I love music — it’s the industry I can’t stand! But watching it self-destruct is even more fascinating than watching a slow-motion car accident…
Having failed in the Congress, the content industry is now pushing the FCC to take action to mandate the broadcast flag. This bit of government regulated code is a mistake. By imposing a requirement (effectively) in the middle of the network, the broadcast flag will break all sorts of innovative new applications. By permitting only “tamper-resistant” technologies, it will effectively ban all sorts of free and open source projects. Thus, two of the key parts in the history of internet innovation — end-to-end and free and open source software — are regulated away by this.
And for what? There has been no showing that this technology mandate is needed. The movie industry (unlike the recording industry) has deployed great new technology (the DVD) that effectively competes with free. (Anyway, apparently according to Jack Valenti the real pirates of the movie industry are members of the Academy.) This is a classic example of regulate first, and ask questions later, and a perfect example of how not to regulate the internet.
Please follow here and do something about this mess. To read more, check out Jonathan Krim’s piece in the Post.
white pebble 