Author: Ed Felten
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Compulsory Licensing: Responses
I have gotten several interesting responses to my posting on compulsory licensing of music. Ernest Miller at LawMeme offers a tongue-in-cheek response. (At least I think it’s tongue-in-cheek.) He says that the same logic that supports compulsory licensing of music would also support compulsory licensing of pornography (requiring everybody to pay a tax to support…
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Edison's World
Lately I’ve been reading a biography of Thomas Edison, one of history’s great tinkerers. (I recommend the book: Edison by Matthew Josephson.) I’m amazed at how little the basic nature of the high-tech business has changed since Edison’s day. The products are different, but the business seems very much the same. Edison coped with –…
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Fritz's Hit List #23
Today on Fritz’s Hit List: musical car horns. These automobile horns play prerecorded digital sounds, so they qualify for regulation as “digital media devices” under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any newly manufactured musical car horns will have to incorporate government-approved copy restriction technology. Fight piracy – regulate car horns! [Thanks to Steven…
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A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come?
On Monday I attended a workshop to discuss compulsory licensing of music. A compulsory license might work like this: a small “tax” is added to the cost of Internet connections and/or computers and/or electronic devices that record and play music. In exchange for paying this tax, everybody gets free access to all the music they…
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Fritz's Hit List #22
Today on Fritz’s Hit List: the Athena Mars Exploration Rovers. These machines, which are designed to explore the surface of the planet Mars, record and transmit digital video and images, so they qualify for regulation as “digital media devices” under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any newly manufactured Mars Rovers will have to…
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NYT Article on Fritz's Hit List
Today’s New York Times has an article (on page 3 of the Business section), by David F. Gallagher, about Fritz’s Hit List. I love the title: “Robotic Dogs and Singing Fish in Cross Hairs.” The article includes the first on-the-record response I’ve seen from Sen. Hollings’ office: Andy Davis, a spokesman for Mr. Hollings, said…
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Fritz's Hit List #21
Today on Fritz’s Hit List: digital sewing machines. These machines replay digitally prerecorded stitch sequences to make complex pictures and patterns, so they qualify for regulation as “digital media devices” under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any newly manufactured digital sewing machines will have to incorporate government-approved copy restriction technology. Fight piracy –…
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Paper on Copy-Protected CDs
Alex Halderman, a senior here at Princeton, has written a very interesting paper entitled “Evaluating New Copy-Prevention Techniques for Audio CDs.” Here is the paper’s abstract: Several major record labels are adopting a new family of copy-prevention techniques intended to limit “casual” copying by compact disc owners using their personal computers. These employ deliberate data…
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More on the Almost-General-Purpose Language
Seth Finkelstein and Eric Albert criticize my claim that the fallacy of the almost-general-purpose computer can best be illustrated by analogy to an almost-general-purpose spoken language. They make some good points, but I think my original conclusion is still sound. Seth argues that speech (or a program) can be regulated by making it extremely difficult…
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Fritz's Hit List #20
Today on Fritz’s Hit List: audio key chains (like this one). These key chains play a prerecorded audio track, which presumably is stored in digital form, so they qualify for regulation as “digital media devices” under the Hollings CBDTPA. If the CBDTPA passes, any newly manufactured audio key chains will have to incorporate government-approved copy…