Ramblings

The RIAA and the MPAA, the lobbying/PR arms of the large record and film corporations, have long attempted to manipulate policy to stifle innovation. They tried to sue the first VCR out of existence. They did the same for the first portable MP3 player. Plus a little known court case is the reason why TiVos and other generic DVRs you can buy can't be set to automatically skip commercials, even though ReplayTV could do it in 2002 (it could play through an entire show without commercials without the press of a button) They've made it illegal to rip DVDs, even though it's legal for CDs.

The National Association of Broadcasters does the same thing. They've essentially killed internet radio (plus collateral damage to other services). Ma Bell tried to kill all devices that hooked up to a phone line, but luckily the Carterphone decision paved the way for answering machines, fax machines, modems, and stuff like that.

For the extreme example, there's always the case where French garment makers successfully lobbied the government to ban printed cotton garments and machine-made buttons because they were too easy to make and threatened their livelihoods (hat tip to Obsidian Wings even though their post quoting this has nothing to do with what I'm talking about):

"Two of the most extreme examples of the suppression of innovation in France occurred shortly after the death of Colbert during the lengthy reign of Louis XIV. Button-making in France had been controlled by various guilds, depending on the material used, the most important part belonging to the cord- and button-makers' guild, who made cord buttons by hand. By the 1690s, tailors and dealers launched the innovation of weaving buttons from the material used in the garment. The outrage of the inefficient hand-button-makers brought the state leaping to their defence. In the late 1690s, fines were imposed on the production, sale, and even the wearing of the new buttons, and the fines were continually increased. The local guild wardens even obtained the right to search people's houses and to arrest anyone in the street who wore the evil and illegal buttons. In a few years, however, the state and the hand-button-makers had to give up the fight, since everyone in France was using the new buttons.

More important in stunting France's industrial growth was the disastrous prohibition of the popular new cloth, printed calicoes. Cotton textiles were not yet of supreme importance in this era, but cottons were to be the spark of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth century England. France's strictly enforced policy made sure that cottons would not be flourishing there.

The new cloth, printed calicoes, began to be imported from India in the 1660s, and became highly popular, useful for an inexpensive mass market, as well as for high fashion. As a result, calico printing was launched in France. By the 1680s, the indignant woollen, cloth, silk and linen industries all complained to the state of 'unfair competition' by the highly popular upstart. The printed colours were readily outcompeting the older cloths. And so the French state responded in 1686 by total prohibition of printed calicoes: their import or their domestic production. In 1700, the French government went all the way: an absolute ban on every aspect of calicoes including their use in consumption. Government spies had a hysterical field day: 'peering into coaches and private houses and reporting that the governess of the Marquis de Cormoy had been seen at her window clothed in calico of a white back ground with big red flowers, almost new, or that the wife of a lemonade-seller had been seen in her shop in a casquin of calico'. Literally thousands of Frenchmen died in the calico struggles, either being executed for wearing calicoes or in armed raids against calico-users."

Why do I bring this up? Right now there are many fights going on just like this where an entrenched interest opposes a new technology, even if the new technology will make life better for everyone else. There's the fight over white spaces spectrum. There are debates raging about the appropriate levels of openness are necessary for broadband internet or wireless networks. What kind of software can you run on your mobile device? What kind of mobile device can you hook up to the network? Does it have to be approved by the provider? Can it have hacked firmware? Sure, jailbroken iPhones will be around, but some of us want it to be legal and openly encouraged, with less risk of bricking your devices.

I hate that we will have to fight over the future like this - it seems so obvious to me, but it's also obvious why a multinational billion dollar corporation would fight this shifting environment in any way it knows how. I just hope they lose badly.

More links (nope, I didn't have enough in the message text) to people who fight on our side against the companies clinging to an archaic business model and trying to use the law as a weapon against the public:
EFF
Google Public Policy Blog
Creative Commons
Lawrence Lessig
Recording Industry vs. The People