contractors are afghans. and right now, if we got about 11,000 security contractors and 10,000 of them are the afghans. clearly, that is a much different scenario than in iraq when it was almost all third- party nationals. the same thing is true with the other contractors. more than half -- in fact, i think is close to two-thirds of r$)ú)

the record and get the fax back to you. >> ok, if it is true, then it worries me. that means once again we have not had the integration between the military mission and the realities of contract in. in fact, the realities of contract in in this instance -- of contract in in this instance are completely under cutting the military mission and i'm betting the military did not realize

that was potentially occurring. >> i understand. >> it is really important and i want to know specifics. how much does someone make doing laundry for our troops? how much did make in the different regions? what do they make in the police department locally? we can do an apples to apples comparison about the local salary and if we are cutting off our noses to spite our face. let me go to the state department for some questions about that. i know there is a reason we have six ambassadors in afghanistan. but it is not clear to me who is doing what. who is the ambassador? who is in charge? what is the difference between eikenberry and holbrook? and who is answerable to them? can you help me with that?

mr. feldman? >> i would be happy to. we do have six ambassadors in kabul, but we feel extremely well served by having them there given the critical nature of our mission and the talent that they bring. ambassador eikenberry is charged with all of our work coming out of the embassy. i'm just looking for the actual organizational chart that i brought with me and i am happy to share. >> that is fine, you can get it to us for the record. the reason i ask the question is not to try to -- i am sure that there is a valid, substantial reason for all of the work that all of them are doing. i'm trying to focus on this just because i have learned the hard way that the accountability

peace never happens if you do not know who is in charge. i'm trying to determine among these ambassadors who is the ambassador that has the authority and accountability and responsibility in terms of the contract and that is going on -- the contract iing that is going on. >> ambassador eikenberry runs much of what is going on. ambassador wayne, as we said, is the coordinating developed -- director for the economic development and assistance. he oversees all of the u.s. government and nonmilitary assistance to afghanistan. he directs and supervises the range of offices in the field. he is our point of contact on many of the specific contract in issues, but many things would go up to ambassador eikenberry. ambassador holbrooke here in washington and coordinates the

interagency events and the strategic events between afghanistan and pakistan. >> ambassador holbrooke would be the one looking to see if circuit was trying to do the same thing and a id is try to do the same thing that state is trying to do. >> yes, in washington we do all of that. the interagency coordination is done from our office. but importantly, much of this work is actually done in the field, obviously. on serp, the decision is on local councils, on how the project is implemented, we need and rely on what is being done in the field and that ultimately goes through ambassador wayne for coordinating basis. but we do the coordinating in washington. >> it was determined on the line that there was a lack of coordination that caused a massive amount of waste -- if so, the book would stj at ambassador holbrooke's desk?

>> indeed, and we would be working with other people here as well. and ambassador kearney was there for the specific collections purpose. now that they are over, he will be returning. >> ok, usaid, you are not putting your contracts into the data base. >> into which? >> spot. the fact that you had to ask was a problem. there is supposed to be one and everyone is supposed to be using it so there is transparency in all of the contracts that are outstanding in the work that are being -- is being done. >> we are putting contracts into spot. we're putting it at the company and organizational level. we have not putting individual names because of concern for the security of the individuals. of the 20,000 people who work under aid contract andts are

afghans there is faced -- are afghans. there is concern for their security and privacy. in terms of all those are working for us, we have not as yet put those individuals into the system. >> let me ask, is the information that the army is putting in, i assume it is more comprehensive than what aid is putting in? >> i do not know what fayed is putting in, but the army requires -- what aid is putting in, but the army requires names of the contract in personnel in the data base. >> i think we need to resolve this. clearly, everyone is hiring afghans. this is an unprecedented hiring of locals.

in terms of our country. i do not think we have ever embarked on this kind of massive hiring program in country when we have been in and -- in a contingency. not even close. i think we have got to decide if it is a security problem for the people at aid, then it is a security problem for the people working through the military. the problem is going to be, this whole spot was designed so that we could at least have one central repository, which we never had -- i mean, we did not even have electronic in iraq. it was all paper everywhere. the accountability is very important, -- the accountability, it is very important this data base work. in peter, you know, everybody using it. i would ask -- in a theater, you know, everybody using it. i would ask aid to come back with their concerns as to why

they are not using the data base and what needs to be done to get everyone together and doing the same thing. >> i would note that we are having a separate meeting on going this afternoon on spots here on the hill. >> good timing. >> thank you. it was this afternoon, but has now been delayed, the ngo community, about 40 members, asked to meet with us about their concerns about the system. it was also to be today. we have put that off now to the first week in january. we have considered the possibility of using a classified version for putting individual names in. that is a possibility we can look at. but we still need to work through those issues. we want to fully comply with the law and be a joined to the full u.s. government effort on this, but we have to be mindful of the

groups that we work with. >> if everyone gets in the same room -- it defies common sense that you all would not share the same set of values as to what should go in the data base and what should not. i think we have just got to all agree on what we are going to put in or not in. if we are not putting in something, then there has to be great justification for it. my concern is that not everyone is utilizing it the same way, and until they are, it is of limited value. i am really tired of databases with limited value. there is about every 5 feet you walk in federal government you find a data base that is of little value. i was involved in trying to make sure we had some kind of central data base. i'm determined to stay on it to make sure it is working the way

it should. >> may i make one last comment on this? >> sherer. >> there is an understanding that we are working with dot on spot and that is in draft. we are trying to figure this out. we are also hiring a full-time person just to administer this database from our side and make sure that we are keeping up-to- date on data entry. as we go forward, we will have to -- >> that is terrific. i know how long those m.o.u. draft takes sometimes. we have got a lot of people are there and a lot of contractors on the ground and the ability to do oversight is going to be hampered if we do not get things working the way they should. i am trying to get handled on the evolution of serp. and especially when you realized it is such a large percentage of the monies that are being spent

on projects that cost more than $500,000. general mcchrystal told me in the armed services hearing that there was sign-off that goes as high as patraeus on some of these. is jccia doing the oversight recordings on serp? is it your responsibility that that is where is occurring? >> at $500,000 and above, jccia chondroitin office of executes serp and are paid in accordance with our payment processes within normal base contracts. yes, on those types of transactions -- for our actions below $500,000, it is much as mr. campbell described in terms of an pinnock officer -- a

payment project control officer. >> is the core still involved in the serp? are they doing part of this? >> yes, ma'am. the requiring top -- activity requires the representative in all of these types of actions. wendy serp requirement -- when the serp requirement comes forth, we require these types of services to prevail. >> would it make sense when it is over $500,000 that it would trent lott -- transfer over to aid? wouldn't that make more sense? the idea that we have the military overseeing a massive road-building project as seems weird to me. yes? that is a nod for the record. he is nodding yes. >> we will take whatever job comes to it and try to do our best with it. but if it is more corporate and

the expertise lies in another area, then absolutely. and we're just here to take the mission on when it assigned to us. >> we are going to build up a whole level of expertise within the military on overseeing massive building projects and, to me, that is very duplicative of what we are trying to maintain at aid, right? he is nodding yes for the record. >> yes, ma'am. >> we have worked very closely with the military on serp planning of the district level. when the striper brigade was going into areas of canada are -- the striker brigade was going into areas of canada are, before that, there was close coordination planning with aid officers with civilians at that level to work with the military to figure out what needed to happen. we have held on the revised use

of to serp so we developed appropriate use and we're going in 24 to 48 hours behind the military. there is a close relationship & on a contingency,

whereas when you start talking about to aid it does not feel as important to many members. we do this all the time around here, which was up like pretzels in terms of what our responsibility -- we twist up like pretzels in terms of our responsibility should be. if you are quick to try to continue to continueserp money -- continue to try to get serp in the budget, i want to make sure that is not duplicative. >> we are working to make sure that is a command emergency response requirement. >> building roads, i know it may seem like an emergency in afghanistan, but i do not ever

remember someone saying, we have an emergency, we have got to build 15 miles of highway. >> in the case of road, one of the reasons that serp was see it as a reason for finding it, be employing the use in the region and pulling royalties away from the taliban. >> that makes perfect sense. >> if i could expand a little but, i would say that the reason that serp has expanded is one just because of the large phasing in of projects in afghanistan, but there are about 300 aid officers in afghanistan. there are 60,000 soldiers in afghanistan out in the field. they act as the eyes and years of what is needed art and the population and bring those back up through their command levels

-- the eyes and years of what is needed out in the population and a spike through their kurram levels. what they -- and bring those back to their command levels. less than 20% of the villages are actually connected by a road. serp was originally walking around money, but they need something to walk around on in afghanistan that is why you are seeing so many more road projects. >> that makes sense. >> it should transition to a more of a state aid, but right now it is in the military interest. >> on serp, we believe it is a viable program and is closely integrated with a civilian efforts. i just want to be sure they you understand that the department had requested and received $30 million through congress for a fiscal year 2009 for a quick response fund, which is designed

to be that kind of walking around money and in 2010 it will be used for state department civilians in the field. nothing approaching serp, but trying to get at the same core mission. >> okay, great. let me talk about projects that do not work. we have a $1.4 billion contract to restore afghanistans infrastructure, a joint venture between berber and black and beach, a id. it was supposed to build two power plants, projected to deliver 140 megawatts of electrical power. $240 million have been spent, it is two years later, the two projects to get the world capable of producing 12 mike -- 12 megawatts of power and not

meant -- not one that what has been delivered to a single citizen of afghanistan. worse than the failure to complete the project from the inspector general at usaid found that the afghan government may not even be able to operate to the kabul power plant because it cannot afford to pay for the diesel fuel it needs to run it. the other plant, which is producing zero power, is costing usaid $1 million per month to be guarded. we have got $250 million spent, we have got a little bit of electricity been generated but not delivered, and we have got one plant that has been built and we are spending $1 million per month to guard it with nothing going on. what is the problem here and have the contractors been held accountable? >> security has been a major issue, certainly, for many infrastructure programs.

