response 76 of 165:

May 7 13:31 UTC 2002

I hope this goes through, but given all the money stacked against it I 
doubt it has a chance.
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,52298,00.html

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Rick Boucher is finally ready to try and dismantle a 
key part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, said last July that he wanted to amend 
the DMCA to permit certain "fair uses" of digital content, such as 
backing up an audio CD by bypassing copy protection technology. 

In an interview on Thursday, Boucher said he now has sufficient 
support -- from the tech industry, librarians, and Internet activists --
 to feel comfortable introducing his bill "in the next month." 

"If I had introduced it six months ago, you wouldn't have seen this 
kind of support," said Boucher. 

As soon as it's introduced, Boucher's proposal seems certain to be 
targeted for defeat by content lobbyists including Hollywood, the 
recording industry and the publishing industry. 

Boucher plans to rewrite section 1201 of the DMCA, which says, "No 
person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively 
controls access to a work protected under this title." 

It doesn't require that the person bypassing the scheme is doing it to 
infringe on someone's copyright. Boucher believes that people should be 
allowed to circumvent technological protection for research, criticism 
or fair use purposes, such as reading an encrypted e-book on another 
computer. 

response 78 of 165:

May 8 16:00 UTC 2002

In the early days of radio, the record companies tried to prevent the radio
stations from broadcasting their music on the theory that nobody would buy
the records if they could hear them on the radio.  Then they discovered it
was worth their while not to charge, but to PAY, the radio stations to play
their music.  I don't understand how it would not equally benefit CD companies
to let their CDs be webcast.

response 80 of 165:

May 8 18:24 UTC 2002

  And it's equally about the record companies being able to control
  what gets played..

response 82 of 165:

May 8 21:25 UTC 2002

I was looking for classical music webcasts and many of the stations are no
longer in operation in the US.  Europe still has plenty, then there is Hong
Kong and Chile.  Maybe people will start listening to more 'foreign' music
of other genres and the US music companies will lose business before they
realize what idiots they were.

response 84 of 165:

May 9 01:01 UTC 2002

In the Netherlands everyone pays a yearly fee for any radio they own which
is hooked up to cable, and they all get to vote on what programming they want,
and the amount of each type of programming is based on the vote.  At least
for the noncommercial tax-supported stations.  There are pirate stations
broadcasting from ships.  I assume some of the for-pay cable TV stations are
also commercial free, am I wrong?  Requiring that one listen to ads in order
to hear music makes as much sense as requiring college students to play
football or vice versa.

response 86 of 165:

May 9 06:51 UTC 2002

For-pay cable channels are generally interuption-free.  They generally
run blurbs for other shows as fillers, which is a form of advertisement.
AMC used to run on the same system, although they now seem to be
evolving away from this.

response 88 of 165:

May 9 15:26 UTC 2002

The entire point of cable in the first place was to be ad-free.

response 90 of 165:

May 9 16:58 UTC 2002

re #88: There was cable TV in Houghton, MI in the 1950's because there 
were no locally accessible TV stations there.  The original point of 
cable was sharp reception and greater selection of programming.

response 92 of 165:

May 9 19:53 UTC 2002

Cable TV started as "community antenna television."  (This is where the 
acronym CATV comes from.)  They'd put an array of single-channel Yagis 
on top of some tall structure, pointed at the various local channels, 
then amplify the signals and feed them out to residents, to avoid the 
visual clutter of every house having its own outdoor TV antenna.  
Obviously that wasn't commercial free since it was just another way to 
get broadcast TV.

Even today most cable systems, as part of the francise agreement, have 
to offer a cheap "basic service" level that mostly just provides area 
broadcast stations.  They rarely advertise that fact and will often 
charge an arm and a leg to install it, but it usually exists.

response 94 of 165:

May 10 01:46 UTC 2002

92 - the acronym CATV has since been modified to be "Community Access 
TV", which may go by other names including Public Access, or Community 
Television.

response 96 of 165:

May 12 09:43 UTC 2002

Well, there's two origins of cable tv, and they tend to get confused.  
One is the provision of tv to back-country areas that get poor 
broadcast reception, and that's always been commercial, simply because 
it was a feed of broadcast stations.  The other is cable-only channels, 
intended in the first place for urban customers, which came along 
around 1980, and that indeed was originally mostly commercial-free, the 
idea being that subscription fees to cable would pay the cost.  So much 
for that notion.

Kellner's remark about stealing is profoundly disturbing, for several 
reasons.

First, as several people have pointed out, applied to print 
publications it would require that you read all the ads (and various 
corollaries about electronic media suggest that you'd have to start at 
the beginning and read the whole thing, read it only once, and you 
couldn't pass it on to somebody else).  It also suggests you can't flip 
stations during commercials, either.

Second, it flies in the face of the whole basis of advertising, in 
which the best ads are designed to actually attract attention and not 
just lecture to a captive audience, and more than that, in which ad 
rates are set with the specific understanding that there won't be 100% 
feed-through.

Thirdly, if you can be required to watch the ads, you can also be 
required to buy the wonderful products being pitched.

response 98 of 165:

May 14 15:07 UTC 2002

Here's Apple's page about the problem:

http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/wa/query?searchMod
e=Ass
isted&type=id&val=KC.106882

They suggest several ways to try getting the disc out, but admit you may
have to take the machine in for service if it's a model that has no
manual eject hole.  They seem to be taking a pretty hard-line stance on
these discs:

"CD audio discs that incorporate copyright protection technologies do
not adhere to published Compact Disc standards. Apple designs its CD
drives to support media that conforms to such standards. Apple computers
are not designed to support copyright protected media that do not
conform to such standards. Therefore, any attempt to use non standard
discs with Apple CD drives will be considered a misapplication of the
product. Under the terms of Apple's One-Year Limited Warranty, AppleCare
Protection Plan, or other AppleCare agreement any misapplication of the
product is excluded from Apple's repair coverage. Because the Apple
product is functioning correctly according to its design specifications,
any fee assessed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple for
repair service will not be Apple's responsibility."

Think there's the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against Sony
from people who have to pay Apple to have these discs extracted from
their systems?