What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss

Asprin writes "Businessweek has an editorial up which argues that the FCC's HDTV broadcast flag rule is a good thing, and that everyone is just overreacting. What the author is overlooking is that this rule gives exclusive control over production to the studios that are in "the club", essentially denying private citizens the right to make their own HDTV format video. To wit: "The problem comes when a program taped on an old VCR can't be replayed on a next-generation VCR. So consumers may experience some compatibility problems between machines as they upgrade." Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!) The problem is the word "consumers", which doesn't describe us anymore. There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?"

Comments

eh?

[nizo]

The article title: What Critics of the Critics of the FCC Rule Miss

Yes but what about the critics of the critics of the critics? Three cheers for article titles that turn your brain inside out!

Re:Is the frog boiling yet?

[Noren]

This is an urban legend- a frog will try to jump out if it's possible for it to do so as the temperature increases. See snopes entry.

Am I missing something here?

[DCheesi]

There's nothing like being locked out of your own old family videos when your current VCR dies, eh?

Err, why would you lose your home movies? Your current videos aren't even HD, so they wouldn't be regulated. And both personal camcorders and recordings from analog should default to having the flag off, so you can copy them in the clear. The whole point of having a 'flag' is that not all HD data will be restricted, just the crap that comes from the media giants.

(Hmm, I guess I must be critic's critic's ...aah, whatever ;)