NEW TECHNOLOGY HAS ALWAYS SCARED SOMEONE (AND THEIR LAWYERS)

Nate Anderson, Arstechnica - The anxious rhetoric around new technology is really quite shocking in its vehemence, from claims that the player piano will destroy musical taste and the "national throat" to concerns that the VCR is like the "Boston strangler" to claims that only Hollywood's premier content could make the DTV transition a success. Most of it turned out to be absurd hyperbole, but it's interesting to see just how consistent the words and the fears remain across more than a century of innovation and a host of very different devices. . .

In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton's Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to "musical taste" itself. His concern? The player piano and the gramophone, which stripped the life from real, human, soulful live performances. . .

When technological innovation took off after World War II, new products like the photocopier quickly changed entire ways of doing business. . . In 1972, Time quoted UCLA law professor Melville Nimmer as saying, "the day may not be far off when no one need purchase books" thanks to the sinister uses of the copier. . .

The copier didn't destroy academic publishing or the book business, just as the player piano and gramophone failed to destroy music. But the rhetoric around new devices just kept spiraling further out of control. In 1982, when the movie and music businesses were engaged in a full court press to shut down the hot new VCR, the warnings about its sinister effects made Sousa sound like a wimp.

Chief movie lobbyist Jack Valenti appeared at a Congressional hearing on the VCR and famously went hog-wild. "This is more than a tidal wave. It is more than an avalanche. It is here," he warned after reciting VCR import statistics. MUCH MORE