John Perry Barlow On The Dangers of DRM 213
D4C5CE writes "In an extensive interview with one of Europe's most renowned IT publishers, EFF cyber-rights activist John Perry Barlow speaks out against attempts to bring the entire planet under the control of dangerous Digital Restrictions Management schemes overprotected by clones of the dreaded DMCA (Dumbest Mistake on Copyright in America, or something). Barlow is one of countless critics of DRM and the DMCA, including Lawrence
Lessig and many other Professors
of Law as well as Linux Kernel Guru Alan Cox and the Internet
Society. Now, are you mailing, faxing and reading these views to all of the many misguided opponents of the BALANCE Act?"
i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree: the corporate media conglomerate is Very Scary Indeed.
How long will it be before AOLtimeWarner merges with AT&T and Wal-Mart and makes all internet connection go through one portal?
not only is it scary from a control point of view, the security nighmare that a single-providership (at the hands of the media moguls) presents is enough to make any real geek lose sleep. Five companies control what we watch and what we read. And they are all best friends. shudderThanks for reminding me that the media are putting the "well" in orwell.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Worse -- imagine if you had to buy a M$-branded PC, running WindowsXX, and use the MSN portal to access the net. [runs away screaming]
While you may have been being facetious (and I hope I am!!) the possibility is inherent in the direction DRM is going.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the reason that it's so much scarier. When industy becomes a de-facto government, they have all of the problems that people associate with a normal government, but without any of the restraint that representative government faces. This is (IMO) the biggest problem that I have with the extreme anti-government, pro-business side of the Libertarians. They can't seem to see that eliminating government would just leave a power vacum that would be filled by businesses and others who lack even the nominal obligation to help ordinary people that governments have.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a libertarian (small "l" for me, please).
In my philosophy, the entire purpose of government is to protect individuals' rights. For example,
In my view, a "corporation" should have no rights of its own. (I'm not even that crazy about the idea of liability avoidance that's supposed to be the whole idea of incorporation, but that's another story.) So it goes without saying that the government should be in the business of preventing corporations from screwing individuals.
I'm not a huge extremist, but I do become disgusted with the extent to which the US government, far from protecting its citizens from mega-corporations, eagerly helps them exploit its citizens.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
This was never ment to mean that the corporation and its agents should not be liable for their own actions. The "limited liability" was originally about protecting investors. With their only liability being the money they had invested. Worst case senario they'd have some scrap paper, but creditors could not expect them to pay debts of the corporation.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
We were really on the same page, im sorry if it sounded like i was contradicting you, i probably just had trouble sorting out what we were saying.
Corps. are truely "private tyrannies". I would entreat anyone reading this to read some noam chomskey.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
I voted with my pocketbook and made my vote known!
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
>privacy" (whatever that means) in order to live
>safely in a world free of terror.
If you give up privileges and don't get to live in a utopia, will you still have that opinion, or will you want your privileges back?
>What makes you think that you have some inherent
>right to "online privacy" or "online freedom"? I
>don't see that in the bill of rights or the
>constitution itself, do you?
I do. I see it between the lines. The very spirit from whence the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were forged is borne on the blood of a revolution against a government which had sought to supress dissent through any and all means.
>Get used to it or go somewhere else.
Or participate in the process of government? Or is that not an option, in your black and white view of the world?
exactly (Score:2)
Re:exactly (Score:2)
Um. That's actually exactly what it means. If it's not in the Constitution, then, no matter how widely held, it's merely an opinion.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask the Irish. The British government wasn't the worst colonial government, but they had their share of very nasty stretches. Bear in mind also that it's entirely possible that the British decided to change their policies in response to the War for Independence. When one group of colonies decides that you're acting tyranically and launches a successful revolution to throw you out, it might be a good idea not to implement the same policies in your other colonies for fear of a repeat.
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you be happy for somebody to be listening in to you dinner table conversation, just to make sure that you are not planning a terrorist attack? (If you are thinking "no way, virtual privacy is a different issue to 'real' privacy", suppose that a couple of your friends couldn't make it to the dinner party and you are having a conversation on mIRC instead)
What if the topic of that dinner conversation was a (hypothetical) "accidental" police beating of an innocent suspect? Would you feel uncomfortable having that conversation, knowing that those same people could be listening to you?
What if your dinner table conversation was about planning some kind of protest, say to confront the local mayor about some abuse of government power? Would you still have that conversation if you knew there was a liklihood that the mayor could end up with tapes of your conversation? And what if your protest was going to be mildy illegal (say, a congregation in a public place for which police permission had been denied)? You might be prepared to take the consequences, indeed the media coverage would just serve to highlight the protest, but what if your conversation could be used to prevent the protest from taking place at all? (say, by arresting you prior to the protest?) Sure, there is no one getting dragged off to the gulag here, but isn't the freedom of the public to act against injustice ultimately one of the cornerstones of Democracy? What happens when you eliminate this cornerstone?
Moving onto terrorism itself, is there any evidence that existing "online privacy" was an important factor that has enabled acts of terrorism to be successful in the past?
Is there any evidence that eliminating such privacy would stop acts of terror in the future?
Even if there is no privacy for ordinary citizens, the anti-terror squads obviously need privacy themselves. It is obviously silly to have every action of the secret police being broadcast over the intenet, indeed they will be much more effective if they have total privacy. So, there needs to be at least two classes of citizens, ordinary joes, who have no privacy, and the secret police who have total privacy. How does such a two-class system fit in with the ideal, of representative Democracy? How do you keep checks on a system that is so one-sided? Who is watching the watcher?
Even if privacy is eliminated, doesn't that at best only make it harder to plan and carry out terrorism? In what sense would it reduce/eliminate the causes of terrorism?
Indeed, what impact do you think the loss of privacy would have on people who already hate the government enough to consider terrorism? Wouldn't it just make the situation worse?
Ultimately, do you think people can/should should be trusted to hold private conversations?
Re:Sounds good to me - you wussy (Score:2)
I'm skeptical of this.
Some years ago, I was under the impression that (A) drunk drivers account for the vast amount of fatalities, and (B) about 50,000 people / year die from drunk drivers.
Assuming the above is correct (can anyone show better facts?) that would work out to less than a couple hundred deaths per day.
The reason people aren't pushing to ban automobiles is because, even though the numbers sound large, the percentages, and therefore, the risks aren't. You are unlikely to personally be affected.
Re:Sounds good to me - you wussy (Score:3)
And this is different from terrorism how?
Everyone who knows somebody who's been in a car accident, raise your hands.
Everyone who knows somebody who's been hurt in a terrorist attack, raise your hands.
That was my point.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:3, Interesting)
Yawn. Everything has the capacity to become a form of political control. The fact that a piece of technology could be used for evil is not a sufficient argument to outweigh the fact that it will be used for good.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Just as an aside, I'd like to point out that your principles with regards to DRM are exactly the opposite of your principles with regards to war on Iraq. Maybe you should do some more thinking.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Between SN74S181 and Planesdragon, this question has been answered. In short, (1) DRM will, when properly implemented, provide an effective means to curtail the rampant piracy that has swept the nation and the world since the advent of the MP3 and other media compression technologies, which will in turn result in (b) the more widespread availability of digital media.