in the case of the kabul power plant, the latest figures i have is that it is now producing 105 megawatts of power. >> is any of it being delivered? >> yes, it is. >> ok. >> and we are also concerned about the sustainability of this. mind you, there was the intend in addition to the economic needs for kabul, the need to demonstrate for the government of afghanistan as we are into this time of war and they are able to deliver it. there is a short-term political need, but at the same time looking at the sustainability of it. we had negotiated with the government that they would pick up the cost of this, but with the understanding that we are also building transmission lines

coming from the north integrated with central asia to provide power to kabul so the power plant becomes a pack of system rather than the main -- the primary means of power. the other plant i believe you are referring to is the dam that is producing 33 megawatts of power. can are now has power 24 hours. -- qantarkandahar now has power4 hours. the third needs to be installed at the dam, this was a year-and- a-half ago, one of the largest nato operations since world war ii to move the turbine into place. due to security concerns, we are unable to get that turbine

installed as well as to build additional transmission lines. we are taking actions to hold off on further costs to us tuntl we -- working with the military, nato, to secure the region. we would -- with the third person -- turbine we would increase the power to 50 megawatts. but we have already increased the power to kandahar and some of the smaller cities in that region from what we were able to do. >> i think -- i am glad that you have updated information based on our research. i would appreciate getting all of that for the record so we can compare the information that we have it came from the ig -- aog and -- aig and frankly, it did

get blown up in iraq. thank you for the additional facts you have done there. let me finish up. unfortunately, if i allowed myself to, we could be here for another couple of hours. i have that many questions, but there are more hearings and we can cover many subjects through these hearings. let me ask each of you to give yourselves a grade on how well you are coordinating contracting in afghanistan. let's assume there was an "f" in iraq -- and if you think you deserve more than an "f" in iraq then you're grading on a different scale than i am. in the end, it came together, but in terms of how the logcap haven't and all of the construction confusion and the lack of accountability, you know, maybe a d minus.

where you think you are now in terms of how well you are integrating, according to my train and overseeing contractors? mr. campbell's? >> yes, ma'am, i can start. right off, i would say about a "c." i think we have done a good job on the front end, where we have put together some lessons learned. we put out guidance, training for these officers and enlisted soldiers here in the state's been trained before they go over to afghanistan on serp and serp management. i think we have done well on the front end. where we are lacking and concentrating our efforts now is more of the back end. we have systems in afghanistan that track a a contract in and systems that track the financial piece. we have systems that track with the corps of engineers do to track content -- construction

projects. to what we have got to do now on the back end is link them together. that is one of the things that we do in this review group that we do in this review group that we're looking at. transformation agency looking at the entire business process in afghanistan. the rather than going in and inventing a new database or process or system, how do we link together first what is out there to get immediate feedback and immediate results so that we do not have soldiers and civilians doing spreadsheets pulling numbers out of three different databases? on that part, i would say we are still in the d - 4 or "f ." >> i would give us a "c" also but for a different reason. in the awarding of contracts over time, but margins get a bit of because other agencies and

organizations are contracting with the same contractors and the contractors are enjoying be able to present products at a higher price. the organization aspect of this needs to be addressed further. we have requirements review boards, we have priorities, allocation processes in place to evaluate what comes first in the order for addressing the most urgent needs and most widespread needs. but it is an organization at a higher level that gets together and collaborate in theater to determine overall requirements being placed and how to best leverage the contractor community, the vendor spread, if you will, to be sure we are getting the best deal from the government as a whole. -- for the government as a whole. there is an organizational level that is needed to be able to accomplish that. we would participate as a component to that and be able to present our priorities to that. and as well, coordinate with the other agencies to determine how

to get the best contracts in place, perhaps on a wider basis, and agency level basis as opposed to an individual basis. >> mr. north? >> i guess i am a bit more optimistic. i think we have a "b." but i think a lot of that relates to the efforts and progress we have made in the past 10 months. things like the agricultural strategy, the government's strategy clearly defining roles and responsibilities among the respective agencies involved, but also, the clarity of purpose and where we are trying to go in the agricultural sector. this is one example where we have developed -- there are others, certainly with the health sector with the u.s. military and the cdc that have been quite strong. an area that we need to improve on and are working on, certainly, is getting our staff -- more of our staff into

theater so that there are more developments out there to help with the coordination and manage our programs. there are systems that still need work, of course, but we are moving in the right direction. >> mr. feldman? >> showing the secret is to be between state and usaid -- >> you guys get along so well, you're going to give yourselves of the -- a "b"right? >> i would say that it would be a the end we have gone up quite a bit. -- it would be a "d" and we have gone up quite a bit. we have been working quite hard to do all the things that we have uncovered in the course of our review and that we have tried to put in place to make sure that we were the best possible start of taxpayer money. i think that we're going in the

right direction with the coronation of civilian agencies with the military partners with the international committee, with the civilian search. -- surge. but yes, this is one to take a while to do and there will be a lot more to be done and we will have to continue to be very vigilant and rose in implementing this. there's always room to do better. -- and rigorous in implementing this. there is always room to do better. >> mr. persons? >> i would say we have learned a lot of lessons out of iraq. certainly, with the establishment of the army contract in command and been part of bnc with logcap there is a lot of good coordination going on there. what we have been allowed to do from enterprise approach, where we duplicating efforts and where can we be more effective in

these types of kondracke instruments -- contracting instruments. even though we have a established some of these joint logistics and support board where we are trying to bring the different parties together to look at the procurement requirements in afghanistan, you know, those are more of a collaboration and cooperation by the parties to come to those boards and a look at it. we do have coalition partners here and one of our concerns is that we understand that nato is doing quite a bit of contracting in afghanistan as well for some of their forces. i know that general nichols is going to put that as one of her priorities. there's a lot of room for improvement. >> if we are getting integration and coordination between nato and our efforts, then i will give all of you an "a" because that means we have got our horicon -- our house in order

and i still think we have a ways to go. as time goes on, we will see if the rates hold up. i think it is maybe a little grating on a curve, mr. feldman, to go from a "d" po a "b" in 10 months. this is a very large organization that is neither new bolt or flexible. when it is nimble and flexible, it generally is a bad contract because it happened to kuwait and nobody was paying attention to what was in it and whether -- because of nobody was paying attention to what was in it and it happened too quickly. i think that -- i want to make sure that i understand what every silo is in terms of contract in money. -- contract in moneing money.

now that i finally logcap finally -- i finally figured out logcap, use bring anyone with me. if you will all give us within your siloi of yourng money and -- what is in your silo with contracting and where it is, i believe we can get on the same page. we have a huge obligation to try to get this right. if you will get that to me, that will be great and we will begin to drill down in those various places and make sure that the on the ground oversight -- and the other thing that we would like from you is that if you believe you have enough oversight personnel in place in theater, and if not, what you need to get the -- enough people in

oversight in theater. i will say this, and i do not mean to embarrass her or mr. north or mr. feldman, but the woman on the front row that keeps handing you notes, i think i want to have lunch with her. >> [laughter] i think she knows -- >> i think she knows quite a lot. every question i asked -- ok, all of you. >> she is an aid officer on mr. hulbert's staff. >> there you go. there is that integration thank you all very much. i appreciate your time. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009]

witnesses. this is a hearing on piracy of live sports broadcasting over the internet. the purpose of the hearing is to

examine how the piracy of live sporting events over the internet impacts sports leagues, consumers, broadcasters and the unique challenges copyright owners face in attempting to enforce their rights on the web page. more and more of our media, the music, the tv shows and sports is moving to the internet. piracy has increased, has increasingly injured artists and intellectual property owners as individual consumers have access to faster, more powerful internet connections. @ @ @ @ @

>> in the same way that other companies have brought online images, news and video clips into the mainstream. in a time of traditional media consolidation, justin.tv is providing an important alternative platform for the distribution of live video content. in addition to providing every day people with access to large audience, we have worked with a wide variety of content owners, advertisers and entertainers to help them increase awareness of their content and services. in 2009 alone, comcast and g4 tv utilized justin.tv for live inch of e3, the largest video game conference in america.

microsoft produced a 10-episode show attracting more customers and jonas brothers broadcast live which went to gross $5 million worldwide. we meet the needs from everyone to individuals to large corporations. because we provide content, it's impossible for scrap to manually monitor its user's broadcast. the dmc recognizes its impossibilitity. we comply which responding to take down noise and terminating accounts of repeat offenders expeditiously. all four sports leagues user generated content and rely on the dcma to protect themselves from the liability of the content uploaded by their customers. we work with copy wright holders

in our effort to ensure unauthorized content does not appear on the site. one example of this effort is our copyright protection system. an online tool that allows copyright owners to instantly remove their content off the site and another step to prevent live filtering through which a copyright owner's content is streaming on justin.tv in real time and when there's a match the content is removed. this system was deployed on november 15th and immediately began removing fox's static content from the site. on sunday, we tested the system with nbc and the nfl for their sunday night football game. the live filter was successful in removing the majority of infringing channels automatically. at this point, the path to full deployment is clear. among the hundreds of organizations that take advantage of one or more of the solutions referenced above, are the nfl, nba, mlb, ufc, espn,

nbc, fox, cbs, abc, and comcast. while providing solutions that go above and beyond the requirements of the dcma has not yet become standard in the live video industry. we believe strongly in the value providing copy wright owners with the resources to protect their rights and invested time and money in developing such resources. we are sensitive to the concerns of the professional sports industry and have entered a memorandum of understanding with fox and a major american sports league that clearly lays out how we can work together to combat these issues. we are actively negotiating similar agreements with the nfl, mlb, nbc, and sony with the goal of finalizing those agreements before the new year. our goal is to democratize the power of live video. and the misuse of our technology slows our progress towards that goal. we trust that this committee and congress will recognize and protect the legitimate interests of technology companies that provides citizens with the tools to irshah their voices with the world. while also considering the

concerns of copyright owners. we are available to assist the community as we explore these issues and happy to answer any questions. >> thank you, mr. seibel. edwin m. durso heads espn. and developed the magazine as well. previously he served in a number of leadership roles in the office of the commissioner of major league baseball. and he's a graduate with honors of harvard university. i note duly. and we're glad to have you here. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, ranking member smith, other members of the committee, i would like to begin by commending you for holding this hearing. and in particular, for your focus on emerging forms of internet piracy. in today's economy we cannot

afford to let the theft of u.s. intellectual property undermine the vitality of what should be among our most promising, creative and economic assets. each year espn invests billions of dollars to produce tens of thousands of hours of high quality sports programming for distribution by a television and a agreeing array of new media platforms. we're here today because sports is not immune from privacy. we see this on the increasing number of internet sites that are the focus of this hearing. it allows the real time threat of real time sports programming uploaded by the site operators or by the users of these sites. in the interest of time let me highlight just a few points from my written testimony. first, it is important to recognize that this is not a problem limited to live sports or even sports in general. these same sites also make available real time streaming of many other types of television and new media program. this is an issue that affects the entire global media sector.

