Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Commerce Dep't to Hold Public Workshop on DRM

Posted by timothy on from the digital-rights-bottleneck dept.

ttyp writes: "The United States Department of Commerce Technology Administration (TA) announced a public workshop on digital entertainment and rights management. They're taking public comments here according to the announcement, but they sure have hidden it well. Can anybody find the form? The deadline is July 11!!"

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Just show up by KrazyFool · · Score: 3, Informative

    FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Further information relevant to the substantive issues to be addressed by this workshop may be obtained from Chris Israel Deputy Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, Technology Administration, (202) 482-5687. Limited seating will be available to members of the general public. It is recommended that persons wishing to become general public attendees arrive early, as seating will be first come, first served.

  2. National Medal of Technology by pmsyyz · · Score: 3, Informative

    From http://www.ta.doc.gov/Medal/default.htm

    The National Medal of Technology is the highest honor bestowed by the President of the United States to America's leading innovators.

    Guess who won it in 1992?

    http://www.ta.doc.gov/Medal/Recipients.htm#1992

    William H. Gates, III., Microsoft Corp.
    For his early vision of universal computing at home and in the office; for his technical and business management skills in creating a world-wide technology company; and for his contribution to the development of the personal computer industry.

    Competition crushing monopolists sure promote innovation.

    --
    Phillip
    1. Re:National Medal of Technology by SwedishChef · · Score: 4, Informative

      In 1992 Bill Gates deserved the medal. His vision of computing was much more coherant than the visions of other industry leaders of that time. Take into account some of these factors:

      1. This was before the Internet. Sure, some people in universities and some large corporations had Internet access... but mostly it didn't exist. If we wanted to communicate we used bulletin boards (like FidoNet) and 300bps modems;

      2. This was before Linux and in the infancy of the GPL;

      3. Unix was fragmented into dozens of incompatible versions each of which was priced out of the reach of mortal users (over $1,000 for SCO Xenix, as an example);

      4. Novell owned the small business network environment and charged over $1,000 for their operating system;

      5. Virtually no one had any idea what email was or why they'd need it.

      In this period of time Gates appeared to be leading us out of the wilderness of Big Computing Iron and giving us what we wanted (and needed). Who could have seen then the course MS would take in the years after this award?

      --
      No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
  3. not the first... by kubla2000 · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is not the first such workshop that has been held.

    The previous was held on December 17, 2001: http://www.ta.doc.gov/PRel/MA011214.htm

    Participants included all the usual suspects including the MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, and Intel

    Interestingly, one of the participants was Forrester Research who, in their public archives which unfortunatly only has summaries available, include several reports such as:

    http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/Summar y/0,1338,10020,FF.html

    whose summaries with punch line conclusions like "Media companies turn into eBusiness network" alone would have been enough to curl the nose hairs of any movie / recording industry executive still stuck in the 90s (1990s that is).