Monday, May 24, 2004

Guess I'm square

Isn't "personal democracy" an oxymoron? Unless you don't mind nothing but unanimous votes, I guess. In any case, I wish I was here.

Noted

More from Christian on the Technorati Salon last week. I'm just glad some folks were taking notes. Funny that ne mentions being "Searlsdotted." Especially when I've been blogging lightly as of late.

What they said

We did our second Gillmor Gang at IT Conversations. Fun series, now at two so far. Choose your stream here.

Better beer

Suw blogs Something for Nothing The Free Culture AudioBook Project. That would be Larry Lessig's latest, available for your listening pleasure here. Nice analysis by Suw, too. Read the whole thing.

Larry will be speaking this Thursday evening at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

As if it weren't dead enough

First the RIAA successfully lobbies the Librarian of Congress to impose a distribution fee and reporting regime on the infant Internet radio business, essentially preventing it from happening. That was in 2002, though the lobbying started in '98, right after the same kinda guys got the DMCA pushed through.

Now comes news from J.D. that the RIAA wants to get the FCC to impose a "broadcast flag" on radio as well as TV. It's creepy shit:

The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.

The horror.

And so the RIAA, the music business's trade and lobbying group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and impose an "audio broadcast flag" on certain forms of digital radio.

On April 15, the FCC bowed to the RIAA's request and initiated a notice of inquiry, typically a step leading to formal rule-making. The public may submit comments to the FCC between June 16 and July 16.

If this sounds familiar, it should. The entertainment industries, unable to get Congress to pass related legislation, did an end-run by lobbying mightily to get the Federal Communications Commission to impose a broadcast flag requirement to protect digital television signals from "indiscriminate retransmission" over the Internet. The FCC, which has been quietly transforming into the Federal Computer Commission, did just that last fall. The new rules for digital TV take effect in July 2005.

Taking a page from Hollywood, the recording industry has begun to push for a similar regime for digital radio, proposing an audio broadcast flag for inclusion in the digital radio transmissions of terrestrial AM and FM stations. The parameters of such a flag, or piece of software code, are still unclear. It would likely prevent users from sending copyrighted radio programs over the Internet. But it could also hamstring other legitimate uses by preventing a digital radio program from leaving the device on which it was recorded.

Want to record the digital broadcast of Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" on your PC and listen to it in your car? Or tape a cool new digital radio station you discovered and play it for friends at a party?

Your device may well tell you: "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

And I'm afraid they can. Neither Congress nor the FCC has shown any evidence that they regard the Net as anything other than a distribution system for "content" that's all owned by somebody, and therefore subject to whatever protections those private somebodies wish to insist upon. And, given their Darwinian understanding of markets, the bigger get the better of all of us.

Look back through the history of FCC decisions to "let the market decide." In every case it ended up being about the interests of suppliers and technology intermediators. Details at Linux Journal when I finish rounding them up.