I'd like to point out that your principles with regards to DRM are exactly the opposite of your principles with regards to war on Iraq.
Explain how?
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Catch 22: Any DRM that is not mandatory and draconian will be trivially cracked. Any DRM that is mandatory and draconian will extract a cost to freedom that outweighs the "benefits of more widespread availability of digital media".
DRM is not going to withstand hacker attacks unless they either: outlaw every existing port, chip and connector on your computer and replace it with a secured alternative, or: require a federal license to open a server socket on the Internet. Neither one of these alternatives is an acceptable price to pay for the convenience of viewing reruns of Gilligan's Island in high definition pay-per-view.
I say if watertight DRM is necessary for digital media, then we can live without digital media. We made it through the 20th century without it, and we're all still here.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
So? DRM does not exist to prevent a determined individual from breaking the law. It exists to make it difficult for law-abiding citizens to inadvertently break the law. For example, right now it's easy to turn your own CD into MP3's for use in your own home, but it's just as easy to give those MP3's away to your friends. One of those is legal and other is illegal. DRM is intended to make it as inconvenient as possible for licensed users to inadvertently break the law.
DRM will, when properly implemented, effectively solve the problem of casual piracy.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
For any given item, all it takes is one determined individual somewhere in the world, then the genie is out of the bottle. (Unless the government takes draconian measures to prevent it, which as I said, is worse than no new content.)
For example, right now it's easy to turn your own CD into MP3's for use in your own home, but it's just as easy to give those MP3's away to your friends.
And with DRM, it probably won't be easy for you to turn your own CDs into MP3s for home use any more either. DRM will hinder casual fair use, but won't stop P2P piracy. It's a lose-lose situation for the content providers and their customers.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Sure. So? We've already established that DRM isn't concerned with preventing determined miscreants from breaking the law. It's concerned with preventing those who wish to follow the rules from casually breaking them.
DRM is like a lock on your car door. A determined thief can break your window and swipe your stereo. And yet we put locks on our car doors anyway.
And with DRM, it probably won't be easy for you to turn your own CDs into MP3s for home use any more either.
I hate the jargon, but this statement is nothing more than FUD. You have no basis for making it. The net result of a properly implemented DRM system will be that law-abiding users will never know the difference, but those who wish to break the law will find it to be a royal pain in the ass.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
This is without mentioning the tracking of use patterns (invasion of privacy), problems if my net connection goes down (as with many of today's DRM systems), and inablity to use all of my equipment (bad considering I have purchased a licence to listen to that music, not the media).
This is good how?
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Hee hee. So you're up in arms about how terrible DRM might be? Lordy, run for the hills, everybody! Society's a-teeterin' on the proverbial brink!
To let me utilise all my rights...
Which rights are those, exactly? I do so hope you're not talking about fair use. There's no such thing as a fair use right. There are fair use exceptions, but those aren't rights.
For example, let's say I came up with some kind of magical technology that prevented a person from playing back a music CD in a classroom. (This is just hypothetical, to prove the point.) Using a piece of copyrighted music for educational purposes is not an infringement; it's covered by the fair use exception. But I have invented a piece of technology that prevents people from doing it.
Which law have I broken? The answer is: none. Copyright holders are under absolutely no obligation to ensure that licensees can make fair use of their works. If copyright holders want to prevent fair use through technological means, that's their prerogative.
Your what use what? Remember, fair use is an exception, not a right.
This is without mentioning the tracking of use patterns (invasion of privacy)...
Privacy isn't a right, either. If a licensor wants to collect information about how many times you listen to the latest Britney Spears single, that's their prerogative.
This is good how?
Because it allows licensors to release digital copies of copyrighted works without fear of the kind of rampant casual piracy that's going on today.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. Keep listening to audio cassettes and watching VHS tapes. Nobody's going to stop you.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:3, Interesting)
Please enlighten me. What good will DRM be used for?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
>The same good that cameras in stores are used for. Heck, the same good that signatures and contracts are used for.
Oh. My mistake. I thought DRM was all about someone else controlling my computer.
I want to be able to control the piece of text you copied-n-pasted from the e-mail I wrote to you yesterday. The only way this can happen is if I can trust your computer.
The plain simple fact is that technology has now made it possible to cheaply copy bits to anyone on the planet. Business models need to adapt. I'm not suggesting stealing. Business models have had to adapt to technology before. You can't make the technology go away. DRM as I understand it is simply evil. The motion picture industry adapted to the VCR, even though they feared it would be their death.
If your point was that the content providers are free to ignore technology and that people want music on their computers, pocket mp3 players, etc., then yes indeed, they are free to dig their head in the sand.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Demonstrably false. The whole "DRM will make your computer illegal" thing is a big, fat straw man argument.
The plain simple fact is that technology has now made it possible to cheaply copy bits to anyone on the planet. Business models need to adapt.
The plain simple fact is that the copying of bits to anyone on the planet without explicit authorization from the copyright holder is illegal. Users need to stop doing it.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
That is the disagreement.
Drinking was illegal during prohibition.
I stand by my position. Business models need to adapt to technology.
With all due respect, the reverse is niave.
The same thing was said about copying albums to cassette tapes in the 70's. Users need to stop doing it. Guess what? Now it is accepted that this practice is fair use. One congressman (I forgot who) had asked this question point blank to Hillary Rosen in front of congress. Was it legal to do this.
If someone has bits that should not be copied, then keep them a secret.
Business models need to adapt. It's the march of technology. The telegraph affected the pony express. The automobile affected the horse and buggy. The ability to copy bits around the planet is going to profoundly affect a lot of things. This does not mean that there is anything wrong with this.
Demonstrably false. The whole "DRM will make your computer illegal" thing is a big, fat straw man argument.
Please demonstrate.
DRM will make my computer able to be controlled by someone else. Trusted by someone else, which means control. I want to control the piece of text you copied and pasted from the e-mail I sent you yesterday. The only way I can do this is if I can trust your computer to enforce my restrictions. Someone, not you, had the ability to get this software "trusted". Otherwise you could make your own "trusted" software that violated the restrictions.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Yeah, yeah. The only way your argument holds up is if you assume that we should abolish intellectual property. Which is as absurd as it is unlikely.
DRM will make my computer able to be controlled by someone else.
See? Giant straw man. DRM requires no such thing. DRM-- digital rights management-- gives users of licensed media tools to manage the various rights and clearances that they have purchased for that media. It can be something as simple as a database, or as complex as hardware-keyed encryption.
The idea of DRM-- back before there was a TLA for it-- has been in use for at least a decade; that's as far back as my experience goes. Ever heard of FlexLM? That's DRM. You can't use a piece of FlexLM-licensed software unless you have a license key for it, and license keys can be time-limited. That's a very simple form of DRM, and it doesn't require that anybody else control your computer.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
I don't agree.
We do not need to abolish intellectual property. (Although on another topic, I think that the concept needs some serious reform.)
Bits are cheap to move around. Business models need to adapt. How does this imply that we need to abolish intellectual property? There seems to be a serious logical disconnect here.
Unlikely it is. Absure, well, the more I think about it, I'm not so sure.
