

Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future - hga
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/radio-riaa-mandatory-fm-radio-in-cell-phones-is-the-future.ars

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dotBen
Oh the duplicity:

 _"We would argue that having radio capability on cell phones and other mobile
devices would be a great thing, particularly from a public safety perspective.
There are few if any technologies that match the reliability of broadcast
radio in terms of getting lifeline information to the masses._

So it's now about public safety. Well what is the RIAA involved then? It's a
different line every time because originally they said it was "to offer more
musical choice".

Total BS.

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hga
And " _PDAs, and other portable electronics_." All part of a " _grand bargain_
" for the RIAA to start getting money from radio stations.

It's not often you read the phrase " _incandescent with rage_ " in the tech
press....

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lzw
And what happens if you don't put a radio in your cellphone after it is made
mandatory? Men with guns take you to jail (after due process)

If we reduce this down to its essential elements, a group of people who won
businesses want to use violence in the form of the government to force other
people to buy the product of their business and pay them.

This is not capitalism, this is the opposite. This is theft.

Let the free market decide. If android phones come with radios and iPhones do
not, then that is the choice they get to make and their customers get to
decide which they prefer.

Using congress to "mandate" things like this, is a crime. (In the moral sense
if not the legal sense, though I think it is in the legal sense as well, given
the constitution does not authorize this, and the constitutions authorization
of congress only empowers them to carry out a limited list of enumerated
powers. But then, when I point that out people seem to think that I am taking
the law too literally.)

~~~
hga
The economic term of art is rent seeking
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking>), but as you note it comes down
to "do it or we throw you in jail".

This is why I find those who both loathe "corporations" and worship the
government as a means to protect us from the former to be ... out to lunch. No
matter how tyrannical or whatever you might consider Steve Jobs or Balmer,
they're in no position to do that to me if I refuse to buy one of their
gadgets.

As for the enumerated powers of the government, I agree (except ones like us
might say the Constitution is more meta-law than law), but I count our final
defeat on that matter in _Wickard v. Filburn_
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn>), where in 1942 the
Supremes ruled that the Federal government could prevent you from growing
wheat on your own land for your own consumption, because otherwise you'd have
to buy it, which effects interstate commerce.

(This is also particularly loathsome because it started in a period when the
USDA calculated 1/4 of the US was malnourished as the same time it was taking
a zillion actions to increase the price of food. WWII conscription confirmed
the former estimate, BTW, leading to among other things the Federal school
lunch program.)

~~~
SamAtt
The Court that gave us Wickard v. Filburn was also the court that provided a
precedent for Guantanamo Bay (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Quirin>).
Stone (the Chief Justice for both cases) had the shortest run of any Chief
Justice yet he managed to rack up quite a little record for himself.

(He was also the only Justice to drop dead in open court while reading a
decision btw which is the reason I remember him)

