Fighting For The Freedom To Tinker
from the keeping-the-debate-lively dept
Not much new, if you read this site often, but Business Week is running a good interview with Ed Felten about his views on the importance of not harming innovation with the unintended consequences of badly written laws officially written to protect intellectual property. He argues that these laws are going too far to try to protect the intellectual property of a few large companies, at the cost of innovation. However, he's also more optimistic now than in the past, because these issues are being vigorously debated - and aren't just being pushed into law with no one noticing.
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Not Noticing? More like not mobilizing...
I cannot think of a single law which was pushed through without some debate before hand, with the exception maybe of the RIAAs "compromise" bill which enacted fees for online radios (even though there was debate there.)
Even the DMCA was debated before it was passed. The problem was, and still is in many ways, the mobilization of the community to prevent stupid laws from being passed in the first place, by helping senators and representatives realize that there are in fact two sides to every issue, and while the side that has all the money now, may not be the side which will be the winning ticket to be re-elected in the future.
What has changed is not the method of reporting issues; the EFF and CPSR, EPIC, ACLU, and many other organizations have served well in this capacity; but the general feeling among the tech folks and those in the tech industry that we are tired of being screwed by idiots with opinions, and designs to rule the world, and have decided to make such noise about it that Congress has to listen.
However, I suspect we have a long way to go before they actually do something other than listen...
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