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Boucher's Anti-DMCA Bill Gets High Profile Allies

Posted by timothy on from the fair-is-fair dept.

Landaras writes "News.com is reporting that a newly-formed alliance called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition is throwing their support and lobbying efforts behind Rep. Rick Boucher's (D-Va) Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. Members of the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition include Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth. The EFF and the American Library Association are also in support."

5 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Hatch And Bono by grendelkhan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now that Fritz Hollings (D - Disney) is gone, the only major stumbling blocks in the senate will be Senators Hatch and Bono. I think we have a shot if Rep Boucher can get this past the House.

    --
    Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
    1. Re:Hatch And Bono by southpolesammy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The only reason that Sen. Hatch can pitch the ideas that he does is due to the fact Utah is so overwhelmingly Republican that as long as he wants to be in office, he will never get voted out. The end result of this is that he can pretty much say anything at all publically without fear of reprisal from his constituents.

      The GOP and other right-wing/corporate leaning organizations know this and use him to pitch ideas that other Senators can not safely propose without possibly drawing the ire of their constituencies and risk getting replaced in 2/6 years. By contrast, Democrats do not have this luxury in the Senate, as there is no state in the nation that is as heavily biased towards Dems as Utah is towards Republicans, therefore you rarely ever see bills in the Senate with as extreme a left-leaning slant as Hatch's right-leaning bills.

      So even if Sen. Hatch's ideas seem completely crazy to everyone, including his own party members, they do serve a purpose, which is to make the moderate conservative bills seem less crazy and outlandish, and therefore to get more credence. Coupled with the lack of an extreme liberal counterbalance to make moderate liberal bills seem more plausible, what we're left with is a permanent tilt towards the right in the Senate.

      --
      Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
  2. A good start, but in the end probably ineffective by keraneuology · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It is a good start, but in the end not much will change. Your average consumer doesn't care much about copy-protected or not-copy-protected CDs and even if they have "this product does not conform to the CD standard" in big bold letters on the cover of the latest hairball that Brittany Spears coughed up they will still buy it just because they have to own whatever it is that Brittany Spears puts out.

    I am waiting for a law that says that producers have a choice: they may a) allow consumers to back up their music/movies/games or b) agree to replace on demand and without charge any CD/DVD that has been damaged and is no longer playable.

    --
    If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
  3. Wouldent this money do better with the EFF by SteakandcheeseUm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've Donated to the EFF, have you?

    EFF's Donation site

  4. chances are VERY high by argoff · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You see, what's going on here is that copyright enforcement is in a world of hurt right now - and so the media industries are trying to microregulate every other industry to do the enforcement for them. Right now we are seeing a back-lash that will likely succede, because the tech companies together have far more economic clout than Hollywood. This will also likely cause all hell to break loose.

    This is not new, it happened in the industrial revolution too. Unlike farming, the industrial revolution required a mobile and educated workforce. It was a disaster for the plantation system who envisioned that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. At first they reactred by making tougher slave laws, till it got to the point you couldn't even teach a slave how to read, then they responded by trying to "force" the industrial northern states to enforce their slavery restrictions through a series of heavy handed regulations, when that went to hell the southern states tried to break off from the union and fence themselves off from the north.

    Today the information age requires the free flow of information, and it is a disaster to those who rely on the copyright system whose vision of the information age was to use inventions like the internet to impose copyrights to the far corners of the earth. At first they responded by making copyrights last (effectively) forever, and imposing punishments for copyright infringement that rival those imposded for violent criminals. Then they pushed through the DMCA, to "force" all the other industries to impose copyrights via heavy handed microregulation. Now that's having problems they are trying to fence themselves off from the rest of the world by using DRM.

    So watch out. SCO was a peace walk. All hell is about to break loose.