the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is holding hearings on digital content copyright protection (as well as broadband roll-out and the transition to digital television). the scheduled panellists include Disney's CEO Michael Eisner, News Corp COO Peter Chernin, Intel's Leslie Vadasz, Andy Bechtolsheim (ex-of Sun, now at Cisco), James Meyer (former COO of Thomson Multimedia), and Robert Perry of Mitsubishi Digital.
so. the government, two gigantic content distributors, two consumer electronics manufacturers (one of whom owns a substantial MPEG/MP3 patent portfolio), a router company, and a chip company are getting together to debate your rights as a content consumer. sounds like a job for the EFF. (via c|net)
update: the Register has its version of the hearings. call me biased, but it sounds about right: consumers and citizens should be treated like crooks, and unfathomably wealthy copyright merchants are victims who need government-mandated tools to audit your personal use of intellectual property.