second, this problem is fairly na-september and heavily international in scope and impact. in many cases, these streaming sites set up overseas particularly in asia where these sites can take advantage of massive broadband capacity, legal uncertainty, and in many instances lacks enforcement. third, to give you a sense of espn's experience with this, we regularly see espn's linear cable networks including espn, espn2 and others made available for streaming real time without authorization. in addition the programming we make available through our new media offerings is also regularly retransmitted on these sites. espn has been a pioneer in expanding legitimate access to live sporting events through broadband services. espn360.com is our signature broadband sports network providing access to more than 3500 live domestic and international sporting events each year. through our investment in technology in this programming,

these events are now available via espn360.com to over 60 million households through 110 affiliated internet service providers. we also provide this programming to u.s. college students and all u.s.-based military personnel via campus and military broadband networks. these efforts have yielded tremendous benefits for consumers. many of the households served by espn360.com would not have legitimate to these events but for our investment. yet, many of these same events appear routinely without authorization on internet streaming sites. it is not hard to see how the widespread unauthorized and uncompensated availability of the content that we paid to produce to distribute would undermine our incentive to invest in and provide this high quality content whether through innovative broadband offerings or through more traditional linear networks. fourth and finally, while the challenges we see are new and the process of devising

solutions is still ongoing we could learn something from what we experienced when user-generated content sites first came online. there like here we saw new media online distribution platforms with interesting possibilities to promote legitimate user generated activity but we also saw those possibilities completely overrun by privacy. as described in my written testimony, espn's parent the walt disney company was one of several that led the way to develop a set of premiums for user generated content services. under these principles, participating services and content providers agreed on a set of objectives that included the elimination of infringement on ugc services and the encouragement of uploads of wholly original and authorized user generated content. while we consider whether the measures embodied ieied princip live streaming sites, those

sites that claim their commitment to legitimate environment, should embrace a limited infringement on their sites as has been done on the ugc sites, that objective should be proceed by implementing those mechanisms that are reasonable and effective to that end. that commitment is important not only to protect the rights of creators and legitimate distributors of creative content but is also key to driving the development of a robust, trusted and content-rich legitimate streaming environment. mr. chairman, i want to thank you for your attention to this issue and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you, sir. we now conclude with christopher yoo, university of pennsylvania professor of law. numbers of books and articles have flowed from his pen.

he's clerked for justice anthony kennedy and appellate judge arthur raymond randolph and has taught at vanderbilt university law school and as usual he's a harvard university law graduate. we welcome you today, sir. >> thank you, chairman conyers, ranking member smith, members of the committee, i'm grateful to testify on the subject of privacy of live sports broadcasting. to date most of the attention has been focused on unauthorized coping of prerecorded television. today's hearing is the unique challenges of privacy of live television. a wide range of companies offer devices that take advantages is what is known as the analog hole to enable end user does to copy high definition television programming directly to personal computers. thedevices typically connect to

the component video ports on cable and set-top boxes which are the trio of green, blue jacks on the back of a wide range of boxes. because they comport data in a analog format they lack of more sophisticated copy protection of ports employing digital formats. once live television programming has been captured and stored on a computer, the person wishing to share the unauthorized copy must find a way to distribute it. one means of doing so is streaming video in which the copier establishes an internet connection with interested viewers and delivers the programming through a continuous flow of data. those making unauthorized copies of live television programming have increasingly used peer-to-peer systems to in a peer-to-peer system the content is saved in a file that is sent to and stored by multiple end users throughout the network. those wishing to view the program can then connect to any of the locations where the file has been saved.

because peer-to-peer systems require that programs be recorded then stored then accessed, they have historically imposed delays that render unsuitable for distributing live television programming. more recently, peer-to-peer systems have begun saving live programming in short segments of approximately 10 seconds. this has enabled those making unauthorized copies to distribute the content without having to wait until the end of the program. it has also enabled viewers to view those programs on a near live basis simply by accessing a series of small files instead of one large one. preventing the dissemination of unauthorized copies of video content poses more difficult challenges for live television than for prerecorded television. one of the most effective means of deterring privacy is fingerprinting which takes advantage of the fact that every segment of a television program exhibits a characteristic pattern. if these patterns are stored in

a database, website owners and network providers can analyze the programs they carry to determine whether they consist of copyrighted content. the problem is that acertaining and disseminating these fingerprints require a certain amount of time. the delay inherent in fingerprint-based solutions limits their effectiveness when live video programming is involved. moreover, those seeking to distributed pirated video content is employing a wide variety of detection which prompted owners to respond with a number of counter-strategies. the result is an endless cat and mouse game in which both sides spent significant resources in an attempt to jump ahead of one another. technical measures to prevent privacy can be summpplemented o measures. it's difficult and costly to target private individuals. the ones who are actually making the copies. consequently, legal responses

generally focus on commercial actors that facilitate illegal privacy such as those firms that manufacture the devices that make the actual copies and the websites that host unauthorized copies or provide information about where to find such content. for example, manufacturers of devices that evade copy protection may be subject to liability under the digital millennium copyright act. in addition, websites that service focal points for information about where to find unauthorized copies may be subject to vicarious liability or copyright infringement for their role. recently france and the u.k. have adopted three strikes policies that mandate that network providers cut off subscribers. who repeatedly violate the copyright laws. lastly, declines in the cost of filtering technologies have led some jurisdictions to consider requiring websites and network providers to filter the content they carry to determine whether it infringes the copyright law.

it's complicated by the fact that any solution will inevitably involve a wide variety of stakeholders including content owners, device manufacturers, network providers, websites and software firms. the problem is that those who would benefit from implementing solutions to curb privacy are different from those who would bear the cost. the multifaceted problem to find common ground. this hearing represents an important first in addressing the significant problems posed by the privacy of live sports broadcasting. i appreciate the opportunity to assist the committee in its exploration of these issues and will be happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> thank you, professor. we welcome adam schiff to this hearing, howard koble, maxine water and bill delahunt came through but he didn't stay. he'll come back out.

now, i thank all of you. the two questions occur, what are some possible legal remedies? and how good are these techniques that we've heard from both seibel and you about fingerprinting and cutting off offending repeat subscribers as they do in britain and france? but nobody suggested any legal remedies. and that's why we may have to hold other hearings. so i'm just jumping -- i'm fast forwarding to what we're doing

after this great hearing today. and everybody is alerted and they know a little something about it. but where do we go from here? mr. medical medical? -- mellis? >> chairman conyers, you asked the most important question right off the bat. we don't there's a silver bullet to stop this problem. we would agree with professor yoo that it's a very complicated one. we do believe that international cooperation needs to be improved. that practices and standards in other countries where we have seen the weight of the gravity of the problem occurring needs to be brought up to ours. we know this privacy in the united states is copyright infringement but in other

countries in china the reasons that mr. durso explained, the situation is unclear and enforcement is lax. so one essential part of an enduring solution is, we think, going to need to include improved cooperation with our trading partners and, of course, the government and the agencies in the united states government are involved in intellectual property rights protection and enforcement internationally in many ways. i think it would be important to prioritize this issue among all of the important and hard work that they're doing. and then second i would say, if we can bring the u.s. sites and services up to best practices, then we have a model. that we can show, let's say the chinese government or other governments and say, this is how it can work. this is how on the one hand these sites and services can do the legitimate things that they

offer. and at the same time protect copyrighted works. >> well, thank you very much. after watching our president, global solutions seemed pretty hard to come by these days. does the u.n. have a role in this? i mean, we have very creative lawyers in back of me here that have all these kinds of ideas. >> i think there is a role in the realm of international copyright and related treaties in general. and there are a number of them that establish minimum standards in foreign countries and national treatment and the world intellectual property organization of the united nations is an important player in all of that.

and so that is an area that i agree should be pursued. but it will needles the follow-through of having our signatories to those treaties and the treaties are already clear in our view that this type of privacy that they need to enforce their legal obligations. >> wait until ambassador susan rice hears about this at the u.n. mr. fertitta? >> yes, mr. chairman. >> what do you think? >> i think that, you know -- i look at this -- i'm not an expert in technology. i'm not an expert in law. i'm an entrepreneur that started a business that -- bought a business that was nearly bankrupt, invested a tremendous amount of money and has grown it

into what is now an international media company where we distribute our product to over 170 countries around the globe and to over 4 to 500 million homes worldwide. >> i'm proud but that's not why we brought you here today. >> why i'm looking at this from our perspective is the current -- i know that the dcma was put in place but i'm not sure that contemplated live streaming events. certainly when somebody puts up a song that is created and there's this issue of notice and takedown and what is the amount of time that it should take to take that down, the amount of damage, if it's within 24 or 48 hours is significantly different than it is to one of our events, which is a live pay-per-view. and the value of our product goes down significantly. it's very perishable every minute that goes by. >> okay.

what did you want to add to your contribution, mr. seibel? you first brought up fingerprinting. >> yeah, i don't believe i'm qualified to discuss the international remedies for these solutions. >> well, turn your mic on. >> we're on. i don't believe i'm qualified to discuss the international solutions or the legal solutions. i do agree with mr. mellis that we are very interested in creating a standard in the united states for how sites that allow individuals to create and share live video can also work with copyright holders to protect their rights. and so we believe that through the copyright system and through the new filtering system and those are two affirmative steps that we believe can certainly

address this concern in the united states in terms of nationally or legal-based solutions. unfortunately, i don't have much to contribute on that front. >> have you considered law school? no. you've been very helpful. you introduced the whole topic of fingerprinting. mr. durso? >> yes, mr. chairman, thank you. i do want to echo what's been said before. we are entrepreneurs. we need the power of persuasion like this committee to keep the pressure on individuals like mr. seibel to do the right thing. if you look what's happening there, you can't traverse down their index page and see stream after stream after stream of wrestling and high quality products and say there's something wrong here and it ought to be addressed. we're doing, you know, what we can but professor, you obviously aptly describe how difficult a process that is.

