Public Knowledge is pleased to join in the Digital Freedom campaign. The issues we are discussing today have been at the heart of our mission since I helped to start the organization five years ago.

During that time, the big content companies have launched a sustained assault on the freedom of consumers to legally enjoy, create and distribute music and video, and on the freedom of manufacturers to innovate in response to consumer demands. These powerful companies have worked nonstop through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the Copyright Office to achieve their ends. The Digital Freedom Campaign is a signal that it's time the government paid attention to consumers, and to the laws already on the books. We must make sure that those rights are protected now and into the future, as more and more consumers become creators of their own content -- content that is now competing for the nation's mindshare.

Just look at what the companies have tried to do just in the past few months. In Congress alone, the PERFORM Act, the Copyright Modernization Act, Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act, and parts of the Senate version of the telecommunications legislation are aimed at enacting government mandated content controls that limit the otherwise legal functions that electronic devices can have.

But it doesn't stop there. The recording industry is going to court to stop devices from being made and sold that simply allow consumers to record music from digital music services, even where there is no possible hint of music theft. And Hollywood is going to court to stop Cablevision from providing a TiVo-like service that does not require the consumer to purchase a digital video recorder. And it doesn't stop there. In the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, broadcasting companies are trying to assert a new intellectual property right over material they don't even own.

If the content industry's efforts to control new technologies and limit consumers rights sound familiar, it is because these are just the last in a long line of examples covering most of the past century. Start with the player piano roll, continue with radio and television, the VCR, the MP3 player and ReplayTV, the predecessor to TiVo. In each instance of course, the technology in the content industry's crosshairs ended up providing it with untold riches.

These efforts come on top of the victories the industry has already won which gave it many tools to combat theft -- if combating theft is their true goal. The U.S. Supreme Court and the new District Court decisions in MGM v. Grokster, lawsuits against infringers, and the passage of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, in addition to the strict penalties in copyright law, give the industry everything it needs.

For years, we at Public Knowledge have worked with our friends at the Consumer Electronics Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the CCIA and others to combat these assaults on consumer rights and innovation.

The Digital Freedom campaign is a way for all of us who are trying to preserve those rights and protect innovation to come together under one umbrella to make our voices heard loudly and clearly. We welcome the opportunity to be part of such a group.

It is now my pleasure to introduce Harold Feld of the Media Access Project.