Reason #1 to start ignoring copyright
Ignore copyright! Copyright and intellectual property law no longer serve you. Even if you are a content owner (especially if), the harms caused by the current draconian system of protection outweigh any benefit you might receive. This is why I've decided to create a regular feature which details the absurdity and harms of copyright.

I'll start this off with HR2391. There are so many things wrong with this bill that I could easily get from reasons 1 to 10 just highlighting portions of this bill. But instead I'll focus on one portion.

There is a section of this bill that makes it legal to skip objectionable content in movies. First of all, "huh?" I thought that it was already legal for us to skip "naughty bits" in movies if we so desired. Well apparently our right to do so is ambiguous enough that a company called ClearPlay is getting sued by content industries for assisting us in doing just that. So it takes an act of Congress to let a company help us skip the "naughty bits" without being sued. Lets call that reason #1, part one.

Reason #1, part 2 is the second part of that same provision. Apparently Congress thinks it is all well and good to be protected from "naughty bits", but you just forget about skipping commercials. Yes, that is right. Any device that helps you to skip the advertisements before, within or after a motion picture will be prohibited by this law. So you can get rid of that fast forward button or anything else that lets you ignore commercials. Maybe the channel up and down buttons should be disabled during commercials. What's next? Potty break monitoring?

- posted by Dave @ 4:44 PM