Michael Eisner: born-again political philospher

Well, well, well. The head of Disney has concluded that Abe Lincoln would have loved the Internet but hated file-sharing. Quote from his FT article:

“In other words, thinkers both major and minor, in words both profound and mundane, have asserted the primacy of property ownership in a free society. It is as American as the apple pie that one may not take off a neighbour’s kitchen ledge.

In writing this, I am not just speaking from the self-interest of the head of an entertainment company. For me, theft of property, via the internet or any other way, is not only alarming because of the material loss but also disconcerting because it implies the loss of the moral compass on which our society is based.”

There’s a lot more in this vein. Am reminded of Dr. Johnson’s comment about a dog walking on its hind legs. One is surprised not that he does it well, but that he can do it at all.

Thanks to AA for alerting me to this engaging example of Hollywood cant.

Why is consistency so absurdly prized by the British mass media? This morning there are reports that Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State responsible for the railways, has decided to compensate Railtrack shareholders for his decision to put the company into administration. This immediately starts up the media (and political) gibe “U-Turn, U-Turn, yah boo!”. But why shouldn’t ministers change their minds? After all, circumstances change. The really stupid people are those who refuse to countenance changing their minds, no matter what happens.

BT has objected furiously to my Observer column of March 17, which argued that huge swathes of the UK population lay beyond the reach of ADSL. But according to the Better Broadband for Britain pressure group:

‘Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of BT, yesterday [5 February, 2002] told MPs that the provision of broadband or fast internet services would not be commercially viable in sparsely populated UK areas for another 10 to 20 years.

Sir Christopher told the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport that even where BT exchanges had been enabled for broadband services – take-up had been relatively weak.

“Areas with less than 20,000 homes and businesses linked to a local exchange simply aren’t viable for broadband today,” Sir Christopher said.’

Useful step-by-step guide to putting navigation links in a Radio Weblog.

Dan Gillmor on Hollings Bill

“This is deadly serious stuff. To protect the entertainment industry in changing times, Hollywood water-carriers like U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings are happy to stifle free speech and curb fair use in addition to whacking technological innovation (other than innovation the entertainment crowd finds acceptable). Violators would be subject to heavy fines and jail terms.” [ more…]

Good quote from Jamie Zawinski – “Linux is only free if your time has no value” – He’s quite right. That doesn’t denigrate it, but for most situations, cost is not the best reason for choosing Linux. [Status-Q: Quentin Stafford-Fraser’s notepad]

Wired News: Anti-Copy Bill Slams Coders. Legal experts said on Friday that the CBDTPA regulates nearly any program, in source or object code, that runs on a PC or anything else with a microprocessor. That’s not just Windows media players and their brethren, as you might expect. [Tomalak’s Realm]

At last — common sense about the US

Those of us who love the US but loathe its current President and his regime currently face a ridiculous kind of totalitarianism. It’s the “You’re either for us or against us” mentality, and it’s patently absurd. How nice then to find a splendid article by Jonathan Freedland condemning this much more eloquently than I can. Quote:

“So today I issue a plea, in defence of that little sliver of middle ground where I – and, apparently a good chunk of the public – want to stand. We want to be pro-America and anti-Bush. We want to applaud what the United States stands for, even as we express our dislike for this particular administration.

This should not be brain surgery. No great intellectual agility is required to laud the founding ideals of the American republic while simultaneously lambasting Washington’s current masters. You can admire the 1787 declaration that we, the people should be sovereign – and still insist that bombing Iraq is not the best way to get at Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. No contradiction. ”

Bob Cringeley wants to make an Open Source television show. Not as daft as it sounds either.

Typically thoughtful Economist piece on the nightmare facing the Hollywood studios as broadband links spread — that they will be Napsterised.

“The lesson from the music business is that, however hard they try, the studios will not be able to stop copies of movies from being downloaded from the Internet. What Hollywood has to do is find a reasonable balance between protecting revenues and keeping consumers happy. Striking that balance will not be easy. Movie makers do not want to encourage illegal copying on a massive scale by supplying unprotected digital copies themselves. And yet the more restrictive they try to be over what people can do with the movies they pay to download, the more the studios[base ‘] own Internet services will be a second-rate alternative to piracy. ”