The Motion Picture Association of America has helped convict an administrator for EliteTorrents.org, a peer-to-peer site, of felony copyright infringement and conspiracy, the U.S. Justice Department announced Friday.
Daniel Dove, 26, of Clintwood, Va., was the first criminal conviction after jury trial for peer-to-peer copyright infringement and the eighth overall resulting from a federal crackdown called Operation D-Elite that targeted administrators and people who provided content that was distributed through the BitTorrents hub.
The case began in 2005, when federal agents raided and shut down the popular Web site that had distributed copyrighted music and movies, including Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. At that time, Homeland Security agents from several divisions served search warrants on 10 people around the country suspected of being involved with the Elite Torrents site, and took over the group's main server.
According to prosecutors, EliteTorrents attracted more than 125,000 members and assisted in the illegal distribution of about 700 movies, which were downloaded more than 1.1 million times. According to the Justice Department, Dove led a group of "uploaders" that supplied pirated content to the group, as well as recruiting members with ultra-fast broadband connections to become uploaders. Prosecutors also said Dove operated a high-speed server himself.
The MPAA "provided substantial assistance" to the investigation, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Dove faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in September, the Justice Department said.
Scott McCausland, who used to be an administrator of the EliteTorrents server before the raid, pleaded guilty in 2006 to two copyright-related charges over the uploading of Star Wars: Episode III to the Internet. As a result, he was sentenced to five months in jail and five months' home confinement.
McCausland--a Linux user--reported in 2007 that the terms of his sentence meant he would have to install Windows if he wanted to use a computer during his probation.
China's State Intellectual Property Office on Thursday denied reports that Microsoft and other software behemoths were under investigation, according to an Associated Press report.
The antitrust agency's statement was a response to a Wednesday report by the Shanghai Securities News saying the Intellectual Property Office was investigating allegations that large software companies were using their market position to gain favorable pricing, as well as curtail research and development by local Chinese companies.
The Chinese news agency also reported that some local companies were contemplating filing antitrust lawsuits, based on a new law that is set to take effect August 1.
Although the Shanghai Securities News did not cite Microsoft, specifically, in its report, it quoted a source, who referenced Microsoft and its pricing practices.
Legislation introduced in Canadian Parliament on Thursday would fine consumers about $500 in Canadian dollars for owning bootleg copies of digital music and up to $20,000 for posting copyrighted music to the Internet or giving away an iPod with music on it.
The changes are designed to bring the country's Copyright Act into the digital age. As it is today, the law does not allow people to copy music onto devices such as MP3 players or computers, according to TheStar.com.
Under the new law, consumers could copy a book, newspaper, or photograph that was legally acquired but couldn't give away the copies or copy material that was borrowed.
Consumers could copy music that was legally acquired but would be prohibited from copying music that was borrowed or rented. It also would be illegal to post copyrighted work on the Internet without the permission of the owner and to circumvent digital locks designed to prevent illegal distribution.
The bill, introduced by Industry Minister Jim Prentice, would allow consumers to record TV and radio programs for playing back later, but it would prohibit them from keeping the copies indefinitely, according to Reuters.
The Motion Picture Association of America is looking to make a deal with the Federal Communications Commission to get the latest Hollywood movies on TV much sooner after their original release. But there's a catch.
In exchange for the faster release, the MPAA wants the FCC to change its rules to allow the industry to prevent these movies from being recorded on DVRs and viewed on some high-definition TVs.
The MPAA filed its petition last week. The FCC is currently asking for comments on the proposal, and it could make a decision on the petition later this summer.
Even though it looks like there could be some benefits for consumers under the MPAA proposal, I think it might be a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The MPAA states in its proposal that movie studios are interested in opening a new distribution channel through cable and satellite TV providers, which could offer new movies before they're available on DVD. This means that people at home will be able to see movies months earlier than they could under the current schedules.
Today it often takes studios three to four months before they release movies on DVDs. Sometimes the wait is longer for hit movies. And cable video-on-demand services typically get movies a month or so after the DVD release.
