Props to Alex (whose blog looks pretty but has no posts) for pointing me at this Ars Techica article on more damn silliness going on in D.C. Once again the Media Mogul Puppet Masters (seen here napping) are trying to get our Congress Creatures (or is it them napping?) to dance to their tune, and once again we have to try to stop them. I quite agree with this new piece and this earlier Ars piece that the real issue is about Fair Use and Consumer Rights and not this damn fool piracy argument. There’s no question that (some) large scale piracy exists, is illegal, and should be stopped.
But that’s not what these proposals address. They make it so that I can’t pause the Tivo in mid-program to take a phone call or go make some nachos (why aren’t the snack food companies on our side on this one?!?). They make it so I have to watch all the damn commercials, and at the time when they’re initially aired. They make it so I can’t re-watch a program (and its commercials) over and over until my brain melts, unless, of course, I’m willing to pay for every re-viewing.
Take all that and replace “viewing TV” with “reading a book or magazine” and it becomes painfully obvious what a dramatic change this would make to the (very old) status quo. And it’s a change that hurts consumers and small media producers and lines the pockets and increases the control of Big Media. This is not a Good Thing.
It majorly ticks me off when these So-Called Capitalists put all this effort into protecting themselves from the horrors of trade that’s actually free. Yes, we fast forward over many commercials. But not all commercials. There are even ads that we go out of our way to watch. We watched the recent iPod/iTunes commercial featuring Eminem about a zillion times and then went and bought the song from iTunes. Shock! Horror! Advertising that worked! WeatherGirl and Sub-Evil Boy watch darn near every movie ad that airs. We probably pay more attention to the ads at the Super Bowl than we do to the game. Some advertising can be interesting and effective. Some advertising is boring or annoying. Giving the consumer the ability to choose where to invest their neurons and their dollars is part of the game, and that should hold for TV (as a proxy for digital) just as much as it holds for print (as a proxy for analog).
But in the silver lining department, what wonderful timing for the honors course Arne and I are teaching next semester on exactly this topic :-). (Actually it’s about open source and network economics, but it all comes down to the same intellectual property issues.) Nothing like having a hot, active topic to motivate the discussion! Maybe we’ll have them read up on this over the holidays
