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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.'"
pshyeah, tell that to the pirate bay!
Former FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate has announced she is retiring in 2009 and is looking forward to serving on the board of the RIAA as their new "Token Ex-Government Paid Mouthpiece" Director.
"...There's nothing to be gained down that path other than possibly to expand the wallets of a few companies."
That's precisely the reason the government would back it. Governments have created corporations and have conducted wars for exactly that reason.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
We're entering some sort of technological dark ages - the honeymoon period is now over.
The mainstream regulation committees have taken interest in these type of subjects and as usual, the ignorance/commercial interests is/are beginning to shine through.
I record my sleeptalking
But kinda of hard to swallow.
Simply stop giving the people that back this shit your money. Put your money where your mouth is.
Before I purchase any product, I look it up on the web and see if it has DRM, if it does, I don't purchase it. When my ISP starts filtering my connection(throttling is one thing, censorship is something entirely different), I will disconnect. When I cannot look up DRM on products because I no longer use the Internet, I'll just have to assume its there.
Why pay for it when it doesn't work anymore?
So you want people who know nothing about the internal workings of the Internet to decide whether or not to regulate parts of the internet? How exactly does this help the US people? My experience from working at an ISP/Telecommunications company is that the actual engineer types usually are against regulations, filtering, DRM, etc; and it is the bean MBA types that push this type of thing down our throats. By forbidding the engineering types from working for the FCC until their knowledge is horribly out of date, you would be effectively making the FCC rely on outside "expert" witnesses put forth by the MBA types of the companies with agendas.
From her speech: "Overall, the U.S. economy lost $58 billion in output that would have been realized if piracy had not occurred. In addition, the U.S. lost 373,375 jobs due to piracy, and federal and state governments lose $2.6 billion annually through unrealized tax revenue."
That is total BS. Piracy != losses; most (or at least many) people who pirate would not otherwise purchase the product. She needs to go take Economics 101 and realize that if you make something free (which is what piracy does), the demand is going to skyrocket beyond what it would normally be at any reasonable price level.
Statements like this are dangerous because if people really believe piracy caused $58 billion of damage to the economy, then they will be willing to spend similar sums of money in order to combat piracy.
In fact, maybe she realizes that this is total FUD, and just wants to justify an exorbitant budget for her department in order to "combat piracy."
As I said: where's an economist when you need one?
Great, because after reading the tags on the story, I am /positive/ that she'll get plenty of insightful, well-thought-out email from the slashdot crowd.
As usual the government won't do shit and she'll worm her way into a different high position. I hope this bitch dies in a fire.
Nice way to invalidate any conceivable merit the rest of your argument had.
hey c'mon, that's not fair...
everyone knows Deborah Tate gets at least some of her talking points from Clear Channel.
Tate (Clear Channel) on the XM/Sirius merger:
Tate (Clear Channel) on expanding their network of more than 1200 terrestrial radio stations:
Translation:
satellite radio monopoly = bad!
terrestrial radio monopoly = good!