Bits are only going to get cheaper to move around. The only way that c current business models can survive (artificial scarcity) is to seriously invade my computing equipment and have draconian legislation. (Otherwise, there is no protection.) So, as I said, Business models need to adapt.
You keep saying they do not. Give an argument why they do NOT need to adapt? You've said users need to stop copying. Not going to happen. DRM is really a way to help prop up the artificial scarcity business model.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
The question of how cheap they are to move around isn't relevant unless you want to talk about abolishing intellectual property. I don't care how easy or difficult it is to make a copy of a CD; it's illegal, and must not be done.
The only way that c current business models can survive (artificial scarcity) is to seriously invade my computing equipment and have draconian legislation.
Why do you keep saying this over and over when it (1) is not true, and (b) has been demonstrated to you not to be true?
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Copyright holders, content providers, whatever, can publish their precious bits in any protected medium they wish. Until they legislate brain implants, which I'm sure would be their wet dream, their bits will be copied. Maybe re-digitized from analog.
That they need to adapt their business models seems to clear as to not be worth arguing. When I see "Contact" on VHS for $9, I have no hesitation at all to buy it. When I see CD of crap music plus two songs for $18 or $25, with the artist getting very little, I think they are in the business of artificial scarcity. I like to download a lot of out of print stuff. If they had it in print, I would probably buy some of it that I really want.
The simple fact is that they are not providing what people want. (I'm not talking about price.)
As for making a copy of a CD being illegal. This is just blatently not true. One of the congress members ask this point blank of Hillary Rosen. What if I make a copy of a CD to play in my car? Is this illegal? The answer was cleaarly no.
Making your own copy is not illegal. Distribution is. Becaues of the ability to cheaply move bits, the model of artificial scarcity is failing. Rather than fix it, some people would rather have DRM. DRM is doomed to failure.
This all seems so clear.
Perhaps I don't fully understand how DRM works. On some level, someone, not me, is able to control some aspect of my computer in order to make DRM work. There simply must be something secret within my computer. Somebody, not me, must be able to make the code that processes a media file. Somebody, not me must make the program that loads that into memory without getting compromised. See where I'm going? Nobody is going to depend on the goodwill of an out of touch organization (RIAA) that would sue Diamond Rio for just making an mp3 player. A device that plays music. And then listen to the raving rantings of Jack Valenti. So the tendancy is to assume the worse possible motives about DRM and the worst nightmare scenerios. Perhaps more, easy to read, information is needed about DRM.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Actually, it is. Making an unauthorized copy of copyrighted material is illegal. The law defines a number of exceptions based on the purpose of the copy, but in all other cases it's illegal. The presumption when it comes to copyright law is that copying without explicit authorization is illegal unless the user can demonstrate that the copy was non-infringing.
See where I'm going?
Nope.
Perhaps more, easy to read, information is needed about DRM.
Why?
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
That's the issue at hand.
Whether it's illegal to copy something you bought, I couldn't give less of a damn. The fact that copyright is there as an incentive (not a privilege) to publish content and here we have content publishers extending the protection of ALREADY PUBLISHED WORKS seriously bothers me.Given that it is an incentive, the fervor with which the publishers whine about copying is rather arrogant. They are not entitled to special treatment as publishers only to a rather quite distorted incentive from what it was designed to do. When I see teachers turned away at Kinko's for trying to make 20 or 30 copies for students of 1 page from one workbook the rest of which is never used (I often see this) I fucking want to scream bloody murder.
Rosen and Co. say, "Why would anyone buy it if they could download it for free?"
I say why would anyone offer it for free if so many people want it?
Copyright came about when it cost more to print than to produce a work. No argument there. The cost of printing is pennies compared to what it was. Copyright allowed people to earn money without having a day job, and frankly I think that's absurd. People got used to freeloading off consumers. It's time they got a real job.
Mickey Mouse is almost 100 years old, Disney give it up already! It deserves to be dead and public domain by now.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
"Intellectual property" is a fiction along the lines of pretending that information is like a physical item. It's actual a fairly recent fiction anyway. What is absurd is treating the idea as though it is underpinned by some physical property or as a legal "sacred cow".
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
See? Absurd.
Intellectual property is not a new idea. It can be traced back several thousand years on the American continent; the Haida and Tlingit peoples of the Pacific northwest have believed for millennia that it's theft to sing another clan's song without permission. The same basic principle is found in the aboriginal cultures of Australia, which have existed essentially unchanged for fifty thousand years or more.
The idea of intellectual property predates written history.
The argument for intellectual property has been repeated so often-- many times by myself-- that I won't bother restating it here. Short version: ideas are work products; exclusive ownership of an idea creates an idea economy; taking an idea without consideration to the idea's owner deprives the owner of value; ergo, ideas have value; value plus scarcity equals property.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Did these people broadcast or publish their songs? Did they have mechanical recording devices? Did th
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
This doesn't let you control my computer. Rather, it lets me prove to you some facts about what I am doing, if I so choose. That capability suffices to provide the kind of DRM that people find so threatening.
Why is this so awful? Why is it so bad for me to be able to prove to you what software I'm running? Nobody is forcing me to do so, it's just that you may choose to withhold your data unless I do. Sounds like mutual agreement to me.
Do you want to stop people from making agreements like this? Do you want to make it impossible for one person to prove to another what program he is running? I hope not. I hope you believe in human freedom and that people should be able to decide for themselves what software to run and what technology to use.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Are you really under the impression that the majority of the IT world desire DRM?
Why... (Score:2)
But why would this be legislated as is being attempted by the media conglomerates? They view PCs as dangerous and must be under control.
Similar, to totalitarian societies where typewriters, PC's and Xerox machines are considered subversive and must be registered
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
As was the manufacture and sale of alcohol. That didn't stop people making money out of it. As what they were doing was illegal anyway they tended not to care about breaking other laws in the process.
Business models need to adapt. It's the march of technology. The telegraph affected the pony express. The automobile affected the horse and buggy. The ability to copy bits around the planet is going to profoundly affect a lot of things. This does not mean that there is anything wrong with this.
It could well mean that there are new potential business models which take account of this intrinsic attribute of digital data.
False (Score:2)
This is false. There are exceptions to this called "fair use" that allow this copying take place.
Copyright holders in the form of large media conglomerates seem to believe that copyright gives them absolute control over how their work is used.
But this is false.
I am allowed to make backup copies for my own use. I am allowed to loan my CD's and DVDs to friends. I am allowed to sell my CD's and DVD's to strangers. I am allowed to change mediums; that is, if I have a CD, I can move it to my cassette deck or mp3 player. If I watch a movie on TV, I can record it to watch at my convenience.
All of this is OK and legal.
However copyright holders don't recognize any of this as proper or legal.
That's their problem, not mine. And DRM turns my PC into an agent of the copyright holder and in return I get nothing but less rights than I have today.
Sorry, that's a bad deal for me, and its bad policy for a free society, no matter how you try to spin it.
Re:False (Score:2)
Right. Exceptions.
Copyright holders in the form of large media conglomerates seem to believe that copyright gives them absolute control over how their work is used. But this is false.
No, it's not. It's completely true. Except for a few very specific exceptions. That's why they're called "exceptions." Activities that are not specifically covered by Title 17 107 and other statues that define non-infringing use are not allowed.
