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7.30.2004
Holiday
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Next week, this site goes dark, as I am off to Yellowstone.
posted by James DeLong : 7/30/2004 06:14:28 PM
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iPod and RealNetworks: Apple's Right
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By now, every tech reader knows the story. RealNetworks' new Harmony software mimics the copy protection code used by Apple, and permits songs downloaded from Real to play on the iPod.
Apple wants music purchases to go through its own iTunes store and has refused all requests by outsiders to integrate with iPod. It says that it is "stunned that RealNetworks has a adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod," and threatens that future updates will end the compatibility. Apple also raises the possibility that Real has violated the DMCA.
Real responds by saying consumers should be able to choose their music source, and that the DMCA allows for interoperability.
The issue is one that keeps coming up in the digital age, in many contexts, including games, printers, and garage doors. The underlying theme is as old as the Gillette safety razor, however, and was a matter of major controversy during the heyday of the Xerox machine.
Gillette followed a strategy of selling the razor cheaply and then coining money from the repeat sales of blades. It secured its hold on blades by patents. Xerox tried a similar strategy, in that it leased out its machines and charged according to how much paper they used, controlling its customers by contract instead of technology.
The objective in each case is to discriminate in price, charging the small user a little and the large user a lot. It makes good business sense, because it expands the market. It also makes sense for consumers, who pay in rough accord with the amount of utility that they derive from the product.
The same strategy can be applied to printers, or to game consoles. If the maker sells the basic item cheaply while maintaining control over the add-ons, such as toner cartridges or games, then it is charging different prices to consumers who value the product differently.
The cyberleft goes into high dudgeon mode over this practice, but in fact it is a reasonable pricing method, and it is much to the advantage of casual users, who can access basic capabilities at a lower price than otherwise. If such bundling is forbidden, then the price of the basic item must rise, to the disadvantage of the light user
So producers should be allowed to choose their business models. Gillette should be permitted to follow its strategy, but, of course, if someone else wants to make a generic razor and allow all comers to sell blades that fit it -- its a free country.
Apple's situation is regarded as different because, according to conventional wisdom, the strategy is reversed. The songs are the basic razor; the profit comes from the iPod itself. So why, ask some, does Apple care, since more music users should mean more iPod device sales?
At least two reasons come to mind. First, conventional wisdom is probably wrong. Establishing iTunes involved a big upfront investment, and Apple needs as much traffic as possible to spread those costs over, even if the main profit is in the iPod.
Second, one of Apple's selling points to the content owners was that the integration of protection software with the playing device was an extra protection against cracking. Real's action breaks this integration, with who knows what result.
Given all these factors, Apple has the right of this argument, from the standpoint of property rights, economics, and common morality.
Furthermore, if society wants to encourage innovative devices, such as the iPod, then the innovator should be able to choose its strategy for exploitation. Real can compete by partnering with other device makers or by starting its own integrated business, but it should not be allowed to wait until Apple has run all the risk -- the iPod was no sure thing -- and then demand to share in the rewards.
posted by James DeLong : 7/30/2004 01:08:59 PM
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7.29.2004
This Song is My Song
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The Volokh Conspiracy has a series of posts (see here, here, here, and here) about the controversy over the latest Internet wildfire, the JibJab satiric duel between Bush and Kerry, done to the tune of This Land is Your Land.
If you have not seen it, take a look. It really is pretty funny.
The legal problem is that parody is classified as fair use, and thus not an infringement of copyright, only if the object of the fun is the song itself, not if the song is used to parody something else. So writing a parody of This Land is Your Land would be immune. But using the song to parody the presidential candidates may indeed violate the copyright holder's rights.
A result is that one sees learned legal debate over the exact target of a parody. Is JibJab really satirizing the politicians, or is it also poking fund at This Land is Your Land? Blogger Nick Morgan thinks the latter, and, as he points out, the discussions quickly become so droll that they look like parodies of legal opinions.
It does seem like the law could use a better sense of humor. It is hard to see any damage to the holders of the copyright from this parody, and perhaps they should simply be grateful for having the original returned to the public's attention.
A similar case arose during the last political season, when Ralph Nader produced a commercial that was a riff on the MasterCard "Priceless" campaign.