Of course, studios would likely charge a premium for delivering these early release HD movies at home, but it might be cheaper than taking the whole family to the theater.
But here's where the catch comes in. The MPAA says that this type of distribution increases the risk of piracy, which is already rampant thanks to high-speed broadband networks and file-sharing technology. In an attempt to discourage piracy, the MPAA has proposed that the FCC make an exception to a 2003 rule in order to allow the studios to block certain movies from being recorded by a DVR or viewed on certain high-definition TVs.
In technical terms, the MPAA wants to use "selectable output controls" or commands embedded in the programming that allows the industry to block recording capabilities, unilaterally turn off digital outputs deemed "unsafe," and degrade the quality of high-resolution signals coming out of analog outputs.That means it could turn off analog connectors to TVs and DVRs that use digital connectors. And it also means that it could disable connectors for some digital TVs that don't have copy protections.
In 2003 the agency, then under FCC Chairman Michael Powell, banned the use of these "selectable output controls," because it feared that some consumers would not be able to access high-definition content. The consumer electronics industry argued that consumers would be reluctant to buy high-definition digital TVs if they were unsure whether they'd have access to all content.
Satellite provider DirecTV filed its own petition during the original debate, arguing that without these controls it would be unable negotiate deals with studios for early access to premium content.
If I were advising the FCC, I'd say be careful. Changing these rules is a slippery slope. The MPAA says it's only asking for an exception to the rule for recently released movies, but movie release dates are changing anyway. And it's no secret the movie industry doesn't like home recording devices. Who's to say that the industry won't push the envelope and restrict more content from being recorded?
A company that legitimately distributes its video programming via peer-to-peer is shut down for three days last weekend after being pummeled with traffic. The likely culprit: a company paid by the major movie studios and record labels to fight piracy. What's wrong with this picture?
It was Memorial Day weekend and Revision3 was scrambling to get its Web TV network back up. Its servers were being bombarded with so much traffic, they were shut down in what is known as a denial-of-service outage. That meant no Diggnation or Tekzilla--popular Web shows for a generation of tech-savvy consumers who get their news and entertainment from the Internet instead of TV.
(Credit:
Revision3)
The attacks led to hundreds of thousands of disgruntled fans and tens of thousands of dollars in lost ad revenue for Revision3, estimates Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback.
In the following days, Revision3 was able to trace the majority of the packets overwhelming its torrent index server to a company called ArtistDirect, which acknowledged to Louderback that the IP address generating the packets belonged to a Los Angeles-based subsidiary called MediaDefender.
MediaDefender offers Internet piracy fighting services to clients including "every major record label and every major movie studio, video game publishers, software publishers, and anime publishers," according to its Web site. The company markets "non-invasive technological countermeasures" it uses on peer-to-peer networks that are designed to "frustrate users' attempts to steal/trade copyrighted content."
Among those methods are decoying and spoofing, in which they send blank files and "data noise" that make finding pirated content on the Internet as hard as finding a needle in a haystack.
MediaDefender Chief Executive Randy Saaf says he has found evidence that Revision3's tracker has been used to index pirated content for at least four years.
"They are running an open tracker that had (links to) a lot of pirated content on it," Saaf said. "We didn't know they were running it. We were targeting the pirated content."
But Louderback says that since April 2007, Revision3's tracker has only linked to its own content, except for during the five weeks leading up to Memorial Day. Last month, the company switched tracker software as part of a move to stabilize the server because it was crashing, and that left the server open to the public to post links to outside content, he says.
"We didn't advertise it was open. It's like leaving your garage door open," and people can't legally just walk in, he said.
Things came to a head after Revision3 closed what Louderback described as a "back door" to its tracker server. The MediaDefender packets--arriving as fast as 7,000 packets a second--backed up and Revision3's operations were offline for about three days, according to Louderback.
"They were either grossly negligent in how they program, or programmed (the traffic) to be obnoxious," he said. "I can't impugn their motives. All I can say is the behavior we saw."
"They said they are changing their process and procedures," he added. "That still doesn't give me my weekend back."
MediaDefender's Saaf sees it differently. "In our mind we were not targeting a legitimate company. All we saw was a public tracker with (links to) pirated content, he said.