and a real world example we made a decision eight years ago to launch -- i said our broadband service, espn360.com. it's a tremendous service. a great application to support the growth and development of broadband. today it has 3500 events on a a year. it's a terrific product. we had a business model where the isps paid a fee and they distributed it and today as i said more in the 50 million homes and providing a lot more product to a lot more people. now, if it were today and i was contemplating launching that service, i might look around and say, this is crazy. there's not an environment in which this can take hold. we started seven years ago and invested, you know, tens of millions of dollars to try to produce something at a time when the service like justin.tv wasn't even thought about by anybody and today it exists. it's neatly packaged and well produced and provides a significant as part of the landscape of what people like us will want to do in terms of

deciding to invest. >> tell me how -- tell me how espn that you mentioned operates and is unique from other websites and why you chose not to offer it as a subscription to broadband-connected consumers? >> certainly. we've addressed any new platform distribution opportunity that's come along in our 30 years of existence. we are platform agnostic and we look to try to figure out ways to put the espn brand on commerce where we think there can be a return. broadband is no different so we've looked at that in a number of different ways. espn360.com is one such application works well. we decided that among a number of approaches we would approach internet service providers directly and say if we can produce a product that has the

espn brand on it would it be helpful and the answer we got was yes. we were happy to participate on their part and at the same time the distribution of the -- the enhanced distribution of broadband throughout our country. now, an analogy might be back in the early '90s, espn was among the very first to embrace and distribute a combat hd programming when it was nascent. i think we did a lot to support the growth of hd and the whole digital transition as hd led up to that. so that's a similar circumstance. we look to build successful products that, you know, can work in an environment but we're making investments and we're working with our distributors, you know, to provide something for them that we think benefits consumers. the fact that it's available to 50 million homes today, 70% of the broadband universe we think is a significant indicator that we think that's a significant effort. >> so you didn't think it was an

economically wise investment? >> no we -- >> why you didn't offer it as a subscription product. you didn't think it was available? >> well, we saw an opportunity, mr. chairman, to get on board a train that we thought was leaving and would do very well, which is called broadband. that was not the business that we're in. we're not a broadband -- you know, we're not a platform. we're not -- we are a content company. we said how can we participate in this in a meaningful way to offer something to broadband distributors that would help their business. we have other products available in other areas so we're not just putting all of our eggs in this one basket. espn.com is available on the open internet. it has free product on it in terms of videos and clips. we offer a product called espn insider which is an adjunct to espn.com. and along with the walt disney company are participating in a

number of approaches here, mr. chairman. we thought this was a good opportunity and the proof is in the pudding and it has worked well. >> professor, you made a number of good suggestions. what about the legal basis. these are technical. how do we sue these guys? >> i have a number of very -- >> how do we prosecute these guys? and everybody agrees what we're complaining about is illegal; right? so there ought to be a law. what is it you think we do here? >> i have some concrete suggestions of ways the law might be changed and what -- changes in the law that might contribute to curbing illegal privacy. the digital millennium copyright act was really envisioned -- content owners sending a website address to a website and forcing them to take it down.

and that's created part of the cat and mouse game. what they do is they'll take it down and it'll immediately get reposted. fingerprinting we can change the notice of takedown means. you give the website a fingerprint instead of a website address and ask them to screen everything that contains the fingerprint and that represents the notice. a more basic problem is the dcma outbreaks after the fact. after the content has been posted and requested to be taken down. the dcma notice requirement could be changed particularly for live programming when you know at what time it will be broadcast. give them advanced notice of when that programming will be provided and ask them to take appropriate measures in the absence of a specific web address by broadening our notion of what it means not a web address but when live content is likely to be coming out and to make that a basis for potential liability for any one facilitating that content under the dcma.

another ambiguity is contributy infringement by the supreme court. this case really instead of addressing one of these substantial questions about how substantial does the infringement have to be before it triggers contributory infringement, the supreme court left that issue unresolved and it was decided on different grounds. interestingly the two concurrences split down the middle about how substantial the noninfringing uses has to be before it substitutes contributory infringement. it's a perfect area where there's an ambiguity in the law where congress can step in and provide a much-needed clarity about ways -- in ways that would make it easier to curb the kind of illegal privacy we're talking about here today. lastly, as mr. durso pointed out, industry got together for universal-generated content and found solutions for prerecorded content in ways that didn't

involve so much direct legal enforcement. and suggest a different role that congress might play, which is holding hearings like the one we're having today to encourage players to come to the table. to find the ways -- to find common ground because everyone has to recognize nobody wins unless the content is provided in ways that are protected and way it is that people can generate revenue. everyone has to -- that has to be aligned -- no one can make money unless the programs are provided and provided in a way that generate rvb. -- revenue. and like the one we're having today is an important part of the process. >> i thank all of you. you've been very helpful in getting us started. remember, this is only the first hearing. so we got a ways to go. i'm pleased to recognize bob goodlatte, a senior member of this committee from virginia. >> well, mr. chairman, thank you very much. and thank you for holding this hearing. this is the first hearing that's

been held on the dcma. i think in quite some time. i can remember very well going back, i think, more than 10 years ago when we wrote that legislation. i was asked by then-chairman hyde to sit in a room with representatives of the content industry, the internet service provider industry, the universities and other users of internet content and try to manage a negotiation of notice and takedown issue. and we came up with something we thought was very good at the time. in fact, it was well received by folks on every side of this issue. but it requires that isps expeditiously remove materials. and i suppose the meaning of the word "expeditiously" has got to change or the dcma has got to change. and i don't know how many people

here agree with professor yoo that we may have to re-open the dcma to enact some of the suggestions that he's made, which are certainly worthy suggestions. but i'd like to ask mr. seibel, since his product is the focus -- as i understand it, you're like the youtube of live streaming online. i know that you have a lot of experience with this notice and takedown issue. what is the typical amount of time that an internet service provider takes to remove infringing content once a notice of infringement is received. how fast is it possible to take down infringing materials once the notice is received? >> sort of justin.tv's system for implementing dcma takedowns -- we refer to that as the copyright protection system. and essentially it transfers the typical takedown email notice which is in the form of a letter into an online form.

as a result, our ability to remove content once we've been noticed is extremely nast because we've been able to push this from the kind of letter and email world into an online form, as soon as we're notified through the copyright protection system, our system can then go about removing that content. >> i would guess that mr. mellis and mr. fertitta and mr. durso would say that in the environment of live streaming particularly where it's broken down into 10-second increments -- if they're going to protect their copyrighted material they've got to get a notice to somebody really fast and they've got to respond virtually immediately, which is very different than what i think we sat around and talked about 10 years ago. is that a feasible environment to operate in? can they -- i guess they can see

coming the fact that they're going to have these programs on the air. and they can then be on the lookout. but i don't know that they can be on the lookout for thousands of different people who might take the opportunity to stream and to use your service to stream. you may have the capability of very quickly taking them all down. but what has been your experience with this thus far? >> so the reason why we have developed both the copyright protection system and the live filtering system is to address the specific issue that you bring up. essentially what we want to provide is both a system whereby people can look at the site, identify their content and have it removed immediately. but also a system by which people can provide us with the fingerprint and we will use our live fingerprinting partner to automatically search out and remove this content from the site. so in our efforts to work with copyright holders we're really trying to encompass both issues,

both how can we make sure that once content is identified it's removed extremely quickly and also how can we confront the issue of identifying the content in a more automated fashion. >> there's another side of this issue and that is the user of your service or other internet sites or people who may have a went on which they're placing some material that may or may not be copyrighted. and i've received complaints about individuals who have complained that they're -- their content has been taken down inappropriately. are you able to judge quickly enough and accurately enough that the content you are taking down is indeed copyrighted material? that's entitled to protection under the dcma. >> our understanding once we receive a takedown notice regardless of its validity, we

are required to act upon that takedown notice. and in addition, we are required to offer to the user whose content has been taken down the ability to counter that takedown. our experience, however, copyright owners have been extremely good on justin.tv in identifying their content as opposed to -- >> not a lot of mistakes in other words is what you're saying? >> in other experienced -- google alleged 57% of the takedown noise it has received under the dcma in the united states were by businesses targeting competitors which is a certainly legitimate thing to do but they also allege that 37% of the noise -- notices were not current to the complaint. mr. durso, mr. fertitta, and mr. mellis, if you want to join,

if these numbers are true, does the fact that 37% of the notices are in error alarm you considering the fact that the content must be expeditiously removed and will not be available online for at least 10 to 14 days after it is taken down? that's the complaint that we're getting from some consumers and some users of various internet websites that have been subject of notice of take down and then have a hard time getting back up. mr. durso, do you want to respond to that? >> i'm not personally respond of anything where i could validate those statistics relative to percentage of inappropriate or appropriate takedown notices. i can share with you i think others in the panel have seen the frustration and difficulty of operating within the current system especially on a live sports environment. >> it's very fast, isn't it >> it's very quick. >> decisions have -- >> it's also frustration in this great that anyone who goes on to

justin.tv or a similar service and looks through their index page where they can go look through will be all confused whether or not sports center which i was watching this morning is the sports center from naples. -- espn. it is. it's a difficult time for us in this respect. and what we're really looking for are companies like justin.tv and others to make a firm commitment to say this is wrong and we will work tirelessly to fix this for you. because someone is indexing those pages. somebody is looking in the notion that there's so much out there that we can't figure out what's on, you know, sort of belies the notion that it's nicely arranged and available and subject mattered and indexed and available. you know, here's how we'll find to help you looking for. somebody has got to be doing that. >> i agree. that's a major onus that mr. seibel and others in the

same business face or there's going to be some kind of a major change in the law that will make this wonderful availability more difficult. mr. fertitta, mr. mellis, any comments? >> yes, i do. thank you. relative to what you were talking about with new zealand, i don't know -- >> well, they're talking about -- this was something they presented to new zealand but they were talking about the united states. >> right. i guess the question is archived or live content? >> i don't know the answer to that. it's a very good question. >> it's very as we mentioned before because it is live streaming and while a lot of these websites are saying they are doing things to try to prevent this, one of the things that bothers us is that right on their own websites, they provide exact detail on how to upload content from your television.÷ue and content coming from the television -- my guess would be 99% of it would be copyrighted materials.fñ not only are they facilitating this, they are in some ways encouraging it, and that's part

of the problem we have and that's why when our pay-per-view starts, you have 271 streams. >> mr. fertitta, would you put that document in the record? will you make it available to the committee for that purpose? and i'd ask unanimous consent that it be made part of the record. >> without objection. >> and mr. chairman, if i might have forbearance to ask, i know my time has expired to ask professor yoo you've heard this discussion of notice of takedown, what can can done to make sure that content owners are doing their due diligence to make sure the claims they allege are valid? we've heard from you, some other ideas which i think are -- have merit in terms of making their ability to protect their content stronger and more immediate, which is effectively the environment they're operating in with this type of -- what can we do to make sure that people don't use this in an abusive way? i can understand why a competitor would have many reasons to ask another competitor to take something down. that may be copyrighted material but they also might have an incentive to try to disrupt the

availability of something on the internet that they shouldn't be asking to be taken down. they don't seem to be facing any consequence for that right now. what can we do to change that?s >> clearly the congress could impose some consequences. unlike producers of people who are pirating large content, large content providers are easy to identify, easy to find, they're easy to bring to this committee and testify. so i would not want to put on content owners the burden of being perfectly correct all the time. on the other hand, what you're talking about is repeat offender status, abusive processes on a repetitive basis and i could see congress enacting a law that if any content owner on a persistent basis pursued a course of action really designed to pull down contact that they, a, didn't own or try to use that in an anticompetitive matter you could make that a basis for liability of the content owner under the dcma. you could make them square under

penalty of perjury that they hold a valid copyright in the content they're asking to be tavern down. -- taken down. there's a number of steps this congress could do to make that -- to give that more teeth because any system is subject to abuse on any side. and what we're likely to see is -- this is in a new area. it's unsurprising that after 10 years in something that's changing as vast as technologically and in revising the laws, this should not be the last time this committee will have to consider issues like this. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. >> maxine waters, chair of a subcommittee and financial services senior member of the judiciary committee. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i have been listening with great interest since i entered the room. but i must share with you that my initial motivation for coming here was not so much to learn

about the piracy but if i could find another way to look at the antitrust exemption. wfed on some efforts that we have all been puttingyj÷ forth deal with some -- some of the problems of some of the older players of the nfl.e! but i must admit since i've been here, i've listened. i'm curious now abouw'm what i'm hearing. let me address a question to mr. mellis. could you show us exactly how people are stealing these live major league baseball >> congresswoman, i'd be glad to try to explain that. this is one way that we think it's happening. there are probably other ways.