My thought at the time, to which I adhere: "If a creator of intellectual property is fortunate enough to hit such a rich chord of public resonance that the result becomes iconic -- a Dr. Seuss, a Buffy, a Star Wars, perhaps a 'Priceless' -- then it should accept the bitter with the sweet, and the scope for parody, allusion, take-off, and imaginative adaptation should be broadened, not reduced. Since all creators are both borrowers and lenders, and admitting the importance of protection against direct theft, the effort to try to keep the accounts to the penny is ultimately destructive for everyone."
posted by James DeLong : 7/29/2004 02:48:20 PM
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7.28.2004
The Latest on File-Sharing Lawsuits
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In Sony v. Does 1-40, a New York federal court upheld the right of the record industry to file "John Doe" law suits against unknown illicit file sharers and then obtain the names of the alleged violators from their ISPs. (The opinion is available on Lexis, but the Southern District does not put opinions on the Internet.)
The decision was not a surprise, since few had expected any court to rule that constitutional protection of anonymous speech encompasses a right to engage in illicit downloading, any more that one would expect a court to uphold a free speech right to shoplift from a book store. That line of argument was pretty much disposed of by the Supreme Court in Eldred (2003): "The [Copyright Term Extension Act] . . . protects authors' original expression from unrestricted exploitation. . . . . The First Amendment securely protects the freedom to make -- or decline to make -- one's own speech; it bears less heavily when speakers assert the right to make other people's speeches."
What the case really illustrates is that the "Copyleft," or "Free Culture Movement," or whatever one wants to call it, is not being straight with the public. During the Verizon litigation (see also here), when the content owners were trying to obtain names of file sharers before filing suit, the argument was that this was unconscionable and that the owners should be forced to obtain the names through John Doe law suits so that a court could pass on the merits of the allegations. Now, when John Doe law suits are brought, the reaction is: "Oh no! You should not be able to sue them at all."
Similarly, if the content owners attempt to hold the P2P providers responsible for infringement, the Copyleft says that is the wrong approach and that infringers should be sued directly. But if the infringers are sued, then it is contended that they were misled by the P2P providers and that suing them is not fair. But certainly we should not create a new cause of action that would allow the content owners to sue the P2P providers, however egregious their behavior. That would "stifle innovation."
If one asks, "Then just how are the content owners to protect themselves, and incidentally protect the public interest in a flow of creative product?" the response is a vague reference to new business models.
Let us be clear. There is a reason for this shifty approach. The goal of the Copyleft is to destroy the use of property rights and markets in the production of creative property and to substitute -- yes, let us use the dreaded "S" word -- a socialized system under which content would be distributed without cost and creators would look to the government for economic support.
In a talk I heard a couple of months ago, Larry Lessig called this assessment "intellectual McCarthyism." If that be so, then I challenge him and his ilk to explain wherein it errs. I am happy to acknowledge that the values of fostering technological progress and of avoiding unfairness to Internet users are very important, and that our system of copyright law must indeed recognize their value. But I would like some acknowledgment from the Copyleft that the values of protecting creative property and perfecting markets for its distribution also deserve respect. What I hear is silence.
posted by James DeLong : 7/28/2004 03:54:41 PM
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7.26.2004
Marybeth Peters on S. 2560
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The debate over the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights" bill tends to be conducted in terms of abstractions and hypotheticals. But in her recent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Register of Copyright Marybeth Peters summed up some of the specific concrete acts engaged in by P2P networks that are designed to encourage and facilitate copyright violations. See particularly pages 16-20.
As she notes, a bill directed at these patterns of behavior that are obviously designed to foster copyright violations really does not present significant threat to honest developers of technology.
I started to quote it, but there were too many good parts. So read the whole thing.
posted by James DeLong : 7/26/2004 02:43:18 PM
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Corporate Blogging
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CNET News.com on Friday had an article Blog's the word in big business, with the tagline: "Long heralded as a way for the masses to wrest the Internet back from corporate control, the Web log has emerged as the hottest new enterprise tool."
Microsoft is Exhibit A, as 1000 employees maintain Web logs. Prior posts on the corporate blog phenomenon are here and here.
posted by James DeLong : 7/26/2004 09:05:27 AM
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7.23.2004
Emended " Czar" Quotation
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To correct my earlier post about the need for an "intelligence czar," and on the need for czars of any sort, I checked with Woolsey's office and got an accurate version of his statement:
"The 500 years of stupidity, rigidity, and autocracy that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution is not a model on which to base the organization of American Intelligence."
posted by James DeLong : 7/23/2004 11:24:28 AM
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Quote of the Day: Let's Not Have a Czar
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The headlines on the 9/11 Commission feature the call for a "spy czar." The best response to this suggestion was given by James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, whom I watched on C-Span a couple of days ago. In rough paraphrase (I am working from memory), he said: "Can't we drop this word 'czar'? Five hundred years of autocracy and incompetence that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution is not a model to be emulated."
