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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."
For the moment, DRM and all of its related ridiculousness is the concern of geeks. We're the ones who are informed about the problems with DRM and the slippery slope that it's sent us down.
If things continue to get worse (and there's no reason to believe they won't), it will get to the point where the general public will no longer line XYZ Company's pockets. And when you hit the bottom line, you suddenly start speaking that company's language.
By eliminating free trade.
... well, what exactly? In Communism, The Party decided what's good for you. What do you call a market where the producer, and him alone, dictates what you can and may buy?
Given the choice, the customer would buy the "better" product. The "better" product, for the customer, would of course be the one that offers him more liberty.
Now, devices that do that will vanish from the market because their companies are sued into oblivion. Result: Only crap can survive.
The customer is left out of the loop, as the deciding mechanism which items should survive on the market, which is actually his responsibility and role in a free market.
Free trade is dead. Welcome to the world of
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I keep saying we need to form GeekPAC, a so-called Political Action Committee (AKA "trade organization") to help counter the big lobbying from deep-pocket companies. Geekpac would also promote open source, reduce software patents, and make companies scientifically justify "shortage" before importing more H-1B's. If we don't protect our political ass, nobody will.
Table-ized A.I.
Olson was puzzled why economic growth was faster in the South, after it lost the civil war, and also why France in the 19c after having had three or four revolutions and two catastrophic war time defeats had grown faster than Britain under stable rule. He concluded and showed that long periods of stability allow vested interests to accumulate anti competitive practices which enrich them at the expense of the whole.
We are looking at a classic example of this. Consider those who profit from the DMCA. Olson's insight was that it is in their interests to impose costs on society as a whole which are many times, maybe 100s of times, greater than what they themselves receive, as long as what they receive is more than they otherwise would.
Let interest groups carry on behaving like this for year after year, and gradually the costs imposed on society become so great that economic growth slows or stops totally.
Then, only a dramatic structural change, abolition of the accretions, will help. The good news is, it helps dramatically.
In an ideal world, the various Federal Agencies would counterbalance such interests, because they, being nominated by people elected on a broader basis, will have it in their interests to represent the country as a whole. However, special interests are ingenious and find ways through, and this only works by fits and starts.
It can be done. Thatcher did it in the UK. Democracies can do it, when they see the need. This is the good news, the bad news is, it has to get pretty bad first!
I would say that the networks should really start looking into it -- in about 20 years all the politicians are going to be people who lived through the shutdown of napster, the lawsuits, and the general stupidity.
I'd say that there's plenty of room for other means of revenue. Product placement in show, micropayments, paying to download the show ala iTunes, not giving their actors a million a show, dvd sales of the series, etc. There are lots of revenue streams that the station currently makes money on; they just need to enhance a couple and stop spending so extravagantly and they'll be just fine.
We need to stop worrying about them, and they need to start worrying about other content usurping their marketplace. In the future, their actors will likely be paid less and they will likely make less money. But that's a direct result of us having more to occupy our free time. That's business, and they need to plan for it, not try to legislate it out of existence. But so far, they're winning with the legislation so they're going to keep pushing it.
Actually, the legislation is a very bold move to prevent other content from usurping their marketshare, and what we're reading on slashdot is the natural backlash to their effots. They've made their decision, and are going to try to execute their gameplan regardless of criticism because billions are at stake here. We need to vote with our votes, because nothing else will work. They have way too much money and influence currently to vote with our wallet or our voices. They're going after the legislators, and so far they're winning them over.
Really,
Microsoft still is evil, and I know that they happily jumped into the DRM wagon too. But when I compare today's news with the past I get a chill. Our rights are being ripped in a astonishing fast pace, and hollywood is suceeding in making things that even Microsoft never dreamed off.
The sad part is that they are likely to succeed; The average people don't understand the ramifications of those laws, and when they question their representatives, they are easily convinced by some crappy explanation in the line that this kind of laws helps to prevent terrorism, or save americans jobs or something like that.
But the truth is that RIAA are a threat to capitalism and free market. They are blocking inovation, subverting the law, and turning law-abiding citizens into criminals without they even knowing that.
We have to stop them. Know! Maybe it's time for another Boston Tea's party.
Your ad could be here!
You make a good point, except for this - if this were really the networks' issue, they should have sued Frito-Lay and Pepsi decades ago. I skip commercials all the time, and I don't have a Tivo or other DVR. People have been skipping commercials for years - mostly to go get whatever the commercial is selling out of the fridge. And if advertisers really though people were going to skip their commercials too much, they should have went after whoever it was that release the first remote control. Even if I'm not hungry, I'm not watching commercials if the remote is within reach. I don't see many complaints from the actual advertisers (maybe because its Slashdot and we don't care if Pepsi complains about us not watching their commercials while we IV in Mountain Dew during any and all coding projects, or mostly because they've been using multiple business models in their advertising for years under blanket marketing strategies), just the networks themselves.
Way to go, police.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
You can boycott the companies that are promoting those luddite acts or vote against Reps and Senators, that are on their payroll:
"In an attempt to put an end to all that, Hollywood has drafted the Digital Transition Content Security Act, introduced as H.R. 4569 in December 2005 by Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). This legislation, better known as the Analog Hole Bill, would impose a design mandate on any "analog video input device that converts into digital form an analog video signal.""
The RIAA is urging the FCC and Congress to impose design restrictions on any future HD Radio recorders to stave off a successful new mutation: a digital hard disk recorder that allows easy and flexible archiving of radio broadcasts. As similar devices have appeared for satellite radio, the recording industry has also begun pushing for legislation to restrict them, such as S. 2644, the Platform Equity and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act of 2006, introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.).
Hollywood lobbyists actually convinced the FCC to impose broadcast flag regulations in 2003, but a U.S. Court of Appeals found that the Commission lacked the authority to regulate the internal workings of televisions. Hollywood is now asking Congress to give the FCC that legal authority by passing the Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006, sponsored by Rep. Michael Ferguson (R-N.J.)."
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Wikileaks, no DNS