Slashdot Mirror
Death By DMCA
Dino writes "There's a good article in the IEEE Spectrum, titled 'Death by DMCA', which talks about how whole classes of devices were eliminated, and how others won't even see the light of day as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One example is ReplayTV's TiVo-like devices which featured sharing capabilities, along with automatic ad skipping; the company was sued to bankruptcy, and the reincarnated device supported neither sharing nor ad skipping."
Well, if everyone here chips in, maybe we can buy our very own Senator?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Has anyone read Player Piano by Vonnegut? Great book... pretty good story about technology and designed obsolescence, and the collapse therein of a society... I won't give away the ending,
I think you just did.
Now I can sleep well in the evening knowing that after a day full of downloading copyrighted music and movies, not paying a cent for them and still making copies of what turns out not to be junk to give to my friends ... I'm doing my role to make this world a better place to live.
Next thing you know, they're going to make microwaves illegal so I can't get up and make popcorn during the commercials.
Thatcher isn't really a good example of this, if anything she's an example of the opposite. Venezuela under Hugo Chávez is a far better example. Especially given that Venezuela, like the US, is federal republic. Or Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He broke up those vested farm interests and redistributed the land to the people. Now the surplus in farm produce is huge, and food is almost too cheap to sell. Zimbabwe is a shining beacon of how socialists like Chavez can achieve economic prosperity and democratic stability for all.
Its unamerican to not expect the gov to legislate your dinosaur-era business model!