LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
WIRED on Electronic Programming Guides
Posted by Ernest Miller on Tuesday, September 17 @ 11:58:39 EDT Consumers
WIRED has a brief article on one of the most important but little noticed battles occuring in the digital realm - the battle over who control digital television electronic programming guides (EPGs) (Showdown Over Digital Show Guides). In my opinion, broadcasters should, as a requirement of their license, make EPG information freely available in a standard format and timely manner. They're our airwaves; shouldn't we know what is being broadcast? The same thing goes for cable companies. In return for their local monopoly, they should at least provide information as to what programming they are providing.

My favorite quote in the article is on the benefits derived from cable companies owning cable boxes (and thus controlling the EPG). It comes from Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies for the Cato Institute, a "libertarian" think tank, "With the cable model, you don't have to keep upgrading your boxes, since they [cable companies] are going to be the ones passing out new boxes, they are going to be the de facto stand-in for consumers, because they don't want to have to put out the change every time a new security standard comes along." That's what consumers need, a stand-in who will stand-up for consumer interests - and we all know how cable companies stand up for their consumers. This is a "libertarian" position?

 
Login
Nickname

Password

Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name.
Related Links
· WIRED
· electronic programming guides
· Showdown Over Digital Show Guides
· Adam Thierer
· Cato Institute
· More about Consumers
· News by Ernest Miller


Most read story about Consumers:
Top Ten Benefits of MS WinXP Media Edition - LawMeme Style

Article Rating
Average Score: 0
Votes: 0

Please take a second and vote for this article:

Bad
Regular
Good
Very Good
Excellent


Options

Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend
"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 0 comments
Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die


All stories, comments and submissions copyright their respective posters.
Everything Else Copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

You can syndicate our news using the file backend.php