There is a property rights and markets point here. The idea that we can set up a perfect hierarchy with one grand decisionmaker who will then save us is delusional, in any area. Whether one is thinking about a company, a government, or a society, one must trust one's culture and civilization. Authority of various sorts is necessary, but basically a society must nurture the growth of institutions and rules that permit all of its members to bring their full powers of intellect and energy to bear, not put its faith in some super-wise czar.
History shows that property rights and markets are among the most important of these institutions, right up there with representative assemblies. A challenge to thinkers about organizations and hierarchies is the development of institutions and rules that can serve the same functions in these contexts that property rights and markets serve in the economy and society at large.
posted by James DeLong : 7/23/2004 08:05:36 AM
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7.21.2004
Witnesses for Hearing on S. 2560
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The witness list for tomorrow's Senate Judicary Committee hearing on S. 2560 is available.
posted by James DeLong : 7/21/2004 03:59:28 PM
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P2P and Filtering
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Forbes reports that iMesh, the third-largest file-sharing network, has settled a law suit brought by the record industry by agreeing "to incorporate some sort of filtering system that would allow owners of copyrighted music to track the distribution of their files over the system, and either limit them or charge users who download them."
This is a major event, since P2P sites have generally argued that the application of filtering technologies is not a viable option.
The iMesh website is not specific about the terms of the settlement.
posted by James DeLong : 7/21/2004 03:53:53 PM
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Antitrust Retrospective
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Timothy J. Muris, outgoing Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, has just written "How History Can Inform Practice in Modern U.S. Antitrust Policy," George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 04-20 (2004).
Since competition among firms is, increasingly, a contest of competing versions of intellectual property, antitrust doctrine is important to the IP world. Muris is a law & econ type who has rotated around government, academia, and practice, and his views are based on reality rather than utopian abstractionism.
I am not a fan of antitrust doctrine, which is mostly drivel (see here and here), even in such capable hands as Muris's, but reading him is a good way to track developments over the past 30 years and to make reasoned guesses about the future.
posted by James DeLong : 7/21/2004 07:49:14 AM
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7.20.2004
Markets Affect Type of Files on P2P Networks
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Time and again, we hear people say that markets matter. In fact, you often hear us at PFF say it. Behavior changes in response to the opportunities, incentives and costs (including legal penalties) that exist. A firm in the UK has published data to support how markets affect the types of files traded on P2P networks.
CacheLogic estimates that at least 10 million people are logged on to a P2P network at any given time. In July of 2003, the same firm estimated the number of P2P users at around 6 million. Even more interesting: CacheLogic asserts that files of more than 100 MB are most common in P2P sharing. With that size, we are talking about films not photos or music. The BBC had the story last week.
The firm sells products to ISPs designed to manage the costs and other effects of heavy P2P usage. One can only conclude that the emergence of market opportunities to legally download music is having a positive effect.
posted by Kent : 7/20/2004 01:23:35 PM
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The Free Market Garden
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A premise of free market thought is that societies are gardens. Given proper seed, fertilizer, and sunshine (i.e., property rights, legal rules, and markets), they grow in fruitful and interesting ways. Societies are not machines, to be engineered and controlled.
For a riff on this theme, see Virginia Postrel's post on
I Robot, and its links to the work of scientist/SF writer Gregory Benford.
posted by James DeLong : 7/20/2004 09:00:28 AM
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7.19.2004
Good Article on Inducing Infringement & Sony
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Professor Lee A. Hollaar of the School of Computing of the University of Utah has posted an article entitled Sony Revisited: A new look at contributory copyright infringement (June 6, 2004).
It is a fine piece -- valuable for understanding the issues involved in S. 2560. In particular, he analyzes how the concept of "inducing infringement" fits into the framework of the Sony case.
