I post this not just for general consumption but especially for my brother, Mike.
I spoke to him on election night and he remarked that he wished he could vote for TIVO for President because TIVO had done more to improve the quality of his life than any politician. Hey Mike, did you know that in a post election orgy of payoffs to its corporate sponsors, the GOP is trying to outlaw TIVO?
Via Tapped comes the following report from Technology Review:
Do you like fast-forwarding through commercials on a television program you’ve recorded? How much do you like it? Enough to go to jail if you’re caught doing it? If a new copyright and intellectual property omnibus bill sitting on Congress’s desk passes, that may be the choice you'll face.How can this be possible? Because language that makes fast-forwarding through commercials illegal—no doubt inserted at the behest of lobbyists for the advertising industry—was inserted into a bill that would allow people to fast forward past objectionable sections of a recorded movie (and I bet you already thought that was OK). And that’s but one, albeit scary, scenario that may come to pass if the Intellectual Property Protection Act is enacted into law...
What I watch or don't watch, what I read, how I worship, who I love, and what I think ain't nobody's business but my own.
Update:
Kevin at Lean Left documents some aspects of the proposed legislation that extend far beyond outlawing TIVO. Please read it.
If the special interests kill the fair use doctrine, as seems to be their intent, critical examination of literature, art, politcs, and science will become slow and difficult. Even blogging will be a lot harder if the law does not permit us to quote from copyrighted material without permission. Kevin is rightly outraged by the effort to destroy fair use.
Edited to make the last line of the main post more concise.
"What I watch or don't watch, what I read or don't read, how I worship or don't worship, who I love or don't love, and what I think or don't think, ain't nobody's business but my own."
DM I think that line deserves the Donkey logo: http://www.oliverwillis.com/branddemocrat
Posted by: Peatey at November 22, 2004 06:01 PMHere's a right we can all rally behind: The Right to Skim!
Tivo = Reader's Digest = Headline News = Cliff's Notes
Sounds like that would be an unbeatable coalition.
Peace, Jarrett
Its worse than that, the law is actually going to do serious harm to just baout every aspect of fair use, with really bad consequences
Posted by: kevin at November 22, 2004 06:49 PMHmm, links don't work. Potential consequneces here:
http://www.leanleft.com/archives/003868.html
Yeah, I asked myself "Am I better off now than I was four years ago?" and concluded that I certainly was. I would have voted for TIVO too, if I had thought he was electable!
As far as specifying that it's ok to skip through what they don't want me to watch but not ok to skip through what I don't want to watch, it makes perfect sense to me:
As long as you're going to mandate that everybody follow the dictates of one groups religious beliefs, why not throw in a payoff to another influential lobby while you're at it. The irony is that it's the religious right Republicans making a payoff to the satanic "liberal hollywood" lobby. (forgive the sarcasm, my reasonableness has been stretched near it's limits)
Posted by: Mike Meredith at November 22, 2004 10:35 PM