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Bill Would Outlaw Digital Receiver Recorders
mjdroner writes "ZD-Net has the latest on a sweeping telecom bill in the Senate. The bill provides no support for net neutrality. The bill does, however, include a provision to authorize the FCC to outlaw digital receivers that record broadcasts. The article states that those receivers would be replaced with devices that treat anything with an audio broadcast flag as copy-protected."
Because they believe that buying politicians is cheaper than the amount of money they'd lose.
Uhm... it's a bill... in the Senate... My point wasn't that misarticulated.. was it?
The libertarian party seems to embrace intellectual protectionism as much as anyone else. Look at many of their candidates and leaders to know for sure that they are as gung ho on it as Dems or Reps.
Second, we could try to start our own lobbying group. Give a concentrated voice to the technically literate population
You don't need to do that. It exists.
FOR ALL MULTI-MEDIA CONTENT DELIVERED OVER ALL DIGITAL NETWORKS -
Supporting an Artist's choice of Creative Commons ALLOWED WORKS FILTERING and OPEN and FREE USE of Creative Commons MetaTag control ability, albiet with no royalty tax paid to no patent holder, is the key to making everyone happy! The viewer then has a choice of content to watch - Free or not Free!
ARTISTS do need to be protected.... with the ability for those who don't want absolute copyright protection to have only the protection that they want. This only can be done with Creative Commons! Not DRM, and Not with exclusionary laws that control our computers (aka devices that can record)! Yes, it is possible to mandate levels of play and record depending on allowed (not excluded) creative commons metadata tagged files and thus the files as they stream over any network to devices that could be mandated to follow certain rules of polite behavior when encountering certain levels of artist requested copyright protection.
There is only one way to make everyone happy...
Use Creative Commons, with a meta-data tag, that gives a digital file a digital ID that is search-able, filterable, and then protect that meta-data from changes or removal by creating a law that prevents the change or removal of a file or it's meta-data. ISP's could filter the meta-data - like how anti-virus software works, and notify a user (ISP has their email address for billing purposes) that the users account is being used to exceed "fair use" of copyrighted material, beyond a quota, or established "fair-use" limit. Of course Creative Commons or the government needs to establish a Creative Commons style of "commercial only" license with a way to register (on-line) a creators digital meta-data. Shareable meta-data (See Creative Commons Share-alike) would be not filtered or audited, only commercial only meta-data would be filtered. The notification process would first be friendly, then a process of questioning by the ISP could happen if the "commercial only creative commons meta-data" continued to be shared beyond fair use! If all friendly attempts to stop the infringer from exceeding fair use quota did not affect the traffic the ISP could then notify a central world wide infringer data base providing a "hidden" Pseudonym email address to the database where others could email this Pseudonym address and the ISP would then forward the email to the infringer (the creator of the works, owner of copyright, or fans of the work could then ask the infringer to stop (could be digital and automatic once the infringer's pseudonym email address hit the database listing the files meta-data along with the pseudonym's email address. Friendly notification, only amplified could continue, before enforcement action via law suit or criminal process could continue. IP v6 could allow an ISP customer a "assigned IP address" and even if the user had a open wireless network that was usable by anyone, they could be advised in a friendly way to investigate the users of the network or be able to "block the sending of certain files on their network" at a central router or firewall. Final penalty for user who infringes on "commercial only creative commons copyright digital meta-data" would be the termination of the Internet account by the ISP (private ISP or public if the municipality were providing free Internet access)! No one would like to loose their Internet access, would be worse than fines (as a repeat infringer could be targeted in a database with the risk of being black listed for X amount of time from using other ISPs). Of course, other Internet anonymous use could continue as only "commercial only" meta-data would be filtered or audited! China does a similar thing now to control Internet access there, only in violation of human rights. Blocking content is possible as well and the creative commons license, once violated, revokes future use of the licensed work (meaning that the ISP could block, or rather only allow by following the applicable license and enforcement of the license cho
so, even though people have been recording things on audio cassettes for decades, now that people are doing it digitally in smaller numbers (it takes some technical knowhow), all of a sudden they want to outlaw the recorders?
Yes, that's exactly what they want to do. Their reasoning being that a digital copy is (or at least can be (with lossless compression)) as good as the original whereas an analog copy is inherently lossy. With a perfect digital copy there's no need for us to re-consume the original (for additional cost), because once we have initial access to it, we can access it just as well any time we'd like. They feel threatened by this.
This sig intentionally left justified.
I think you missed the benefits of 'preferential voting'. Essentially it means:
'I'll vote for this guy, but if he doesn't get in then
I'll vote for her, but if she doesn't get in then
I'll vote for them.. etc'
To use an example from the previous US election, one could vote for (say) Ralph Nader, but preference John Kerry. (Yeah, yeah, so I'm left-of-centre). With preferential voting, you're not wasting your vote, even though Nader will probably not get in. Rather, you're sending Kerry a message that you don't really approve of his policies, but just prefer him to the Other Guy. The crux is, that your vote still goes to Kerry.
Another benefit, is that minor parties can allocate their own preferences. So one could just vote for (say) Nader, and he could negotiate his preferences with the major parties. This would give him leverage in the policy development of the major parties in the lead-up to the election. It also makes people more inclined to vote for minor parties, because they know it's not a 'wasted vote'.
That's the system we have in Australia, and I think it works really well. I think it's absolutely essential if we're to encourage multiple parties (even if they're minor parties).
I think what he most likely meant was that rather than there being a certain number of districts per state, the seats would be divided based on the vote across the entire state. For example, if a state has 10 House seats, and the state votes, say, 40% Republican, 40% Democrat, and 10% independent, then there would be four Republicans, four Democrats, and one independent. This would basically eliminate gerrymandering, and make it easier for small political parties to gain a voice.