Doug's Inner Net News
News and views from a software developer's perspective
Friday, April 05, 2002
I mentioned yesterday about the content owners being greedy. I should probably explain that statement better. I don't mean to pronounce a moral judgement on content owners. Regular expressions are "greedy", but they are not bad. :-) However, when I say that the content owners -- specifically corporations like Disney -- are greedy, I just mean that they try to earn as much money as they can, and that is not wrong. But, when formulating public policy on copyrights and technology, the government must take this greediness into consideration. It is the nature of corporations to be greedy. It is the responsibility of governments to make sure that the greediness does not get out of control. The Founding Fathers put checks and balances into our form of government because they recognized that humans act according to human nature. It would be wise for the government now to put checks and balances in place to limit the greediness of the content owners. I think it would be a big mistake to pass the CBDTPA, as it allows content owners to take advantage of technology to grow their profits at the expense of consumers.
News and views from a software developer's perspective
Friday, April 05, 2002Agency Pushes Digital TV Shift
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell yesterday exerted new pressure on the television industry to speed the rollout of digital television, challenging it to meet a set of comprehensive deadlines. [WashingtonPost.com]
Oh, sure. Everybody will be so happy when HDTV arrives. Not! Not when they find out that they can no longer time shift programming without paying extra for it. Not when they find that they can no longer record programs for their own personal viewing. Just let me have the old technology, for Pete's sake.
3:14:50 PM 
I mentioned yesterday about the content owners being greedy. I should probably explain that statement better. I don't mean to pronounce a moral judgement on content owners. Regular expressions are "greedy", but they are not bad. :-) However, when I say that the content owners -- specifically corporations like Disney -- are greedy, I just mean that they try to earn as much money as they can, and that is not wrong. But, when formulating public policy on copyrights and technology, the government must take this greediness into consideration. It is the nature of corporations to be greedy. It is the responsibility of governments to make sure that the greediness does not get out of control. The Founding Fathers put checks and balances into our form of government because they recognized that humans act according to human nature. It would be wise for the government now to put checks and balances in place to limit the greediness of the content owners. I think it would be a big mistake to pass the CBDTPA, as it allows content owners to take advantage of technology to grow their profits at the expense of consumers.
8:15:58 AM