Jason Dunn
03-09-2004, 07:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8137512.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8137512.htm</a><br /><br /></div>"I'll try not to be an alarmist about this, friends and neighbors, but here's the deal: While America slept, the suits and ties in the recording, film, television and software industries launched an attack against our gadgets. While America slept, holders of multimedia copyrighted material slipped measures into law and new federal regulations that make many of the innocent things we now do to enjoy digital music, digital video and even digital books either illegal or expensive.<br /><br />Wake up, my friends. Call it the Format War. We have nothing to lose but our pocket protectors and our MP3s, our AVIs and MPGs and DiVXs and WMAs and other media files."<br /><br />This editorial goes on to talk about some of the subtle and not so subtle changes that have been made in US laws both on the hardware and broadcasting side of things. Reading the article certainly put a foul taste it my mouth, even if I don't live in the US (Canada usually follows the US on many issues eventually, so this doesn't bode well for Canadians). I can't help but think that this all boils down to authentication - if my media could know that it was me, the "owner", wanting to watch it, I don't think there would be an issue with recording, backing up, etc. <br /><br />There are two driving fears at work here: fear that Joe User will capture a TV show and upload it to the Internet (thus undermining the business model TV is built upon), and fear that the big media companies will miss out on the opportunity to nickel and dime us to death with per-use charges to prop up the relentless greed of the stock market for increasing profits. And there you have it. Your thoughts?