A Copyfighter’s Musings

About a year and a half ago, I celebrated that the broadcast flag had no movement in Congress. One week later, they slipped it on over to the FCC. Since then, I have been optimistic that the popular opposition would be enough for the even the FCC to see that this wasn’t something worth getting involved in. Seeing Senator Brownback and others oppose this sort of copyright regulation made me hopeful that the tide is turning.

Sadly, it’s not – at least, that’s what the feeling from the FCC is.  We might see a tech mandate here, crippling innovation, fair use, open source, and the future of digital television.

Please, go to the EFF Action Center and help burn the broadcast flag down to the ground.

I hope to write more about this later in the week. Many people have beat me to the punch – for more info, please see:

Donna, one and two; Frank; Ernest.

Once again, I ask: how can we avoid this in the future?  How do we make Congress listen to the technologists?  Why are we letting the FCC make this decision?  How do we make the public interest heard in the legislative arena?

Filed by Derek Slater at 3:16 pm under Big Ideas
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In a prior post, I talked about some of the features of new digital music services that are making much closer to ideal. A couple things I didn’t talk about that have been coming up in my head recently:

1.  Prices – as this article points out, the a la carte services could go lower if the record industry would take a smaller cut.  A la carte services have really tough constraints in part because of credit card charges, so it’s going to be up to the record companies to decide how low to go. Subscription services also could go lower, particularly with their CD burning prices.

I don’t know exactly how low these prices can go, but, if the Jupiter Research report cited in that Business Week article is correct, then the services are going to have to try to go lower.

2.  DRM as usage restraint – this one’s fairly obvious.  I am still not sure how necessary DRM is, particularly to the a la carte services.  You can get those songs out onto P2P via the analog hole or by recording the sound as it’s outputted to your soundcard, and those songs are probably on the P2P networks anyway from people who buy the CDs. So why annoy the customers?  What is Apple really gaining from the DRM?

3.  DRM and interop problems – as I said the other day, I think this is a big problem. Dave Haxton pointed out that iTunes Music Store is mainly a way to sell iPods, and that’s why using AAC/Fairplay and iPods’ not playing WMA is fine with Apple. For me, I have no interest in being locked into a given music store and portable player because of file formats. (I haven’t jumped on the iPod bandwagon yet. For now, MP3-CD players fit my budget much better.) Though many players support WMA, I don’t even like that lock-in. 

I want selection and flexibility in my format.  What happens when a better standard comes out? And what happens if I want to switch operating systems?  How will I convert my files?  On pho, Stephen Hill compared having to switch between formats to having to move from LP to CD.  If bits are bits, there’s no reason why a new file format should force me to rebuy my entire song collection.

This doesn’t mean that everyone needs to use one type of DRM, but we do need some way of guaranteeing interoperability.

Filed by Derek Slater at 2:44 pm under General news
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