http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/11/MNJB170JM7.DTL

I was working for a car company on a project for communication between vehicles and infrastructure. The end-of-year demo was in Michigan in January. Because of the cold, I had to deal with car batteries failing, in addition to bugs cause by GPS inaccuracies. Oh and failing hands, because of the temperature. My boss, holding down the fort in California, was please that the demo was a success, but what really cracked him up was the fact that I came down with the flu after the demo.

The media production and publishing industry's job is being made defunct by technology. Therefore, they are trying to delay the new technology with litigation.

Imagine you were an accountant used to working with a book ledger. Then computers with accounting packages came along. You could make a choice about embracing the new technology or trying to delay it with (quite valid) arguments about the pitfalls of it. If you had enough clout, you could event mount a legal campaign to ban this unproven and unreliable technology because it is unsafe, dangerous and destroys people's livelihoods. Of course you would ignore then known unsafe and dangerous aspect of they way you currently do things.

The growing reality is that, if you are a musician, you don't need the record labels. If you do gigs, have a $500 recording setup, a web site and have a Myspace or Facebook account, you can do your own production, promotion and distribution. In this case, you might not sell as much as you would have if you had a deal with and label company represented by the RIAA, but what you did sell, you would ouwn close to 100% of. Not so with a record label.

Perhaps they didn't try so hard because they didn't have to. Maybe the recording industry's funds went towards a better way of ensuring a favorable verdict.

I do live in CA and here's what I sent:
Network Neutrality. I have been reading about Senator Feinstein's attempts to introduce legislation into the current stimulus bill to allow ISPs to filter content. California is home to many internet business "start-ups" which would be adversely affected by this. I am aware that ISPs such as Comcast repeatedly lobby for this ability, since allows them to charge organizations for not reducing the quality of transmission of web services and to block services that compete with their own, such as VOIP.
I'm also aware that the excuse put forward for allowing ISPs to throttle traffic is to prevent odious uses of internet technology, such as child pornography. However, this argument ignores the fact that content filtering can easily be subverted by determined individuals using a variety of cryptographic and other techniques. The end result of Sen Feinstein's proposed legislation is that legitimate actions and small businesses will be discriminated against by ISPs such as Comcast. Criminals will soon adapt continue their illegal activities with only minor convenience.
I would like to ask Sen Feinstein to desist with her attempts to introduce this and other similar legislation and concentrate on trying to create a free, open and healthy economy in the US. If she persists, she can expect negative feedback from myself and other technologists through all available means, including the ballot box.