DRM and Democracy

jar writes to tell us Bruce Perens has a short editorial on why DRM could have an impact on much more than just our record collections. From the article: "Within the last century, electronic communications have increasingly become the vehicle of democratic discourse. Because radio and television broadcasting are expensive with limited frequencies available, the wealthy have dominated broadcasting. The Internet and World Wide Web place into the common man's hands the capability of global electronic broadcasting. [...] In order to protect democratic discourse in the future, the Internet must remain a fair and level playing field for the distribution of political speech. The full capability of the Internet must remain available to all, without restriction by religious, business, or political interests."

Comments

Parallels with the advent of print

[Quirk]

I ran a quick search and came up with the following site that attempts to study the parallels between the development of the printing press and the internet. History is replete with book burnings and the suppression of books by the power elite. The Vatican Library was thought to hold untold supressed works of great import. The questions arises as to whether we have learned from the past and have wrought a sturdy enough framework of legislation and findings in law to offer the users of the internet the opportunity for free expression.

From the site:"The purpose of this web page is to serve as a focal point for investigations of the parallels between perhaps the two greatest qualitative jumps in communications capabilities of the last millennium - printing and internetted computers"

Further the same site has referenced a number of relevant papers:
" There is a wealth of information available on and off the Web that talks about printing and/or the Internet and/or their social and cultural implications. Since the interest of this web site is in the parallels between printing and the Internet and what they might tell us about policy about the Internet, only a small subset of such papers will be relevant to that understanding. Though even the concept of what is relevant will evolve, there are at least two general topics that should remain relevant:

understanding the parallels and divergences between printing and the Internet

understanding the history and impact of printing"

Re:Monopoly

[Homology]

Make that "because the wealthy have assured monopoly in the broadcasting frequencies, others could not use it". Because I don't know if you turned the dial on your radio lately, but of the 90+ possible FM radio stations, only 20+ are occupied in my city.

What Pereens is talking about is that so much of the so-called "mainstream" media is owned by a few, and it is a controlling factor in reporting. So while there seems to be much choice, in reality, there is very little. The "mainstream" media serves the interests of the powerful and the rich. Look at who owns who.

The coverage of the Iraq war should give you some insights (hint: what is not widely reported).