However copyright holders don't recognize any of this as proper or legal.
Of course we (you do realize that everyone is a copyright holder, right?) recognize that these things are legal. We just don't care. There is no law on the books that says, "Copyright holders are hereby required to make sure that their licensees can make perfect digital reproductions of their works for non-infringing purposes." It's simply not a requirement. If you, the licensee, want to go making non-infringing copies of our, the licensors, works, that's fine with us. But if, in stopping the rampant piracy that has swept the country and the world since the mid-1990's, we hinder your ability to do so, that's just hard cheese. If you don't like it, don't buy the product.
But wrapping your dissatisfaction up in cries of "its bad policy for a free society" is disingenuous, dishonest, and wrong.
Of course, let us not forget that we could avoid this whole discussion if we would all, as a society, agree to stop pirating copyrighted works. We could voluntarily shut down Kazaa and Gnutella and all the other pirate-to-pirate (P2P) networks for a start; that in and of itself would probably take care of most of the casual piracy going on in the world.
What's that you say? You don't think people are likely to do that? Then cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of DRM. You've made your choice; now live with it.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Information control is by its very nature political control. Instead of deciding who can and cannot speak, we are instead deciding who can and cannot listen.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm constantly amazed at how large populations can have such diverse viewpoints. I think the issue du jour regarding Iraq is a good case in point [but I'd rather not go into the details of that specific issue here.]
What's happening is that Political Rights Management is already here in the form of Media Access Controls.
The colored and filtered "news" that one hears in Omaha, Paris, Beijing, Tel Aviv, or in Islamabad each has its spin on it.
I know this is nothing new to many readers. But I'm still struck by how such disparate viewpoints can coexist. For the most part, these "news" sources ignore each other and the logical contradictions between themselves and others, or even the logical contradictions within a single news source.
The Fourth Estate has been disappointing me a lot lately.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? I'd be a lot more suprised if you could find even a small population that didn't have diverse viewpoints.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
Yeah, people see the same evens through their own filter; but compare the US's view of itself (the white knight riding to the rescue of the world) with the rest of the world's view (a playground bully that steals kids lunch money and sits on them until they act the way he wants). This is an extreme difference.
What's most surprising to me is that each side is, for the most part, unaware of the other's view.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:3, Interesting)
They've been doing that forever. Filtered and locally spun news is the norm, not the exception.
Long ago, I happened to read a highschool level history book, that had text from the 4 victorious powers in WWII. Britain, Russia, USA and France.
All 4 had different slants on the outcome, and all 4 basically said "We won, everyone else helped".
And each blamed the other 3 for letting it happen in the first place.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:2)
highschool level history book...WWII. Britain, Russia, USA and France.
I've noticed that.
Another really fun place to experience some cognitive dissonance on a large scale is to compare Chinese and Japanese high school history books' account of the same era.
Sometimes I think we'd do better if the news feeds to news audiences were dynamically multiplexed so that, on occasion, people would get a clue that their friends on the other side of the world are getting fed a line and that maybe, just maybe, we were gettting fed a line, too.
Re:i think i found a new sig (Score:3, Interesting)
And this is problem for politicians how? If the aim to in influence our leaders, how is tell them this going to benefit us in any way?
If anything it will only prompt them to implement DRM faster.
right on point (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. It seems in the past 1 1/2 years more and more proposed legislation has gotten to the point where I wonder if half my representatives can even turn on a computer or work a CD player.
Look at some of the preposterous things we have been inundated with and will continue to be until we speak up to our representatives and provide them the proper information and insight into IT laws. Right now the basis of most of it is to hinder competition and prosper monopolies ala the garage door opener lawsuit[universal remotes].
Re:right on point (Score:1)
Re:right on point (Score:3, Funny)
Well duh. That's what interns and aides are for.
Bloody peasant.
DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:5, Insightful)
TCPA also has a randam number generator chip which could be usefull in ecommerce applications as well as locking documents. TCPA is more of an encryption card solderied into a motherboard where as palladium uses chips in every single component including the ram and cpu in a trust relationship tamper proof nightmare. The master ssc chip has a set of master keys that it uses to unlock all the keys from all of the other peripherals.
Sadly typical ignorant and niave corporate american will believe the hype and would love to drm their word and excell files thinking it was designed for their needs in mind.
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:5, Insightful)
But I thought that DRM was exactly designed with the needs of corporate america in mind? The need to control. I want to control who does what with the portion of text you copied & pasted from the e-mail message I sent you yesterday. I want to control it, even after it is on your computer and copy&pasted into a different document. That's the point of DRM. It's exactly for corporate america. I want to control not only that piece of text, or that portion of a graphic image, but also a clipped portion of an audio or video clip. As long as I can trust all the software running on your computer, then the future promise of this will become a beautiful and wonderful reality. They can manage your rights for you. Automatically. It's quick. It's easy. No thinking required.
Do we need hardware level DRM for this? (Score:3, Informative)
Seem
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:4, Informative)
If you could get this going with every binary on your machine you'd have basically what you're asking for.
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:2)
heh... just kidding... my afternoon crack shipment is late today...
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:2)
Ok, I was about to moderate someone else, but this is hard to pass up on. DRP will *not* help you in that situation. It just won't. NO amount of DRM will defend you from yourself...
A virus comes though your email filter and you click it (or, I hear, Outlook allows things to run without a click from the user), then the virus will run just like one of the programs you have registered. And trust me, you really do not want to register every piece of software on your hard-drive... soon you'll be clicking yes without thinking. And before you argue this point -- tell me, why does the software signing window on browsers have "Always trust this source" check box? Because people are to lazy to read the warning sign every time.
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I can run unsigned code then palladium really is not about security but drm.
Re:DRM is fine, as long as I hold the keys. (Score:2)
Please note that is signed apps "execute" data as code, then signing the binary executable may sill get you nothing. While things like TCPA and Palladium can verify an executable piece of code hasn't been changed, if that executable piece of code simply reads in any binary as data and runs (the allowable parts of) it, then you are - as I said - screwed.
TCPA, et al. is not mandatory access control (ala SElinux).
Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:4, Interesting)
When Gutenberg created the massively reproducible book there was no model for the economic return on that product. And actually it was another 250 years before they came up with copyright. And they somehow managed to have books in the meantime. I would have been a lot happier if we would have stuck to that waiting period instead of going right through the door as we've gone.
I agree with many of Mr. Barlow's points, but that point doesn't seem to make sense. We live in much different times than the time of Gutenberg. I mean, how many printing presses existed back then? At first, just a few, and then maybe several thousand in the entire world. Right now, there is a "printing press" in almost everyone's house in America. There's a big difference.
As tempting as it may be to just say we should sit back and wait 250 years (or even 10 years), we can't do that. Everything happens quicker, now. That includes the laws. If you disagree with a law, then you just need to change it quicker.
Re:Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally would have preferred waiting for laws like the DCMA until the social climate was better understood by people in power. Instead we have laws based on extrapolated scenarios of what social changes will be brought about by the emergence of digital media. Also, during this waiting period, the affected industries would have to find a way to exist in the new paradigm. They could not rely on quick, poorly understood laws to come in and protect their monopoly.
