iPod v. Broadcast Flag, or Innovation v. Government Mandates

While the Senate Commerce Committee was considering the broadcast flag proposed by the Motion Picture Association of America, and the audio flag proposed by the Recording Industry of America, Sen. John Sununu, R. NH remarked:

"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?"

History and Senator Stevens' iPod, Danny O'Brien, January 25, 2006, EFF Deeplinks

The ARPANET was started by government funding innovation; GOSIP (requirement for computers sold to the U.S. government to have the ISO/OSI protocols) was government mandating technology. The history of technology has numerous other examples. What sometimes frightens me is that so few of the legislators at the national or local levels, in the U.S. or other countries, seem to know this history or the simple lesson from it that Sen. Sununu so pithily describes.

But it took an older Senator to save the day.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R. Alaska, who had helped get the proceedings going by saying he was against piracy, later asked whether the proposed broadcast flag would interfere with his use of the iPod his daughter bought him for Christmas. When he was informed that it would, the subcommittee found better things to do.

-jsq