FCC Commissioner Lauds DRM, ISP Filtering

snydeq writes "Ars Technica's Nate Anderson and InfoWorld's Paul Venezia provide worthwhile commentary on a recent speech by FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate (PDF), in which she praised DRM as 'very effective' and raised a flag in favor of ISP filtering. Anderson: 'Having commissioners who feel that the government has a duty to partner with and back educational classroom content from the RIAA; who really believe that ISP filtering is so unproblematic we can stop considering objections; and who think that universities worry about file-swapping because tuition might be raised to pay for the needed "expansion of storage capabilities" (huh?) isn't good for the FCC and isn't good for America.' Venezia: 'Leave the ISPs out of it — it's not their job to protect a failing business model, and a movement toward a tiered and filtered Internet will do nothing to stem the tide of piracy, but will result in great restrictions on innovation, freedoms, and the general use of the Internet. There's nothing to be gained down that path other than possibly to expand the wallets of a few companies.'"

Comments

WTF parts...

[LingNoi]

It's interesting that a lawyer can know so much about this. She's obviously the most experienced person to know about this stuff..

For example, in South Korea, Warner Brothers is combating piracy of its DVDs by releasing a watermarked version online, instead of a DRM-protected DVD.

How is it piracy if Warner Brothers releases it? Aren't you a fucking lawyer?! You should know this!

For example, leading digital
fingerprinting company Audible Magic expects a turn-key system to cost around $100,000 for a large university this year.

and I assume Universities will be forced into installing this black box on their network monitoring all their traffic, because that isn't weird in a 1984 kind of way..

For example, less than 1% of the
Olympic coverage viewed this past summer was pirated.

So what? Most of us didn't watch it on purpose out of protest. Correlation doesn't equate causation.

Some campuses have taken measures to create their own tools to combat piracy. The University of Florida is a great example. Once they realized the huge cost that piracy was creating on campus, they developed their own tool to combat illegal file sharing. This tool, called âoeRed Lambda,â helped bring the Universityâ(TM)s number of infringement claims to almost zero, and the infrastructure and bandwidth savings were so great that the University was awarded a taxpayer award for the savings generated.

So rather then buy a $100,000 system they rolled their own and got paid for doing it? Nice to see those taxes aren't going to waste.

Digital fingerprinting and watermarking would not be possible if net neutrality is enforced in its harshest form.

They don't work now, she even says so in the pdf that watermarking doesn't work and what does network neutrality have to do with this at all.

She should stick to her own profession instead of thinking she knows things about computers.

If net neutrality is implemented in its strictest form, with carriers not being able to distinguish between any packets, prioritizing more time-sensitive traffic such as video and VoIP traffic, we will have lost much of the innovation that makes the internet great, and may lose what progress we have made.

The reason the internet is what it is because it is network neutral. They'd be no Google if it wasn't for network neutrality as well as many other companies.

Her reasoning is that VOIP and video is more important because big companies want to turn the Internet into cable TV and Phone.

She can not comprehend the Internet as a communication tool used by all, she can only see money to be made.. Typical really, she is a lawyer after all..

Take for example materials that have been created by companies such as IKeepSafe. One recent initiative taken was the creation of a new online adventure: âoeFaux Paw and the Dangerous Download.â This book and animated adventure helps explain to kids why piracy is bad, and encourages them to only download from trusted, legal sites.

Yes lets brainwash the kids, that'll ensure your cashcow internet is a success. Don't download from our competitors stores, only our trusted website.

I am grateful that government has acted in an appropriate manner, incorporating
piracy education requirements in the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

Why? You're the FCC Commissioner however the more I read the more you sound like a fucking RIAA sleeper agent and "incorporating" isn't the word I would use, "slipped in" sounds more appropriate.

Some of you probably attended public schools that were connected to the internet through a program administered by the FCC, the âoeE-rate pro