Why does news always have to be so conflicting? Can't it ever just be about a glorious victory for the forces of unimpeded boob-tubing? Sununu is attempting, again, to crush the broadcast flag. We all hate the broadcast flag, yet another effort to force universal hardware support for corporate-philic DRM on the media that we clearly exist solely to steal.
Unfortunately, this nascent legislation would also curb the FCC's ability to regulate industry standards. If it had been in place, we might not be able to look forward to sticking a Comcast cable card in an arbitrary piece of television hardware, such as a cable box. The cable companies are certainly in need of much more outside governance than the FCC traditionally hands down to them, even with its current powers.
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Well, from the music point of view, I know that when the content is available for pirating (such as being able to download from Napster or from YouTube), I get to hear stuff I would never have been exposed to. After 10 years of not buying any CDs, I had a huge binge of buying when Napster was around, then another lately from music videos on YouTube (until Google shut them down). Obviously there is more content on the CD than the 1 or 2 songs I initially pirated, and I replay the content more frequently than a movie, but there is probably some nugget of truth in here; maybe not.
All these anti-piracy plans are doomed to fail, as they always have. Even more so now in a fully digital environment where everyone already has cheap access to huge computing power, bandwidth and interoperability.
While there is clearly no software solution that will sate the media beast, enough legislation and required hardware can effectively shut sharing (bad kinds and good kinds) down for the general populace. As you point out, though, this wouldn't necessarily be good for the media monstrosities.
When faced with (A) Adapt, B (Die), and (C) Legislate, the RIAA seems to always choose (C).
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