FTC Wants To Straighten Out IP Law 97
coondoggie writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld:
"What do you get when you mix the government, the court system, company lawyers and Joe Consumer? A serious mess that would send most people screaming into the night. But the Federal Trade Commission is no such entity. It wants to straighten Intellectual Property (IP) out and today said it will hold a series of hearings — the first in Washington, DC on Dec. 5 — it will use to examine IP law and the myriad issues surrounding it. Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players. The patent system has experienced significant change and more changes are under consideration, the FTC said."
The FTC held some different, but related hearings this week which addressed topics such as copyright law and DRM interoperability. Transcripts, podcasts, and summaries of the talks are available on the FTC-hosted "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade" site.
Those are easy odds to figure (Score:5, Informative)
Right from the summary:
Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players
I don't see a mention of consumers, and since consumers don't pay for lawyers (except the few who defend IP suits) or professors (who's salaries are paid for by "research grants" from corporations), it sounds like this can only end in tears.
Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies... (Score:5, Informative)
We'll end up like crazy canadian laws where an entrenched monopoly gets a tax on anything that poses a threat to that monopoly (taxes on ipods, black CD's, and likely ISP taxes).
We have a levy on blank CDs, but nothing on iPods or internet service. I imagine many of us view the levy on CDs as a loophole of sorts that allows us to share as many songs as we want without any legal repercussions.
Right Month, Wrong Year (Score:1, Informative)
>> The FTC held some different, but related hearings this week which addressed topics such as copyright law and DRM interoperability. Transcripts, podcasts, and summaries of the talks are available on the FTC-hosted "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade" site.
Uh, no, these public hearings are from November 2006.