Give an iPod to your Senator?
February 2, 2006 - Media - Politics - General
If you follow tech news, you may have heard about the comments Alaska's 82-year-old Senator Stevens made during last week's hearing on the broadcast flag.
It turns out that the senator's daughter had given him an iPod, and that he loves it. He asked whether this flag's passage would prevent him from recording songs from the radio and playing them back on his iPod. The obvious answer is... absolutely - that is exactly what this flag is intended to prevent. You can find a nice review of this facet of the hearing here.
The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?
Now, the Intellectual Property Action Comittee is organizing a campaign to but iPods for senators. I'm really not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I'm certainly an opponent of the broadcast flag, but is giving iPods to senators in an attempt to sway their opinions really ethical? Maybe it's fine - I really am undecided. Certainly, the likelihood (and the assumption) is that they'll love their new mp3 players and legislate accordingly, not passing laws to restrict innovation. But is a gift of this sort even legal?