British Politicians Present Reasonable Views On Copy Protection?

from the amazing dept

Mon, Jun 5th 2006 11:13am — Mike Masnick

While the US government is going around the world trying to protect obsolete business models, it looks like over in the UK, a group of politicians are taking a much more reasonable approach to the copy protection issue. While most of the attention is being place on the proposal that anyone offering copy protected content needs to clearly label what the limitations are, a more interesting element of the report is that mandating copy protection could be harmful. While the article mentions that there aren't official attempts to mandate DRM in Europe yet, it's likely only a matter of time. There are definitely efforts underway in the US, and things like the broadcast flag are constantly popping up again. Then, once something gets turned into law in the US, suddenly we'll be hearing all sorts of talk about how Europe needs to pass similar laws to comply with international treaties, leaving out most of the debate over whether or not such laws actually make sense. Therefore, it's good to see these politicians raising the issue of how much harm DRM can cause now, before things have gone too far.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

9 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Jacka$$, 5 Jun 2006 @ 11:53am

Yay, first comment!
First Comment! All your comments are belong to us.

p.s.
Finally! Decent politicians... way to go U.K.!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jezsik, 5 Jun 2006 @ 11:53am

Food content requires labels, why not media?
Given the Sony rootkit fiasco, it looks like it's high time we had a system in place that works much like the system for labelling food. We "consume" media, so we need a label that tells us what the media is and how we can use it - including restrictions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Ben, 5 Jun 2006 @ 12:06pm
  
  Re: Food content requires labels, why not media?
  good analogy
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
anonymous coward, 5 Jun 2006 @ 12:14pm

protecting obsolete business models? like a monarchy?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Bailey, 5 Jun 2006 @ 12:27pm
  
  Re:
  "protecting obsolete business models? like a monarchy?"
  
  Or free public health care.. Just imagine all those sick people being denied the right to go bankrupt paying medical bills.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Jezsik, 5 Jun 2006 @ 1:13pm
  
  Re:
  Mmm, no, a monarchy is an obsolete government model. Mind you, it's only slightly more obsolete than representative democracy.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- |333173|3|_||3, 5 Jun 2006 @ 5:29pm
  
  Re:
  The monarchy is not obsolete, it is generally preferred to any ther option, and is *very* stable
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Starky, 5 Jun 2006 @ 3:34pm

Note to self:
Move to the UK. It's not full of idiots and assholes (Like Jack Thompson!)
Then again, neither is Canada. Hmmm....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rick, 9 Jun 2006 @ 1:48am

I certainly do not prefer the 'Bush monarchy' at all!

As for stable, well he sure messed up Iraq.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]