Senate Questions Broadcast Flag
A couple of days ago, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the Broadcast Flag and the RIAA-proposed Audio Flag. Surprisingly, committee chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and John Sununu (R-New Hampshire) asked some key questions that exposed holes in the arguments for this “anti-piracy” technology. First up, Sununu (from an EFF Deeplinks article):
“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?”
Later, Stevens revealed that his daughter has recently bought him an iPod and had a question about how these proposals would affect his use of the device:
And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that’s when the RIAA’s Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat.
With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago.
Even more damning was Senator Sununu’s follow-up question, in which he asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the RIAA’s proposed controls, you may not: this is “disaggregation” in their language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping, mixing, modern-day Senators.
It’s kind of sad that they only understand the problems with legislation like this when they themselves will be affected by it, but at least now they’re starting to see through the weak claims made by those that believe we desparately need this technology.
