The RIAA's only option is to legislate the monitoring of 100% of all file transfers, and to make unauthorized transfers illegal. The public should not allow such legislation to be made. The problem with this is that the "family groups" (there's a big one in the US isn't there?) and co. may say similar things - introduction of content filtering, monitoring, etc under the guise of "protecting the public from porn", and the uninformed among us may fall for that.
Also think of the case over here in AU where we ended up with a pile of shit piece of legislation that wasn't wanted, but was introduced for political reasons.
So its not really as simple as saying "the public should not allow it", because sometimes the public doesn't have a choice post-election.
Of course, you can show your disgust at the polls, but once the legislation has passed its usually quite difficult to get it repealed.
You're right about the sucking up to a senator (his name is Brian Harradine, incidentally, and he's not been a senator since July), but it wasn't about the Telstra sell off - it was about the GST, which has been on the Liberal Party agenda for quite a few years (fellow Australians will remember John Hewson's campaign in '93). Ironically, Harradine didn't end up supporting the GST bill. It got through with the support of the Democrats (their slogan used to be "Keep the bastards honest" - I wonder what happened?)
I mean i haven't heard anything about this for months now in the mainstream press; it's hardly big news
I think the reason its not been in the mainstream media is because the news media has been given other focusses - the East Timor crisis, and the republic referrendum of late.
But basically the chances of this bill really making any practical difference is virtually ziltch
I agree. Basically its not worth the paper its printed on.
Slashdot Mirror
The RIAA's only option is to legislate the monitoring of 100% of all file transfers, and to make unauthorized transfers illegal. The public should not allow such legislation to be made.
The problem with this is that the "family groups" (there's a big one in the US isn't there?) and co. may say similar things - introduction of content filtering, monitoring, etc under the guise of "protecting the public from porn", and the uninformed among us may fall for that.
Also think of the case over here in AU where we ended up with a pile of shit piece of legislation that wasn't wanted, but was introduced for political reasons.
So its not really as simple as saying "the public should not allow it", because sometimes the public doesn't have a choice post-election.
Of course, you can show your disgust at the polls, but once the legislation has passed its usually quite difficult to get it repealed.
A couple of points:
You're right about the sucking up to a senator (his name is Brian Harradine, incidentally, and he's not been a senator since July), but it wasn't about the Telstra sell off - it was about the GST, which has been on the Liberal Party agenda for quite a few years (fellow Australians will remember John Hewson's campaign in '93). Ironically, Harradine didn't end up supporting the GST bill. It got through with the support of the Democrats (their slogan used to be "Keep the bastards honest" - I wonder what happened?)
I mean i haven't heard anything about this for months now in the mainstream press; it's hardly big news
I think the reason its not been in the mainstream media is because the news media has been given other focusses - the East Timor crisis, and the republic referrendum of late.
But basically the chances of this bill really making any practical difference is virtually ziltch
I agree. Basically its not worth the paper its printed on.