Going forward, MediaDefender will look to see if any public trackers it finds are associated with a company, and if so will contact them before acting, Saaf says.
The legal issues are unclear. Putting aside any discrepancies over whether there were links to pirated content on Revision3's tracker and for how long, there are questions about whether by transmitting so many packets at once, MediaDefender knowingly caused a denial-of-service outage. In addition, anti-competition questions could be raised since ArtistDirect promotes videos and music and could be seen as a rival to Revision3.
Using a back door to a server without permission of the owner could make MediaDefender liable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and could violate Revision3's terms of use, which typically prohibit creating unreasonable loads on the servers or accessing servers without authorization, said Ira Rothken, an attorney who recently defended TorrentSpy against copyright claims.
Louderback, who wrote about the situation on his company blog early on Thursday, said he probably won't sue because of financial constraints.
MediaDefender's behavior has crossed a line, Rothken says.
"Hollywood goes too far and loses all credibility when their investigators, in the name of antipiracy, act like lawless pirates and hack servers and force law abiding services off the Internet," he said.
"It's ironic for a company that is supposed to be helping major Hollywood organizations in getting legal compliance, that they would use techniques that at least optically appear to be in violation of the law," Rothken added.
To others, including my CNET News.com colleague Charles Cooper, Revision3 is more like a civilian casualty in an escalating cold war over how to protect and distribute copyrighted content in a digital age.
"You'll find over time more and more examples of Hollywood, big music and their agents being overzealous, overreaching, and overprotecting," said Eric Garland, chief executive of peer-to-peer file-sharing tracking firm Big Champagne. "If they are going to compete and defend their content aggressively enough to put a meaningful dent in piracy, they are going to be overinclusive and make mistakes."
Updated 3:20 p.m. PDT with comment from MediaDefender and to clarify that individual movie and recording studios, and not RIAA and MPAA, are clients of MediaDefender, and that Dmitri Villard is CEO of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect and not MediaDefender.
Revision3 has investigated the denial of service attack that kept it offline over the Memorial Day weekend and has concluded that antipiracy group MediaDefender is to blame.
In a blog post on Thursday morning, Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback writes that much of the traffic that bombarded the Web TV network was traced back to MediaDefender. The group has a history of launching DOS attacks against distributors of what they believe to be copyrighted content, he alleges. MediaDefender's clients include all the major recording label and movie studio, but not the RIAA or MPAA.
Revision3 says this is a photo of their equipment responding to the DOS attack.
(Credit: Revision3)Louderback says he called MediaDefender and was told that it had indeed been injecting spoof files into the Revision3 network without permission for months as part of its antipiracy efforts to dilute the pool of pirated content online, but MediaDefender denied responsibility for the DOS attack.
It appears that Revision3's servers were overwhelmed by backed up traffic when the company closed a back door that MediaDefender had been using into the network, Louderback speculates.
"Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3's servers for their own purposes--quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender's servers freaked out, and went into attack mode," he writes.
He notes that DOS attacks are illegal in the U.S. under 12 different statutes and that Revision3 suffered "measurable harm" to its business as it was unable to serve videos and ads through much of the weekend and into Tuesday, and its internal e-mail servers were even shut down.
The FBI is looking into the matter, he adds.
MediaDefender Chief Executive Randy Saaf told CNET News.com later on Thursday that the firm did nothing illegal, did not target Revision3 specifically, and was merely posting spoof files to what it saw as a public torrent index server that had pirated content on it just like anyone can post files to a torrent network.
"We're fans of Revision3," he said. "We didn't know they were running" the index server.
Dimitri Villard, chief executive of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect, did not immediately return calls or respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Pirates caused the software industry to lose nearly $48 billion in sales last year, even as most countries experienced declines in their piracy rates, according to the latest annual study commissioned by the Business Software Alliance.
The fifth annual report, released on Wednesday, determined that from 2006 to 2007, overall losses grew by $8 billion and worldwide piracy rates increased by 3 percentage points to 38 percent. At the same time, piracy rates dipped in 67 of 108 countries included in the report. (About half of the increased dollar losses are attributable to the declining value of the dollar, BSA said.)
