, for example.

The Supreme Court has ruled it is legal to tape broadcast TV shows, but new HDTV standards will make it illegal to copy a digital braodcast without the permission of the TV station.

It is now a crime to sell a DVD player that allows you to fast forward through ads at the start of a DVD with content that companies have denoted as "must see." This denies consumers the "right" to skip commercials while in their home.

Historically, there has been a balance between the rights of copyright holders and citizens. Copyright holders have a right to make a profit on their product, and consumers have the right, once purchased, to use and enjoy the product in a non-commercial way.

The concept of copyright is the foundation of innovation and progress in a democracy. Early patents were a solution devised to create an incentive for invention. Likewise, copyrights are the incentive of the author. But, the reason that copyrights exist is not to protect artists but to benefit society.

The danger here is that without reward, authors and artists are less likely to put themselves on the line and give free to the world their work. Not many people can afford to work for free. Furthermore,

in an effort to find a new solution to pirating, what the entertainment industry wants to do is eliminate the notion of personal rights use and use technology to control content completely. Our 1^st amendment rights are being threatened directly by the very people who boost and applaude it.

The technology companies are scrambling to create the new hardward and softward solutions to piracy and would like the consumer, not the government, to handle the problem. Technological invention is impossible to foresee and specific legislation would impede the innovation that is the entertainment industry’s lifeblood.

Hollywood has a history of fighting new technology that later has become lucrative sources of new revenues. Remember all the hoop la over the cassette player and VCR?

Some suggest that fear of new technology blinds Hollywood to solutions that are already available. The military has solved the problem of how to protect sensitive digital data. Security encryption software and hardware is available, but a lack of a standard has kept Hollywood from using them. Yet, Hollywood would set the standard, if large entertainment companies began their use.

But should consumers be treated like potential theives? Just walk through any major department store and count the security cameras.