Tivo, P2P, and the FCC

INFO SCIENCE: Salon's piece titled "Must-download TV" is a great article about at Tivo, P2P, and the FCC's broadcast flag.

Indeed, the most troubling thing about the FCC's broadcast flag rule is that it seems designed to stamp out the idea that we're free to do what we want with TV. As many critics of media firms have pointed out, there's something deeply unsettling about the fact that TiVo, a firm that completely remade the way we watch TV, needed the government's permission to release a new technology. You don't have to be a techno-libertarian to find this state of affairs troubling. Sure, this time the FCC allowed TiVo to innovate -- but the decision could easily have gone the other way. In the future, what other technologies might the government deem too dangerous to be invented?