http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/3200101.htm
Posted on Sat, May. 04, 2002 Paranoia, stupidity and greed ganging up on the public By Dan Gillmor Mercury News Technology Columnist Dear Reader: If you are reading this column in the newspaper, but did not read every article and look at every advertisement in previous sections, stop now. You must go back and look at all of that material before continuing with this column. If you are reading this column on the Web and did not go to the newspaper's home page first, stop now. Go to the home page and navigate through whatever sequence of links our page designers have created to reach this page, and don't you dare fail to look at the ads. Ridiculous? Of course. Tell that to the dinosaurs at some major media and entertainment companies. They insist they have the right to tell you precisely how you may use their products. Consider: . DVD movies have copyright notices at the beginning, but can disable the fast-forward feature of your DVD player while the notice is on the screen. Studios have also placed commercials at the start with the fast-forward disabled. . Hollywood and the broadcast television cartel are going to war against the makers of hard-disk video recorders that allow you to skip past commercials. The head of Turner Broadcasting calls it ``theft'' when you, the viewer, decline to watch the ads he wants you to view. . A major newspaper (not this one) is telling people they may not post hyperlinks to pages on its site other than the home page. The paper says avoiding the home page lets viewers avoid home page advertising. [snip] -- Raju Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/ It is the mind that moves ================================================ To subscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subscribe in subject header To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe in subject header Archives are available at http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd%40wpaa.org =================================================
