The Worst Sort of Protectionism
Wouldn’t life be grand if you could go to Congress and get a law passed that forced everyone in the nation to pay you money? That’s exactly what the RIAA/MPAA are doing at this very moment, under the guise of “fighting piracy”.
First on their list is getting the broadcast flag reinstated, after it was struck down by the courts. This is perfectly legitimate, since the only reason the broadcast flag was struck down was because the FCC didn’t have the authority to instate such a requirement. Congress, on the other hand, does have that authority. If the bill passes, then all future devices that receive any sort of entertainment signal will be required to obey the whims and wishes of the originator of that signal. That might seem fair, since the originator probably owns the material, and should get to decide what’s done with it. Of course, you’re already paying for the right to see that material, and right now, you have every right to do a large number of things with that material. You could record it to watch later (time shifting), pipe it to your bedroom instead of the living room (space-shifting). You could even record it to your computer and then take the copy to a friend’s house to watch there. If the broadcast flag goes in, the originator can arbitrarily decide to prevent you from taking any of these perfectly legal actions.
While Big Content wants us to believe that this is necessary to combat piracy, which is by their account crippling their business model, the truth is that they want a bigger slice of the pie. Imagine what will happen if a user no longer has the ability to do something he’s always done. Big Content can then generously offer the ability to return that right… for a price.
Right now I’m paying what I consider a relatively hefty monthly fee for satellite TV. I get a whole slew of channels that I really could happily do without, but I’m forced to pay for them anyway. If one of the channels I do like airs an episode of CSI that I want to see, I can record that show and watch it later. Or I can use my TiVo to record the content, and skip over the commercials. Or I can record it to my computer and archive it on CD/DVD. Or compress it and watch it on my PDA on the way to work. What Big Content undoubtedly intends to do is force me to pay for the privilege of doing something perfectly legal with content that I’m already paying for.
You may not think that’s too big a deal, but imagine that you’ve paid for a newspaper subscription, and you usually read the newspaper at your kitchen table over breakfast. Now imagine that the newspaper company has the technical means to force you to pay an extra “Bedroom fee” if you want to read the paper in your bedroom, or a “Travelling fee” if you take it on the bus, or a “Birdcage fee” if you try to use the newspaper to line your birdcage. I suppose if the newspaper company reduced its regular subscription fees at the same time these additional fees were introduced it might not be unpalatable, but I honestly don’t believe that will happen.
Simply put, I’m of the opinion that I’m already paying the Big Content companies quite enough, thank you very much. Passing the broadcast flag legislation will probably not put even the tiniest dent in “real” piracy, where the Content companies lose most of their money. It will, however, give them the ability to pick my pocket whenever I want to do anything imaginative or unusual with their content, even if that use is perfectly legitimate under existing laws.