[Home]
May 16, 2002

[News]
BusinessWeek on BPDG vs. open source

Jane Black at BusinessWeek has published an article on BPDG and open source (part of a larger BusinessWeek feature on Linux and open source) which criticizes BPDG and the CBDTPA. (It also discusses criticisms of the DVD CSS negotiation -- which are second nature in the Linux world, and heresy in many consumer electronics circles. The most recent BPDG negotiation showed that attitudes toward CSS are a fairly good prediction of attitudes toward a broadcast flag mandate.)

The problem is, in their zeal to dictate how hardware and software makers build their equipment, the movie and music moguls would mess with matters that are none of their business, critics say. Embedding copyright-protection mechanisms into new PCs and other digital devices would mean inserting pieces of software code that are hidden, or locked down, and couldn't be altered. That would amount to nothing less than an assault on the open-source religion, which advocates sharing, collaboration, and free access to code.

A crucial feature of the Linux operating system -- the basic software that controls a computer -- is that any part of it can be modified by its users, as long as they agree to make the modification available, for free, to the world at large. Locking down Linux could destroy this dynamic, on which plenty of corporate software developers now depend, and also bar open-source programmers from the $80 billion consumer-electronics market.

Posted by Seth Schoen at 10:43 PM