In Abe Lincoln and the internet pirates, Disney chairman Michael Eisner attempts to co-opt Abraham Lincoln and Czeck Republic president/poet/rights activist Vaclav Havel to justify the extreme measures embedded in the recently introduced Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. He stoops to the level of informing us that his father, like his father’s father and so forth, taught him not to steal. And hey: “For me, theft of property, via the internet or any other way, is not only alarming because of the material loss but also disconcerting because it implies the loss of the moral compass on which our society is based.” Well that makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?
I think the CBDTP comes down to the fact that the entertainment industry executives want the laws not only to overwhelmingly favor their interests over those of us consumers but also to require enforcement. No longer will we be able to buy PCs or other recording devices to use as we will but only devices that force us to behave as Hollywood desires. This is a slippery slope, my friends, have no doubt; when will they move to ‘enhance’ the law to allow only professionally prepared content and thereby end the ability of me and other little people to even publish something as simple as this website? And not because they care about what I say here but because they won’t make money off of it and could even think they are losing money since time spent reading here is time not spent consuming their for-fee content.
In his sermon, Eisner quotes a Lincoln speech as praising IP protection but that quote specifically states the protection should be for a limited time. In the CBDPTA legislation, though, the media companies are essentially seeking no time limit to the protections. Recent legislation already gives copyrights a term of the author’s lifetime plus 70 years but even this is not enough. Eisner is desperate since copyright protection for Mickey Mouse apparently will expire in the next few years, soon followed by several other major Disney characters. Zimran has an excellent analysis of the value of extending protection timeframes.
In a sharp bit of reality that contrasts with the gloomy picture Eisner paints, the Mercury news this morning ran a big feature piece on teens and their spending. Of course with their messed-up site redesign I can’t find the article and even if I could the link would evaporate in seven days. Anyway! The article mentions that teens are spending over $100 per week, with entertainment (CDs, movies, concerts) being one of the two largest areas of spending. Where they get $100 per week, I’d like to know, cause I had maybe $10 or 15 back in the day. Anyway, clearly having access to music and movies over the Napster/Gnutella/whatever file sharing networks isn’t preventing them from dropping the dollars on Eisner’s products. As Dave W asks, when is enough enough?
Don’t forget to write your Senators about this abomination of legislation. In the case of our sadly misled Dianne Feinstein, who has co-sponsored this bill, write and mention that you won’t be voting for her again if she doesn’t take her name off it.
BillSaysThis 