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Thanks to Ernie the Attorney for this one. This business with the Fritz bill, and the FCC broadcast flag brouhaha is asinine. Some argument may be made (I don’t necessarily buy it) that government intervention is called for to protect certain industries and American jobs from foreign competition. But since when does the government of the US of A intervene to protect specific industries from their own customers?! How idiotic is that?

From the New York Times:

Hollywood studios have maintained that they will not send digital copies of movies and other programming over the airwaves unless safeguards are in place to prevent perfect copies from being redistributed online. That, in turn, is seen as holding back the market for digital televisions and the on-demand services that might come with them.

I can assure you this is not the case, and if it is the market will respond with a solution far better for consumers than what the television networks purport to do. There is no way that legislation written by a bunch of sold-out, technology-ignorant legislators for the sole purpose of protecting an entrenched media aristocracy can do anything but harm for consumers and the market in general.

Legislators should be debating the extent of copyright protection, the applicable penalties for violation, and what -- if any -- changes should be made in the balance between spurring innovation and rewarding creators. Nothing more. As Ernie said in Ignorance is Bliss

Sometimes too many people working together on one thing do not create a bold new thing. Instead, they create a patchwork of compromise, where the whole is vastly less than the sum of the parts.
This happens in lawmaking too, but mostly because of the influence of lobbyists representing special interest groups. It's not just a problem of too many people, but rather it's a problem of people having too much information.

First, every legislator should be forced to read The Broadband Difference: How online Americans' behavior changes with high-speed Internet connections at home from the Pew Internet Project. If they can’t read it themselves then they should be tied in a room and have it forcibly read to them. Then they should be required to go to the blackboard and write 100 times each, “The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV. The Internet is not cable TV…”

This whole episode shows how woefully ignorant most of our legislators are regarding basic economics, market theory, and basic technology. And my, how thinly they disguise their motives.

Interesting BookBiz TidBits from M.J. Rose

10:55:25 AM

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There are some good ideas in today's Wired News column by M.J. Rose, and some validation for authors like Hugh Madison at American Invisible.

Before 1998, it was rare for established publishing companies to bid on self-published fiction. But in the last 18 months, thanks in great part to authors' ability to use the Internet to market themselves, more than three dozen self-published novels have been picked up by major houses. [...]

Also, a very entrepreneurial idea from Florida-based Chapter-a-Day: sending out excerpts from popular business books via daily e-mail:

The business of book clubs: From Good Morning America to the White House, book clubs are flourishing. And now businesses want them too.
Wells Fargo already has one. So do sales and marketing executives in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Chapter-a-Day, a Sarasota, Florida, company that builds and maintains online book clubs -- sending out daily book excerpts for libraries and book stores -- is getting as many as a dozen inquiries a week from corporations. [...]

I love this idea. It's a variant of the book summary/abstracting services offered by several companies. I think the bite-sized nature of this makes it very appealing. One of my favorite services comes from Audio-Tech Executive Summaries and is called Business Briefings.

It's on CD rather than e-mail, but every month they review some 300+ publications and send out a very interesting bite-sized summary of ideas, concepts, research, and publications that are or will affect business. It's one of the most interesting services I get, and I think it's because of the bite-sized nature of things.

Self-Publish Stigma Is Perishing. Major houses gobble up rights after authors create a buzz for their work. Also: Book clubs that work for business ... and more in M.J. Rose's notebook. [Wired News]