Slashdot Mirror
How the Obama Copyright Policies Might Unfold
An anonymous reader points out a column by James Boyle, who knows a thing or two about copyright, analyzing the Obama Administration's policy choices about intellectual property and high tech. "Traditionally, Democratic administrations take their copyright policy direct from Hollywood and the recording industry. Unfortunately, so do Republican administrations. The capture of regulators by the industry they regulate is nothing new, of course, but in intellectual property there is the added benefit that incumbents can frequently squelch competing technologies and business methods before they ever come into existence. ... The Obama administration's warm embrace of Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley's checkbook, had given some hope that this pattern would change — and I think it will. Now, instead of taking copyright policy direct from the media conglomerates (who, after all, have a very legitimate point of view — even if not the only point of view) it is quite likely that the administration will construct it as a contract between content companies and high-technology companies such as Google. In some places, citizens and consumers will probably benefit, simply because optimizing for the interests of two economic blocs rather than one is likely to give us a slightly more balanced, and less technology-phobic, set of rules. And perhaps the administration will go further. But recent actions make me doubt that this is the case."
More like the both are wholly p0wned subsidiaries of the plutocrats.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Government moves slow, which is probably a good thing.
We are used to government moving slow, because until now it's been regulated by two parties with different goals slowing each other down.
When the Democrats were elected to control essentially two branches of government and neutralize the third, we removed all governing forces keeping government moving slow. Government is now free to grow unchecked, at any rate desired. That's how you got an almost order of magnitude increase in the federal deficit in the first month of a new president. That was of course before any of the other multi-trillion dollar projects come up and get added to the grand total.
That was really the singular reason to vote for McCain to the exclusion of all others good and bad, but the independents who voted for Obama blew it when they could not grasp this fundamental concept (control of the house and senate was never really in question). Never let one party hold all the marbles, it's like crossing the streams...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and I don't think I've seen any statistic that showed Obama getting a lot more media coverage than McCain
Time and Newsweek, for example. (Speaking of 2008)
"Obama's face or name has somehow made it onto the cover of Time just about half of the time this year (25 out of 52 issues -- 48%)
Newsweek has had 49 issues this year so far (through Dec. 22), so Obama has been featured on about a quarter of its covers as well."
"...the Republican nominee, John McCain, made the cover of Newsweek just four times the entire year, and twice he shared it -- once with Obama and once with Sarah Palin"