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Coble-Berman Bill Would Restrict Fair Use
Amazing Quantum Man writes "News.com is reporting on the new Berman-Coble copyright bill. This bill is a two-edged sword. It would make life easier for webcasters, but it would restrict fair use. Interestingly, according to the article, Berman allegedly opposes the bill that has his name on it as a sponsor! I don't think it's on Thomas yet, but Politech has a copy of the bill (2.1M PDF)." The report which the memorandum attached to the bill refers to is online. Congress is making an effort to reconcile traditional copyright law with the realities of digital copying; there's no telling whether the end product will be something tolerable or not.
This may have something to do with the pdf format or the pdf format and MS Word. I've noticed the same kind of bloat here at work with pdf's created from word documents. For example:
word-test.doc - 966 KB
word-test.pdf - 1,646 KB
Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
Unfortunately, to Congress, "bringing in tech people" means bringing in people from MSFT, Oracle, Sony, the (RI|MP)AA, etc. If we are lucky, they might bring in a forward thinking persom from Caltech, MIT, etc. But otherwise, they will bring in industry people who would/do profit from Digital Restrictions Management.
actually this is not a document, but a scan of paper bill without any text recognition.
And PDF-file is not the best way to do it in a such way.
Actually, most of the MBA-crowd literature, from the scholarly to the popular is chok full of remarks on disruptive innovations. The most specific on on this subject, however is (aptly enough) The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.
There are a few really good, more general books on the subject, but i'd have to be at home to find the titles.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
And the TPC fax gateway Website is running now.
Tech Public Policy stuff