The End of Innovation?

Simone writes: "2001 has been a bad year not just for dot-coms but also for people interested in preserving the public's right to fair use of copyright materials. From the shutdown of Napster and the DeCSS case to the prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov, federal prosecutors and U.S. courts have acted in support of copyright interests and against the public's ability to use technology to secure fair-use rights. OpenP2P.com editor Richard Koman talks about these turns of events with Lawrence Lessig." Not particularly coincidentally, Lessig has a new book coming out on this very topic.

Comments

A few additions...

[the_ph0x`]

2001 has been a bad year not just for dot-coms but also for people interested in preserving the public's right to fair use of copyright materials.

It's also been a bad year for the stock market, most all technology fields and on top of all that, my sex life is down 5 points... go figure, I'm still blaming el nino.

.ph0x

Re:W e didn't loose anything, look at what we gain

[AstynaxX]

The whole slashdot concept of DVD's is pathetic. BUY A DVD PLAYER to watch your movies. 99% of the world bought dvd's because of the technology and advancements over VHS. YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THOSE ACHIEVEMENTS and technological improvements. SO FREAKING WHAT if you want watch your DVD's for free. You didn't write the codec, produce the technology, market the products and standardize the industry on formats. That comes to a huge cost and well, DVD's are so awesome for home theater that i don't mind paying that cost.

The price of the DVD and/or player isn't the issue. DVD's aren't priced much higher than VHS [in some cases they can actually be less than a comparable VHS tape]. Likewise, the players are now at rather reasonable prices, about where VCR's stabalized to after they became common [incidentally, VCRs are now DIRT cheap]. The issue is fair use violations [it is not possible, under current law, to legally copy ANY portion of a DVD, even a small excerpt for use in a classroom.] The other issue is region encoding [I can buy tapes from Europe, Asia, etc that play fine in my VCR so long as they are the right format {VHS}. Yet, DVD's from each area may or may not play depending on the region encoding]. Region encoding is, flat out, screwing the consumer. The only possible reason for it is so people in region A have no choice but to pay region A prices and can only get films at region A release dates. Currently, especially for those of us in the US, this is not much of an issue, but the potential is there for a great deal of abuse, and it would be best to nip that in the bud. Lastly, there have been reports of DVDs the refuse to fast forward [one of the wonderful points about DVDs is the ability to jump straight to a scene as opposed to winding tape] through trailors. On rental only copies, maybe I can see this, a way to offset the discount rental places must get, but for consumer purchased discs? I think most would agree if I buy it I ought to be able to watch however I like, be it straight through, no trailors, or the last 5 minutes only. I paid my money, it ought to be my choice.

Basicly, the DVD opposition isn't about copying. Even with today's huge hard drives, you still couldn't put too many onto them at DVD quality, and besides, to download them off the net would take forever even at broadband speeds. The issue is consumers losing rights they have been entitled to and enjoyed since the dawn of home entertainment devices.