{"id":388,"date":"2003-10-28T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2003-10-28T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/politics\/digital_mandate.html"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1970-01-01T05:00:00","slug":"digital_mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/2003\/10\/28\/digital_mandate","title":{"rendered":"Digital Mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cadc.uscourts.gov\/\">D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov\/docs\/common\/opinions\/200310\/02-1312a.pdf\" title=\"DC Circuit Opinion\">today upheld the FCC requirement<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/TECH\/ptech\/10\/28\/digital.tv.ap\/index.html\">(CNN story)<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/hraunfoss.fcc.gov\/edocs_public\/attachmatch\/FCC-03-225A1.pdf\" title=\"FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Digital TV\">all tuners receive digital TV signals by July 2007<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p> I fail to understand why the digital TV transition warrants a government mandate of this sort. While I&#8217;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&#8217;t purchasing digital televisions, it&#8217;s because (1) they&#8217;re too expensive or (2) they&#8217;re not interested (1 and 2 are really the same thing). There&#8217;s no evidence of a particularly high barrier to entry to the DTV market, so there&#8217;s nothing stopping any particular manufacturer from marketing cheaper or more appealing DTV tuners, and there&#8217;s no need for the entire industry to be forced to make this transition. <\/p>\n<p> 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&#8217;s a risk you should be able to take, and the price should (and does) reflect that risk. I&#8217;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&#8217;ll have a source of income. <\/p>\n<p> Can someone make a convincing argument why the state needs to force manufacturers to make what people aren&#8217;t demanding? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;m generally not inclined towards knee-jerk anti-regulatory opinions, this seems to be a perfect case [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adam.rosi-kessel.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}