Fox Explains Why SSSCA Is Bad 739
corbettw writes "Fox News is running an article that slams Sen. Fritz Hollings ("The Senator from Disney") and the Democrats (with the notable exception of Rick Boucher) as having betrayed their principles. More importantly, the article explains why the SSSCA is so bad, in language any American can understand. It's nice to see someone in the mainstream media taking this beast on before it becomes law."
Ok, a real reply, from Fritz' state (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I'm not so worried about the implications of this legislation. If it passes (unlikely), it'll just get attacked in the House or defeated in the courts if it somehow makes it past Dubya's desk.
It's more that SC (and the US in general) has a gentleman like this steering legislative policy on something that didn't even exist when he was celebrating his 60th birthday. I'm not saying older folks can't learn, but in this case, I think it's safe to say that SC is not going to become a technology center (nor will the United States remain one) as long as its legislators insist on kissing up to interests that have less consideration for the proper deployment of technology than they do for the protection of their short-term revenue streams.
Anyway, God help us all. Fritz is a nice man, but he should be ignored on this issue.
Give 'em enough rope... (Score:1, Interesting)
Is it just me, or do they seem more and more desperate with every passing day?
Re:A little out there? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:coming of age for Fox? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm shocked... (sarcasm) (Score:3, Interesting)
C'mon folks... you absolutely have to "follow the money" when looking
for political motivation. From Enron to SSSCA. Nobody should be shocked when
they hear something like this. Its just an extension of the old golden rule...
he who has the gold, makes the rules. Unless the people (perhaps with help from
the hardware manufacturers) vehemently make their views known, there will be
people like this who try to run through legislation designed to screw the little
guy.
We obviously don't count as much in the process. Voters are needed to be elected...
but MONEY is needed to get voters to vote for you. They don't get money from
the voters. Besides... they figure we'll forget and just vote for the incumbent
anyway.
I'm babbling...
Jason
One of which may run for President (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:5, Interesting)
'Course, it's interesting to note the changes in Congress over the last 20 years (and particularly since the "Republican Revolution" of '94 and the Newt-ites). Most concepts of seniority have been thrown out the window and senators (in particular) have become less "gentleman statesmen" and more like the party hacks that fill the House. "Tow the party line and nobody gets hurt" has become the de facto philosophy of the Senate, rather than the classic "let's all be gentlemen and discuss things in a rational manner" way things used to be done. (I think shadows of this change were visible back during Tip O'Neill's tenure and even before).
So it becoms an issue of senators not taking views too far out of line with a) their party platform and b) their constituents' views, so as to not appear in the national press, except when signing bills or slinging mud at the party in power.
It may be this "keep your head down, get re-elected" shift that will oust Hollings, Daschle, et. al. (It certainly cost Gary Condit his job...)
Just my $.02
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:2, Interesting)
I sincerely hope that the people in his district are well aware of Sen. Holling's attrocities.
Well, he did initially raise the Rebel Flag over the state house as S.C. governor to protest the civil rights movement.
Hollings routinely refers to blacks as "darkies"
A search for "KKK" and "Hollings" on google will link to numerous articles and postings substantiating these facts.
A Change in Political Structure (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe they need to change the party names to the Hollywhigs and the Oilies?
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:5, Interesting)
Sen Hollings has been in the Senate for something like forty years. He is the longest running junior senator ever. At forty years of continuous service, he is still the young'un from SC.
The senior senator is Strom Thurmond. He's 99. He said that he won't run again when his term ends in 2002. He was elected again, mainly on the idea that he would die in office and that he should be allowed to do so.
Also, remember that the longer your Senator serves in Congress, the higher his seniority. If you elect someone else, you lose all special privleges there. For example, Shaw AFB is never included in base closings, because Sen Thurmond would crush any Senator that voted to do so.
Basically, Sen. Hollings could parade naked down Huger St. in Columbia SC, and the Republican party would run commercials on how the Sen. must have nothing to hide.