For Professor's Hollaar's bio, and links to more of his work, see here.
posted by James DeLong : 7/19/2004 10:57:56 AM
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Hearing on S. 2560 (Inducing Infringement)
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The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on S. 2560, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, on Thursday, July 22, 2004, at 2:00 p.m. Venue is Room 226 of the Dirksen SOB. The witness list is not yet available.
posted by James DeLong : 7/19/2004 08:51:06 AM
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7.16.2004
7.15.2004
7.14.2004
NYT Rejoinder
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On June 25, the New York Times printed an oped by a Harvard Law professor entitled "Don't Beat Them, Join Them." The gist was that the music industry should stop trying to enforce its IP rights and get on board with academic proposals that creative works be funded by a licensing fee levied on Internet users.
Then, for balance as the term is defined at the NYT, it added a second oped by a professor of "communication studies" enthusiastically supporting the idea and extending it to movies, video games and software.
You can't download these pieces explaining the evils of IP rights unless you pay the NYT $2.95 each -- sorry.
I submitted a rejoinder, "Don't Join Them, Beat Them!", but alas, the NYT saw no need to confuse its readers with counterarguments.
No one who has seen this webjournal will be surprised to find that the article extols a vision based on property rights and markets, as opposed to the mushy communitarianism of the academics. It concludes:
"The road to this creative heaven is clear. Content creators must provide their wares over the Internet and share cost savings with consumers. Micropayment technologies must be perfected. And the illicit filesharers who want to deprive us of the benefits of the new technologies must be suppressed.
"The first two parts of this triad are well in train. The last one is in doubt, not least because the professoriat is trying hard to convince the public that illicit file sharers are freedom fighters.
"This impression must be reversed. A refusal to recognize the standards of conduct necessary to make great social systems work -- such as the economy in general or the production of creative work in particular -- is not a badge of superiority but an act of juvenile vandalism.
"Those who want to destroy a system based on markets and intellectual property must be told that they are destructive, just as someone who strews garbage across Central Park should not be called a performance artist.
"To the extent that education and social pressure do not work, content should be protected with digital rights management and anyone who cracks it to take the work for free should be sued.
"Those of us who want to live in the content heaven that is within our grasp, thanks to the Internet, owe it to ourselves, and to each other, not to be cozzened by utopian abstractionists."
posted by James DeLong : 7/14/2004 10:13:27 AM
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7.13.2004
More on Micropayments
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An email just came in from Peppercoin, which is one of the leading developers of micropayment technology, announcing a conference in NYC on October 4, 2004. The topic: "micropayments and the business models they enable."
posted by James DeLong : 7/13/2004 09:06:37 AM
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7.12.2004
Blogger Powell . . .
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is not a character from the Outback.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has started a Weblog on the Always-On Network. In his first entry, last Thursday, he stated his explicit purpose of reaching out to the high-tech community and by-passing the Washington lobbying structure:
"One reason I am participating in AlwaysOn Network's blog is to hear from the tech community directly and to try to get beyond the traditional inside the Beltway Washington world where lobbyists filter the techies. . . . Regulated interests have about an 80 year head start on the entrepreneurial tech community when it comes to informing regulators what they want and need, but if anyone can make up for that, Silicon Valley can."
And:
"The high-tech community traditionally shied away from regulatory debates at the FCC and state regulatory commissions. Perhaps staying off regulators' radar screens has served entrepreneurs well in the past. Unfortunately, the era of salutary neglect is coming to an end. As regulators get involved in issues such as VoIP affecting high-tech industries, the collateral damage can be significant. As technologies, services, and legal policies converge, it is critical that the high-tech community understand the issues and engage them."
Silicon Valley should heed this call. For too long, the tech community has let the cause of deregulation, respect for property, and free markets be stalled by the vicious political infighting triggered by the mistakes in the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. A determined tech world might break the deadlock.
Powell's second posting, on Sunday, takes up the strategy of multiple platforms, intramodal competition and UNE-P, and media ownership.
posted by James DeLong : 7/12/2004 12:04:59 PM
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7.9.2004
10th Annual Aspen Summit
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PFF's 10th Annual Aspen Summit is coming up, Sunday August 22 through Tuesday August 24. Confirmed speakers include Shane Robison of HP, Craig Mundie of Microsoft, Darcy Antonellis of Warner Brothers Entertainment, Michael Powell of the FCC, Hewitt Pate of the Antitrust Division, and other star-studded attractions.
