by Flemming Funch
Dan Gillmor writes:"U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, has a strikingly simple idea to bolster customers' rights to freely use software, movies and music that they've paid for: Force the sellers of such products to tell the truth about the restrictions they're imposing on users.
When customers know, for example, that the compact disc they're buying is technologically rigged so they can't rip MP3 files from it for use on a portable player, they won't buy it. Eventually, these informed customers will demand change in the copyright laws..." Yep, simple and elegant. Force the manufacturers to clearly, in proper English, explain what you're buying, including the features they have painstakingly built in to make the product LESS useful to you. And the market will decide what people really want.
If the truth were always clearly visible, market economics alone would transform the world. The only reason that large numbers of people are choosing that which they don't really want is that they're being deceived.
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