Patents: Limited term, no extension, and it makes "trade secrets" a matter of the public record after 20 (or so) years.
Of course, if Congress decides in favor of Disney, you could see patents getting the same "enhancements" that copyrights are getting now (length extension, retroactive extensions, etc.)
That's the kind of stuff I meant. I don't think that all IP protections are bad, only that Congress has been swinging the benefits of IP protection (which should be a compromise between the good of the inventor and the good of the public) much too far in favor of the inventor.
As much as I don't want it to happen, I'm 99% convinced that the Supreme Court will side with Disney, et al. I just don't see them actually taking a reasonable view of the Constitution and understanding that unlimited extensions equal an unlimited time.
And when they decide in Disney's favor, that will be a big flashing green light for Congress to sell out all other IP-related protections for the citizens without a second thought.
Say goodbye to the Public Domain. It was fun while it lasted.:-/
Leave your knee-jerk reactions at home for now, people. The FSF is on the case. Don't get all up in arms unless the FSF determines there is an actual problem.
That's right - save the knee-jerk reactions for when Red Hat changes a desktop theme.
My sister-in-law is starting her second year at Boston University, and I swear getting emails from her is like getting an email from Prince.
"Hey! I got a msg 4u. It's gonna be 2-cool 4evr!!!:-)"
I can't decide if that's more annoying than my sister and father, who still, in spite of my best efforts to educate them, haven't figured out the basics of the capslock key, new paragraphs, and punctuation in email.
Until Linux comes to a level of user-friendliness much more advanced than it's at now, Linux is not going to enter the general consumer market. The programs are not what people are familliar to, it's not supported by ISPs and a lot of technical help groups, the installation is still complicated (we're talking about people who generally have neither the ability nor desire to so much as reinstall Windows), and neither the CLI (obviously) nor the major interfaces (Gnome, KDE, etc.) are really as user friendly and simple to use as Windows.
You do realize that the more support that gets behind Linux, the more quickly and easily familiar programs will get written and/or ported to it, right? And the more people who use Linux on a daily basis outside of the developer world will result in a greater push toward the user interface?
The NYT isn't advocating the government yank out everyone's copy of office and stick them on "ed" - they're advocating that governments look at throwing support Linux's way, thereby resulting in increased competition and, by extension, better advances for the end user on both sides.
Following the release of the plan, the Administration's Cybersecurity team will take it on the road for discussions with the people about what can and should be done to protect and defend the net.
...for values of "the people" that equal Sony, Microsoft, and the RIAA.
You kid, but I remember a story from a year or so ago about this guy who has made his career by looking for trends in industry, filing a very broad, generic patent, and ammending it to become more specific as the technology solidifies, and going after the people who invented the technology for patent royalties.
I searched the archives and google, but wasn't able to find a link to the story. Maybe someone else remembers the story, too.
The Slashdot headline was sensationalist and misleading. I can't see how ITC/Afga could argue that the DMCA should even apply here.
Like most companies that have invoked the DMCA recently (Apple, HP, etc.), they're probably doing it as a scare tactic, without any real understanding of what the law applies to. The important part isn't really that the DMCA might apply to font embedding - the important part is that this is yet another group using the cudgel of the DMCA in a dealing with a competitor.
I expect to see "I'm going to sue you under the DMCA" replacing "I'm going to tell Mom" in sibling fights any day now.
However, let's take a look into the future. Let's say that technology has evolved to the point where one can transfer complete, same as CD-quality albums in less than a second, and imprint them onto CD (or whatever the current technology is) in even less time. One click allows me to fully reproduce Janis Ian's latest release - liner notes & all.
At that point, should artists be worried? Or, to put it more generally, should artists always permit the reproducing of their works?
Or, the question should be, is it acceptable to cripple this future technology to protect the entertainment industry?
Let me get this straight
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This guy's just whining because Google doesn't rank pages according to his crackheaded counterculture views? And this is news?
Google must be doing pretty well if this is the worst criticism they can find about them.
I gotta wonder what Declan's been smoking. First he writes the "Don't spend a lot of effort trying to get laws changed, just let the government do what it wants" article, now the "The DMCA isn't that bad, don't be afraid of it" article.
Anyone think that Jack Valenti's hired a cracker to break into Declan's account and masquerade as him?