Register now to get the early rate.
posted by James DeLong : 7/9/2004 10:50:00 AM
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Chicken Little-ism & Inducing Infringement
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In a new piece on the Website of the investment advisory service Motley Fool, Seth Jayson scoffs at the Chicken-Little campaign that is being mounted against the recently introduced "Inducing Infringement" bill:
"We are a nation of whining, sensationalist thieves. Want proof? A new bill introduced in Washington is already being painted as a threat to Apple's iPod. You can almost forgive Gannett's USA Today for running the bogus headline 'Copyright bill poses threat to iPod's future.' After all, the screaming from Web junkies was audible from my house."
As Jayson notes, "It would be nearly impossible for a reasonable person -- and that is the standard used in the bill -- to decide that an iPod is a tool for intentional violation of copyright. Ditto a pay-per-download service with copy-protection schemes."
Jayson describes himself as "Overeducated Wanderer, Photographer, Flute-playing tree-sitter," so it is a bit hard to cast him as a corporate tool.
posted by James DeLong : 7/9/2004 10:08:41 AM
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7.8.2004
Software Piracy Study
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The Business Software Alliance has released its 10th annual study of the prevalence of illicit software, worldwide. It says that in 2003 almost $80 billion worth of software was installed, of which $50 billion was paid for, a piracy rate of 36%. Lowest rate was in the U.S. and Canada - 23%. Highest in Eastern Europe - 71%.
For the first time, BSA included software for personal use as well as business use in the survey.
It is sometimes argued that the losses from software piracy are not real because many people who will take software for free would not be willing to pay money for it, and would not have been customers. This is true, to some degree, but another perspective is that if all the software had been paid for, prices could have been reduced by one-third, which would have brought it within the financial reach of even more people.
The pirates are not just cheating the producers; they are cheating their fellow consumers, who must support their free riding.
posted by James DeLong : 7/8/2004 04:07:45 PM
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7.7.2004
Tech Workers of the World, Unite!
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Warren Buffett in the Washington Post and James Glassman in TechCentralStation dueled yesterday over proposals to treat stock option grants as corporate expenses.
Glassman is right in his opposition, but, IMHO, he and other champions of Silicon Valley underestimate the political and ideological nature of this struggle. They keep treating the issue as one of technical accounting, and assume that if they explain it clearly enough, once again, this time their opponents will see the light.
In fact, the opponents know that the proposed accounting changes would discourage stock options and work to the disadvantage of the rising creative classes. That is the point of their proposals. To repeat views expressed in "Options Wars," The Milken Institute Review (1st Quarter 2003):
"The options issue actually ties into profound questions about the nature of capital and the structure of business enterprises in the 21st century. It embodies serious conflicts between the generators of intellectual capital allied with their gunslinging venture finance allies on the one hand and the conventional providers of financial capital on the other."
. . . .
"[O]ld line capitalists are trying to stem the pressure to share the loot with the creative classes by eliminating the means by which this sharing is occurring. If the peons are creating capital assets, then, by golly, the assets should belong to the capitalists.
"In terms of realpolitik, eliminating stock options for the creative classes would help to protect the cartel of old line providers of finance capital. The availability of options allows the geeks to force the financiers to bid against each other not in terms of absolute dollar amounts but in the coin of who will give the biggest share of the enterprise to the idea people. It also allows the geeks to guarantee their own sincerity by reducing their immediate reward in exchange for more of the long term profits.
"If this mechanism were removed from the system, the geeks would lose a powerful bargaining tool, and thus would be able to capture less of the pie. And who gets what they lose? The financiers. And who is disadvantaged, besides the geeks? The venture capitalists, who are far better at playing the game of investing in intangible assets than are the conventional moneymen. It is no accident, Comrade, that leading proponents of expensing options include giant retirement funds that represent public employees and conventional financiers such as Warren Buffett."
For an earlier post that links to more background work, see here.
posted by James DeLong : 7/7/2004 11:43:53 AM
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7.6.2004
Filtering Technology
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For a decade, thinking about protection of creative content has focused on encryption and digital rights management. But this approach has always been subject to problems: (1) What one mind can encrypt, another can decrypt; (2) Rules to prevent decryption, such as the DMCA, are lightening rods for political attack; (3) To be perceived by an audience, digital content must eventually be turned into analog, at which point it can be captured and redigitized.
So attention is turning to an alternative. If copyrighted works could be reliably identified as they stream through the cybersphere -- if they could be DNA tested -- then it would be possible to prevent their transmission by filtering them out.
True to the maxim of the Internet that technology both giveth and taketh away, it appears that such filtering may indeed be possible. (The name most often heard is Audible Magic, but there may be other technologies as well.)
