Ulmo
join:2005-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·Comcast
 ·SONIC.NET
| The group RIAA represents is more to blame than the law. The progress of technological advance has slowed a great deal since baby boomers took over and didn't want their personal cash cows to stop producing.
It is true that the media producing industry in general is laggard in bringing appropriate avenues for distribution. Why must I use a bulky crappy fixed position TV with lower-than-SD resolution and a high pitch transformer whine to watch shows that torrents offer with higher-than SD resolutions on my greying low end mobile laptop? Just the other day, the dumb DVR I rent from Comcast failed to record a show I told it to, because of an anomaly in the user interface and because the resolution of the TV was so bad I didn't see an indicator that I accidentally set it up wrong. If it were available to me on my computer without any of that DVR PVR VOD crap, I could just download and watch it in all its glory when I wanted.
Having said that, the reason I posted is that unfortunately the laws and the dinosaur industry, as outdated and bad-generation-bound as they are, still are existent.
One of my recent attempts to stay on the good side of law was upgrading to Comcast TV and Comcast DVR. Fact of the matter is, I could elect to just stop watching audiovisual media, and instead find something else to do with my time, for instance, reading and posting to DSLREPORTS.COM, or use the possibility of not watching audiovisual media as an alternative to when Comcast and its DVR aren't adequate.
At this time, I don't know what that would be, but it is theoretically possible, I'm pretty sure.
So, to say the laws are outdated is a bit far reaching. After all, aren't they only as up to date as the original author's writing of the law before it even got to the various legislatures, and then passed, and then made effective? Certainly, better crafted laws' appropriateness and effectiveness of purpose last better, no doubt. But in either case, the law starts aging immediately before it is even effective, so "outdated" could apply to many laws. There are some laws that make perfect sense even far after their effectiveness started, true, but some are sort of complicated and therefore subject to being outdated far more easily, and they must exist in force in that manner to have any effect at all.
However, like I already said, the quality of the laws through time depend greatly upon how well the laws were created in the first place.
Next, the laws themselves might not be to blame: the TV, as antiquated as it is, is no longer as preeminent as it was for how we watch audiovisual at home. However, it is the media distributors and the people that hire them that are to blame more than the laws, for not keeping current with use methods. The laws allow the distributors to so authorize such newer and current use methods.
However, that does not prevent reason-minded folk (in the power of law creation, i.e., legislators, and their constituents that empower them) from creating new law that helps facilitate the present situation moving ahead, such as an exception for copying a work from another that you already have the authorization to have anyway. For instance, what if someone subscribes to AT&T U-Verse and has a DVR attached to their U-Verse, and then rather than setting up their DVR to record a show that they actually could so do without further authorization and it still being so authorized, then instead download a torrent of the same show, albeit at a higher definition? There are many considerations: higher definition could be considered a better product, and of course, it is. So perhaps the law ought not allow that, but could allow a work distributed in equal or lesser quality to be allowed; what if I have a crappy VCR, decent SD distribution of a work, and then download a torrent of a very well converted digitization of that SD distribution that I could have recorded, and then watch that? Many would claim that is not an allowed use under current law, but if the law had a specific exemption for that that everybody knew existed and agreed existed, it would not hinder the current distribution model, its compensation, and novel ways to work with it.
Just some thoughts, and I certainly welcome discussion, increased depth of thought, corrections, and some of the incorrect disagreements that sometimes spawn such welcome things. |
