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January 15, 2007

Flagging the broadcast flags

Susan Crawford blogs about Sen. Sununu's legislation that would prevent the FCC from creating audio and video "broadcast flags" that would prevent digital recording devices from making copies of content that has a flag set by its owner. Susan quotes Sununu:

"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?"

Taken as an argument, this is fallacious, because maybe this is the exceptional case. But taken as a putting of the rhetorical ball in the court where it belongs, it's right on.... [Tags: susan_crawford broadcast_flag fcc sununu politics digial_rights copyright ]

Posted by D. Weinberger at January 15, 2007 12:31 PM

Comments

An interesting mix of copyright ("creativity") and patent ("innovation") arguments. The words creativity and innovation seem to have lost meaning in themselves, not in the least because the people who argue for changes in the law rarely bother to do research into whether creativity and innovation will actually be hindered or stimulated by these changes.

Posted by: Branko Collin | January 16, 2007 10:59 AM

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