07 March 2001

Hollywood Stomp Here's a rather dense but extremely perceptive interview with Lawrence Lessig by Tim O'Reilly, done just before the Oreilly hosted Peer to Peer conference. "Hollywood's objective...is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off. Well, that's to reinforce an old model of creativity that I think the Internet has the opportunity to destroy." Yep, this is all about copyright, Napster and corporate big brother emasculating your hard drive. For a major rant on this subject, try What's Wrong with Copy Protection, a screed by Web founding father John Gilmore. Even more chilling, this post to the T13 standards mailing list, which is the group that sets standards for hard drive interface. (Courtesy of Hack the Planet) His chilling, deeply pessimistic view is that the good times are over. The fight for an open hardware platform is very real, and the power has swung from the PC leaders to the entertainment industry. It's a valuable strategic view from the trenches of the T.13 committee, where the fight over copy control mechanisms continues. 3:36:09 PM