Downloadable Security Committee Members Ask Chair To Keep Within STELA Mandate

The work of the Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee is being derailed by members determined to base aspects of the committee’s downloadable security solution on CableCARD and the AllVid proceeding, pay-TV companies and associations said in an April 10 letter to DSTAC Chair Cheryl Tritt. The committee is in danger of exceeding its congressionally defined mandate, and Tritt should “ensure that the DSTAC does not squander its limited time and resources on such extraneous matters,” said the letter signed by eight DSTAC members including Comcast and Cablevision, and nonmembers such as DirecTV and the American Cable Association.

Though the letter doesn't name the DSTAC-member subjects of the complaints, the missive is clearly aimed at TiVo and Public Knowledge, several DSTAC observers told us. Both TiVo and Public Knowledge issued responses to the letter. The multichannel video programming distributors' “apparent goal is to narrow [the DSTAC] mandate to something that would be of little use to the FCC,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. Tritt and the FCC didn't comment.

The DSTAC is “being steered” into developing a method where the unique points of an MVPD retail offering, such as user interface and program guide “would be disassembled into individual piece parts that any retail device manufacturer could selectively reassemble into a new configuration and new service,” the MVPD letter charges. These ideas “hark back” to the unsuccessful AllVid security solution abandoned by the FCC in the face of widespread industry opposition, the MVPDs said. “Congress intentionally refrained from including this approach in the carefully constrained downloadable security task assigned to the DSTAC by the STELA Reauthorization Act,” the MVPDs said.

The MVPDs also attacked attempts to relate the DSTAC's product to CableCARD, a comparison that TiVo Chief Technology Officer Joseph Weber made repeatedly at the last DSTAC meeting. “Setting CableCARD as today's starting point for a DSTAC recommendation ignores more than a decade of technology advances,” the MVPD letter said.

The pay-TV interests are trying to “pre-judge” the DSTAC's result, both Public Knowledge and TiVo said in their responses. The letter ignores the congressional directive that the downloadable security solution produced by the DSTAC must be platform neutral, TiVo said. The MVPDs are trying to “infect the process with non-technical policy arguments,” TiVo said. The MVPDs make the same argument in the other direction, calling TiVo and Public Knowledge's arguments detours into policy.

If the DSTAC is technology focused, it should be open to all approaches that would lead to a competitive market for retail devices, Bergmayer said. “Ultimately, it’s the FCC that is going to be making the policy decisions, not the DSTAC,” he said. “The DSTAC report should provide expert guidance as to what is technologically feasible.”

The two groups of DSTAC members disagree on what should be considered “policy,” said Jason Friedrich, Head of Government Affairs at Arris, which signed the letter. The MVPDs don't believe specific aspects of their product, such as user interfaces, should be under the DSTAC purview. If the DSTAC keeps trying to “shoehorn” aspects other than security into its work it will “it will inevitably fail to adhere to the clear limitation of the Congressional mandate,” said BBT Director-Strategic Communications and Development Steve Effros, who's not a member. NCTA, also not a member, agreed. The mission that Congress gave the DSTAC and the FCC is clear: the DSTAC should focus only on technical recommendations for a software-based “downloadable security system, and nothing more,” said NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg.

The MVPDs are “trying to use the technical working group to try to turn back the clock and limit retail devices only to carrying MVPD apps,” TiVo said. That would “prohibit retail devices from providing 'fair use' competitive functionality such as DVR, side loading, and out of home streaming and, in the future, would limit providers of retail devices from being able to innovate.”