You might remember John Hodgman from Apple's new series of tv ads, but he's also the Daily Show's resident expert on everything. Yesterday he took on Net Neutrality explaining it in a way that even Senator Tubes can understand.

From last night's Daily Show:

In today's Washington Post, business columnist Steven Pearlstein tackles the nonsense that is the XM lawsuit. He dives right into the heart of the matter; that the record companies are cartels abusing their government granted monopoly to protect their antiquated business model at the expense of innovative technologies.

Here in Washington, there is nothing more amusing than watching business interests work themselves up into a righteous frenzy over a threat to their monopoly profits from a new technology or some upstart with a different business model. Invariably, the monopolists (or their first cousins, the oligopolists) try to present themselves as champions of the consumer, or defenders of a level playing field, as if they hadn't become ridiculously rich by sticking it to consumers and enjoying years in which the playing field was tilted to their advantage.

A recent example is the political and legal attack mounted by the music-recording industry against the upstarts of satellite radio.

That pretty much sums up the recent escalation of the Hollywood cartel's battle in Washington. First it was the DMCA, but they have opened new fronts with the IPPA (DMCA 2.0), SIRA, PERFORM, and a host of other terrible pieces of legislation that do nothing by enshrine in law their position as gatekeeper between musicians and their fans.

While they claim poverty and artist protection, they rack up record profits and continue to screw artists at every chance.

You'd think an industry that has managed to turn out so much mediocre music for so many years, done so much to lower moral standards and lost so much business to illegal file-sharing would have something better to do than attack some of the few distributors that are actually expanding the market and charging for music. But the prospect that the industry might not extract every last penny out of the new satellite radio services and their customers is simply unacceptable to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Wow. It's so rare to see this outside of the tech community, let alone the front page of the Washington Post business section. He's absolutely right by the way. The Hollywood cartels are dedicated to extracting every single red cent they can out of every single business that is even remotely connected to music. And if the business won't comply with their extortion demands, the cartels simply go to Congress and demand that the law act as their muscle.

The fundamental problem here is that there really isn't a free and open "market" for recorded music.

It starts with copyrights, which are nothing more than little government-issued monopolies. As a result of the recording industry's lavish political contributions, Congress has extended the copyright for music to absurd lengths of time (70 years after the death of the artist) and absurd situations (singalongs at Boy Scout campfires). This is well beyond what is reasonably required to meet the aim of encouraging artistic creation.

...

The copyright laws also effectively set up the record labels as a cartel that can bargain as a group with satellite and Internet radio operators over royalties and other terms. Not surprisingly, the same cartel-like behavior appears to extend to the industry's negotiations with Apple's iTunes and other download services, which seem to strike suspiciously similar deals at suspiciously similar times with all of the major recording studios. It's perhaps no coincidence, then, that the industry has already settled an antitrust suit over price fixing of compact discs and is reported to be the subject of another antitrust probe regarding prices for music downloads.

Pearlstein acknowledges the obvious, the record companies are a cartel that artificially inflate the price of music. They are no different than OPEC except that the Hollywood cartels have the blessing of Congress to continue distorting the market, suing innovators, and imposing an innovation tax on all of us that enjoy music and technology.

Hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call to Congress members and their staffers that they've been duped by one of the greatest hype machines out there.

Wow, the Chinese really are at the forefront of everything these days.

The New York Times [Via PK] is reporting on a new program in Hong Kong involving hundreds of thousands of young people scouring the internet to rat out their friends and classmates for sharing content.

Starting this summer the Hong Kong government plans to have 200,000 youths search Internet discussion sites for illegal copies of copyrighted songs and movies, and report them to the authorities. The campaign has delighted the entertainment industry, but prompted misgivings among some civil liberties advocates.

The so-called Youth Ambassadors campaign will start on Wednesday with 1,600 youths pledging their participation at a stadium in front of leading Hong Kong film and singing stars and several Hong Kong government ministers.

And I thought that suing 12 year old girls was bad enough. Not for the Chinese! They've created an army of snitches. Could you just imagine if the MySpace hordes were working for the Hollywood cartels?

The Hong Kong youth campaign covers a sixth of the territory’s youths ages 9 to 25 and is particularly aimed at teenagers. It is drawing international interest. Customs officials here have already been contacted by their counterparts in the United States, Macao and mainland China, and are ready to work with other jurisdictions to help set up similar programs, Mr. Tam said.

Uh oh.

But Dean Boyd, a Homeland Security Department spokesman in Washington, said that the United States had no plans to introduce a similar program, partly because of liability concerns.

