Stoned koalas drooled eucalyptus spit in awe as Sean M. Doran exclaimed:
Perhaps their interests and the Hollywoods' interests dovetail so much that we could see mergers between big content owners and last-mile owners. Then there'd be the fun choice between actively-filtered broadband ("watch all the high quality [as determined by Congress!] digital content you can pay for, and see none of that darned free stuff!") and no broadband at all, on a market-by-market basis. Cooooool!
"Hollings' solution, backed by Disney, would modify personal computers to block piracy. At the hearing, an Intel executive said that Disney wanted to dictate how computers would be designed, crippling their functionality." Source: http://www.commweb.com/article/IWK20020321S0022 I should've known that Disney had a hand in this somewhere. I wonder how much they paid him?
So cool, in fact, that I think that this bill is doomed because it does not go far enough to support exactly that sort of development.
What I would like to know is, in the unlikely event that this bill passed, how is it supposed to be implemented? Particularly among the free software community, which most likely wouldn't have the resources to implement this in the timeline specified in this bill. Also, unless I have missed something, the term "digital content" doesn't seem very well defined. Does this mean that my personal, non-profit web site is "digital content?" It's painfully obvious that Mister Hollings is completely ignorant of the very technology he is attempting to legislate. How do we, as network operators, fit into the picture? Must we ensure that our customers use only approved hardware and software? If we have to make upgrades to our infrastructure, who is going to foot the bill? I suppose that Hollings doesn't know that spare cash is getting harder and harder to find in this sector. This isn't the first time that Hollings has shown his ignorance. Remember the SSSCA? http://cryptome.org/sssca.htm What a waste of skin. Jeff -- Jeff Workman | jworkman@pimpworks.org | http://www.pimpworks.org