Senators figure out the Broadcast Flag, curse it as an abomination!
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/28/senators_figure_out_.html
The Senate Commerce Committee's hearings on the "Broadcast Flag" and "Audio
Flag" proposals have been derailed because senators on the committee now use
technologies that would be threatened by the flags.
The Broadcast Flag and Audio Flag proposals would require anyone who build a
digital TV or radio device to use technology to control what sort of other
devices -- like portable players, recorders and PCs -- could be connected to
them. That means that your ability to watch a TV show on your laptop or
listen to a recorded digital radio program on your iPod would hinge on
whether the manufacturers of these devices can proved to a regulator that
they weren't disrupting Hollywood's entrenched business-models.
Until now, lawmakers have been reluctant to speak out against this. A
combination of expert lobbying and technological ignorance has made Congress
suicidally willing to consider proposals to break America's televisions.
But in yesterday's Commerce hearings, two Senators altered the course of
events. First MIT grad John Sununu of New Hampshire said that government
mandates "always restrict innovation" and then 82-year-old Ted Stevens of
Alaska talked about the iPod he'd gotten for Christmas and put the RIAA's
Mitch Bainwol on the spot about whether his proposal would break Stevens'
ability to move digital radio programs to his iPod and listen to them in the
most convenient way (it would).
This is a momentous occassion: two powerful senators have woken up to the
impact that these proposals will have on their voters. As more and more
lawmakers get wise to how these things will harm their constituents'
interests, it will get harder and harder for entertainment mouthpieces to go
crying to government to enshrine their cushy business-models in law.
[Sununu] pointed out that "we have a whole history of similar
technological innovation that has shown us that the market can respond with
its own protection to the needs of the artists." And he concluded with one
of the most damning depictions of the ahistorical nature of the flag (clip
from Congressional RealVideo) you'll hear on the Hill:
"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle
creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and
product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies
for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it
always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time,
we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it
will actually encourage innovation?"
The second revelation, dropped into the later discussion of the RIAA's
audio flag, was that Senator Stevens' daughter bought him an iPod.
This is unhappy news for the RIAA. Once again, their representative was
forced to burst into praises of MP3 players (a technology his organization
attempted to sue out of existence in 1998).
And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be
able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that's when
the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat.
With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated
arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would
have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago.
Even more damning was Senator Sununu's follow-up question, in which he
asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio
today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the
RIAA's proposed controls, you may not: this is "disaggregation" in their
language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared
to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping,
mixing, modern-day Senators.
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