Filed under Copyright by adam | October 28, 2003 | 1 comment
In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, you should check out Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience and the internal memos from Diebold Voting Systems. Swarthmore has been cracking down on students who link to these sites in response to threats from Diebold. Diebold makes electronic voting systems that are widely deployed and terribly flawed, and is attempting to use copyright doctrine to shut down critics.
Please link widely, e.g.:
Diebold Election Systems
Which will appear as Diebold Election Systems.
I genuinely hope that Diebold sues someone here—not for that person’s sake, but for the sake of our democracy. You couldn’t ask for a better DMCA test case to balance constitutional principles vs. misguided and misinterpreted copyright statutes.
Filed under Politics by adam | October 28, 2003 | 0 comments
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the FCC requirement (CNN story) that all tuners receive digital TV signals by July 2007.
I fail to understand why the digital TV transition warrants a government mandate of this sort. While I’m generally not inclined towards knee-jerk anti-regulatory opinions, this seems to be a perfect case to let the market do its work. I invite anyone to make a convincing argument for market failure here. If people aren’t purchasing digital televisions, it’s because (1) they’re too expensive or (2) they’re not interested (1 and 2 are really the same thing). There’s no evidence of a particularly high barrier to entry to the DTV market, so there’s nothing stopping any particular manufacturer from marketing cheaper or more appealing DTV tuners, and there’s no need for the entire industry to be forced to make this transition.
Sure, you might purchase a non-digital tuner today and be screwed in four or five years if this transition really does occur, but that’s a risk you should be able to take, and the price should (and does) reflect that risk. I’m happy to buy somewhat obsolete technology for 80% off, even if I can only use it for a couple years, and then buy something new at that point, when hopefully I’ll have a source of income.
Can someone make a convincing argument why the state needs to force manufacturers to make what people aren’t demanding?
