The Electronic Frontier Foundation Action Center has chosen to use Flash to make a fun animation about the CBDTPA, but the issue is serious enough.
Big media corporations are trying to take away ownership from the consumers and make you and me pay for every single version of a digital work we consume. Imagine having to pay 4 times to have the same song on a CD, your MP3 player, your own CD-compilation for the car and on your computer. That is what Disney and others in reality is trying to accomplish with the CBDTPA bill.
Senator Ernest Hollings and a powerful group of Hollywood entertainment interests are pushing Congress to pass an anti-consumer bill called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) that may make it impossible to:
-Play your CDs on your desktop computer
-Create legal copies or mp3s of the music that you own to play in your car, or listen to while you exercise
-Create mix-CDs of music you’ve paid for
This is not the way copyright law is supposed to work. Tell your member of Congress that you value your fair use rights and don’t want Hollywood to control technological innovation.
So why am I, a norwegian, even caring about such bills? well, what happens in the USA will also have a strong effect on consumers in Europe and other related markets. We are big consumers of american TV, films, music and general entertainment. In addition, law making in the USA does have a certain degree of influence on law making in Europe.