the way that i'm going to describe involves the coaxial cable in your house. this would be the end coming in from -- excuse me, this would be from your set-top box to your what you would do is you would unscrew the end from your television set and then you would screw this tv stick into that end here. and on the other end of this stick satisfy usb connecter, universal serial bus and there's a connecter for that the same way you could put in a flash memory stick and with drivers that would come with this device, the one we bought cost $70, you can more or less manipulate your personal computer as if it were your television. and you could watch your tv programming, change channels on your computer.

and the next step is using a peer to peer service download, let's say from one of the services in china that hasçfñ plagued us, or through the take those signals, which have already been converted and are being read by the computer through this device and route them -- upload them to the public internet for worldwide viewing. >> mr. mellis, the device that you just showed us that you could put on the cable and connect to your computer is a device that is legally sold in some retail outlets somewhere? >> yes. i believe these devices are widely available. and it's not the only device that could be used to do this. there's a card that you could stick into the back of your personal computer which would

receive the coaxial cable into the back that has this nub on it. and the technology of the card achieves the same function and the same purposes of it. >> what other use would these devices have other than the piracy actions that you just described? >> i don't know much about these devices except about how they're used with respect to the piracy of our game telecasts, unfortunately. >> where are they sold? >> oh, they're widely available. this can be bought online at amazon. we bought this one at a staples store. >> so you don't know whether these devices could be used for legitimate use? >> i think they could be. what i mean to say is i'm not familiar with how they are, in fact, used by people. but they could be used to watch television programming on your

personal computer. then there is the next step whereby downloading the peer-to-peer service client from a chinese service, let's say, or following the instructions from a service like justin, that you would then take that converted signal -- someone could, upload it to the public internet for worldwide viewing. >> i see. well, mr. chairman, if i may, it sounds as if we have of a complicated issue before us that must be given an awful lot of thought. i know that you will lead this committee and trying to make sure that we correct the problems of piracy, but as we do that, i'm also wanting to keep you focused on the nfl and the

fact that it has the power to negotiate with all of these entities and avoid the antitrust laws of this country and see, when we solve the piracy problem we can also take away that exemption. >> no, i want you to rest assured that hank johnson's committee is going to hold hearings, i think, in january on this antitrust exemption and the nba problem. with that make you more comfortable? >> as long as we stay focused on that antitrust exemption, i'm happy. >> okay. that's an easy assignment. thank you very much, maxine waters. we turn now to turn to senator

coble and ask him to question our witnesses. >> thank you, mr. chairman and welcome to the panelists who appear before us today. gentlemen, i believe, that streaming broadcast is a global problem and i think robust and effective american copyright laws are essential to content owners who work to protect their works from being infringed by individuals by other countries and i think probably we all concur with that, do we not? i'm glad to hear that. mr. durso, i was going to ask you about the decision not to offer as a subscription product to broadband consumers and i think you and the chairman pretty well covered that. let me ask you some have questioned the espn360.com mode

and it's to drive up prices and is that it is leveled? >> i don't believe it is, congressman. we've heard that complaint before. two things to point out on that, if i may. one, you know, we watch the marketplace pretty carefully, you know, to see the impact of our -- you know, our business in it and the retail world. we have not seen any instance where we can identify where there was any direct correlation between our sale of this product and the wholesale marketplace and the impact of the retail pricing of the isps. that's their decision to make. we don't have anything to say about that. our only requirement is that if you do the deal with us, you must provide the service to everybody on your system. so we think, you know, we're helping consumers in that regard. secondly we looked at it from an economic standpoint. we got noted washington, d.c., economists to take a look at this issue to see, you know, how one would analyze it from an economic standpoint. he put together a very short

paper, which i'm happy to introduce in the record. his conclusion was this. it's very expensive to build a broadband platform and, you know, the cost of getting that first subscriber is very high. but if you can, you know, make your service popular, as you add more and more people to the service, the average cost of providing the service to each subscriber comes down. >> i gotcha. >> and in that circumstance you're putting downward pressure on retail pricing. we'll be happy to submit that for your reviews. >> thank you, sir. professor, your testimony you referred to several technologies that may be employed to prevent infringement through rebroadcasting. which of these technologies in your opinion is the most realistic option for entities such as ufc or professional sports leagues? >> when you see how piracy and other problems have been addressed in the internet and other context, it's very rare to see one single strategy that is

the solution to everything. you generally see a layer of strategies. in this case, you can see the use of fingerprinting to screen out content in advance. perhaps asking the content provider instead of sending it out on a live basis do it on a near live basis delayed by a few seconds to allow that technology to work. you may see some form of in addition to automated screening some sort of manual screening obligation on the part of the websites and you may see after the fact old-fashioned lawsuits which cannot prevent it up front but it will be -- have a role in deterring repeat offenses and identifying those people and give them some deterrence. if you rely on one solution, the minute that one is cracked, you have fog. -- nothing. you're much better than having an eggshell -- you're much better having a series of layers of protection that is more

robust. >> i thank you all for being with us. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. hank johnson, subcommittee chair, former magistrate is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and for some reason this microphone goes limp all the time. maybe we can -- maybe with some viagra we can -- >> i hope nobody chooses to take your words down, mr. johnson. [laughter] >> what i'd like to ask, mr. seibel -- by the way, i'm happy to learn that your firm supports getting a handle on this kind of copyright infringement.

but i got to ask you, do you think it's morally right for your firm to continue to engage in the use of copyrighted material without the owner's consent? from a moral standpoint? i'd like for you to answer that. is it right? is it fair? >> i think that when we -- when we look at this issue, our understanding and kind of as we look at our entire business, it's not the point nor the goal of justin.tv to distribute copy written kent. -- content. when you look atfñ> where justiv began we started broadcasting one person's life online.

that was our cofounder. and the viewers of that original broadcast were so excited by the potential of live video online that they, too, wanted to create their own live content. they didn't want to broadcast their entire lives but they wanted to share live video of interesting events. >> now, that is different from -- there's no need for consent and payment for the use of that material that's voluntarily put on the web but i'm speaking of the -- this precise of that issue. if you could speak to that because i don't have a lot of time. >> sure. when designing a site for anyone to create and share live video, unfortunately, as in any user-generated site, some group

of people are going to do that in a way that distributes unauthorized content. and so i want to be clear that the goals of justin.tv is not to support that. i also want to be clear that the business model of justin.tv is not based around supporting that. continued broadcasts of unauthorized content is not a good base on which to start a business or to run a business in the long term. and so when you look at where we've invested our time and energy on this front, it took a significant amount of time and energy to build out the copyright protection system and the live fingerprinting system and the goals of those systems are completely removed copy written content from the site. >> you're kind of going far afield of my question. >> okay. i will ask also how does justin.tv make its money? >> so justin.tv -- when we look

at our business model, it is really threefold. the first aspect is an advertising-supported model. the second aspect is going to partners who want to distribute live content on our platform and charging in a metered format and the third aspect is going to partners who have premium content that they believe they can charge a pay-per-view[aç or subscription fee for and for that transaction and generated revenue from that reaction. when you look at our business model, justin.tv is a significantly more robust and viable company as it's able to work with copyright holders as opposed to the opposite. that's why we invested all of this time and energy in these potential solutions in the!n-[ run -- i'm sorry. go ahead. >> if you could filibuster for the remaining 1 minute or so of my time.

and i'm just having fun with you. no disrespect. what's the difference between which was kind of -- i don't want to say -- yeah, forced to change its -- it was forced to change methods of distribution of copyrighted music without -- that they were doing it without the consent or payment of royalties or anything like that? how does -- can somebody shed light on the napster case> so i'm not a legal expert in terms of the legal part of the napster case, but from a product perspective, napster was

designed and built to distribute music content on the web. essentially, a parcel of their product was the distribution of copy written content. in addition napster avoided working with content owners to help reduce or eliminate the copy written content that was distributed by that company. ..

>> at some point it can be, libel as a contributory infringer. the supreme court did not clarify exactly where that line is. it ambiguous and in the sony case from 1984, the grafner case had a chance to address this. it chose not to and in fact, of the five justices who opined on the proper standard, they split more or less right down the middle. so we are -- the business community is left with a great deal of equal ambiguity about the precise to which providers like justin.tv who are not actively on interest that may nonetheless be subject to liability. >> anyone else? >> yes, i have a comment. not an expert on the grafner case. in the early days of music

industry it wasn't necessarily embracing technology to wear what the consumer wanted to do. there wasn't a system put in place. i think the difference here is we all sit up here on this panel. we are embracing technology. we want to be able to give consumers are product on any format that they want, whether they watch it on satellite, cable, broadband, on their telephone. we offer those products all the way down the line. and i think that maybe part of the difference as far as how that evolves. and we're in a situation now where we offer it on at least various ways to watch it, yet it can be uploaded onto the internet and watched by literally hundreds of thousands of people for free without having to pay for the copyright. >> anyone else? thank you, mr. chairman, for allowing me some additional time for the answers to the

questions. thank you. >> you're more than welcome. ranking member from florida, tom rooney? >> thank you, mr. chairman as a freshman, that sounds pretty good. mr. johnson post of the questions i wanted to ask, and it's usually what happens when you're low man on the totem pole at. >> was that the viagra issue also? >> yes, sir. >> i warned you about that, mr. johnson. >> that's my sign to talk quickly here. i really appreciate your testimony. i think that it's incumbent upon us, especially my predisposition is to protect the u.s. tradition of the value of property rights. and certainly, i understand what you're saying about the courts leaving it open to congress to fill in the gaps here. and obviously, mr. chairman, i think that's our duty moving

forward, is to make sure that it's our obligations to finish the work that has been started years ago. as technology and things evolved, that the court has punted it to us and now it's our opportunity to address that situation, as outlined in the grafner case. my questions, you know, i apologize for sounding elementary in what i ask. specifically, mr. seibel, i'm trying to get my arms around exactly what justin.tv is. and from the testimony here today, it sounds like that you have taken steps to try to work with the other entities, but at the same time i can get out of the back of my head this sort of notion that we have opportunities and obligations in the wall to act, you know, if you act or if you fail to act, sometimes you can be just as culpable or liable.

it sounds like justin.tv has content on the website that is not permissible, and failing to act for that until one of the content-based companies comes and says please take it down, it's kind of like going into a jewelry store and robbing it but not making a mess when you're in there. i mean, i don't know if that's a fair assessment, but just because you aren't actively seeking out content-based material but not doing anything about it until one of these guys comes and says, hey, you need to take it down, in matters of law and fairness it just doesn't to me seem right. what would you say in response to that? >> so i think the new technology of the fingerprinting solution is a comprehensive solution to this issue. i think really what you are addressing here is, you know,

isn't there a manual solution that we can be implemented? and i think what's most important to understand is that on justin.tv, there are 1.9 million broadcast a month. and we believe that any attempt to manually monitor the site would create an unfair act that tatian on copyright holders, that we were going to be 100% or 90% or some reasonable percent effective. when we think about the solutions that we want to provide, we have been focusing on systematic and automated solutions. and that's why a live filter is a liable. because we can ensure to a copyright holder that that solution is going to her. >> on that point, you said earlier in your testimony as this one of these guys goes to the take-out, whatever, and that can happen quickly, what if you don't take down, what happens or what could happen to you? do you know legally?

