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MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!
A month ago, the MPAA filed
its report [PDF]
with the Senate Judiciary Committee on the terrors of analog
copying. I quote: "in order to help plug the hole, watermark
detectors would be required in"
-- are you sitting down? -- "all devices that perform analog to
digital conversions." At their page
Protecting Creative Works in a Digital Age,
the Senate lays out the issues they'll be looking at, including
briefs from corporate groups, and provides a
comment form
so your opinion can be heard as well. As Cory Doctorow writes:
"this is a much more sweeping (and less visible) power-grab than
the Hollings Bill, and it's going forward virtually unopposed.
...the
Broadcast Protection Discussion Group
is bare weeks away from turning over a veto on new technologies to Hollywood."
Doctorow's article on the "analog hole"
for the EFF does a great job of explaining the issues to
non-electrical-engineers, and has many thought-provoking
examples of how requiring such technology would be a giant step
backwards.
Congress is spending more and more of its time considering legislation that requires technological enforcement of copyright laws ... Why is it than we've not seen a legislative mandate that requires car manufacutrers to prevent drunk driving?
Three words:
Ted Kennedy. Chappaquiddick.
You'd be amazed and what they will do if they're given the power that this article indicates they'll get soon. Do you *really* think they care more about the cost of an ADC than they care that their copyrighted materials are protected?
... what did you *think* one of the largest industries in the nation was going to do when they saw everyone crapping on their copyrights? You thought "there are so many people doing it, they'll NEVER be able to stop us" ... bwahahahahaha. Right?!? Yeah, thanks a lot to you piss ant morons that thought Napster, Morpheus, KaZaA, Limewire, OpenNap, etc., etc. were the coolest thing since sliced bread ... "this isn't stealing, they OWE me ... " or, "hell if *I'm* going to pay for music I don't even like *that* much" ...
... tell your friends, hey, check this out - free music. "What? You PAID for that CD? I got it for free ... without even having to leave my dorm room!"
... do you think things would have gotten to this point as quickly? All the immature music pirates out there have brought this about ... and from the folks that have enjoyed paying for our music and being able to format/time-shift it, we wholeheartedly thank you for bringing this kind of draconian control about.
... not paying for something that costs money is stealing. Just because Linux is free doesn't mean everything else should be as well. If an artist wants to release their work for everyone to enjoy, for free, fine - so be it. But guess what, guys? That's the *artist's* choice to make NOT YOURS. And if the artist wants to sign up with a record label that YOU think is the bane of your existance and is dicking you over by charging $18 for the artist's album ... guess what? That's STILL the *artist's* choice to make, NOT YOURS!
... commercials and all. I didn't get pissed off because the radio had commercials, either ... this whole "lets have everything for free" bullshit is too much. Guess what? That's NOT capitalism ... hell, that's not even "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" ... that's some kind of utopian BS that hasn't ever and probably won't ever work. At least not in OUR life times.
C'mon, folks
It doesn't matter if the recording industry was making more money during the height of Napster. The point is, people were stealing, copying and basically doing things that have been illegal for a long, long time and all the while, they thought nothing was going to come of it
If all people wanted to do was take CDs that they purchased and format-shift them to Ogg or MP3 or be able to purchase MP3s online so that they wouldn't have to buy an entire CD
Yesterday I was cynical, today I'm downright pissed off. Get it through your immature, thick skulls
P2P is great as a technology, but all the geeks in the world screaming that it has legitimate uses won't keep measures like this from being rained down on us. And now that the genie is out of the bottle, you might as well sit back and enjoy things while you can, because pretty soon, things will start to suck. The fact of the matter is, when it comes to P2P, no matter what the legitimate uses are, the networks with the most traffic aren't using it for legitimate purposes, they're using it to infringe on copyright and they're using it to STEAL. Plain and simple. I'm not entirely sure how much simpler it can be put.
I'm only 24, but I have quite a bit more ethics and much more of a sense of responsibility when it comes to music piracy.
I recall when I was in high school and college, if I couldn't afford the newest CDs (which happened quite frequently) - I listened to the radio
My apologies for the tone of this, but I'm just as pissed about what the MPAA and RIAA are trying to do as the next geek.
The government wants you to speed.
The government wants drunk drivers on the roads.
And in any case - The government really can't control either. But to back up my statements; There is an industry of crime in the US. There are too many people making too much money on the status quo to turn back now. When you speed, the government writes tickets; It's kind of like every highway is a toll road, but only for those who utilize it to its fullest. A lot of money is made based on speeding tickets. In fact, Texas eventually had to pass a law saying that a given county could only make a certain percentage of it revenue from writing tickets. The city responsible for this is Johnson CIty, where I - shock amazement - got a ticket.
As for wanting drunk drivers; That's an important part of the system as well. Remember that the government (like the new RIAA/MPAA wing of the government) exerts control through FUD. The drunk drivers keep people scared. The penalties don't begin to keep people off the street.
And in any case, people would only defeat them anyway. They'd tamper with the systems and override the speed limiter, or replace the sensor element in the breathalyzer, or something. BMW tried to make cars too complex for a drunk to work with that new car control system, but it turns out that didn't work. :)
All in all, there are too many people making too much money for any part of the system to change significantly. Marijuana is illegal because of DuPont, more or less, and it stays illegal because of the poverty industry; Selling it puts money into the hands of minorities and the poor, which the government doesn't want because it wants to keep those people in poverty - Again, maintaining the social order from which they profit. Then they get to bust people for selling it (or occasionally for owning it or buying it) and fine those people, or sometimes throw them in jail. Prisons are a multi-billion dollar business in this country, largely as a result of our drug laws, whether directly or no. You can't stop putting people in prison, running them through the judicial system, and so on, because we'll have a bunch of unemployed prison wardens who let's face it, are not the most retrainable people around.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"