"What that means is in countries in many of the emerging markets where there is an extraordinary growth of PC sales per year, the sales of legitimate software are lagging dramatically behind that," BSA President Robert Holleyman said in a telephone interview, adding that he doesn't see the trend toward overall increased piracy losses reversing itself in the near future.
The study found, for instance, that so-called "emerging markets"--namely Brazil, Russia, China, and India--accounted for 46 percent of all new PC shipments last year but only 17 percent of new software shipments, Holleyman said.
Piracy rates rose in only eight countries, with Armenia, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Zimbabwe holding the top five spots for highest piracy rates. The United States, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Japan, and Austria were the countries with the top five lowest piracy rates.
One mildly encouraging spot was Russia, which has experienced a one-year piracy reduction of 7 percentage points, to 73 percent, and 14-point drop over the last five years, thanks in part to stricter government enforcement efforts, the group noted.
The methodology used by BSA and its analysts, IDC, for these reports has attracted a fair share of controversy in the past, with some claiming it overstates the piracy problem.
"They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms," said a 2005 piece in The Economist, echoing concerns voiced by two pro-fair use trade groups, the Computer & Communications Association and the Consumer Electronics Association.
To derive its figures, the group says (PDF) it considers analyst expectations of how much software was installed on PCs in a particular year versus how much software was paid for or "legally acquired" in the same year. The difference between the amount of pirated and legally acquired software is then used to calculate a country's piracy rate, and that rate is multiplied by the revenue from legitimate sales to arrive at the estimated losses.
Holleyman, for his part, argued the studies actually provide a "conservative" estimate of his industry's losses, in part because it doesn't assume every piece of software downloaded through the Internet is pirated and thus represents a sales loss.
"It's certainly true that not every piece of pirated software would be replaced immediately with licensed software if piracy rates went down," Holleyman told News.com, "but we do believe...that the evidence is that all of the pirated software will be replaced with legitimate software over time because people need good software."
The entertainment industry's controversial efforts to get universities to be more proactive about policing peer-to-peer piracy have begun to spread from Capitol Hill to the states.
Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a Hollywood-backed proposal buried in a higher education reauthorization bill that would require universities receiving federal financial aid funding to devise plans for "alternative" offerings to unlawful downloading--such as subscription-based services--or "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."
That otherwise wide-ranging bill won't become law until House and Senate politicians agree upon a compromise version. Meanwhile, the debate over the proper role of higher education institutions in fighting piracy has shifted to some state legislatures.
On Thursday, what appears to be the first such proposal in the country became law in Tennessee--home to Nashville, the country music capital of the world. A similar measure is currently being considered in Illinois. And California held an "informational hearing" last month featuring a Recording Industry Association of America representative, although no legislation has been introduced there yet.
RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth declined to divulge where else the industry may be planning to push such policies, but she insisted the group views new laws as a last resort.
"If we're asked to participate in conversations by lawmakers, of course we will," she said in an e-mail interview. "But we prefer to be working directly with schools on a collaborative approach to reduce theft."
Still, university administrators gathered at a policy conference in Arlington, Va., this week sponsored by the nonprofit group Educause, which represents higher education institution technologists, suggested they're bracing for the quiet appearance of new bills proposing what they view as overly burdensome and overreaching network management mandates.
"If there is a trend here anywhere, it's that these things tend to fly under the radar," Steve Worona, Educause's director of policy and networking programs, told conference attendees. "Let me alert you once again to raise the consciousness of whoever in your state is tracking (legislation)."
"Technological deterrents" vs. Copyright 101
That was the experience related by Thomas Danford, chief information officer for the Tennessee Board of Regents, a governance organization that covers 19 public colleges and universities inside the state. If it weren't for the close scrutiny of his organization's legislative committee, Tennessee universities may have been stuck with much less savory obligations related to managing peer-to-peer file sharers on their network, he said.
