Bad news....
Hollings has been on this kick for a while. He's very eccentric, but I don't know how he winds up on this side of the issue - not a lot of media companies in South Carolina that I know of.
This looks like a classic shell game. Sure, the media types are worried about file transfers, but most consumers are more or less willing to pay for music if someone creates an economically appropriate model (broad range of choice, decent quality, individual file selection rather than aggregated packages, etc.). I like a free lunch too, but lets get realistic. Those days are going fast, amybe gone.
What's more interesting to them is this. By using the P2P issue as a wedge, they can radically restructure a company-user balance that (in their view) has been out of whack since Sony/Betamax. We talked about this in another forum - they're changing the basic license (that has always carried with it a fair use component) by eliminating portability and the right to manipulate your files for personal and entirely legal purposes. And when people complain about it, their rationale is they're combatting copyright violation.
So, when the technology develops to the point where it can limit reproduction, you will wind up with a tiered payment system. So much for a file that can be downloaded and played only in its original environment. Add another x$ for the right to make up to y copies, Add another x$ for the right to make from y 1 to z copies. And so on.
These guys aren't as stupid as we'd like to believe. To repeat prior rants, they understand at long last that this is a new product and a new technology that will allow them to alter the existing paradigm, if they're clever in how they use traditional copyright issuues to mask what they're really up to.
My niece is heavily involved in the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to combat these abuses. These are her views in part:
"I'm hoping we'll see an expansion of the copyright misuse doctrine soon -
whether in Napster, the hardware/media licensing schemes for DVD, or
leverage copyright holders have been trying to extract from their
monopolies in other areas, even with the overbroad cease and desists they
send."
The EFF can be a significant force in combatting these schemes - probably mroe effective than writing a congressman/woman, who checks the contribution list anad throws the letter in the circular file. Check out
www.eff.org.
Thanks for putting up with this. Whenever I think about the Brave New World these rascals are creating for us, it gets my weather up. Nothing a couple of good Scotch Ales won't cure.
HTH
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Topic: OFF TOPIC copy control (Read 1200 times)