If the idea proves out, then the P2P software providers and ISPs will come under heavy pressure in two ways, as the content providers argue to the courts that failure to include filters in P2P software or to apply them to Internet transmissions makes the software provider or the ISP liable under the legal theory of contributory infringement, and argue to Congress that filtering technology should be mandated.
The P2P companies are not happy over this possibility, to put it gently, and they charge that they have not been able to test the technology and that it is unlikely to work. It is safe to assume that ISPs would not be happy, since the DMCA already immunizes them from liability. Schools might be happy, because they are paying for serious bandwidth used by students to download music and movies, not educational materials; some are already experimenting with the technology.
Imposing legal requirements on P2P software providers and ISPs would indeed raise serious issues. We should be wary of putting costs on Party B (such as an ISP) to protect the property of Party A (a content provider), because the natural tendency of such rules is for Party A to keep demanding more. On the other hand, one of the good features of filtering software is its requirement that the content owner provide precise information. (It is not like anti-porn filters, which tend to zap any recipe that refers to chicken breasts.) So there should be a check on inordinate demands.
In any event, cost allocation issues may be difficult, but they can usually be solved when the stakes are high enough. And the possibility of successful filtering is one of the most promising developments in many a moon for anyone who believes:
(a) that the road to a Golconda of creative riches lies through the successful transplantation of the organs of property rights and markets to the Internet, and
(b) that the existence of this Golconda will reinvigerate the investment necessary for the deployment of really fast broadband connections,
posted by James DeLong : 7/6/2004 01:38:42 PM
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7.2.2004
Upgrades on Open Source & Corporate Blogging
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In response to my note on corporate blogs, Australian software developer and open source skeptic Tony Healy points out that Microsoft has been sponsoring corporate blogging since January. Here is a list. Included are some of the company's serious software architects, such as Healey favorites Chris Pratley, Raymond Chen, Michael Howard(security czar), Don Box (famous COM czar).
Healey also suggests an answer to my puzzlement as to why Linux Australia is flying Lessig in to speak on the free trade agreement. He emails:
"I notice you draw attention to Australian open sourcers' emphasis on the DMCA. One plausible explanation is that Samba, the program that lets Linux computers exchange files with Microsoft networks, was developed in Australia. It is being funded now by IBM in a lab at Canberra.
"One of the prominent open source activists who appeared before the Senate inquiry into the FTA was a guy called Rusty Russell, who is on the committee of Linux Australia. Neither Rusty nor his submission mentioned the fact that he is an employee of IBM at the Samba lab. I mentioned this in my submission to the Senate inquiry.
"The ability to 'break into' Windows to read its network information was vital to developing Samba, and is part of the popular stories told about Samba. So breaking into other programs figures highly in the consciousness of the Australian open source movement."
posted by James DeLong : 7/2/2004 08:57:25 AM
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Fahrenheit 9/11
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According to CNETnews.com, a bootleg copy of Fahrenheit 9/11 is available on the Internet, via a link at an anti-Moore website.
The site's proprietor quotes an interview with Moore in which the filmmaker expresses his disagreement with copyright laws and approves of non-commercial unauthorized downloading. The film's distributor is less equanimious about it.
For a thoughtful comment on the film from a conservative point of view, see TechCentralStation today. (PFF and TechCentralStation disagree violently about telecom policy, but on other topics it is a great source.)
posted by James DeLong : 7/2/2004 08:31:02 AM
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7.1.2004
Intel Corrects a Typo on H.R. 107: "Change That 'Yes' to 'No' "
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Last week's report on H.R. 107 had a link to the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition, a newly-formed group of supporters of the bill. The list of supporters included Intel.
But, according to the Washington Internet Daily [subscription required], there was a small mistake -- Intel does not support the bill, because it "has concerns about some of its more controversial components, particularly permitting one to circumvent copy-protection mechanisms for non-infringing uses." (That's WID paraphrasing an Intel spokesperson.)
Intel does agree with some provisions of H.R. 107, such as labeling. But these are non-controversial. Everyone is in favor of appropriate labeling (though the necessity of legislation is dubious.)
So Intel is not "proactively lobbying for the bill at this time." (WID quoting Intel directly.)
The correction is nice, but it would be nicer if Intel took the next step, and proactively took the position that destroying the possibility of digital rights management is destructive of the company's, and the nation's, true interests.
posted by James DeLong : 7/1/2004 09:41:31 AM
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