The printing press analogy is a bad one. There was no "scribe's union", pushing for laws that only allowed books to be copied by hand to protect their livelyhoods. The printing press largely gave way to new content, as opposed to improving the distribution of existing content. There was still an enormous cost in producing any work due to leading, etc... The printing press made mass production possible, but made single copies impractical. (Scribes made single-copy practical and mass production impractical.)
If the printing presses of old passed out leaded letters that you could put in a home press for duplication, unlimited duplication, then perhaps the analogy stands.
The DCMA succeeded largely by timing. In 1996, not many people thought that law would concern them. Subsequent efforts have failed because of a society that is more cognizant of the benefits of digital media. Had the gov. taken a "Let's wait and see what the damage is and the benefit before we start passing a whole bunch of laws..." approach, I have every faith that the DCMA would have been worded differently for its 2002 passage.
Quickly enacted laws serve the Machivellian system of problem-response. Things like thought and debate only serve to muddy the waters with people having "better solutions" and "more information" as time goes by. We could use alot less of that...
I don't advocate 250 years of waiting but ten sounds appropriate. Either that, or pass laws that expire in ten years so we have to re-pass them or they become invalid. But thinking that a law passed today will be revisited in ten years is denying the crush of history.
Shortly after the Len Bias tragedy, (when friends and relatives were still claiming he had only used coke that one time) every politician stumped up for Mandatory Minimum sentencing. 2 years later, most politicians disagreed with the law, but noone wanted to challenge it. I mean, who wants to appear soft on drugs?? So they let these laws stand that say I MUST get more time for selling you an ounce of weed than raping you. Forget if that weed was for your cancer, etc... Regardless of what you may think of drugs, have MMS's reduced the amount of drug use in this country?? (Their intended purpose)
Quickly made law is almost universally bad law. Poorly thought out solutions to poorly understood problems. I could point out example after example.
~Hammy
nothing4sale.org
Re:Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:2)
Au contrer: [honco.net]
"Yet, the rise of the printing press was not without controversy. Scribes were being put out of work, and their complaints caused presses to be banned in many locales. And the Church did not want to let go of its long-held literary privilege. Not surprisingly, the first press to arrive in Italy was smuggled across the Alps by two of Gutenberg's apprentices and set up near Rome in a cloister in Subiaco, bringing much power and influence to the monastery."
Re:Wait 250 years for the laws to kick in... (Score:2)
This is technically true, but it is not an accurate assessment, if you understand what I mean. In England (which I know better than Germany), when Caxton and co. began mass-producing books using moveable type, you not only had the Church denouncing moveable type work because it was a vehicle for the rapid dissemination of heresies (read: made it possible for a larger number of people to check the Pontificate's facts) but you had Guido and Nunzio and their friends from the Scriviners Guild (Scribe's Union) actually going round and vandalizing presses, beating printers and burning paper stocks that were being delivered to Caxton and company.
There was very vocal opposition to the introduction of moveable type presses, because it cut into an existing monopolistic business practice. They wanted it banned, they wanted it made a felony, they wanted lynchings. They got quite a few. They eventually lost largely because too many of the rich and politically connected saw in the presses an opportunity to screw the Church.
Mind you, 150 years later (Elizabethan era) the Scriveners guild were still making good money in England; many people who wanted work on paper couldn't afford to finance a press the way certain merchants and aristocrats could.
~cHrisThe DMCA and alcohol (Score:2, Insightful)
If nobody listens to them how long will it be until they decide to regulate it instead of stopping it.
Perhaps record companies will one day get smart (God willing) and figure out a productive way to make money off of the internet Just my humble opinion. SirLantos
Re:The DMCA and alcohol (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm waiting for this to happen. When change is in the air, a good portion of the people fight against it; it makes them uncomfortable, shakes up their nitch, etc. The music industry in partiular exhibits this; instead of investigating the potential that technology provides them, they fear the changes it may bring.
This is common, and is commonly overcome when an individual or entity embraces change and exhibits success. If one record label started offering a quality on-line, DRM-free music service, I believe that they would both see profits, and see the other labels move to compete against them.
Unfortunatly, this is slowed down by the fact that there are so few viable competitiors in the music industry; fewer players means fewer people likely to take a risk, which slows down change and innovation in general.
I Believe that the problems we face, such as the DMCA, are a symptom of a larger problem: corporations have grown too big and too powerful. The MPAA/RIAA doesn't need to innovate because it owns the market and can purchase legislation to defend it's market share. Microsoft doesn't need to innovate because it can buy our or stangle any competition, and has shown itself esentially immune to legal reprisal.
We don't need more laws; we need current laws enforced. There were rumors of 9-11 in the air without the PATRIOT act. Copyright violation was illegal without the DMCA. Monopolies are illegal, despite what the Microsoft case may indicate. If the laws were enforced, there would be much less knee-jerk legislation.
Re:The DMCA and alcohol (Score:2)
Even if they avoid getting squashed they can see the huge club "the law" has put in the big guy's hand...
Re:The DMCA and alcohol (Score:5, Interesting)
I sincerely doubt this. We are now in the business of fighting vague wars we cannot win, that extend...well, forever. Thats because winning is not the point. The War on Drugs was just a trial run. It worked out very well (fighting it was more advantageous than winning it), so now we have a War on Terror (so long, and thanks for all the fish). What we are starting to see, IMO, is the beginnings of a War on Piracy. As in the Wars on Drugs and Terror, many of it's victims will not be terrorists, or drug dealers, or media pirates. It's a ruse to grab more Control.
Yes, three years ago, I would have thought this was paranoid at best. But in 2003 I find myself posting it at slashdot. =)
Re:Give me a break (I know it is off topic) (Score:5, Insightful)
I have the same problem. Every time I troll, some bastard mods it 'insightful'.
Re:Give me a break (I know it is off topic) (Score:2)
selling wine without bottles (Score:2)
more info (Score:2)
Rich source of 'sound bite' quotes (Score:3, Interesting)
Text of article in case the site goes down (Score:2, Informative)
Stefan Krempl 09.03.2003
A talk with cyber-rights pioneer John Perry Barlow about Digital Restrictions Management and the future of human knowledge
John Perry Barlow or JPB for short is maybe best known for three things: he was the song writer for the Grateful Dead and is still supporting music bands. He wrote the Cyberspace Independence Declaration seven years ago during a visit to the World Economic Forum. And he tried to define a brand new way of thinking about copyright in an well-received article that was published in Wired magazine. Recently, the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation came to Berlin to fight the German version of the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DMCA) together with the civil rights organization privatkopie.net. Stefan Krempl sat down with him to look forward and back in the history of Cyberspace and copyright.
There are new laws for copyright in the digital age drafted here in Europe everywhere at the moment. What do you think is at stake? Why is this an important issue people should care about?
John Perry Barlow: There are three things at stake. The first is, extending a monopoly to a few large organizations about what people can or cannot know and express. This is really about the control of information and it has the potential to become over time a kind of private totalitarianism. That is not an exaggeration since it has already happened in the United States. The reason that the U.S. is behaving in the completely irrational and dangerous way that it is, is because we have erected private totalitarianism and are suffering a reality distortion field that is as dangerous as the one erupted in Germany in the 1930s. But not being driven by the government, but being driven by the media. Being driven by ourselves. I fear erecting a system which highly advantages a very few corporate channels for human intellectual exchange.