If your senators are anything like mine, you MAY get a meeting with some low-level staffer, who will listen to your arguments and then blankly reply that "The Senators supports the rights of artists to protect their work. Thank you for coming by."
You won't, of course, even get to see the Senator unless you're a big campaign donor.
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.
So... is there a middle ground? I have heard some interesting proposals (dollar downloads from music sites, etc) that might offer a light at the end of the tunnel.
For that to happen, the RIAA/MPAA would have to actually be interested in giving the people what they want. They aren't. They're interested in getting more control over what you do with media. The cries of piracy and half-hearted attempts at providing digital music are merely there so they can go to Congress and say "See! We tried! But we need to force every hardware and software company to let us determine how media is used, in order to provide our HIGH VALUE DIGITAL CONTENT on the internet."
So any middle ground will have to come from Hollywood. They've shown no inclination to put forth a good-faith digital music service that respects the rights of the citizens. If they did that and it failed, they'd have more ammunition. As it is now, it's just posturing.
And, again, the MPAA/RIAA is working to make sure that nobody CAN develop a better product, or a better way to distribute media. That's the real danger and injustice in the situation. You can't develop a better product if the proponents of the old way of doing things make everything BUT their way illegal.
I care about my fair use rights to copy content for my personal use. I with all of you on that. I DO NOT care about my rights to mass distribute media to anonymous people.
But, you see, the RIAA doesn't know or care if you're making copies for personal use, making a mix CD to play at your parents' 50th wedding anniversary party, emailing your college fight song to your old roomate, or putting the new Britney Spears single up on Napster. There's no technical way to distinguish between those, because they all must take into account your intent. So if you let the RIAA/MPAA dictate what you can do with your technology, and what you can do with the media that you legally obtain, then your fair use rights will be impacted. That's why you should oppose this Congressional involvement, even if you consider everyone who uses P2P a freeloading internet pirate.
These millionaire artists can change the system ANYTIME THEY WANT, so you'll excuse me for not having a lot of sympathy for their cause. Any time they want they can start up their own record companies. But funny how new record companies start to work like old record companies, because they have subsidize 100 failures for every 1 success.
The point isn't that the artists are millionaries, or that they haven't changed the system. The point is that most reports point to the MPAA/RIAA being, at beast, a price-fixingcartel who sign gullible artists to slave-like contracts. Yes, I'm well aware that the artists sign those contracts, but even given that, Big Hollywood is about the farthest thing from a Good and Pure group as you'll find, thus the amazement that you'd use them as a contrast for P2P users who are out to "rip people off". Just different sides of the same coin.
Inneresting cite, technology obsoleting industries. This sure happens, but in the past (I'm thinking about automobiles obsoleting horses, plastic obsoleting whalebone) the new industry came by its gains honestly, by offering a better product. What the *AA are trying to do is prevent the theft -- or, if you prefer, "unauthorized copying without payment to the distributor or artist" -- of their material. I see a significant difference here.
The way I see it, it's the horse industry using their influence in Congress to make the internal combustion engine illegal, it's the whalebone insdustry getting Congress to pass laws saying that they have the right to determine which kinds of plastic make it onto the market.
So the real argument, when you get through all the layers of "We want free stuff" and "Burn, internet pirates, burn!" is that Big Hollywood wants Congress to allow THEM to determine what sorts of digital technology make it to market in the future. So, by granting them this right, Congress is short-circuting the process by which new technology could arise and replace the old.
The point is that Congress represents ALL THE PEOPLE, no matter how rich they are (!!), not just people who want to rip-off things. But apparently you think that rich people shouldn't have any rights because they are rich.
And MY point is that Congress is not currently representing ALL THE PEOPLE - they are representing only the people with enough money to buy the laws. One need only look at the hearings on DRM, the broadcast flag, etc. If there are 20 seats on the panel, 19 of them will be bigwigs representing one side of the argument, and possibly one token seat will represent a consumer interest voice. Jack Valenti doesn't get the ear of 30 Congressmen at one time because he's Jack Valenti of Los Angeles, he gets it because of the unproportional influence the organization he heads wields in Congress.