Re:coming of age for Fox? (Score:2, Interesting)
They have? [go.com]
Re:And for those of us who have figured that out (Score:3, Interesting)
Warning! Contradiction encountered! Dumping core...
Well, maybe not. She didn't mention anything about the rights of the citizens...
Democrats usually are on the right side...not here (Score:2, Interesting)
That's why the SSSCA is such an interesting case. It looks and smells very bad indeed when you have prominent Democratic leaders like Hollings, Boxer and Kerry falling in line with the people who gave them huge amounts of money.
The author also tries to compare this to the Enron debacle--please...how many people lost their life savings here... But I do think that they have one thing in common. They are both fabulous examples of why we need meaningful campaign finance reform.
An analogy for the SSSCA (Score:2, Interesting)
The Original SSSCA.
Statement of Yakval Enti, spokesman of the MPAA (Mnemonists, Praise-singers, and Anthemists Association) to His Highness Hammurabi, King of Sumeria:
Your Majesty: I wish to call you attention to a severe threat to the security of your kingdom, and the livelihoods of thousands of your subjects.
After Shamash sets and the people kick back after a long day of growing millet, they desire entertainment. Their favorite forms are stories, tales, and sagas, told by the members of the MPAA. Talented boys spend up to 12 years learning the tales by heart at the feet of the masters. Any evening MPAA members can be found in the taverns singing the old tales, praising the praiseworthy, and creating new tales from the old.
This system has worked well since the beginning of time - there were storytellers at your coronation, there were storytellers at your father's coronation, and there were storytellers in the caves of our ancestors.
This natural arrangement is now threatened from an unexpected direction - the scribes and accountants. The geeks' system of recording numbers and quantities has been perverted to freeze speech onto clay.
Understand the threat to our business model. At the moment, if someone wants to hear 'The Tale of the Ox, the Ass and the Sumerian', they find an MPAA member, pay him, and sit back to listen to the whole four hour saga. While anyone could recall and tell others the general outline, only MPAA members know every detail and can give the listener the whole story. If you want to hear it again, you pay again. Thousands of MPAA members rely on this fact for their livelihoods.
With the recent invention of "writing" the system is in danger of collapse. We've found that some scribes are actually "recording" entire sagas onto clay. Any scribe can "read" these out to people for free or for money, complete and word-for-word, without being a member of or paying the MPAA! A scribe who has obtained a set of tablets of an story can even read it an unlimited number of times, or (worst of all) make copies. This is starting to have an economic impact on our membership. Consider Rimat-Ninsun, whose masterwork "The Epic of Gilgamesh" took him three years to create, and who looked to it to put bread on his table into his old age, as he told it for money, or let others tell it under paid license after learning it from him. 'Gilgamesh' is now circulating on 12 clay tablets, and Rimat is starving. Who will bother to create new tales if they are just going to be written down?
"Writing" presents insidious dangers to your kingdom as well. It can be anonymous. Before writing, any message arrived with a person to speak it, who could be held accountable for their speech. With writing, it is impossible to tell what scribe "wrote" a message. Anonymous threats, kidnap notes, and untraceable sedition are now possible. Clearly "writing" carries with it far greater problems for our civilization than it does advantages.
However, scribes, accountants, and their skills are essential to business, contracts, laws, and the collection of taxes. We just need to make sure that they are controlled properly.
I therefore propose the Scribal Stylus Safety Control Act. (SSSCA). This requires every scribe to have an MPAA approved, "literate" slave with him at all times, peering over his shoulder. If a scribe is seen to be "writing' something other then accounting information, for example a story (stories are the province of MPAA storytellers), or a message (which should have been given to a paid mnenomist for delivery), or anything seditious, then the slave will take away the scribe's stylus and call the authorities. I ask you to have this Act "written" into your Code of Law.
Is this difficult? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. However, it is clear that without strict controls, widespread "writing" will not only destroy the entertainment industry, it will threaten civilisation itself!