What are the other points?
John Perry Barlow: Secondly, I fear that Digital Rights Management today is Political Rights Management tomorrow. That embedding these kinds of technological controls into the very architecture of computing has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future. Because you're putting at a very basic level surveillance capacity, control over what information may or may not travel, and a whole range of things in the architecture that can be very easily used to suppress dissent. Third, I am very afraid, that by wrapping a large amount of human knowledge up into bottles that can no longer be opened except at a price, much of it will be wrapped up in crypto bottles that in a very fairly short time cannot be opened even at a price. A huge amount of human creativity will simply be lost for future generations.
So you're mainly worried that the content industries in cooperation with the help of hardware and software makers and their DRM techniques are taking over control of the data universe?
John Perry Barlow: It's not the data universe only, it's human conversation. They want to turn it into a one-way flow that they have entirely monetized. I look at the collective human mind as a kind of ecosystem. They want to clear cut it. They want to go into the rainforest of human thought and mow the thing down.
Many people are worried about the efforts of the computer industry to establish a new computing model based on TCPA and Microsoft's Palladium.
John Perry Barlow: They should be.
What's your take on this issue?
John Perry Barlow: I think it's very dangerous. This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is the first form of Political Rights Management. And there won't be anything we can do about it. After these organizations have come up with a new business model, Palladium will still be there. And the chip and the computer architecture will have been changed so that it will be very easy to track what everybody is doing and saying online. Germany has some memory of what it's like to live in a society where everybody is visible in that way. And I suppose that we don't want to go there again.
Could you express a bit more widely your thoughts about copy protection and informational sustainability? I mean, today we still have a lot of books, and they can be read for centuries. What about the digital world?
John Perry Barlow: This is one of my greatest concerns. I am really afraid that a lot of material that is already in the Public Domain is going to be re-encapsulated and taken out of the Public Domain. I'm also very afraid that they are going to refuse to digitize -- or are only digitizing in this highly controlled way -- much of what has taken place over the last 150 years. And that, as a consequence, this will die embedded in their corpses and be lost to future generations. I'm disappointed with the human species that we are less concerned about that than we are about strengthening a monopoly for a very few large organizations. We're given this choice. Why are we choosing to help them instead of our descendants?
The "culture of the free" has to end, it was a "mistake by birth" of the Internet, Thomas Holtrop, the CEO of T-Online, proclaimed a while ago. If you could talk to him right now, what would you say?
John Perry Barlow: I would say that the culture of the free started the first time when somebody said something and it was heard by another human being. It wasn't started by the Internet. People have been sharing information that they found relevant without cost for their entire history. Do you think that there were royalties collected on the early cave paintings? Do you think that Bach wrote everything he wrote because he was looking to get his copyright royalties? The culture of the free has been around for a while. And people nevertheless managed to be enormously creative and managed to get paid for, by a wide variety of means.
You helped to found the EFF about 13 years ago due to "concerns over the combination of governmental zeal and cluelessness", you once said. How far did you come in educating the politicians?
John Perry Barlow: Unfortunately they are half-clued now in a dangerous way. Now they recognize that something is going on and they are responding to it in a way that is as bad and as harmful as it could be -- in terms of what I would consider to be the optimum future of Cyberspace.
Could you give an example?
John Perry Barlow: What I want to see is a world where anybody can know anything what they are curious about. I want to see a world where any kid in Africa can find out all that human beings know about any subject no matter how obscure. And that's not an unrealizable dream. But if we continue in this way, it will never be realized. And that's because the large media corporations, the content industry, have succeeded in buying our policy makers and taking over the control mechanisms. If you got to WIPO in Geneva, you will not find anybody who has not worked for a large content organization. They are just not there. They own that. If you go to Brussels, it's just the same. And they have succeeded in getting the public to think that there is no difference between sharing knowledge and shop-lifting.
You're maybe most famous in the "old" Internet community for writing the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. "You titans made of flesh", in that time you wrote, "back off". How do you feel about the piece today?
John Perry Barlow: (laughing) I wish they would have taken my advice. I mean, looking back it seems impossibly quiet. It seems like an incredibly 90s thing to have done. I don't regret it, however, because I think that over the course of time it will be demonstrated to have been correct that the industrial period is simply not equipped to understand the information age. That the traditional nation state does not nearly have the same kind of sovereignty over the virtual domain.
The declaration still stands the test of time?
John Perry Barlow: Now one thing that I have regretted at that time and should have revised was that I didn't make it more clear that I understood that there was a profound connection between the physical and the virtual worlds. The virtual world bares the same relationship to the physical world that the mind bares to the body. Which is to say an intimate connection. But even though they are closely connected, the body and the mind are two very different things. And so are the politics of the virtual world, the global mental space, and the politics of the physical world. And so are the economics and so are the philosophical underpinnings. And those differences need to be recognized. What's been happening is that those differences are not being recognized and that the physical world is trying to impose all of its economics and political philosophy on the virtual world in a way that I think will be in the way of the long term reliability of the human race.
How is the copyright situation in the US in the moment? Do you consider it worse for the average user than in Europe?
John Perry Barlow: It's much worse because we already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that you plan imposing on yourself. We already have obscenely long extensions of copyright, which have been recently upheld by the Supreme Court in a way that I think is clearly unconstitutional. And even they had some questions about it. They ruled very narrowly. They ruled that Congress had the right to do what it had done even while expressing concerns that what it had done was wrong. And it's even getting worse. Hollywood wants to rule the world, make no mistake. And I think that there are more uplifting things for the world to be ruled by than Hollywood.
The EFF has warned often about the "chilling effect" the DMCA might have in terms of fair use and free speech. Do you still consider this piece of legislation a threat?
John Perry Barlow: The real threat has still to be seen. We're gonna really see it when all CDs are copy-protected, when all music and all literature has Digital Rights Management embedded, when all software does. And that will be very shortly. At that point it will be too late for us to do anything about it and furthermore we won't be able to have a public discourse on this subject because the channel will no longer be open for that to take place. That's already the case. You can see how difficult it is to get a story about copyright on television, despite the fact that it is extremely important and critical. But the channels just don't want to carry anything about it.
You've coined a totally different notion of copyright in your Wired article about the "Economy of Ideas". Could you please shortly sum up your main points?
John Perry Barlow: I said back in 1993 that it was going to be very difficult -- given the natural human desire to share information and human creativity -- to control that desire in an environment in that everything humans do can be easily reproduced at zero cost. And that we had to come up with a different way of monetizing human creativity than to deal with it as though it was no different from physical goods. Because the physical goods in which it was previously embedded would go away. And that what previously would have been a noun would become a verb. But we didn't know about the economy of verbs and we would have had to learn. Instead, what we've been doing is trying to turn many things that are not verbs into nouns and imposing a large number of very severe constraints on the people in order to preserve the business models of a few large organizations. And that's what the European Copyright Directive is about. It's about consolidating and strengthening media companies that are actually of dubious long term benefit to humanity.
