I’ve mostly completed my attempt at a switchers guide, so at last we can move on to other things.

Over on boingboing.net there is a great story about the RIAA talking to Senators about the new broadcast flag restrictions they want to bring in. Senators that like recording from the radio and listening to iPods. It didn’t go well for the RIAA.

Even more damning was Senator Sununu’s follow-up question, in which he asked if, post-flag, the Senator might record three songs from the radio today, and listen to only one of them again tomorrow. Of course, under the RIAA’s proposed controls, you may not: this is “disaggregation” in their language. This flag, which was sold to Congress to impede piracy, appeared to be designed primarily to control and inconvenience law-abiding, ripping, mixing, modern-day Senators.

Perhaps there is hope yet? If the Senators are directly put off by the RIAAs stupid restrictions maybe they will fail. As Engadget says, the whole deal could turn on one Senator and his iPod love.

At hearings earlier this week on the Broadcast Flag and the RIAA’s Audio Flag initiative, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) commented that his daughter had just bought him an iPod, and asked the RIAA’s Mitch Bainwol whether the Audio Flag would stop him from recording audio from the radio onto it. Bainwol, in turn, warned that, without an Audio Flag to block recordings, HD Radio would turn into a major source of piracy. Stevens, a Broadcast Flag supporter, asked whether the RIAA was trying to restrict what he listens to or records “on my own iPod”, adding, “we have a disagreement here, I think.”

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