Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
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The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (or CBDTPA) was a proposed US bill which would have prohibited any kind of technology which can be used to read digital content without Digital Rights Management (DRM), which prohibits copying any content under copyright without permission of the copyright owner. The bill was known in early drafts as the "Security Systems and Standards Certification Act" (or SSSCA), and sometimes derisively called the "Consume But Don't Try Programming Anything" bill.
The CBDTPA was proposed by South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings. Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had stated that he can "not support" the proposed legislation and as chairman intended to block consideration of the controversial bill in his committee. This essentially killed the bill in 2002.
Proposed penalties for violating the CBDTPA ranged from five to twenty years in prison and fines between $50,000 to $1 million.
Other U.S. senators named as sponsors of the controversial CBDTPA bill include:
- John Breaux (D-LA)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
- Bill Nelson (D-FL)
- Ted Stevens (R-AK)