And I also find it curious that you'd place the MPAA/RIAA on the side that doesn't want to "rip-off things", given how people like Chuck D., Courtney Love, Janis Ian, etc. have described their business practices. Holding up a price-fixing cartel as a beacon of goodness and purity in this debate doesn't win any points. The legislation Big Hollywood is buying will not only affect those mean nasty internet pirates, but also people who faithfully purchase the latest RIAA CDs, and wish to do piratic things like back up the CDs, convert them to portable digital formats, or listen to them on non-Microsoft platforms. So spare me the "If you don't support DRM, you're obviously out to rip people off" line.
So yes, I'm saying that DRM, etc. is the wrong way for Congress to handle this problem, but I'm also saying that this is a problem in the first place is that the MPAA/RIAA/etc. can waltz into meet with Joe Senator, say "I want you to pass a law that gives my industry rights above and beyond what should be morally permissable," and an average citizen can expect at best to meet with a low-level staffer. Thus, my argument that it is wrong for a multibilliondollar industry to expect Congress to act as its lapdog in the face of a changing technological landscape.
If what you mean is that only in America can a creator of something valuable go to congress and ask that protections be in place to prevent stealing by people who don't create things (but think that they should get them for free), then I agree with you.
Ah, I see you're falling into the thinking of "Big Hollywood == producers, ordinary folk == consumers." Because don't think for a minute that your garage band, self-published novel, or digital art gallery will get the same copy prevention technology as the MPAA and RIAA use. For no other reason than if anyone could mark content as "protected", then it wouldn't solve any sort of "piracy" problem. So what you're supporting is in essence a select group that can use technology as a "producer", while denying the technology to the mere mortals. Ok, gotcha.
The fact of the matter is that there is a subtle difference between ensuring the right of someone to attempt to make a profit, vs. ensuring the right of someone to demand a profit. What the MPAA/RIAA are asking for is the keys to future technological development, so that they can dictate what new technology comes about, and when. It's not anyone's concern but their own that they have developed and clung to a business model that makes the assumption that they are the only ones who can produce and distribute "content" on a global basis. Times change, technology changes. Plenty of formerly profitable businesses are on the scrap heap of history because they could not or would not adjust to a changing technological landscape. Yet you seem to think that the Congress has the right, nay, the duty to grant the MPAA/RIAA a special exception to this, and to prop up their profit models in the face of a changing landscape. Curious.
In a free-market economy, services pop up to fill a vaccuum. Big Hollywood has shown no inclination to fill the consumer's desire for digital media, so quasi-legal/quasi-moral industries have sprung up to fill the hole. Even now, Big Hollywood's attempts to fill the market are only halfhearted. They offer a small selection of music online, in restrictive formats, at fairly high prices, and wonder why people don't flock to them compared to the free filesharing services that popped up while they were ignoring the internet. Sorry guys, your loss. Do some market research, find out what people want, and give it to them. I daresay that if Big Hollywood offered their back catalogs in an open format at reasonable prices, a majority of people would go for that, if for no other reason than the quality control vs. P2P services. But no, they'd rather run to Congress and have MP3s, CD Burners, and firewire ports made criminal, rather than competing in the marketplace.
Congress' role is to protect the rights of the people, not Jack Valenti's paycheck. By bending to Hollywood's whims, Congress is most likely delaying or eliminating a marketplace where artists can sell directly to their fans without the expense of a middleman like the *AA, and where new and different musical artists and genres can gain exposure over webcasting stations that are not beholden to Clear Channel's top-10 directives. By granting control of digital technology to a group that fought the VCR all the way to the Supreme Court is shortsighted at best, illegal and immoral at worst.
So the issue is not one of protecting the rights of artists - that can be accomplished within the framework of current copyright law. The issue is that Congress should not prop up the profits and business model of any industry, simply due to its influence and campaign contributions.
As an aside, I'm also going to take from your post that you oppose the rights of people to have access to VCRs, audio tapes, Xerox machines, or pens, since they can all be used for, and have been used for, "stealing" from "creators."
...can we have multibilliondollar corporations going to Congress and saying "If you don't change the rules to help us, we are going to cut ourselves off from selling our products with this new form of technology, in essence leaving ourselves in the realm of the horse-and-buggy as we enter the automobile age"...
And actually have Congress give in!!! Remember that when the rapid advance of technology slows in the next few years.