Deron Smith, a spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America, said in an e-mail message that the group had no plans to ask scouts to report infringements to law enforcement officials.

Well, that's better.

I'm not one to offer policy advice to the Chinese government, let alone on piracy which is rampant, but this is just outrageous. How long until the Hollywood cartels want this in every school?

Now?

Yup, the RIAA has announced a program paid for with your tax dollars to infiltrate schools:

"Our partnership with the RIAA will allow us to educate more students about the proper use of intellectual property," said i-SAFE President and CEO Teri Schroeder. "Through awareness we empower teens to make appropriate decisions on the Internet and make a positive change in both attitude and behavior."

Never heard of i-SAFE? Neither had I. Here is the RIAA's description:

i-SAFE, a government funded non-profit Internet safety foundation, focuses on creating safe communities by conducting school assemblies; training teachers, law enforcement officers and students to deliver safety-oriented messages; and by establishing partnerships with student associations. Since September 2005, i-SAFE has conducted assemblies at more than 350 schools. Going forward, i-SAFE will work with the RIAA to develop a nationwide assembly experience on intellectual property for students in middle school and high school.

This is just out of control. It really is only a matter of time until the Hollywood cartels have their hands in everything.

If you want to join the fight to stop them, consider supporting IPac.

I'm writing this from my Treo. I'll have more when I get back in front of a computer.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

A Los Angeles video news service sued YouTube Inc. on Friday in federal court for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage onto the popular Web site, including the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 riots. Tur alleges YouTube is violating the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 decision in MGM v. Grokster.

...

"YouTube.com is not merely Grokster redux," Tur claims. "For unlike the peer-to-peer file sharing systems at issue in the Grokster case, YouTube provides the computer servers and 'world-class data centers' which allow users to upload video clips directly to YouTube's servers."

...

Tur seeks $150,000 for each work infringed upon and a court order enjoining YouTube from allowing his work to be posted on the Web.

The Daily Show took on the Net Neutrality debate.

I'm concerned that my internets take too long to show up too.

Just a quick thing.

Because of the amount of spam we've been getting in the comments, I've had to turn on moderation.

All this means is that it might take a bit longer for your comment to show up.

We have no interest in censoring comments at all.

Nothing has changed except there shouldn't be any more spam.

Maybe it was their profile of a certain PAC that woke them up to information policy issues. Maybe it's because they have to suffer every day reading the trade publications that make every new starlet the next big thing. Maybe it's because they can think logically.

Whatever the reason, the LA Times gets it. In an editorial today the LA Times makes the case that Hollywood has gone too far in buying their legislation in Congress and that Members need to wake up to the results of their actions.

THE INTERNET AND DIGITAL technology have been both a blessing and a curse for the entertainment industry, opening new opportunities for selling music and video but also fueling rampant global piracy.

To attack the latter problem, industry lobbyists are pressing Congress to adopt at least five different proposals that would give them more control over their works as they flow through new digital pipelines into living rooms and portable devices.

Every time Hollywood has demanded control of technology the courts and Congress have said no. That is until recently when Congress realized it was easier to take Hollywood's money and screw their constituents. The Hollywood cartels want complete control over every and all digital device that is capable of playing back media in any form. PERFORM would cripple satellite radio and internet radio. SIRA would also cripple internet radio. The Broadcast Flag would cripple HDTV. The Audio Flag would cripple digital radio. And IPPA (DMCA 2.0) would throw every file trader in jail for 10 years.

That's quite the legislative agenda. The 109th Congress has been busy.

Protecting intellectual property is a legitimate goal for Congress — after all, the Constitution called on Congress to give authors and inventors exclusive rights "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." The task has grown more urgent with the emergence of an Internet-fueled global information economy. But what the entertainment industry is seeking in this year's proposals isn't merely protection from piracy; it's after increased leverage to protect its business models.

This is what the fight really is about. The Hollywood cartels are distribution agents that take artistic work, remove most of the artistic intent, and sell it to consumers at inflated prices. That is what they are fighting to protect. The internet has changed media distribution permanently, but the Hollywood cartels are buying themselves legislative carve outs to ensure that they stay in business, that no business that deals with media can possibly survive unless it is sanctioned and controlled. If this was just a fight for technology, we would have already won. But because this is a fight for the Hollywood cartels' livelihood they have pulled out every weapon they have.

The major [movie] studios want to alter digital TV receivers, recorders and home networks to stop shows from being redistributed indiscriminately online — a proposal that has won grudging support from some consumer-electronics and high-tech firms. They also want to redesign computers, set-top boxes and other products to ensure that the limits placed on digital videos are not removed when the data are converted from digital to analog.

