[luau] CBDTPA: Effectively fighting the Hollings bill

[Warren Togami]

http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/03/27/196246.shtml?tid=4
CBDTPA: Effectively fighting the Hollings bill

 - By Jack Bryar -
"The senator from Disney World is at it again. Stating that the "absence
of robust, ubiquitous protections of digital media ... has led to a lack
of content on the Internet and over the airwaves," U.S. Senator Fritz
Hollings (D-South Carolina) is once again trying to shut down
independent electronic communications in the United States in order to
curry favor with large media conglomerates. Is there any way to reform
South Carolina's junior senator and dissuade him from stomping on the
First Amendment? I think there is."

...

"While there are likely to be a few corporate winners, most observers
from the IT community warn that the IT community would face a disaster
if the CBDTPA actually passed into law. Jim Raposa of eWeek wrote that
the Consumer Broadband and Television Promotion Act was the "greatest
threat that America's technology infrastructure has ever faced." Raposa
and others suggest that the market for new technology would dry up as
consumers would try to hold on to older PCs, software and
telecommunications equipment that would likely work better and have
fewer restrictions on their use. In addition, a massive gray market in
machines purchased overseas or in Canada would likely spring up
overnight. The result could be a death blow for the U.S. tech industry.
Raposa wrote: "Osama Bin Laden himself couldn't come up with a better
way to strike at America's tech economy.""

(Read more in the article)