Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Of course you expect this sort of thing from Republicans, but there may be a couple of four-year-olds somewhere in the country who are still surprised when Democrats, representing poor districts in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Chicago, Pittsburgh and San Antonio, go to the mats for the swimmin'-pool-'n'-movie-star crowd in Bel Air.

The bare-faced eight joined their Republican colleagues in signing an "open letter" to the chair of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, urging that the "broadcast flag" be written into law.

This is Round Two for the studios and the labels; they got knocked flat in Round One, when the FCC tried to mandate "broadcast flag" observance in cable boxes and TVs. That was back in 2003; two years later, last May to be exact, a Federal court issued the FCC a stinging rebuff, bluntly stating that the agency had exceeded its authority. But the intellectual-property totalitarians don't discourage easily. What an agency can't do, Congress can -- and probably will, since the two parties are both thoroughly convinced of the need to protect wealth and power.

So here are the infamous eight, the outriders of the Intellectual Property Inquisition:

Kind of an interesting mix, very characteristic of the contemporary Democratic party. There are old urban soup hounds like Towns, Engel, Rush, Gonzalez and Doyle, representing fairly poor districts, and thus themselves available on the cheap. Then there are glossier, more upscale, more suburban Democrats, presumably in good standing with the soccer moms or whoever the current reference group is. Even among these, though, Gordon of suburban Nashville is the only one who could colorably claim to be representing his constituency; you could probably meet a fair number of record-label executives at his fund-raisers.

It's baaack, and badder than ever, thanks inter alia to your your friendly Senate Democrats.

I refer to the iniquitous "broadcast flag," discussed briefly here last October. The "broadcast flag" is a copy-protection scheme, and if nice Democrats like Boxer and Inouye, and nice Republicans like Stevens and Smith, have their bipartisan way, it will be illegal for any device you may own or build, or any software you may download or write, to ignore it.

Nobody ever expected the Spanish Inquisition, either (shown above).

Who knows, perhaps the next President Clinton will make him Secretary of Commerce. Or invent a new post for him -- Copyright Czar, maybe.

The RIAA (the lobbying group for the recording industry) has Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) carrying their water again in the new Congress. They're sponsoring the "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act" (PERFORM), which was introduced (and died in committee) last year, and re-introduced last week.

The bill requires Internet "broadcasters", as they are drolly called, to "use reasonably available and economically reasonable technology to prevent music theft," and it makes the Federal government responsible for determining the royalties paid to music companies for the use of music libraries over the Internet. It also requires all Internet, satellite, and cable "broadcasters" to implement "digital rights management", or in other words, pay attention to the infamous "broadcast flag," or something like it, presumably in every file they transfer. What exactly this means in practice is unclear -- the language is very vague and obscure. But the record rentiers have always wanted to make every Internet business -- or site, for that matter -- into a draftee intellectual-property enforcer, and that appears to be the thrust of this bill as well.

This is wild, overreaching, midsummer madness on the part of the copyright owners. It's hard to convey just how crazy it is. It's very much like Will Rogers' old joke about defeating U-boats by boiling the ocean -- then they'd have to surface, you see. Or King Canute telling the tide not to come in -- and this time Canute has a nice bipartisan consensus behind him, with Hollywood Dianne Feinstein sternly wagging her finger at the oncoming surf.

Quite apart from the craziness, there's a very stark confrontation here between property and people. It makes me think of the 18th-century enclosures of common land -- another historical moment when property owners, feeling their oats and giddy with the possibilities of plunder, undertook to fatten their purse by depriving ordinary people of rights they had long enjoyed.

And note, of course, that the Democrats are right there in the forefront -- not on the people's side, either. Surprise, surprise.