Big Content's bringing its greatest hits to Capitol Hill once more, this time to the House Commerce and Energy Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. the subcommittee's holding hearings this Friday (April 25) on "Ensuring Content Protection in the Digital Age". this is not promising -- in this face-off between Dick-and-Jane-Voter and Big Content, protecting our rights doesn't even get a mention in the hearings' title.

scheduled to speak are many of the usual suspects, including reliable Big Content moutpieces like News Corp's COO Peter Chernin, and AOL Time Warner supremo Richard Parsons. the consumer electronics industry will be represented by Matushita Electronic Corporation of America CTO Paul Liao and Philips Consumer Electronics of North America CEO Larry Blanford. as for IT, the best we're getting is Real Networks' COO (ex of Ticketmaster, News Corp, and Sony's Columbia Pictures) Larry Jacobson and Asaf Litai, CEO of corporate spyware vendor Vidius. coming in to give voice to the consumer's concerns is Joe Kraus from DigitalConsumer.org.

as an aside, i like what Joe's trying to do here, but i think i'd feel more comfortable if someone from the EFF were there to place this whole thing in the context of our civil rights -- this isn't just about consumption and convenience.

hosting this charming little party is the Subcommittee chair, Michigan Republican Fred Upton. although Republicans aren't generally sock-puppets for Big Content (after all, Hollywood is the New Sodom and Gomorrah) it's hard to ignore the fact that five of Fred's top ten donors for this election cycle are either content owners or broadband companies. in fact, Big Content has become Rep Upton's most generous patron, outstripping the automobile industry (and this guy's from Michigan). (via Politch)

the EFF's Fred von Lohmann puts in print what we all know to be true about Big Content's copy protectionism. Hollywood's dorm-room-piracy-as-Reds-under-the-bed scare tactics ("are you now, or have you ever been, sharing files on Gnutella?") has nothing to do with the clear and present danger of file sharing, and everything to do with protecting an obsolete business model through freedom-eroding legislation.

Why is a content protection system necessary for digital over-the-air television?

Hollywood representatives have, from the beginning, given one answer: a protection system is needed to prevent "Internet piracy," or even "Napster-ization."

There's one problem with this rationale: it's not true.

(via Consensus at Lawyerpoint)