Apparently there is no boundary to the inanity of the MPAA. They’re currently lobbying a bill that would require end users to register any “home theater system.” The reason? Just by purchasing a DVD, we don’t actually have the right to invite our friends over to watch it. Correct me if [...]
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has recently been debating several initiatives that I’ve been following, both of which I’ve discussed in previous posts.
The first is the Broadcast Flag - an initiative originally mandated by the FCC to force all electronics manufacturers to obey a “broadcast flag” that would determine how any given [...]
This article was originally spurred by the generally negative portrayal of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in the novel Digital Fortress. As a long-standing fan and member of the EFF, I must admit that I was more than a little taken aback at some of the characterizations of the organization. The members of [...]
Network neutrality is one of the key factors leading to the current wild success of the Internet. The basic idea of network neutrality is that all traffic is treated equally, so that there is no effective difference between my grandmother sending an email, my friend connecting to a P2P network, or my using FTP [...]
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 [...]