4/10/2015

Dear Ms. Tritt:

As members of the Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee (DSTAC) and representatives of entities that applied to serve on the DSTAC and were assured they would be able to participate indirectly, we are writing to express our concerns about the current direction of the Committee. Congress directed the creation of the DSTAC for a clear and limited mission: “to identify, report, and recommend performance objectives, technical capabilities, and technical standards of a not unduly burdensome, uniform, and technology- and platform-neutral software-based downloadable security system.” Yet despite this focused objective, the DSTAC is veering into areas that are well outside its statutorily-defined charter. While DSTAC working groups have made progress in grounding themselves in the technical and marketplace reality within which downloadable security must function, DSTAC continues to be diverted toward proposals that would hinder the ability of consumers to access MVPD and online video services on their growing number of devices. We ask you to ensure that the DSTAC does not squander its limited time and resources on such extraneous matters that threaten to derail it from fulfilling its statutorily defined purpose, to the detriment of innovation and consumers.

First, the DSTAC is being steered into developing a method by which an MVPD’s distinctive retail offering (carefully assembled with licensed programming, a guide, and many other features and functions) would be disassembled into individual piece parts that any r etail device manufacturer could selectively reassemble into a new configuration and new service. From the very first meeting, working group deliberations were nearly derailed by a staff directive that the DSTAC “committee shall develop” a means to disaggregate service “even if participants believe that those features should not be mandatory.” Productive efforts only resumed after the staff walked back its directive, although those directions remain on the official FCC DSTAC webpage without any of the subsequent clarifications that FCC staff have provided to DSTAC members.

The second DSTAC meeting brought a renewed emphasis on a “box” that disassembles MVPD service into “outputs” that a device manufacturer could rearrange, combine with other content and overlay with its own user interface. Staff has even proposed a specific working group for DSTAC members to define “non-security APIs” to access these piece parts of service, which, by definition, is beyond the DSTAC’s well-defined “downloadable security” mission. Some are also claiming that the copyright licenses and retransmission consent terms and conditions under which MVPDs distribute service – such as channel position, acceptable advertising, and whether and how each program may be redistributed for out-of-home use – do not necessarily apply when a third-party retail device receives MVPD service. This approach would circumvent the security and chain of trust required for the distribution of high-value MVPD and other video services, as well as raise significant contract and copyright issues.

These proposals hark back to the “AllVid” concept. Under an AllVid approach, pay TV providers would have been forced to deploy an AllVid adapter box to enable a retail device to disassemble a provider’s retail subscription service for reassembly into a new service for commercial exploitation.

Subscribers would need two devices – an AllVid adapter plus a client box – just to watch TV. If adopted, this approach would have precluded millions of consumers from receiving MVPD and online video services directly via secure downloadable IP apps on their own smartphones, tablets, PCs, gaming stations, Smart TVs and standalone IP television devices. Such an approach also would have precluded the integration of features such as viewer polling or social networking into the MVPD’s service as well as prevented MVPDs from deploying equipment facilitating the distribution of high-definition video across home networks. The FCC has not taken further action on the AllVid proposal in the face of widespread opposition by content owners, cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors, among others.

Congress intentionally refrained from including this approach in the carefully constrained downloadable security task assigned to the DSTAC by the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014 (STELAR). An amendment was proposed during the negotiations over STELAR that would have required the DSTAC to recommend a “methodology for access to a system’s programming, features, functions, and services” and compelled the FCC to adopt it by rule. But that amendment was withdrawn, and, as adopted, STELAR limits the DSTAC to report only on recommendations for a “downloadable security system,” not on recommendations to disassemble the MVPD service or swap out electronic programming guides. Resurrecting AllVid variants here is already needlessly bogging the DSTAC’s deliberations in controversy, while at the same time, content providers, distributors, and device manufacturers are entering into agreements almost daily to offer over-the-top (OTT) video services.

Second, there appears to be a determination by some to direct the DSTAC to use CableCARD as the starting point for its work when the market already offers far more capable technology. CableCARDs were never used by major video distributors like DISH, DIRECTV and many telephone company IPTV video distributors, like AT&T. CableCARD use in the retail marketplace is also very limited. All television manufacturers abandoned the CableCARD many years ago, and fewer than one million ret ail CableCARD devices are deployed today. By contrast, the marketplace has rapidly created and embraced a wide variety of innovative video platforms and downloadable applications independent of CableCARDs, with more than 50 million downloads of MVPD apps, and millions more occurring every month.

To be sure, the CableCARD model adopted more than a decade ago required retail CableCARD devices to access one-way linear channels using their own guides, rather than downloading the MVPD’s full service. This requirement did not, however, arise as a matter of policy. Rather, it reflected basic technical limitations at the time – a one-way device could not support an interactive program guide and suitable Remote User Interface (RUI) technology did not exist. Technology has advanced over the ensuing years. A variety of RUI industry standards have been developed and are widely used by consumers to access MVPD and OTT services on retail devices via secure, downloadable “apps.” Setting CableCARD as today’s starting point for a DSTAC recommendation ignores more than a decade of technology advances and practical marketplace successes.

Much progress has been made in educating the DSTAC on how downloadable security works today; on the diversity of networks and their complex interaction with content, software, synchronized application data, interactivity, diagnostics, ad reporting, audit paths, and more; on how subscription

services are assembled and securely delivered consistent with copyright licenses and intellectual property rights; and how multichannel and over-the-top video providers are all delivering their services by using secure downloaded software and apps to solve for the complexity of service and the diversity of customer-owned devices. As we move towards recommendations grounded in commercial and technical reality, we urge you to ensure that the DSTAC not take the policy detours described above, but instead allow the DSTAC to fulfill its statutorily defined downloadable security mission.

American Cable Association Cox Communications Patrick Murphy and Jason Hansen Steve Watkins

ARRIS Group Inc. DIRECTV Bruce McClelland Steve Dulac

AT&T Inc. DISH Network Dr. Ahmad Ansari John Card II

Bright House Networks LLC Evolution Digital Jeff Chen Brent Smith

Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Motion Picture Association of America Ralph Brown John McCoskey

Cablevision Systems Corporation National Cable & Telecommunications Bob Clyne Association

Andy Scott Charter Communications, Inc.

Jay Rolls Time Warner Cable

Kevin Leddy Cisco Systems, Inc.

Edmond Shapiro Verimatrix

Petr Peterka Comcast Corporation

Mark Hess Verizon Communications

David Young

cc. DSTAC Members