They will settle for nothing less than complete control of our digital future. They want to be on the design teams of Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple, and every other computer manufacturer to cripple computers and turn them into dumb media devices.

Clearly, the industry-backed proposals would do more than just defend copyrighted works from pirates. They also would impinge on devices that have legitimate uses and steer the development of technology, cutting off some innovation. As they weigh the entertainment industry's pleas, lawmakers shouldn't assume all consumers are bootleggers and every digital device is a hand grenade aimed at Hollywood.

This is perhaps the best summation I've read on the fight for balanced information policy and the fight for our digital future.

The LA Times gets it. Now it's time for Congress to get it too.

No, really.

Sen. Orrin Hatch did his magic and got convicted drug smuggler Dallas Austin released from a Dubai jail where Mr. Austin had be held. From the NY Times:

Senator Hatch made numerous phone calls on Mr. Austin's behalf to the ambassador and consul of the United Arab Emirates embassy in Washington — Dubai is one of the seven emirates — and served as an intermediary for Mr. Austin's representatives, the producer's lawyers said.

"The senator was one of a number of people who were very actively involved," said Joe Reeder, the Washington lawyer, who, with an Atlanta colleague, Joel A. Katz, spent 10 days in Dubai working to secure Mr. Austin's reprieve.

Now this is the same Orrin Hatch that wants to put file traders in jail for 5 years for sharing a single song.

According to the NY Times article, the Senator has a long history of leniency for drug offenders, but where is the compassion for a 12 year old girl sued by the RIAA? Oh, that's right, blow up her computer and lock her away.

Senator Hatch is so divorced from reality that he needs to be kicked out of office in the fall. That's why we've decided to FireHatch.

In what can only be considered a desperation move, YouTube has started removing public domain cartoons from their site. From CartoonBrew:

What is most disturbing about this indiscriminate purge of cartoons is that they've also removed dozens of public domain cartoons which were legally posted on their site. Warner shorts like EATIN' ON THE CUFF, PORKY'S MIDNIGHT MATINEE and A DAY AT THE ZOO, as well as the Fleischer SUPERMAN shorts, are all films that have entered the public domain, and can be freely reedited, redistributed and resold without permission from anybody. Unfortunately, YouTube has shown a woeful ignorance of copyright law and removed these films citing a baseless "terms of use violation" clause.

This is what happens in the world created by the Hollywood cartels. Sites like YouTube are so scared of being slapped with huge infringement suits that they are willing to remove legal (and funny) cartoons.

Via TV Squad

'Tis true:

Wow. I don't know what planet this guy lives on, but they must not have a very oxygen-rich atmosphere. According to Mike Shaw, ABC's President of Advertising Sales, DVR makers like Tivo should turn off the fast-forward button. What's more, he doesn't think that consumers will mind:

"I would love it if the MSOs, during the deployment of the new DVRs they're putting out there, would disable the fast-forward [button]," Shaw said.

While MSOs risk losing some of their DVR customers if fast-forwarding were blocked, Shaw said the cable operators--who are beefing up their own local ad sales operations--"are in the same business we're in." "They've got to sell ads too," he said. "So if everybody's skipping everybody's ads, that's not a long-term business model for them either."

Shaw also threw cold water on the idea that neutering the fast-forward option would result in a consumer backlash. He suggested that consumers prefer DVRs for their ability to facilitate on-demand viewing and not ad-zapping--and consumers might warm to the idea that anytime viewing brings with it a tradeoff in the form of unavoidable commercial viewing.

I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling very "warm" about a "tradeoff" where content providers break my gadgets.

The Los Angeles Times recently published a nice piece on the (un)changing world of music downloading since last year's Supreme Court decision in Grokster. This is good advice from the Hollywood Cartels' hometown paper:

The Grokster ruling wasn't simply a nudge for companies like Grokster to get out of the file-sharing business. It was an invitation for the entertainment industry to get in. By clarifying the legal obligations of file-sharing companies, the Grokster ruling created a road map for partnerships between tech and entertainment companies.

So far, however, talks between leading file-sharing firms and entertainment conglomerates have yielded few tangible results. Labels and studios have warmed a bit to popular but bootleg-heavy sites such as YouTube.com, where users post most of the videos, yet they remain extremely cautious about letting users redistribute their works.

The industry needs much more experimentation with approaches that give users the control and freedom to consume that make file-sharing networks so attractive. Instead of hoping that millions of Internet users on file-sharing networks will go somewhere else and pay for their downloads, it's past time to try to do business with them where they are.