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Hollings vs. McCain on Broadband and Copyrights
tabdelgawad writes "The Washington Post has a mostly speculative article on the effects of John McCain (R-AR) replacing Ernest 'Fritz' Hollings (D-SC) as chairman of the powerful senate Commerce Committee. Topics in the article include the future of pending broadband and copyright legislation as well as the Senate's relationship with the FCC. Best quote from the article belongs to ITAA president Harris Miller: 'If Jack Valenti had been around at the time of Gutenberg he would have organized the monks to come and burn down the printing press' :-)."
More appropriate to say if Jack Valentini had been around during the time of Nazi Germany, he would have led Hitler's book-burning campaign.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Well, this article was quite rather mindnumbing and inconclusive, but if I'm reading this quite right, then it seems like the telco's monopolistic reigns are to in^H^Hdecrease in power (hahahahaha... riiiight). Thus allowing for more DSL providers. Well, yea this will resolve the last mile. Telcos will never put the equips in their CO's just for OTHER DSL providers. I forsee, regardless of the laws to be passed, telcos will disregard them, virtual monopolies will continues.
oooh, anti-digital copying protection. This falls back to "closing the analog hole" discussion that we had before. It can't really be done because the last step from the tv/player to our eyes are analog, as some other people have stated before. Laws and technologies will put up barriers, but future technologies will overcome the barriers preventing us from legally having our backups.
This will prove very interresting. On one hand, Sen. McCain is a Republican and Republicans generally favor "small" government, which can (and often does) lead to deregulation. On the other hand, Republicans have bowed-down to big business interrests in the past (does anyone really need examples?), and this could be what der Fuehrer Valenti is counting on.
No matter where you go... there you are.
That's just amazingly wrong. Wow. How can you stand being so wrong?
McCain's opponents accuse him of being a liberal because he had the audacity to run against the interests of some of the Republican party's leaders. They're still angry.
His Stances and choices usually support what the Democrats want, and often exceeds their wildest dreams.
Give us some examples. The American Conservative Union and the Americans for Democratic Action, two diametrically opposed organizations both rank his voting record as highly conservative. I'm a liberal Democrat and I would love it if McCain turned Democrat, but it sure as hell hasn't happened.
Do you have any evidence to base these absurd beliefs on? Any whatsoever?
Someone here said McCain is "a bad thing for opponants of the DMCA". I dont know McCain, so I cant really comment on that. But consider is from another position. IS there any way he could be worse than Hollings? Hollings was nicknamed "the senator from Disney". Hes so well known for his CDTBPA that hardware copy protection componants are refered to as Fritz chips. I dont know McCain, but there is no way he can be as awkward as Hollings. I dont follow US broadband news, but im all for more competition in the area before they start blocking p2p systems. If theres no competition thats a lot easier.
I know I'm going to get nailed for this, but I get so sick and tired of the garbage people spew about copyrights.
If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges unless I could plant a tree in your yard, or I said I didn't have an incentive to make cotton without owning slaves on the plantation, people would see it as the shallow and worthless arguments they are. But if I say I don't have an incentive to create and bring works into the public domain unless I have a copyright monopoly - people just take it on faith. They don't even question it. They just assume on faith that society would fall apart, and artists would be ruined without them. They ignore simle facts like that the entire renassance happened without them, and like how copyrights were originally created as a form of censorship and not a property nor an incentive to creators. They ignore and write off the consistent, dramatic, and often unpredicted success of non "owned" technologies - like Linux, tcp/ip, x86 compatable interfaces, etc...
Not only that, but they completey ignore, blow off, or sweet talk all the bad ancillatory effects of cpoyrights. Eg the failures of hollywood culture, the unethical effects of Microsoft and other companies that leverage intellectual property in a way that does not benefit society in the slightest, biases in the media, overpriced overly revised and modified college books and books of other educational means. And the things that copyright lead to like the DMCA. They ignore things like how the effective enforcement of copyrights is going to require centralized system of checks and enforcement that is costly, invades privacy, violates due-process, and is just plain big-brotherish. And even *if* such a systyem could be held up in the US, implementing that in other countries wiothout constitutional protections could be disasterous, even murderous (eg china).
They ignore simple physical facts. like the fact that normal property has natural limits in supply and demand - that imply markets and property law, but that information has no natural limits. If the government gave someone a monopoly on growing potatos, and then fradulently called that a market because someone could buy or sell that monopoly, they would call it big brotherish and overbearing government regulation. But when they do it with information, people just call it a right, an entitlement, they can't even see that if anything information should have less restrictions in government regulation - not more.
If the government called the right to beat people over the head a property right, would beople just take it that that's the way things should be because they called it *PROPERTY*. Just because government or institutions call something a property does not mean that it is. Think about it.
btw. Merry Christmas
That is a very small electorate and each state senator is thus more responsive and responsible as they can be ousted much more easily.
We used to have this system. It didn't prevent corruption; in fact, corruption is far easier on a local level because you don't have as many people looking at what you're doing.
What I can see happening is state legislatures ousting democratically elected Senators because they don't like their ideology. State legislatures tend to be far more conservative than their respective populations (look at Florida's legislature's actions during the 2000 election debacle).
He claimed that VCR's would doom the industry, and they turned out to be their saviour. So, other than him being able to write checks to politicians, is there anything he has to say on this issue that isn't suspect on the face of it?
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When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
"While he sees it as a useful tool, "he really is quite a populist," Gownder said. "He really wants to see the consumers benefit. When he sees deregulation to a bad deal for consumers he's really quite critical."
Why does that comment practically chide him for being pro-consumer? Aren't *they* the ones giving companies all their money (aside from gov. handouts)?
There is a related article about the changing chairmanship of the Judiciary committee, from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a great advocate for the People, to Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a major supporter of DMCA.
The article's coverage on the "News for Nerds" issues of that committee starts in pargraph sixteen, which begins "The entertainment industry's quest for legislation to stamp out the growing problem of Internet piracy..." and also touches on providing digital content online including webcaster royalties.
-Robert