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Disclaimer:
The above are strictly the personal opinions of myself, and I'd be astonished if my employer had any official position on the matter (so don't pretend otherwise).
Feel free to copy this document in its entirety, with proper attribution.
Peter Trei
ptrei@rsasecurity.com
Fair and balanced BS (Score:2, Interesting)
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting talks about how Fair and Balanced Fox News is.
I hate to opine for Fox "News'... (Score:3, Interesting)
Vote Repulsocrat!
Write Your Senators! (nicely, please) (Score:5, Interesting)
(If you're going to write, PLEASE be a grownup: typical Slashdot flaming gets us nowhere.)
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Dear Senator Boxer,
I was a bit surprised to hear that you are favoring Senator Hollings' SSSCA bill. While there are real concerns about illegal file-sharing, an overly-broad and intrusive bill like the SSSCA is absolutely not the way to go about it.
As a technical professional (software architect, security and database systems), I strongly believe that putting hardware copy-control devices into general consumer PCs is a terrible idea, one that will help stifle creativity in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Code is speech, and there are many people who are quite passionate about this issue, and others having to do with free and open access to technology. I, for one, am made very uncomfortable about mysterious black boxes, legislated into hardware, over which I have no control.
The problem is that the PC is a very general device, and requiring "certification" for every operating system/hardware combination will merely enrich the mainstream at the expense of the cutting edge. This sort of legislation is very dangerous to the continued health of Silicon Valley innovation. Our neighbors to the south in Hollywood have legitimate concerns, but harming one signature California industry to help another strikes me as the wrong approach.
Thank you for your attention,
Andrew MacBride
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:5, Interesting)
From Wired [wired.com]:
One explanation for the opposition to Hollings' approach may not be principle but politics. The House this week voted 273-157 for a Republican-backed broadband bill -- the Tauzin-Dingell legislation -- that Hollings has vowed to block in the Senate.
During last Thursday's hearing in the Senate, it was the Democratic members of the committee who proclaimed the need to legislate -- while Republican senators such as John McCain (R-Arizona) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) said they "would be extremely hesitant regarding any proposal for government to mandate copy-protection technology."
Barbara Boxer of California implicated (Score:2, Interesting)
Will the Republicans lead the charge? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure they will. If it will help them garner more votes in the next election, they will use this as a club to beat down the Democrats. Though, you are right, neither side is really any better than the other. All our polictical system really is, is an attempt by the people to play the two sides against the middle, and hope that we end up with something at least palatable, if not good. And that is exactly where politictal commentary like this comes in (it is really a political piece). It helps to set public opinion against something that is disagreeable, and at the same time helps to present the Republicans with a perfect opportunity to slam the Democrats with it. This makes it more likely the that Republicans will take up arms on this one and probably kill it. Was either side really more moral or better than the other? No, but in the end the people won on this count because the bad bill was killed, and that is what we are after.
Ya, its a screwed up system, but its all we have at the moment, so we'd better make the best of it. The only power "We the People" have is our vote. It may not seem like much, but en masse they can be very convincing to a carrer politician.
Free speech or intellectual-property? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ironically, Fox News' parent company News Corp had its senior executives testifying to Senator Ernest Hollings' committee that high-tech companies were hypocritical for suing others for intellectual-property violations while failing to develop software or hardware to protect entertainment.
Looks to me that Fox News enjoys the freedom to tell the truth, even if the business end of the company seeks political intervention as a solution to a market problem. I cannot say I feel the same for other so called Networks who lean left and don't admit it.
I do have to say that our industry would do itself a huge favor by developing technologies that allow for better protection of intellectual-property for all types of electronic content. Not only will it move us towards wider consumer use of technology, but will protect intellectual-property from misuse which leads to high costs for all of us.
Question is: How do we protect free speech and the rights of intellectual-property owners? That is the next billion dollar high-tech industry!