>> unfortunately, i'm not an expert. >> does anybody? >> justin.tv would lose its immunity under the digital millennium copyright act to the extent to which they have made a copy, they would be subject to copyright liability such as statutory damages. and any damages that could be proven, there's an open question about whether a softcopy, is a copyright violation. there is cases on both sides of the question. >> mr. seibel, i am running out of time already. when you say that you're entering into agreements, unit, with some of these guys in the future, you mentioned the nfl. do you have the nfl games on your website now every week? >> so in the context of the nfl, the nfl and abc were looking for an automated solution to remove nbc's nfl came from the side, and eventually any nfl game that might appear on justin.tv.

and so when we ran a test, just this past sunday, we were actually into automatically identifying to remove the majority of nfl games that had appeared on the site during that time period. >> but you don't have an agreement with the nfl to put these games on your website? they are just their, and if they say taken down, you taken that? >> as in all sites it's really the same issue. whether a user is putting someone else's content on your site and using your site to distribute someone else's content, how do you work with copyright holders to address that and to remove the content and to remove that user from the site? so we approach it. >> madam chairman, i know my time -- can ask one more question, please? [inaudible] >> very quickly. thank you, madam chairman. you mentioned with regards to maybe precluding these things even getting on a site before, and she talked about what we can

do as a congress to actively do that rather than just reacting, how can we be proactive. and i think that you've mentioned we need to make consequences for repeat offenders. i believe that you said one of the way to do that is to swear under penalty that these rights are not there so they can get in trouble for doing that. is that specifically what you're talking about with regard to us making a law that would provide consequences for repeat offenders? is there some more specific solution you have with that? >> i think a repeat offender law is in the u.k. for end-users who are pirating illegal content, posting it is a potential solution. the other question i was asked specifically what what about a rony's takedown notices that people are using it and i competitively to take guns can't even though it doesn't belong to them. any aspect of the system could be abused, and it's relatively easy with corporations.

the real problem for the end-users who are extra and hard to find, hard to track down and extremely hard to enforce rights against. i think what they're doing in the u.k. is a very interesting solution, assuming it is done up properly. three strikes, you get to warnings that you make sure you know it's illegal. there some obligation to limit their service. that is an option for congress. >> thank you. i'm going to yield myself five minutes. my five minutes. and then we will make further determinations about the questioning. let me welcome the witnesses, and thank you very much for your presence here today. and sorry that we are interrupted by votes. i just have a nonlegal question.

mr. fertitta, do you have any relatives in texas? >> i do. >> all, mike goodes. i have obviously run into them on several occasions. you will not bias my questions and i will recuse myself. but in any that i hope you have the opportunity to visit this great state. i first of all want to thank mr. seibel for his ingenious and creativity, and i hope that our questions don't disregard that uniqueness of your efforts. but i'm going to try to be pointed in my questions, and particularly slightly which that deals with deals with the grafner case, and as i understand it, that case establishes liability for peer-to-peer copyright infringement that pertained to the unauthorized education and availability of music files.

on the web. so it is a near decision, and professor, yes or no. is a narrowly drawn decision? >> yes. but it has implications beyond music. >> but it is a narrowly drawn decision. if we look at it pertains to music. of course, it can be used and cited in somewhat great but it will be up to the courts to interpret it more broadly. is that my understand? the copyright law does not distinguish between music and other protective ask. no, it does not decide anything else. >> so there is the possibility we would legislative act, or this would have to be an ongoing court proceedings or action that individuals who felt that they were agreed with taken to court, is that correct? >> yes. >> then let me indicate that though we don't often cite our work, i think the judiciary committee has been a champion on job creation.

and it has done so because we've taken to task this whole question of copyright infringement. as i understand it, when you have a product, content, you also have jobs. you have the institution that depends on content. and i just want to cite for the record some deals that have been put forward. espn has in recent years signed several high-priced deals for sports leagues for broadcasting rights including an $8.8 billion deal with the nfl, $82.4 billion with the major league, major league baseball, and he $2.4 billion deal with nascar. that's a lot of money. and i assume the intent behind that is that those games generate dollars and that means that people are employed in that particular industry, not necessarily -- it may means that football teams can stay open as well because i understand part of their revenue stream is the dollars they get. so we talk about copyright

protection, i'd like it to be beyond the nuances of those of us who enjoyed that kind of debate, intellectual property. it really has to be a mainstay of survival of the genius of america. this committee has been in the forefront of trying to protect the genius of america. we have done so in a number of occasions. we have not been the most popular committee here. we've talked about others. we just have not been popular. so my quick question is, and i think i'm under five minutes, is that ym right now? five minutes on the floor. does anybody have a timeframe was just ask each of you very quickly, how the present structure or the potential piracy would impact the bottom line and jobs? mr. mellis, am i asking the right -- you're in major league baseball. >> yes. right now with respect to the

piracy as we've been expecting and observing it for several years, is a very difficult to quantify the impact. because most of it is occurring offshore through rogue sites and services, where we don't know much. we don't know how many piracy incidents there are. >> but you do know that if piracy continues, and your product depletes in value, the potential that you may lose jobs, can you answer yes or no? >> yes. >> thank you. mr. fertitta? >> yes. i can tell you i'm sure this is an important issue for the other members of the panel. i can say this is the most important for our company. we have created thousands of jobs and we have built a company with our content. and pay-per-view represents over half of our revenues. it's over half of our total revenue. so when people can choose just to log onto the internet under justin tv and get it for free,

it certainly impacts our abili ability. >> mr. durso? >> we have 6000 people worldwide supporting the work of espn, and are incentive to keep growing would be significant impacts. how many employees worldwide? >> six thousand. >> does that impact upon my? >> unquestionably. >> professor, do you see this as an economic issue. >> yes. i used to teach in national, the music industry got behind his. this committee has been a tremendous help to the. >> mr. seibel, do you want to work with us? your business provides income. do you see that i am trying to get a roadmap to you can exist so that we can prevent piracy and internet? >> definitely. >> let me thank you. we are going to adjourn this hearing, and mr. chairman -- we're going to adjourn this

hearing. so this hearing stand in adjournment. in recess excuse me. what are we doing? adjourning or recessing? okay. excuse me. let me pull it back. we are going to reset this hearing and asked that the witnesses remain available. it should be about 10 minutes. maybe a little water but we need you to stand by. thank you very much. this hearing is in recess. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> okay. the hearing will come to order. mr. issa, for as much time as he needs. >> thank you, mr. chairman. this is a very interesting here because i think it's gone beyond perhaps the issue, just that your organizations are dealing with. let me go to a couple of questions. first of all, mr. mellis, would you concur that over the air broadcasts becomes a right of anyone to perceive it, to have it to time shifted, and to watch it wherever they want to watch if? >> beyond the television set in homes and? >> beyond the supreme court decision. in other words, the supreme court has held that we have in the soda betamax we have a right on a broadcast to store and because it was removable device,

i can take my vhs tape out and i can take it to grandma's house and watch it there. that was all codified with sony betamax, do you agree? >> i do. the question for you is, recognizing that that's not a commercial use. that's not a dissemination or a performance or a broadcast to others here and you say it very well the start and a baseball, football, all the major leagues, that rebroadcast is prohibitive. so we're not having that discussion here, and that maybe today's subject, but let me just go through a scenario. i'm in san diego. san diego chargers are playing there. let's just say it's not being -- i don't have it available where i am. would you say that as an owner of seven tds and oceanside, san diego, california, this is california, that i can watch it there and i can record it on an equivalent today of the betamax?

>> yes. stimac and if i had to bail ability to do that and have the availability forwarded to my self, i am well within my rights? >> well, from a strictly legal contact, that question hasn't been decided by a court, although there is a technology available to do that. >> the sling box and other similar devices? >> right. but what we're talking about here is the uploading of that game telecasts for worldwide viewing. >> one of the reason i'm pursuing pursuing this line of questions, i happen to believe strongly that your right to go to the audience that you ridgely broadcasted to, wherever they might be, including going forward as i mentioned how is really what we should be talking about today. but i ask this to lead you down a road of a question, if in fact i were to pay a service to

capture in my home, whether it is a sling box i own or a commercial equivalent, i pay so that i may watch that on my blackberry. because, in fact, i am away from my house right now, i'm downtown, i want to watch it. as long as i am a broadcast recipient, would you say that i had the reasonable right to have it delivered to the? >> on your blackberry. smack lets you say on my blackberry. >> and it's a service that you subscribe from your blackberry, or are you saying from a television to your blackberry? >> let's go back to the sling box because that may be a better one. my availability to have delivered to my washington home from my san diego, san diego charger game or padraig in. would you say that that is recently consistent with existing law and your interpretation of a? >> i think my view under the copyright is that there are two copyright rights that are appliquéd.

there is the platform shifting. using not copyright terms, but platform shifting, and the place shifting. >> time is based. >> right, right. those are the issues that the question is whether or not doing that in the context you describe for your own personal use, having paid for it already, whether that is a fair use, and that hasn't been decided by any court that i know of. >> i'm going to go down the aisle quickly, because i happen to be of an opinion, thank goodness i'm not a judge, but i'm of the opinion that simply broadly think i'm going to capture everybody's football games, baseball games, boxing matches, and then make it available as a service is way outside of the intent of existing law or copyright interpretations. as to the description i made, that whether it's through a service that is literally in my home or a service i contract, how many would you believe with existing law we should feel

comfortable that the owner of a san diego home who wants to receive something from san diego in their home in washington, d.c., or on a blackberry should be able to? let's just assume it's a sling box for now so that the technology is pretty understood. >> yes, once again, i don't have legal background and i'm not an expert relative to that issue but my thing is you're using it for your own personal use. as long as you pay for it then that find. >> mr. seibel? >> i think this calls for a legal interpretation. i'm not qualified to revive. as a consumer that sounds reasonable. >> try to? >> once upon a time i used a practicing lawyer, but not in the. >> for julie you are probably practicing when sony beta. >> a long time ago. but as someone who produces

industry biscotti, i think it's an unanswered question that i don't know, courts haven't really addressed it and how that plays out, i don't know. there are legitimate concerns about scope angiography and writes from baseball in terms of protecting markets and the like but it's a competition. >> but back to the original premise, if i can record on a sony betamax said, assuming i find, and i would know that cartridge and moved her to california and play it at my home here, that is codified in law. then would you agree that the equivalent would reasonably be anticipated by the supreme court decision? >> i don't know that it would be, honestly. >> okay. so this is something we don't consider it law when they go digital, we go over the internet, we go to something other than a sony version of a videotape recorders because i think additional questions coming to my.