Slashdot Mirror
Patents: Limited term, no extension, and it makes "trade secrets" a matter of the public record after 20 (or so) years.
Of course, if Congress decides in favor of Disney, you could see patents getting the same "enhancements" that copyrights are getting now (length extension, retroactive extensions, etc.)
That's the kind of stuff I meant. I don't think that all IP protections are bad, only that Congress has been swinging the benefits of IP protection (which should be a compromise between the good of the inventor and the good of the public) much too far in favor of the inventor.
As much as I don't want it to happen, I'm 99% convinced that the Supreme Court will side with Disney, et al. I just don't see them actually taking a reasonable view of the Constitution and understanding that unlimited extensions equal an unlimited time.
:-/
And when they decide in Disney's favor, that will be a big flashing green light for Congress to sell out all other IP-related protections for the citizens without a second thought.
Say goodbye to the Public Domain. It was fun while it lasted.
Come on, you know it's not a Slashdot story without a ignorant jab at Red Hat! It's the new trendy thing to do!
Any idea when we'll see Congressional action to look into how RIAA members can collude to keep CD prices artifically high?
[sounds of crickets chirping]
There is no rule that says that business have to survive.
Tell that to the RIAA, and be sure to have paramedics around when they go into convulsive fits of laughter.
Leave your knee-jerk reactions at home for now, people. The FSF is on the case. Don't get all up in arms unless the FSF determines there is an actual problem.
That's right - save the knee-jerk reactions for when Red Hat changes a desktop theme.
My sister-in-law is starting her second year at Boston University, and I swear getting emails from her is like getting an email from Prince.
:-)"
"Hey! I got a msg 4u. It's gonna be 2-cool 4evr!!!
I can't decide if that's more annoying than my sister and father, who still, in spite of my best efforts to educate them, haven't figured out the basics of the capslock key, new paragraphs, and punctuation in email.
You do realize that the more support that gets behind Linux, the more quickly and easily familiar programs will get written and/or ported to it, right? And the more people who use Linux on a daily basis outside of the developer world will result in a greater push toward the user interface?
The NYT isn't advocating the government yank out everyone's copy of office and stick them on "ed" - they're advocating that governments look at throwing support Linux's way, thereby resulting in increased competition and, by extension, better advances for the end user on both sides.
...for values of "the people" that equal Sony, Microsoft, and the RIAA.
You kid, but I remember a story from a year or so ago about this guy who has made his career by looking for trends in industry, filing a very broad, generic patent, and ammending it to become more specific as the technology solidifies, and going after the people who invented the technology for patent royalties.
I searched the archives and google, but wasn't able to find a link to the story. Maybe someone else remembers the story, too.
The Slashdot headline was sensationalist and misleading. I can't see how ITC/Afga could argue that the DMCA should even apply here.
Like most companies that have invoked the DMCA recently (Apple, HP, etc.), they're probably doing it as a scare tactic, without any real understanding of what the law applies to. The important part isn't really that the DMCA might apply to font embedding - the important part is that this is yet another group using the cudgel of the DMCA in a dealing with a competitor.
I expect to see "I'm going to sue you under the DMCA" replacing "I'm going to tell Mom" in sibling fights any day now.
However, let's take a look into the future. Let's say that technology has evolved to the point where one can transfer complete, same as CD-quality albums in less than a second, and imprint them onto CD (or whatever the current technology is) in even less time. One click allows me to fully reproduce Janis Ian's latest release - liner notes & all.
At that point, should artists be worried? Or, to put it more generally, should artists always permit the reproducing of their works?
Or, the question should be, is it acceptable to cripple this future technology to protect the entertainment industry?
This guy's just whining because Google doesn't rank pages according to his crackheaded counterculture views? And this is news?
Google must be doing pretty well if this is the worst criticism they can find about them.
I gotta wonder what Declan's been smoking. First he writes the "Don't spend a lot of effort trying to get laws changed, just let the government do what it wants" article, now the "The DMCA isn't that bad, don't be afraid of it" article.
Anyone think that Jack Valenti's hired a cracker to break into Declan's account and masquerade as him?
If your senators are anything like mine, you MAY get a meeting with some low-level staffer, who will listen to your arguments and then blankly reply that "The Senators supports the rights of artists to protect their work. Thank you for coming by."
You won't, of course, even get to see the Senator unless you're a big campaign donor.