But payola IS rife in the industry. (Score:1, Interesting)
I used to work for a college radio station as the programming director, and major labels were ALWAYS trying to push their schlock on our station by offering me free tickets, trips, etc. And we were just a college station, for God's sake--think about how it is with major metropolitan areas.
And you're kidding yourself if you think N'Sync (or any other boy/girl band, for instance) got to be where they are solely because of their "catchy hook." Yes, that helps, but something had to get it out to be heard in the first place. It's THIS step where payola is key--if no one hears it for the first time, how are they supposed to be drawn in by the hook? They can't. Therefore, record companies offer initiatives to radio stations to insert these "hitmakers" into the playlist. Plain and simple.
There are a lot of bands out there that have great hooks in their songs too, they just never see the light of day because their distribution doesn't allow for nationwide airing (read: their labels don't have multiple millions of dollars to get the songs heard on radio, etc).
It's an extremely crooked industry.
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:3, Interesting)
With Watergate came a major public outcry for opening the processes of government up generally. Seniority rules were rewritten, committee meetings (with the exception of a few national security-types) were opened up and so on. Heck, senators rarely returned to their home districts! So yes, if advances in media and transportation make government more open, I think that this is generally a good thing.
So, if senators appear more politically influenced these days it's probably because they are forced to deal with popular demands moreso than they've ever had to do before. Does this have its downsides? Sure. But to claim that the senate is less democratic today than in the past is just rubbish.
Record industry nastiness (Score:5, Interesting)
One paragraph of the article said:
Talk about screwing the little guy: audits of record companies routinely indicate "errors" that are always in the companies' favor. (Recording artist Peggy Lee just won a big judgment, and many other artists' lawsuits are pending)
This brought back some memories of conversations I had while consulting for one of the major record companies. Not only is the slanting of "errors" in the favor of the companies common, it's completely intentional and so common that the industry has a name and an acronym for it.
The term is "settle on audit" and the acronym, obviously, SOA. What it means is that if a particular clause in an artists contract is too much of a pain to apply correctly, or even if the company just feels like it, they deliberately choose to err in their own favor, with the idea that when (or if!) the artist chooses to pay a third party auditor to come look at the books, they'll just negotiate a settlement.
In some cases, the contract clauses are so bizarre and impossible to apply that this actually makes a twisted sort of sense (what would really make sense is to write contracts that can actually be executed), but the record companies apply this technique in lots of other situations as well.
And, if that weren't enough, they also make absolutely no effort beyond the minimum required by the contract language to facilitate these audits. One common practice is that when the auditors request sales records, rather than giving them the information in a nice, easily-manipulable electronic format (which is what the companies use to look at and process the data themselves), they print it all out and provide it in paper format, sorted in some less than ideal way. For a major artist that has sold millions of CDs these paper records can fill dozens of large boxes -- truckloads of paper. And the auditor is paid by the artist, typically by the hour.
I guess in one way all this chicanery is actually in the artists' favor: The artist never has to wonder whether it's worth it to pay an auditor, because however much the auditor charges, they can always be sure that the record company has screwed them for worse, so they'll come out ahead in the end. I pointed this out and the folks I was talking to said that there was some debate over that point, that maybe they'd be better off playing it a little closer so that some sizeable percentage of audits showed no underpayments. But they're pretty sure they get to keep more of the artists' money this way.
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:3, Interesting)
The current matching-funds system isn't particularly great (it's still tough on newcomers) but they do have some chance at least. Of course, one might have separate rules for newcomers and for those running against the wealthy... hrm. I wonder if those would pass Constitutional muster.
Re:The Senator from Disney (Score:3, Interesting)
If corporations can not make donations, what about sole owner or LLC?
I just think you are hampering free speech by making limits.
Why not make it a requirement that ALL donors and their contributions are provided to the public? Maybe have a rule that elected officals, their political parties (soft money), and people running for office have to maintain lists of donors and their donations amounts.
my two cents.