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Saturday, August 10, 2002 |
Paving paradise, putting up parking lots
A good article on the attempts by the communications and entertainment industries to tilt the playing field in favor of them and against both the tech industry and the consumer. Minor caveat: his paragraph on the political naivete of techies wanders off into a ludicrous comment about crypto; one doesn't have to be a member of "the digerati" to think that attempts to legislate against distributing a secret which can and has been printed on the back of a t-shirt are idiotic.
The Internet Power GrabThe Hollings bill is breathtakingly far-reaching legislation, but it is a measure of Hollywood's clout that California senator Dianne Feinstein -- formerly the mayor of San Francisco -- has cosponsored it. If it passes both houses of Congress, the Hollings bill will likely be vetoed by President Bush. But that's not the point. The point is that legislation that would effectively devalue Apple Computer ( whose new iMacs are capable of copying music and video and sharing those copies over the Internet ) may well pass both houses of Congress. That's real power. There aren't many industries that can cut themselves that kind of deal.