ITYM "formerly the World Wrestling Federation," jabroni. :-)
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.
If that's as polite as you get, Mr. AC, I say go for it! :-)
If you'd like to contact Sony Japan, this form appears to be a good place to start.
Remember - be polite and direct in telling them that you will not support technology that negates the rights of the customer.
So... is there a middle ground? I have heard some interesting proposals (dollar downloads from music sites, etc) that might offer a light at the end of the tunnel.
For that to happen, the RIAA/MPAA would have to actually be interested in giving the people what they want. They aren't. They're interested in getting more control over what you do with media. The cries of piracy and half-hearted attempts at providing digital music are merely there so they can go to Congress and say "See! We tried! But we need to force every hardware and software company to let us determine how media is used, in order to provide our HIGH VALUE DIGITAL CONTENT on the internet."
So any middle ground will have to come from Hollywood. They've shown no inclination to put forth a good-faith digital music service that respects the rights of the citizens. If they did that and it failed, they'd have more ammunition. As it is now, it's just posturing.
And, again, the MPAA/RIAA is working to make sure that nobody CAN develop a better product, or a better way to distribute media. That's the real danger and injustice in the situation. You can't develop a better product if the proponents of the old way of doing things make everything BUT their way illegal.
I care about my fair use rights to copy content for my personal use. I with all of you on that. I DO NOT care about my rights to mass distribute media to anonymous people.
But, you see, the RIAA doesn't know or care if you're making copies for personal use, making a mix CD to play at your parents' 50th wedding anniversary party, emailing your college fight song to your old roomate, or putting the new Britney Spears single up on Napster. There's no technical way to distinguish between those, because they all must take into account your intent. So if you let the RIAA/MPAA dictate what you can do with your technology, and what you can do with the media that you legally obtain, then your fair use rights will be impacted. That's why you should oppose this Congressional involvement, even if you consider everyone who uses P2P a freeloading internet pirate.
These millionaire artists can change the system ANYTIME THEY WANT, so you'll excuse me for not having a lot of sympathy for their cause. Any time they want they can start up their own record companies. But funny how new record companies start to work like old record companies, because they have subsidize 100 failures for every 1 success.
The point isn't that the artists are millionaries, or that they haven't changed the system. The point is that most reports point to the MPAA/RIAA being, at beast, a price-fixing cartel who sign gullible artists to slave-like contracts. Yes, I'm well aware that the artists sign those contracts, but even given that, Big Hollywood is about the farthest thing from a Good and Pure group as you'll find, thus the amazement that you'd use them as a contrast for P2P users who are out to "rip people off". Just different sides of the same coin.
Inneresting cite, technology obsoleting industries. This sure happens, but in the past (I'm thinking about automobiles obsoleting horses, plastic obsoleting whalebone) the new industry came by its gains honestly, by offering a better product. What the *AA are trying to do is prevent the theft -- or, if you prefer, "unauthorized copying without payment to the distributor or artist" -- of their material. I see a significant difference here.
The way I see it, it's the horse industry using their influence in Congress to make the internal combustion engine illegal, it's the whalebone insdustry getting Congress to pass laws saying that they have the right to determine which kinds of plastic make it onto the market.
So the real argument, when you get through all the layers of "We want free stuff" and "Burn, internet pirates, burn!" is that Big Hollywood wants Congress to allow THEM to determine what sorts of digital technology make it to market in the future. So, by granting them this right, Congress is short-circuting the process by which new technology could arise and replace the old.
The point is that Congress represents ALL THE PEOPLE, no matter how rich they are (!!), not just people who want to rip-off things. But apparently you think that rich people shouldn't have any rights because they are rich.
And MY point is that Congress is not currently representing ALL THE PEOPLE - they are representing only the people with enough money to buy the laws. One need only look at the hearings on DRM, the broadcast flag, etc. If there are 20 seats on the panel, 19 of them will be bigwigs representing one side of the argument, and possibly one token seat will represent a consumer interest voice. Jack Valenti doesn't get the ear of 30 Congressmen at one time because he's Jack Valenti of Los Angeles, he gets it because of the unproportional influence the organization he heads wields in Congress.
