Chris Anderson, Wired's Ed-in-Chief, has written an open letter to whomever succeeds Jack Valenti as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America:
Now the bad news: You're at risk of alienating your customers like the music industry did. The do-not-record "broadcast flag" that the TV industry just pushed through the FCC will introduce new restrictions on programming, none of which benefit consumers. Proposed legislation that throws anyone caught with a prerelease movie on their hard drive into prison for three years is the sort of disproportionate response that gives the RIAA a bad name. The notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act is Hollywood's fault. And extending copyright protection year after year so that the film and television archives stay shut isn't just bad law, it's depriving Americans of their cultural history.