>> professor, you get the end on this, because for us on the day at least for many of us, that's the question. i happen to come from a consumer electronics manufacturing background. i come from that industry that thought it was settled law that the noncommercial rebroadcast by the owner of something for purposes of time shifting or place shifting, or even product shipping, in other words, recorded on this mission, played on another one with a different tv, were all pretty much settled law. how would you do that, professor? >> with respect, i don't think it is part of a. forgot, we have, we have broadcasting signals over cable. had to require a separate statute. rebroadcast of raiders signals over the internet required a separate statute. if it were simply true that if you could receive a radio signal -- >> that's rebroadcast, but not

the owner recipient who have stored pursuant to a very hard-fought battle and sony betamax case. >> but what's interesting is -- [inaudible] >> that left a lot of questions and his. time shifting is clearly within the realm. was close to just buy other decisions, building a library is probably outside if you're going to build on a durable basis. space and device shifting is much harder to deal. a couple of examples. people by for programming property could internationally and in fact there are state blackout laws if for some reason your beloved chargers is not selling out their stadium, you would be banned from -- it would be blacked out in san diego. theoretically, a person could see in washington, d.c., where they are getting a feed and feed it back. >> i'm going to close with a small statement which i'm taking

for the chairman, partially. our problem on the day is we pass laws or observation or petitions by the courts as part of promoting commerce, protecting intellectual property and recognizing that laws are only effective if they are one, supported by the masses, and two, enforceable. what i'm hearing here today is that potentially we would reinterpret a law. my question to all of you in the abstractor, hypothetical is, how would we enforce -- you can do this but you can't library it. the sony product was a durable product that and it was portable. and it met a whole bunch of requirements. so from the side or from the men and women in robes across the street, how in the world would we, one, enforcer, and two, why would it be the burden of the federal government to bring

about that very aims under expensive of enforcement to find out whether they are fording, whether it is durable? we have been asked over the years to buy into, you might remember the digital millennium copyright act, buy into schemes that we are going to empower others to primarily do it. it each time when it failed, you come back to us. so i'm going to leave that as a rhetorical question because it is beyond the scope for the just of his hearing but i think what the chairman, we are very interested into doubt whether or not what's been brought to his if we dealt with it, we could be effective. i think the general. deal back. >> thank you, mr. ice. ibc, i think the sentiment here on this side, is to ensure that the creative community is

protected, and continues to operate and function in a way that produces the kind of products that the united states has a lead, has an advantage on, if you will. i believe that to be unanimous. i think enforcement and compliance issues are the real ones, as suggested by my friend from california. and i'm always struck being a former state attorney by the imposition of very long prison sentences. and often cases, mandatory ones. on some juvenile or some other old, maybe for legal purposes,

but maybe 19 or so goes in and robbed a convenience store, and comes up with around $30 in cash and ends up doing eight to 10 and a maxim security prison. and yet, here we are today listening to concerns that are ibc legitimate, where i'm confident that any aggregate the loss is substantial. maybe if there's anyone on the panel that can describe or estimate what the losses are, i would be interested in hearing from, any panel is. mr. fertitta? >> i can give you an idea just days on our experience. we operate the ultimate fighting championship which is the largest pay-per-view provider of sports in the world. one of our recent events was just held back in november. our team of people that were trying to find pirated streams

found over 271 broadcast in over 160,000 views of just that one night. and as i had mentioned in previous testimony, its import for us because it is a live sporting event that we charge money for, it's extremely perishable. once it's over, it's not worth what it was once it started. once somebody knows the outcome of what happened in that. revenues that are generated through their represent over half of our revenues of our overall company. and just a bad number of streams represents probably in the neighborhood of 40 percent of the total amount of business. >> give me a number. >> well, pay-per-view, we charge $44.95. if there were 160,000 people watching that night, as potentially 106 he thousands that were not paying $44.99. >> how much? >> eight million. that's just what we found. >> less deliberate.

8 million. i mean, compare that, you know, what is it in terms of the order of magnitude as far as the balance of payments issues is concerned. what is it to the loss of economy? and what is, does anyone know here, what is the longest prison term that has been served by a pirate? professor? >> i don't know. >> mr. seibel? >> i don't know, sir. >> so no one knows? >> there's a famous case of someone violating the dmca who recently went to jail but he was one of the first people to go to jail for this kind of creating a technology that allows this form of piracy. i don't know -- it's well over -- in the years. to contract would never. in a 10 year range, but something in that order.

but it is rare. >> i guess what i'm saying, until there are severe sanctions, because we can have these very arcane discussions about dealing with the concerns that you are expressing, but until we have enforcement and appropriate sanctions by courts, many of my friends on the other side support the concept of mandatory sentences. i happen to disagree. but once that happens, this is theft. this is grand larceny. and until we get serious about enforcement and prosecution, we're going to continue to have -- we're going to continue to have interesting hearings such

as this. and i guess we're not going to make a lot of progress. you know, professor, i'm sure that you could provide us the guidance and counsel in terms of how the law needs to be changed. i'm sure our own staff can do that. you know, i'm sure there are technologies that are out there, and we should have, as bob indicated order, had meetings etc. the summary has to get serious about enforcement. and at one point in time, i know that we implored the department of justice to create a task force to do this. i don't know whether it still exists. midweek need some sort of an oversight hearing, but if someone is going to steal $8 million from, you know, one particular outlet, and there's no consequence, you know,

there's a difference between a young male, 18 or 19 years old who robbed a convenience store and does eight to 10, the deterrence doesn't really exist in those cases. because that young male doesn't have in his back pocket, you know, the united states criminal code. and he hasn't done an analysis of what the potential sanction may be. believe me, that's the case. based on my own experience. so the concept of deterrence is really, doesn't play. but whoever is doing the $8 million hit to the company, to our overall economy, i'm sure he has a battery of lawyers that are going to raise all of the issues that i heard being discussed here today, contributory infringement and all these concepts that are, you

know, freedom of free speech, the marketplace, etc. but until there is a serious consequence, and i think it is incumbent upon people who are in the industry, working with the congress, working with the executive branch, to say, if you are a thief, you go to jail. if you are ceiling, and you can establish it beyond a reasonable doubt, then let's impose harsh, severe sanctions. because it's not just the individuals, it's not the individual company that's being victimized here, but it's all of us. i mean, this is an important aspect of the american economy, and a global economy. any comments?

>> couldn't agree with you more. >> well, i've been given some questions. >> mr. seibel, could you comment in response to the document that mr. fertitta introduced into the record? >> yet, thank you for the opportunity. for a second, i want you to excuse the title of this document and consider the attack. what's clear is that this is a guide for broadcasting video from a few game console to justin.tv which is an extremely popular practice. consider the second since. this is a popular question who see channels like four player podcast with a broadcast a screen capture for the videogame. you can look at the second instruction, a waitress in a video from your console to your television. the third instruction, most blogger consul into the tv using

tables and use another set of cables to send audio. if you were to follow this guide on justin.tv, you would not see television showing up on your channel. you would see a video game from an xbox or playstation. i just want to make that clear. and i do apologize for the header and the title because i do believe that that's slightly misleading. that's something that we will certainly correct. >> thank you. i want to thank all of you for your testimony and without objection, members will have five legislative days to submit any additional questions to you, which we will forward and ask that you and as proper as you can to be made part of the record. the record will remain open for five legislative days with the submission of any additional materials. thank you again. the hearing is adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> and the use of carbon monoxide detectors in homes. this is about an hour.

>> call this hearing to order. today's subcommittee hearing will consider the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning and steps consumers can take to protect themselves for exposure as the chairman of the consumer protection subcommittee, i believe this is an important consumer protection issue that requires this committees scrutiny and collaboration. consumers are being harmed by safety risk or product defects, my colleagues and i work hard to protect and. senator klobuchar who's been a leader in the area of carbon monoxide poisoning prevention has introduced as 1216, the residential carbon monoxide safety act. today we will consider her legislation and i commend her for her excellent efforts in his area and look forward to the saphenous discussion. and i want to witnesses and the audience to know that we are here because she requested this hearing. and as part of her leadership on

this issue. we're joined by an expert panel of witnesses who have agreed to testify before us. they will share with us their insights regarding carbon monoxide poisoning prevention. i welcome them and i thank them for their presence and contributions here today. our witnesses will present their remarks on one panel, and they are already set up. and each of you will have five minutes to deliver your oral statement. and then we'll have an opportunity to ask questions and follow-up on some of your opening statements. your written statement will also be included in the record, so if you want to abbreviate your testimony, that's up to you. carbon monoxide is known as the silent killer because it's allusive. we can neither see it nor tasted nor smell it. and each year in the united states approximately 500 people died and there is 4000 hospitalizations that occur as a result of it. and about 20000 emergency

department visits from this every year. i look forward to learning more about this issue and i look forward to the witness' testimony. but first, senator klobuchar? >> thank you very much, senator pryor, and thank you for your leadership, for this committee. you have always been there in the frontline. i remember when we had the full safety bill and it was a family that maybe ms. burt from minnesota remembers this. senator pryor was right there and got that build on. and i'm hopeful the same thing will happen with the legislation that ha have introduced here. i first want to recognize cheryl burt. i was thinking as senator pryor asset. i just had hoped we would still be here. and i'm glad that it all worked out for everyone, but when i think about what motivates me to get this thing done and keep moving with this legislation, it would be someone like cheryl burt. she's from rochester, minnesota, the home of the mayo clinic.