And I also find it curious that you'd place the MPAA/RIAA on the side that doesn't want to "rip-off things", given how people like Chuck D., Courtney Love, Janis Ian, etc. have described their business practices. Holding up a price-fixing cartel as a beacon of goodness and purity in this debate doesn't win any points. The legislation Big Hollywood is buying will not only affect those mean nasty internet pirates, but also people who faithfully purchase the latest RIAA CDs, and wish to do piratic things like back up the CDs, convert them to portable digital formats, or listen to them on non-Microsoft platforms. So spare me the "If you don't support DRM, you're obviously out to rip people off" line.
So yes, I'm saying that DRM, etc. is the wrong way for Congress to handle this problem, but I'm also saying that this is a problem in the first place is that the MPAA/RIAA/etc. can waltz into meet with Joe Senator, say "I want you to pass a law that gives my industry rights above and beyond what should be morally permissable," and an average citizen can expect at best to meet with a low-level staffer. Thus, my argument that it is wrong for a multibilliondollar industry to expect Congress to act as its lapdog in the face of a changing technological landscape.
If what you mean is that only in America can a creator of something valuable go to congress and ask that protections be in place to prevent stealing by people who don't create things (but think that they should get them for free), then I agree with you.
Ah, I see you're falling into the thinking of "Big Hollywood == producers, ordinary folk == consumers." Because don't think for a minute that your garage band, self-published novel, or digital art gallery will get the same copy prevention technology as the MPAA and RIAA use. For no other reason than if anyone could mark content as "protected", then it wouldn't solve any sort of "piracy" problem. So what you're supporting is in essence a select group that can use technology as a "producer", while denying the technology to the mere mortals. Ok, gotcha.
The fact of the matter is that there is a subtle difference between ensuring the right of someone to attempt to make a profit, vs. ensuring the right of someone to demand a profit. What the MPAA/RIAA are asking for is the keys to future technological development, so that they can dictate what new technology comes about, and when. It's not anyone's concern but their own that they have developed and clung to a business model that makes the assumption that they are the only ones who can produce and distribute "content" on a global basis. Times change, technology changes. Plenty of formerly profitable businesses are on the scrap heap of history because they could not or would not adjust to a changing technological landscape. Yet you seem to think that the Congress has the right, nay, the duty to grant the MPAA/RIAA a special exception to this, and to prop up their profit models in the face of a changing landscape. Curious.
In a free-market economy, services pop up to fill a vaccuum. Big Hollywood has shown no inclination to fill the consumer's desire for digital media, so quasi-legal/quasi-moral industries have sprung up to fill the hole. Even now, Big Hollywood's attempts to fill the market are only halfhearted. They offer a small selection of music online, in restrictive formats, at fairly high prices, and wonder why people don't flock to them compared to the free filesharing services that popped up while they were ignoring the internet. Sorry guys, your loss. Do some market research, find out what people want, and give it to them. I daresay that if Big Hollywood offered their back catalogs in an open format at reasonable prices, a majority of people would go for that, if for no other reason than the quality control vs. P2P services. But no, they'd rather run to Congress and have MP3s, CD Burners, and firewire ports made criminal, rather than competing in the marketplace.
Congress' role is to protect the rights of the people, not Jack Valenti's paycheck. By bending to Hollywood's whims, Congress is most likely delaying or eliminating a marketplace where artists can sell directly to their fans without the expense of a middleman like the *AA, and where new and different musical artists and genres can gain exposure over webcasting stations that are not beholden to Clear Channel's top-10 directives. By granting control of digital technology to a group that fought the VCR all the way to the Supreme Court is shortsighted at best, illegal and immoral at worst.
So the issue is not one of protecting the rights of artists - that can be accomplished within the framework of current copyright law. The issue is that Congress should not prop up the profits and business model of any industry, simply due to its influence and campaign contributions.
As an aside, I'm also going to take from your post that you oppose the rights of people to have access to VCRs, audio tapes, Xerox machines, or pens, since they can all be used for, and have been used for, "stealing" from "creators."
...can we have multibilliondollar corporations going to Congress and saying "If you don't change the rules to help us, we are going to cut ourselves off from selling our products with this new form of technology, in essence leaving ourselves in the realm of the horse-and-buggy as we enter the automobile age" ...
And actually have Congress give in!!! Remember that when the rapid advance of technology slows in the next few years.