The original version of the Tennessee bill (PDF), which Danford said was penned by a local RIAA lobbyist, would have required universities to effectively play copyright cops on their networks. It dictated that they must employ "effective technology-based deterrents, to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works over the school's computer and network resources, including over local area and internal networks."
That requirement was problematic not only because of its cost, which Danford said was estimated at $14 million, but because many university administrators still question the effectiveness of filtering programs and other technological means designed to detect and block copyrighted works from being exchanged.
"I'm convinced that had we not had this (committee), they probably would've been able to get this through the state house before anyone caught wind of it," putting universities in the tough position of trying to fight the law after the fact, Danford said.
In the end, the Tennessee governor signed into law an amended version of state senate bill 3974 (PDF) that Danford said is more palatable to universities and addresses many of the concerns he outlined.
It requires any higher education institution in the state, whether public or private, to develop and enforce a policy that prohibits its students, staff, and faculty from committing copyright infringement. It also requires schools to make "reasonable" attempts to prevent copyright infringement on their networks if they receive 50 or more infringement notices during a preceding year, but it does not explicitly define what those steps are.
Similar legislation is pending in the Illinois state legislature, except it appears to be stricter at this point. It would require universities to "undertake reasonable efforts to install and implement a technology-based deterrent system to attempt to prevent the infringement of copyrighted works" over its networks if it receives at least 10 infringement notices in a given year. That measure has only been considered in one chamber so far.
University representatives like Educause and fair use advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose mandatory use of so-called infringement suppression technologies--such as those made by Red Lambda, SafeMedia, and Audible Magic--because of the cost and perceived flaws associated with those products.
Charles Leonhardt, Georgetown University's principal technologist, told conference attendees that a coalition of 28 schools and higher education consortia known as the Common Solutions Group has vetted those three main vendors of network filtering software and came to the following conclusion: "The current products cannot stop all or even most unauthorized copyrighted material without interfering with networks essential to research and teaching on our campuses."
The solutions on the market today are undesirable because they suppress legitimate network traffic along with pirated works, degrade network performance, and are "very expensive," particularly considering their flaws, Leonhardt said.
Both Leonhardt and Ken Wada, director of IT strategic policy for the University of California at Los Angeles, said the best recipe lies not in technological fixes, but in publicizing and enforcing the university's acceptable network use policy and offering a healthy dose of education about copyright for students.
After all, it bears repeating that universities and the entertainment industry do share one major distinction, Wada said: "We're both creators and consumers of intellectual property."
A bipartisan proposal to create an intellectual-property czar and impose new penalties on pirates sailed through the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday.
By a 410-10 vote, the House approved the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property, or Pro-IP, Act, which is backed by the entertainment industry and other major copyright holders. The proposal is chiefly sponsored by Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill would rewrite U.S. law to allow federal officials to seize property--including computers or other equipment used to commit intellectual-property crimes or obtained as a result of those proceeds--from people convicted of making unauthorized copies of music, movies, or live performances. In civil cases, federal agents would have to establish that there was a "substantial connection" between the property and the offense.
In addition, the bill would also create a new position, presidentially appointed within the Executive Office of the President, charged with acting as a chief adviser on intellectual-property enforcement matters. The U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative, as it would be known, appears to be modeled after the U.S. Trade Representative, which already has some intellectual-property enforcement responsibilities and puts out an annual report on global piracy.
The measure had previously drawn harsh criticism from consumer advocacy groups because of a controversial provision that would have dramatically increased fines in copyright infringement lawsuits. But that section was stripped out during a committee vote, seemingly to avert proposal-killing opposition, though the bill's sponsors said they plan to revisit the issue.
Thursday's vote may have arrived scarcely a week after the House Judiciary Committee lent its backing to the bill, but it seems unlikely to be on a fast track to becoming law, thanks to vocal objections from the Bush administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice has complained that establishing such a new White House-based intellectual-property officer is unnecessary and could undermine its traditional authority in prosecuting copyright cases.
WASHINGTON--The Recording Industry Association of America's chief voiced skepticism on Tuesday about the need for Net neutrality rules, but warned that the government may need to step in if Internet service providers don't become more proactive in fighting digital piracy.