Now, a decade onward, could you run a "reality check" on your thesis?
John Perry Barlow: I think it stands up quite well. Well, one thing where it does not stand up that well is that I don't think that I proposed the right kinds of approaches to solving the problem. I stated that there was a problem and I didn't talk much about solving it. Actually, one of the solutions I proposed is what I think extremely dangerous, which is the use of cryptography to bottle information. Which is much all this is about, giving a legal protection for that method. And I don't think anymore that this is a particularly good method. At this stage I have other suggestions how to monetize human creativity. I'm not too hard on myself on not having them because even today I feel like what needs to happen is for us to have an open field of experimentation what the appropriate business models are. When Gutenberg created the massively reproducible book there was no model for the economic return on that product. And actually it was another 250 years before they came up with copyright. And they somehow managed to have books in the meantime. I would have been a lot happier if we would have stuck to that waiting period instead of going right through the door as we've gone.
Giving away content might work in the realm of music. But would it also apply to other content and copyright areas?
John Perry Barlow: Well that was misunderstood. I mean, what I think the reality is that making freely available virtual copies increases the sale of physical copies in many cases. And it certainly did for the Grateful Dead. Despite the fact that our fans had access to better recordings that we made commercially available, they went out and bought our commercial copies. Not right away, but over the course of time just about all of our records went black. And I think that the fact that much literature is available online is in some way responsible for the fact that somehow book sales are higher than ever. Furthermore I think that even tough I would concede that some people are not buying CDs that the might have bought otherwise economic I would also insist that there are many people -- myself among them -- who have bought CDs because of downloading that the never would have bought. Otherwise you would see a much greater fall-off in the record industry.
Why?
John Perry Barlow: There are probably five or six million people trading files at any given moment with Morpheus or Kazaa. And the fact is that the record industry is only off ten percent. In the United States everything is off at least ten percent. We are in a recession. In fact, the record industry is not in anyway dying. It has just to become much more realistic after a long period in which it has seen obscene profits. Because when they first produced the CD they had huge gross margins. The cost of a CD was based on the cost of making a CD, and that cost plummeted immediately. And the cost of selling one and the cost of buying one staid the same. Huge amounts of many was pored into the record companies. They got ridiculously fat and heavy, and now they are having to pay the piper. And they claim it's not their own mismanagement and greed but that they are being attacked by pirates. In fact they had been the most unconsciousness pirate at all.
Would this model also work in other content areas?
John Perry Barlow: Yes, there the demonstration is even much more clear. You can get a DVD of any first-run movie now before it is released. But the actual attendance in theatres has never been higher. DVD sales and video cassette sales are on a all-time high. So if downloading is injurious to these industries, why are we not seeing the results? What they would tell you is, that we haven't seen them yet, but that we will. Well, I'm a big fan of solving problems that we have, not problems that we think we might have.
Do you have a long-time strategy to protect the knowledge commons?
John Perry Barlow: I don't think it's a matter of protecting them. It's a matter of distributing them properly. The whole notion of protection is based on the assumption that there is a hard-coupled relationship between scarcity and value. Which there is in physical goods, but not in virtual services, where there seems to be a relationship between familiarity and value. There are a variety of ways to monetize it. But one way that I think may work in the short run is for us to create a pool of money at the ISP level from a percentage of what people are charged for their online accounts and make those funds available on a statistical basis to the creators themselves as you do with entities like ASCAP. And unlike these licensing and collection entities, you have the potential to come up with a very clear understanding what material is actually passing online. You don't have to know who it's coming from or where it's going. But easy enough to know what it is quite accurately and then dividing up the proceeds from that general pool to the people who are responsible for the material that is passing through the ISPs on a most regular basis. That's my current idea for solving this problem. But his presupposes something that I am not very comfortable with which is compulsory licensing such as you've got it in broadcast now.
What role could Open Source play in this context?
John Perry Barlow: I think this movement will ultimately prevail. My big concern is what damage gets done before that happens. What architectural changes will be made in the substrate of computing, what intellectual output will be lost forever, and what freedoms will be endangered. But ultimately, it's hard to come up with a better model than open source where everybody can be involved improving everything. I don't care how smart you are, how rich you are as a company. You don't necessarily have the world's greatest programmers working for you. And even if you did, if you think about human knowledge and how it grows: it grows in an open system. It doesn't grow in a closed system. Science is about an open self-feeding process, it's about expanding the consensus and reality-checking at the broadest possible level. The same thing applies to any form of human creativity.
You've been doing a lot of research about Internet censorship too. Here in Germany, or better say: Nord-Rhine Westphalia, a government official has forced access providers to "block" access to two controversial US-sites with Neonazi content, which is, of course, illegal in Germany.
John Perry Barlow: Where does that stop?
Many people are worried that this is just a beginning. Do you see web blocks as a workable solution for the problem?
John Perry Barlow: I don't think that the answer to hate speech is trying to shut your ears to it. The answer is love speech. And as terrible and stupid I find Nazi propaganda, I still remember that Hitler was in jail when he wrote "Mein Kampf". So it would seem apparent to me that oppressing that kind of expression actually strengthens it and gives it a kind of credibility that it would not otherwise have. The answer to it is to let it disprove itself which it does quite easily when given the opportunity to flop out. But also I would say that a community has the right to define what is a permissible topic to discuss. I just think that a community by necessity is a smaller entity than the entire nation state. And the right to express inherently includes the right not to listen. But it doesn't necessarily include the right to make everybody else not listen.
In ten years, what will the Internet look like? Will there still be a culture of sharing information or will it be totally walled down?
John Perry Barlow: I would be very disappointed of my species if it is all walled down. But I'm afraid that what we're gonna see is two separate entities. One of which will look like interactive television and will have all of the commercially made available material that has been produced. And the other which will be an open-source Freenet and will have little access to the previous works of humanity. This is already more or less the case. If you go to Google and search on a topic what you get is what has been written but not published in a material form.
Godwin's law invoked! (Score:2, Informative)
This idiot must immediately concede the argument for implying the DMCA is similar to 1930s Germany.
Seriously guys, you will get NOWHERE by comparing ANYTHING to nazism or fascism. seriously. knowledgable people will NOT take you seriously.
May i respectfully refer you to the jargon file on this matter:
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/godwin_s
or, posted here:
"Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful."
Speaking of Nazi's (Score:2)
"Yankee's are the new Nazi's. They dont want to hear about it, they dont want to read about it, they dont want to get bored with it..."
Think about that for a while.
While at a party the other night with the young ex-tech set I listened to: a half hour long disertation about why because PC speech is so retarded, its ok to start referring to blacks as the N word again. While playing trivial pursuit, everyone passed on the (simple) Africa question stating "I dont know about, nor care about Africa". And, when asked the question "Where does the Olympic Torch reside on the Olympics off years", the answer was promptly blurted out:
"Washington DC.."
Something truly fucked up is going on.
in that light (Score:2)
and
"Seriously guys, you will get NOWHERE by comparing ANYTHING to nazism or fascism. seriously. knowledgable people will NOT take you seriously."
With that in mind, I will promptly invoke Godwins law in the face of all the current rhetoric regarding the Iraq/Hussain matter.
