it seems too easy to lump all of hollywood into the “get it off the face of the earth”
Freedom to tinker
Mike Godwin’s article The Right to Tinker (Edward Felten) makes an excellent argument for the importance of the freedom to tinker. The copyright protection schemes that some in Washington and Hollywood want to implement will choke off the innovation that has been the driving force of the American economy. They will do so by outlawing our tradition of taking things apart, studying them, discussing them, and making them better. Do we really value entertainment so much that we are willing to sacrifice public knowledge for it?
I’d gladly give up all mainstream movies, musical recordings, and television programming to keep my right to tinker. If I hadn’t been able to study and hack code a few years ago, I might still be serving popcorn and soda at the theater or risking my life in the steel warehouse.
Not to mention that I think we’d all be better off if Hollywood fell off the face of the Earth. But that’s a topic for later.
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Maybe I should be more precise in my language. Let’s try, “I think we’d all be better off if the major media cartels fell off the face of the Earth.”
ok, i can see the need to have the “broadcast flag” on tv programming - but i think this is a separate issue from tinkering. my question is - what are they going to do about people taping/burning a program and watching it more than once? technically, that is a no-no too. i bet the people supporting this were anti-napster too.