The House of Representatives subcommittee hearing was further evidence that the now years-old debate over Net neutrality is taking on a new dimension, in which concerns about Internet piracy are entering the debate. Net neutrality, of course, refers to the idea that network operators should be barred from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content that travels on their pipes.
RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol told the panel that a Net neutrality bill proposed this year by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) isn't all bad because it views "unlawful" content, such as copyright-infringing material, as unworthy of protection by Internet service providers. He said he hopes that approach may even help to pressure ISPs to "focus on the piracy problem."
Still, Bainwol said he strongly prefers that the entertainment industry and Internet service providers work together on the piracy question in an unregulated fashion.
"My fear is that legislation will take time," Bainwol said. "We have a problem that is right now."
If private sector action doesn't pan out, Bainwol said the RIAA would return to the committee for its "help" on the matter.
Markey attempted to reassure copyright holders that his bill will do nothing to hamper ISPs' ability to block "unlawful" pirated content, vehemently taking issue with any suggestions to the contrary.
"This whole idea that this legislation helps piracy is 100 percent wrong," Markey said. "It's a red herring. We should put an aquarium out here because there are so many red herrings floating around to mislead about what the intent of Net neutrality is."
The bill that Markey introduced in February would enshrine certain Internet nondiscrimination principles into law--namely, that the government should adopt and enforce "baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degradation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet."
As in the past, the effort is mostly supported by Democrats, although Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) is also a co-sponsor. They argue that it's necessary to keep the Internet open and democratic. Some Republicans on Tuesday argued new laws are unnecessary because of a lack of visible discrimination problems by Internet service providers--because they could harm ISPs' antipiracy efforts.
A 1998 law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, says Web hosts and ISPs aren't generally liable for infringing activity on the part of their users, provided that they don't condone infringement, that they remove infringing material when notified, and that they aren't deriving financial benefit from it. But some ISPs, such as AT&T, are exploring ways to filter their networks for pirated content, even though they arguably aren't legally required to do so.
"It would be remiss for us as a body to interfere in these efforts," said Mary Bono Mack (D-Calif.), the widow of singer Sonny Bono. "I think this bill would do that."
Bainwol, for his part, said he was "heartened" to see that Markey's bill recognizes "that Internet freedom isn't synonymous with a Wild West in which the taking of our property is accepted or, at best, ignored." But he worried that the bill could unwittingly limit forms of "network management" used to police networks for copyright infringement.
His remarks are similar to those made earlier this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, which argued that attempts to prohibit network operators from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content could limit their ability to police their networks for copyright infringement. Recently, the cable industry, which has long opposed Net neutrality regulations, raised similar concerns.
Steve Peterman, co-creator and executive producer of the hit children's series Hannah Montana, said he strongly condemns piracy, but he argued the Net neutrality bills put forth by Markey and the senators would do nothing to harm those efforts. Peterman spoke on behalf of the Writers Guild of America, which says Net neutrality laws will ensure a diversity of new content can surface without interference from big-media "gatekeepers."
"We don't want (the piracy issue) to be an excuse for limiting our access to the Internet as a means of communicating with an enormous new audience," Peterman said.
The event marked the second hearing on Net neutrality legislation in two weeks. Senate Democrats have also renewed their call for the antidiscrimination rules, with a particular focus on whether the Federal Communications Commission has the necessary authority to take action against network operators found to be interfering unreasonably with their customers' network traffic.
Comcast, which is under investigation by the FCC for its handling of BitTorrent file-sharing traffic, was the focus of a large chunk of the Senate hearing but didn't attract as much attention at Tuesday's House event.
Republicans and some Democrats have long argued that Net neutrality regulations are unnecessary and will stifle the growth of new broadband networks. But Pickering, the bill's co-sponsor, said his measure is necessary because of contentions by Comcast and others that the FCC doesn't have the power to enforce its own broadband principles, which say consumers have the right to access the lawful Internet content and applications of their choice.
"I think this legislation is very helpful," Pickering said, "in that it says very clearly we will codify these principles."