Those Bush idiots have been comparing that idiot to Hitler for years, so according to your logic, the argument is null and void.
hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Why DRM isn't Dangerous, but DEADLY!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I maximize the ultility of an idea -- say, the concept of curved space-time -- by disseminating it as far and wide as possible.
Ideas are not physical objects. The rules that apply for measuring their "value" are completely different. Currently, a "closed source" idea carries monetary value but only because of government fiat. Without those laws, information would carry no monetary value. We now have the technology to make the dissemination of that information carry (practically) no cost, as well. Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is a kluge to carry the old methods of copyright and patents into the digital realm, where the constraints that made such tools necessary no longer apply.
DOWN WITH COPYRIGHT!!! DOWN WITH PATENTS!!!
How prophetic is this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that about covers it. As people continue to refuse to vote against DRM we'll continue to have these issues. We're not thinking about the human race as a species that needs knowledge to grow, we're thinking about profits for companies in the short term. Growth and innovation are being completely stifled by censorship and we're too lazy to vote against it because that's the only way we'll convince politicians to stop the madness.
Anyone have a list of political parties that have policies on DRM and Internet censorship worth voting for?
John Barlow's lyrics (Score:2)
He's actually quite a talented lyricist. I particularly like the beginning of Throwing Stones:
Picture a bright blue ball, just spinning, spinnin free,
Dizzy with eternity.
Paint it with a skin of sky,
Brush in some clouds and sea,
Call it home for you and me.
A peaceful place or so it looks from space,
A closer look reveals the human race.
Full of hope, full of grace
Is the human face,
But afraid we may lay our home to waste.
A bit off-topic BUT (Score:2)
1. MS controls the operating system running on most computers
2. Read the "sealed storage" section in tcpa
3. Excercise for the reader : create a winexec() function that implements palladium on top op tcpa (should not be more than 2 or 3 lines)
4. Come to the inevitable conclusion : palladium is easily implementable on top of tcpa (and *shudder* worse things than palladium are too)
This guy is clueless (Score:2)
Re:This guy is clueless (Score:2)
Re:This guy is clueless (Score:2)
DRM on the plantation (Score:2)
heres a copy of a letter I wrote to the UK copyright office
Subject: Copyrights in the information age
To: copyright@patent.gov.uk
Dear Reader,
As society enters the information age, there are a few parallels to the industrial revolution that should be carefully considered when choosing how enforce copyright law. While my analysis is a little lengthy, I hope you take the time to read it so that you can make the best decisions about copyright enforcement and successfully guide the UK into the information age....
During the 1850's there were those in USA who believed that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to use inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited control and profit. Plantation masters, as they were called, envisioned a system where continuous improvement in machinery and technology would allow them to do more and more with fewer and fewer slaves. Since the plantation system was so enormously financially successful, there was no reason to believe that the future would take any other direction other than bigger plantations, more slaves, and endless profit. While there were some concerns about slavery, the plantation masters considered them like any other property right. They were paid for, there was no incentive to grow cotton without them, and slavery seemed to have been there forever. The plantation masters, who were astute at business and commerce and very well educated believed that they had nothing to fear. However, as time went on it became more and more apparent that, in order to prosper, the factory system would require an educated and mobile work force. This was at direct odds with the plantation masters whose profits hinged on being able to control and restrict the movement of large parts of the population. With billions at stake, and no impasse in sight, it wasn't long before the plantation masters were taking desperate measures to control their slave populations. Those who tried to find a compromize were useless. At first it started out with unusually restrictive and harsh laws toward slaves, and eventually resulted in a blatant attempt to break off from the union. Of course, no one in the northern states respected that boundary, so soon war broke out and well over a half of million people died.
Ok, thank you for being patent enough to read that first part, now comes the part about how this could possibly relate to copyrights and the information age.
Today there are many people who believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use new technologies like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited control and profit all over the globe. The content sector, as they are sometimes called, envision a system where continuous improvement in information sharing and display technologies, would allow them to earn more and more with fewer and fewer copyright holdings. Since the content industries are so enormously financially successful, there is no reason to believe that the future would take any other direction other than bigger content facilities, more copyright holdings, and endless profit. While there are some concerns about copyright enforcement, the content industry considers them like any other property right. They were paid for or worked for, there is no incentive to make creative works without them, and copyrights have been around forever. The content industry leaders, who are astute at business and commerce and very well educated believe that there is nothing to worry about. However, as time goes on it is becoming more and more apparent that, in order to prosper, many technology industries will require the free and uninhibited flow of information. This is at direct odds with the content industries whose profits hinge on being able to control and restrict the movement of large amounts of information. With trillions at stake, and no impasse in sight, it won't be long before the content industry will be taking desperate measures to control their content possessions. Those who have tried to find a compromize have gotten nowhere. At first it seems to already have started out with extremely harsh punishments for copyright infringement and laws like the DMCA in the United States, but will eventually result in a blatant attempts to fence off all information using content controls. Of course, no one in the technology sector going to respect that boundary, so soon all hell will break loose. With trillions at stake, who knows how many people in the middle will suffer, or what they will suffer until copyrights are eternally unenforceable, but do we really want to find out.
Re:DRM on the plantation (Score:2)
Nice post. Cute typo too!
Ok, thank you for being patent enough to read that first part
Job Op (Score:4, Interesting)
Role: Testing enterprise applications / products built using DRM and Anti-piracy technologies and SQL Server.
Required Skills:
Strong knowledge of Digital Rights Management and Anti-piracy
SQL Server (ver. 7.0 or ver 2000) a must. Strong understanding of stored procedures, triggers, T-SQL.
Application testing methodologies and writing Test cases and scripts
Overall understanding of Microsoft technologies including Windows 2000, Windows XP, IIS, Vbscript, HTML, JavaScript, and ASP.
User Interface development and/or testing. Working knowledge with test automation tools such as WinRunner, Rational, etc. will be considered a plus.
Good communication skills
Experience:
2+ years of experience in development or testing of DRM and Anti-piracy related porducts/applications.
2+ years of SQL server developing and testing.
2+ years of experience in Microsoft technologies.
Description:
Responsible for defining and implementing application/product testing. This includes product enhancement as well as migration and regression testing for product patches and bug fixes. Develop test plans, conditions, and scenarios in support of ongoing business system operations, enhancements, and development (per request). Define and maintain a repository of test plans, cases, and scripts. Definition of performance and stress testing requirements. Understand and document key functional dependencies between supported applications. Maintain test plans based on changes due to design, delivery, and/or change control. Develop and review test cases and test scripts. Develop and review test data requirements. Developing automated and manual testing procedures.
This is a contract job.
OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
Reposting this message elsewhere is NOT OK.
this is in or around Redmond WA
main objection from me... (Score:2)
It only protects big, rich companies. The independent writer or musician will get ripped off by the big companies as before.
Re:Another writeup (Score:1)
Re:"Online Privacy" (Score:4, Insightful)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This affirms my right to online (read: papers in electronic form) privacy (read: security). Granted, the choice of words, namely "security", is open to a degree of interpretation but I'd bet privacy is what they had in mind.
Re:"Online Privacy" (Score:2, Insightful)
Screw the DMCA did you see his daughters? (Score:2)