she has been a leading and tireless advocate for carbon monoxide awareness. she tragically lost two of her sons to carbon monoxide poisoning 14 years ago. sharyl is here today to share with us or important story and to help educate us on the importance of carbon monoxide alarms in home. so i first want to welcome her and thank her for coming, along with the other witnesses. in my state of minnesota and across large sections of this country, winter temperatures arrived a few weeks ago. and though likely will stick around for a while. that means our home furnaces, fireplaces and chimneys will be getting a good workout over the next several months. and with that comes a danger. the potential for accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. known as the silent killer, carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, poisonous gas produced by burning fuel like propane, kerosene, natural gas, gasoline and charcoal. these deadly fumes can leak from

family furnaces, water heaters or from stoves. they can be trapped inside by a blocked chimney or a flu. other sources include running a car engine and aimed at hatched garage, burning charcoal in the house or operate a gas powered generator in a confined space that when any of carbon monoxide is quickly absorbed into the blood and it becomes deadly when it replaces the blood oxygen. early symptoms of this kind of poisoning are sometimes confused with the flu, with symptoms like headache, not in this, dizziness and sickness. another 150,000 people and of any emergency room. 150,001 year. children are especially vulnerable. according to the centers for disease control on a 92 minnesotans died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning between 2002 and 2006. this need not happen. one of the simplest and most

effective defenses against this killer is the installation of a carbon monoxide alarm in the home. you don't just take my word for it. the american red cross, the mayo clinic and the american lung association all recommend the installation of carbon monoxide lr and in the home. in minnesota, it isn't just good advice. it is the law. since 2008, all homes in our state are required to have working carbon monoxide alarms. nationally however it is as made that fewer than 30 percent of homes actually have them. so we are here today to think about ways to get more families to install tranninety characters in their homes. we are here today to talk but legislation that i've introduced along with senator bill nelson which would require the u.s. consumer product safety commission to enforce stronger standards to protect people against the deadly dangers of carbon monoxide. it's called the residential carbon monoxide poisoning prevention act.

it includes three key provisions. first, it would strengthen the safety standards for carbon monoxide alarms. currently, the consumer product safety commission has set voluntary safety standards for carbon monoxide alarms, which are underwritten -- which are written by underwriters and laboratory that the legislation would make the safety standards mandatory for all carbon monoxide sold in the '90s. this is especially important in my state because substandard alarms tend to fail and low humidity areas like minnesota's cold, dry winters. second, this legislation would require the consumer product safety commission to determine whether portable generators sold in the u.s. can be equipped with safety mechanism that detect the level of carbon monoxide in the surrounding area and then automatically turn off. in recent years, carbon monoxide deaths caused by generators have been on the increase. it typically happens after natural disasters like hurricanes, that's why senator nelson is so interested in this

legislation in florida. or ice storms, something i might be more interested in. when there's a power outage and people are tempted to use generators in their homes. last year event tragically drove this point home. in 2082 men and a boy died in a minneapolis home from carbon monoxide poisoning due to the use of a portable generator in the home. finally, the bill authorizes the cpsc to provide grants to states with laws on the books that promote the inclusion of carbon monoxide detectors in apartment buildings and new homes. when someone dies of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, it's not just a private tragedy but it's a public tragedy also. because we know that so often we could have prevented these deaths from the right safeguards that when i was a prosecutor i was always frustrated, but by the time a case got to our office, the damage had already been done. the crime had already been committed. i knew that the best way to protect public safety was to prevent the crime in the first

place. and on this committee, we're in a position to protect families and prevent unnecessary accidents from ever happening at all. data we want to do with his carbon monoxide legislation. and so we are here today to sound the alarm on the silent killer. that is, carbon monoxide poisoning. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses. thank you, senator pryor. >> thank you. and were going, what i'm going to do is briefly introduce all four witnesses on the panel, and then just let you give your testimony. i would love to do it, keep it to five minutes if at all possible. first, we have alan korn. is the executor of an general counsel for safety at u.s.a. then we have cheryl burt of rochester, minnesota. then we have, is that john and his? yes. he is the director of engineering kidde residential and commercial division. then we have kelvin cochran.

the u.s. fire administrator -- u.s. fire administration department of homeland security. so i want to welcome all of you all to the subcommittee today. thank you for your time. i know it is late in the same and you probably have a lot of other things you could be doing today, but thank you very much for your preparation and for those of you who travel, those of you, we appreciate you very much. mr. korn, do you want to leadoff the? [inaudible] >> am i on? one in our view gets very little attention so we very much appreciate the opportunity to increase the discourse here today. this subcommittee knows very well that safe kids u.s.a. spends just about every waking moment working to protect children from their number one killer. unintentional injury. this subcommittee and quite frankly, senator pryor and senator klobuchar, have been very helpful in that effort

throughout the years that we know children and children's safety are in good hands with these two numbers of congress. that help continues here today. the vast lajoie of americans don't realize that the number one killer of children is intricate it is not cancer. it's not a bikini. it's not violence but it is not objection. it is car crashes, drownings, firebirds and just poisoning, like carbon monoxide. so as far as i know, this is the first time congress has ever had a fully dedicated hearing to co poisoning, and we think it's about time. thank you very much, senator klobuchar and senator pryor. i have a portion in my testament where i kind of talk about how it happens, what the results are. but senator klobuchar, i think you addressed that pretty clearly in your testimony. i will do by way of making two analogies that one is this is not like smoke. smoke at least argue that you can see in the home. you can taste it. you can smell it. there's at least an opportunity for you to react to it and get out of the home. by the way, i'm not making a case for not having smoke

alarms. they are very, very important. but carbon monoxide, you cannot see. you cannot smell. so that makes detection all the more important. and i am reminded of a story along with the burt story of a family of four who died in their own. they found the father did in his bathroom on the floor with shaving cream on his face. that's how quickly it happened to him. two children died in the mother, and senators, they found the dog dead on the mat. there was no opportunity to detect that this was happening. because there was no tranninety factor in the home. they had a attached garage and he left the car running. i would be remiss if i didn't talk just briefly about a couple of prevention opportunities here and how we think these things can be prevented. and i will talk more specifically about your piece of legislation, senator. the most important thing, in fact, the two most important things is if you have a source of combustible fuel and home, you better darn well have a carbon monoxide detector in your home. i do on each level of my home.

outside my sleeping area, and in the living area of my hope that they are not expensive. this is a safety device that's not use enough that it's not like smoke alarms which are in the bassman jury of homes. these are still highly underutilized. your legislation, said it is going to help get these into home. i will talk about in a second. the second concept in prevention is to prevent it from happening in the first place. that is, the ceo into the home. so check your gas appliances. get them installed by professionals. every year getting their gas supply appliances checked a couple of things and i'm not really about your legislation. never, ever ever use your gas ranges or your oven to heat your home. that happened, that is a source of carbon monoxide. and don't leave your cartooning is a home or in an attached garage. we talked about portable generators to get scenes of cartoony people use their generators inside their home,

for an opportunity for co to build up inside the home and that's when the gas and injury have. to the tune of about 500 a year. of course, residential carbon monoxide prevention act is passed is going to help us greatly in these prevention efforts. we very much appreciate your leadership on this. to build as much but i'm going to talk about two things on a. one is a state incentive grant program. if passed, it would establish an incentive grant program as you said to encourage states to pass 9/11 laws that will require a proved alarms be installed in commercial dwellings, and construction, new construction. congress has used its integrates many, many times before. we think the velocity is a sound one for booster seats, pool safety legislation which both of you were supportive of. so this is quite consistent with that philosophy. i would make one change to the bill and i will work with the staff on that. right now it applies to just rental properties and it just applies to commercial properties. existing older homes are just as

important. in fact, i believe even more important. because they've got the older gas appliances. i think you're going to hear from the burt on that matter perfectly and they have the ability to be faulty and fall into disrepair. so for existing homes also like we do for pools, like we do for booster seats, we don't require booster seat and just new cars that it's all cars. so we would like you to consider that change. and then there's a second concept here, which is your mandatory standard. i'm running out of time. we are quite supportive of that. i am happy to talk about why we think a voluntary standard serves a better and more vibrant prevention aspect than a mandatory standard. i will say, i'm not worried about these tranninety pictures but this is a pretty good company with a very good reputation. at a mandatory standard helps us to police the market place a little better, just in case we don't have the good reputation out there.

and one final point. when parents rely on this service, we believe it better serve that safety purpose. and it's nice to have a mandatory standard in place to make sure that it meets that goal so that we have these up in our homes, they behave and react the way they are supposed to. we rely on it to greatly. so thank you very much. sorry gord over just a few seconds. >> thank you. ms. burt? >> good afternoon. my name is cheryl burke and i'm from rochester, minnesota. thank you, chairman pryor and members of the committee for giving me the opportunity to talk about carbon monoxide poisoning. and i'd like to thank senator klobuchar for inviting me to tell my story. i commend her and senator nelson for the commitment to take the issue of co awareness to a national level. when you have a fire in your home, you know it. you can see the smoke. you can smell the fumes, feel the heat. incense smoke alarms have been

required and homes for many years, chances are you also hear that smoke alarm sound. when you have carbon monoxide in your home, you cannot see it. you cannot taste it. you cannot smell it. you will feel its effects, a headache, nazi, dizziness. but you don't realize that you are being poisoned. you.com and the danger, and if you do, you are completely helpless to take action to save yourself or your family. i know. 14 years ago, this january, carbon monoxide poison my family and killed two of my three children. let me start by saying that i live by safety rules that i had smoke alarms in my home. i used safety gates, child locks, and i thought my home was safe. and i was wrong. on this particular evening, i progressively got sicker and sicker. with what i thought was a family

case eyes of the flu. in fact, i had brought my sons to the doctor each week for about two months with different symptoms. and i knew something was wrong. but everyone, including the doctors, thought i was overreacting. i now know that by the time we reached the doctors, my sons had received enough fresh air that he co was causing them to be sick. and it had dissipated. but back then, i never thought that we were being poisoned. by the time i realized something was terribly wrong, i didn't have any idea just how terribly wrong it really was. i didn't realize that my babies were dying just feet from a. and i couldn't help them or even help myself. a carbon monoxide alarm would have saved my children's lives. but i didn't have one in my home, and that night, my two

youngest children died in their sleep from a carbon monoxide poisoning due to a malfunctioning furnace. the rest of my family while we were severely injured, we managed to survive this horrible experience. only to wake up the next afternoon in the hospital with our lives tragically changed forever. i was asked to give testimony today to give reasons why i support s. 1216, which would give states that passed co alarm laws intended to waste awareness and require mandatory standard for all co alarms in the u.s. i can give you three very good, very precious reasons for my support. necklace of todd burt, todd burt and ryan burt. excuse me. . . e nick turned 4 years old eight days before he died. in fact, we had been too sick to