This is smart and offers a good history of the situation we find ourselves in:
In October of 1998 the Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed. The DMCA was basically a law that set a very un-nerving precedent. That the government would do what it could to protect the interests of content owners at the expense of technological development.
The DMCA in and of itself didnt kill technological innovation. At the time it was passed it was more nuisance than anything else. Digital content wasnt all that prevelant and there certainly wasnt much money in it, so not many people cared that our tax dollars were being spent to make sure that your internet radio station never played more than 3 songs in a row from the same artist. Or that it became illegal to have a 24 hours a day Beatles (or any other artist) station.
Read the entire post. Good stuff. And now I know why I never got that 24 hours a day Beatles station I wanted…
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