(no subject)
13/1/12 18:21![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsThe coming war on general-purpose computing
The first part of the article is mostly history, then it gets into the above part about regulations and then concludes with the warning that it will only get worse. I think this is a reasonable analysis of the situation and I agree that a big part of the problem is dealing with copyright when you have technology that effectively eliminates it, so that you have to create a new version of copyright by fiat, rather than have the system naturally enforce it. And people want to hold onto that old system and shoehorn the new one onto it.
That's where we're headed and there isn't anything to do about it as long as the copyright holders insist on controlling things the way it's always been. We need to rethink the concept of copyright, not just how we enforce it.
It's not that regulators don't understand information technology, because it should be possible to be a non-expert and still make a good law. MPs and Congressmen and so on are elected to represent districts and people, not disciplines and issues. We don't have a Member of Parliament for biochemistry, and we don't have a Senator from the great state of urban planning. And yet those people who are experts in policy and politics, not technical disciplines, still manage to pass good rules that make sense. That's because government relies on heuristics: rules of thumb about how to balance expert input from different sides of an issue.
The first part of the article is mostly history, then it gets into the above part about regulations and then concludes with the warning that it will only get worse. I think this is a reasonable analysis of the situation and I agree that a big part of the problem is dealing with copyright when you have technology that effectively eliminates it, so that you have to create a new version of copyright by fiat, rather than have the system naturally enforce it. And people want to hold onto that old system and shoehorn the new one onto it.
But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning certain instructions, protocols or messages will be wholly ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy. As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits, and all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship.
That's where we're headed and there isn't anything to do about it as long as the copyright holders insist on controlling things the way it's always been. We need to rethink the concept of copyright, not just how we enforce it.
(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 03:20 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 05:52 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 06:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 12:33 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 17:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 16:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 19:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 04:57 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 16:09 (UTC)I think that's the major issue here. Take away the requirement to actively defend a copyright, and most of this becomes moot.
(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 12:39 (UTC)Check it out. (http://www.amazon.com/Copyrights-Copywrongs-Intellectual-Threatens-Creativity/dp/0814788068)
Just don't photocopy it, because you know, it's copyrighted.
(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 02:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 13:26 (UTC)But just as we saw with the copyright wars, banning certain instructions, protocols or messages will be wholly ineffective as a means of prevention and remedy. As we saw in the copyright wars, all attempts at controlling PCs will converge on rootkits, and all attempts at controlling the Internet will converge on surveillance and censorship.
This all seems very typical of the libertarian stance: If it’s difficult to enforce, just don’t bother to enforce it. Don’t worry about the fallout. I’m sure it will work out okay.
The problem seems to be that it still doesn’t address the overall protection of the intellectual property of the authors and their agents. The linked article appeared to make a lot of apples to oranges comparisons, such as the automobile references.
I anticipate what will eventually happen is that everything will become Software as a Service in the cloud. You will have to get permission from the vendor or its authorized agent to run the software. Anything that doesn’t run as SaaS will be considered software piracy and subject to litigation or prosecution.
Over all, this seems like a lot of bluster and contains no real solutions. The right this approach takes is nothing more than a right to pirate.
(no subject)
Date: 14/1/12 19:12 (UTC)The object is not to protect intellectual property. The object is the production and dissemination of intellectual value.
Now copyright in the pre-digital era was a pretty good crude approach to that objective. Creators couldn't afford to publish because of up-front costs. But if publishers could publish without remuneration to creators, then creators couldn't afford to take time to create in the first place. So we invented "intellectual property" as something that could be controlled in a legal relationship between creator and publisher, with the power of the state used to prevent publishers from cheating. The result is creators making things and publishers making them available. The ability of the state to locate publishers' equipment and the incremental cost of published works are integral to the practicality of this arrangement.
But digital media radically change the material basis of all this. Publishers are insisting on the law preserving their pre-digital business model. These publishers claim to be acting in creators' interest, but I think we know the truth of that. (Look particularly at the music industry.) Note that Cory Doctrow, the author of the piece, is a creator who has found a different business model that supports him better than working with conventional publishers.
What Doctrow is pointing to is the consequence that forcing technology to conform to the business model that conventional publishers want will both fail and reduce the utility of technology. You're right that doesn't talk about alternatives in that talk (though he has (http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/09DoctorowCommentary.html) talked about it elsewhere, as have other copyright skeptics (http://www.lessig.org/)) but that does not mean that he's advocating Give Everything Away Free.
(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 02:26 (UTC)But digital media radically change the material basis of all this. Publishers are insisting on the law preserving their pre-digital business model. These publishers claim to be acting in creators' interest, but I think we know the truth of that. (Look particularly at the music industry.) Note that Cory Doctrow, the author of the piece, is a creator who has found a different business model that supports him better than working with conventional publishers.
Thanks for the follow up comment. It made about 200,000 times more sense than the ramblings of Cory Doctrow. I tried to suffer through the article again, but my bullshit meter was screaming so loud it was keeping the neighbors up. First off, his rant has nothing to do with the information age, it is the digital age that should concern him. When I saw him compare the internet to a copy machine, I thought this guy was almost as qualified to discuss computing as Britney Spears would be to discuss nuclear physics.
Cory Doctrow’s arguments are pretty parallel to the ones that our postal system made about Email. The world marches on with or without you. He is still clinging to the paper model. It is not the fault of digitization that Cory Doctrow’s craft is falling into obsolescence. Cory Doctrow and publishers are suffering the same fate.
I found it extremely appropriate that you mention the music industry debacle with digitization. They, also, screwed the pooch and paid the price. The motion picture industry embraced digitization and flourished with things like special effects, Pixar and 3-D movies in theaters.
The literary industry needs to follow the same model as Netflix. It is already in place. It is called the fucking library, except instead of the community paying for the subscription, subscriptions would be privatized. Libraries can still exist as well as hardcopies of books. The subscriber would pay a monthly fee in accordance with the number of eBooks that can be checked out concurrently, just like Netflix with movies. The books would be read on the internet in a non-downloadable and non-printable form with a desktop, laptop, tablet or eReader.
Since books would have to be licensed per concurrent use, winners and losers would be determined by the books’ popularity and the authors and publishers paid accordingly.
(no subject)
Date: 15/1/12 16:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 02:27 (UTC)Still sounds to me like he's talking out his ass.
He may have made digital copies of his books, but I doubt he made his fortune on giving away free digital copies.
(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 02:36 (UTC)He's saying exactly the opposite, that those who want to continue the old copyright model will require restrictions on technology in order to enforce it.
(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 02:49 (UTC)He's saying exactly the opposite, that those who want to continue the old copyright model will require restrictions on technology in order to enforce it.
If that’s the case:
a) His presentation sucks because I can’t tell what he was talking about. He was all over the place with this thing.
b) He doesn’t seem to be presenting any solution. Just a rant.
(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 07:26 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 17:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/1/12 19:32 (UTC)