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A History of the Digital Copyright Struggle
sconeu writes "The National Journal has an article detailing the battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. An interesting read, it discusses the tech industry's early miscues, and the efforts made to ensure that Hollywood isn't the only voice heard on the Hill."
With a cue from Walt Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, Senate Commerce panel staffers dimmed the lights for a packed February 28 hearing in the Russell Senate Office Building. A full house of lawmakers and lobbyists settled back to watch an ABC Nightline
How funny would it be if it came out that Eisner had downloaded the footage the night before off of LimeWire?
Which makes you wonder, did he actually have the rights to show the footage? Sure, Eisner OWNS abc, but i wonder if he went through the red tape to get something printed that said he had the rights.
a) Many industry forces want to combat the rise in Internet copyright infringement through technological means.
b) These technological means would likely result in a considerable reduction in the flexibility of personal computers.
c) This "considerable reduction in flexibility" might preclude 100% open source operating systems, depending on the technology used. It stands to reason that open source and free software license compatibility is not the primary concern of the proponents of such legislation.
d) At the very least, this is likely to make it difficult to play movies and/or music with open source software, which will reduce the desirability of the software we've worked so hard to build.
e) This is unacceptable.
What are we going to do about it?
I can think of a few possibilities.
We could stop infringing copyrights, and convince the industry that the problem has been solved. Fat chance this'll happen.
We could implement a classic broad-based boycott, but history has shown that this only works until the next cool shiny DVD comes out.
We could convince our representatives to stop listening to the entertainment industry.
We could do nothing (or do things that amount to nothing, like sit around and gripe like I'm doing right now).
Something is going to happen, and it's probably going to suck unless we, a community of people who have a vested interest in preventing these things from happening, unite and implement an effective solution.
What'll it be?
-John