Just when it seemed like world peace was on the horizon, the availability of online weather data is under attack in the Senate! Not that this is the most important issue ever to grace the Congressional floor (nor even this humble LJ). But it serves to illustrate one thing horribly wrong with our lawmaking process today.
I can at least comprehend some aspects of Santorum’s argument (e.g., that money could be better spent focusing on disaster prevention rather than daily forecasts – I may not agree, but I at least see where the opposition is coming from there). What really pisses me off is the mentality that government should enact law to allow corporations to more effectively compete with nonviable or outmoded business models.
Oh no! The government provides free weather data to everyone on the Intarweb! We’d better ban ourselves from doing that, so that weather corporations can waste resources competing and arguing over what would otherwise be public knowledge! After all, we wouldn’t want them to update their business model to provide an original or useful service!
Just like we wouldn’t want the RIAA to evolve to provide music to us at reasonable prices, in useful formats, rather than digitally fucking the data so that half our consumers can’t do what they want with the music they purchased. No, instead let’s pass laws tightening copyright law to prolong the inevitable downfall of the obsolete business model for as long as possible!
It has always been the responsibility of corporations to go where the profit lies, not hoodwink the legislature into making laws that drag the profit from consumers kicking and screaming.
“I’m not trying to break copyright over my knee and howl as I suck out the juice. I’m just ready to live in the real world where the idea of media scarcity is incoherent and consumers handle the distribution.”
—Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade