Slashdot Mirror

For other Brewster Kahle interviews, see also the Slashdot story that pointed to the O'Reilly interview and the Slashdot story that pointed to the Feed magazine interview (which is currently unaccessible from my machine).

#9. Slashdot is a plot by Microsoft to destroy the
productivity of Linux users.

I have friends who were once tremendously productive
programmers, until they started reading Slashdot. Then, the
endless stream of links, updated a dozen times a day no less (so
you don't go once a day to get your fix; instead, you keep a
window open and hit reload every twenty minutes or so), steadily
seduced them, until they eventually became babbling idiots,
dribbling saliva from the corners of their mouths, ranting on
the forums about the relative merits of Karma Whores and
Anonymous Cowards. Can there be any doubt that this website is
anything other than a nefarious ploy to destroy Linux by
undermining the productivity of its developers? And is there
any organization that would like to destroy Linux more than
Microsoft? (Well, maybe the Santa
Cruz Operation...) Is it any coincidence that just as the
Feds were working out Microsoft's sentence, Microsoft sued
Slashdot, resulting in a firestorm of geek ire that totally
overshadowed the monopoly ruling?

#8. Screaming 14-year-old boys attempting to prove to
each other that they are more 3133t than j00.

Need I say more?

#7. Technical opinions refereed by popular vote means
lousy technical opinions.

Before the Internet, a certain breed of deconstructionists
had a lot of fun telling everybody that "privileging of dominant
paradigms" was wrecking the world. The Internet has taught us
that privileging certain views is absolutely crucial to avoid
drowning in the ravings of idiots. On Slashdot, many articles
discuss technical issues---but comments are refereed by popular
vote, and even though the populace of Slashdot readers knows
somewhat more than your average set of people off the street,
they still tend to promote (as in "moderate up") a lot of
technical nonsense. Reading Slashdot can therefore often be
worse than useless, especially to young and budding programmers:
it can give you exactly the wrong idea about the
technical issues it raises.

The pre-Internet publishing world had magazines, newspapers, and
journals with editors. Respectable publications hired
qualified editors. Those qualified editors were educated
enough to make intelligent decisions about the quality of
content. The Slashdot model removes the editors and substitutes
popular vote, and the result (unfortunately) is that the quality
level becomes incredibly inconsistent. It was an interesting
experiment; it didn't work, not for Slashdot (though it might
work in some other population of users). Too bad. Now, it's
time to quit.

#6. Community myth that Linux is technically superior to
any other operating system in the known
universe.

People who do operating
systems research, of course, think this is a joke. Dissent
from this view in Slashdot, however, and you'd better be wearing
your asbestos fatigues.

#5. Butt-ugly visual design.

Of course, this one's a matter of taste. However, in my
analysis, the visual elements of the Slashdot site are basically
hopelessly confused and wrong. From the cryptic links in the
left margin, to the drop-shadowed graphics (hello, digital
design cliche circa 1994?), to the offensively lousy color
scheme (let's use circuit board green, because it's "News for
Nerds", right?) I can't find much to like about the design of
Slashdot.

#4. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
any and all articles that vaguely criticize Linux in any
way.

Blowhards (like the flock of irresponsible columnists over
at the Windows-boosterism rag InfoWorld) have had tons of
fun taking advantage of this tendency to drive hits to their
site. On any given day, Slashdot readers are treated to another
link to another column by another self-proclaimed pundit
declaring that Linux is (pick one) unreliable, not scalable, not
user-friendly, doomed, piracy-inducing, foul-smelling, or
un-American. And irony was that the editors of Slashdot are
falling right into the pundits' trap: inciting the Slashdot
community is the one surefire way to drive up your hit count and
hence your revenue from ad banners. Did the Slashdot editors
ever wise up? Not that I ever saw. Given how tiresome the
endless pro-Linux jihad had become by the time I quit, I have
very little desire to go back and find out whether that's
changed.

#3. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
bogus pseudoscience articles by crackpots.

At the time I quit, the editors were posting links to
theories of alternate consciousness, unified theories of the
universe made up by people in their garages, and the like at a
rate of two or three a week. And the number was only
increasing. If I want to read articles that promote totally
bogus pseudoscience, I'll open up the Village
Voice. We don't need another webzine filling that
role.

#2. Editorial/comment system pretends to be democratic
but in reality most content remains firmly in the iron clasp of
the editors.

The above problems with editorial could be solved if stories
could be moderated as well as comments, or if editors paid
attention to negative feedback about the posting of certain
articles. However, the editorial staff, while pretending to be
ideology-free selectors of any "interesting" content, in fact
exert tremendous power over the content of the site, because
they are the only ones who can select top-level links. They
have furthermore demonstrated, for all the reasons above, that
they cannot use this power wisely.

In fact, if you think about it, the links on Slashdot are easily
an order of magnitude less interesting, on average, than those
of Suck, Hotwired, or FEED---all of which are run by
smart editors with good taste (and two of which are dead---thus
proving that only the good die young). If you've read any of
these webzines, you'll probably agree. Rob and Hemos simply
don't compare, as editors, to Stephen Johnson or Joey
Anuff.

So, really, it's time to ask yourself: why should I read
Slashdot? Because it targets my demographic? That's a silly
reason. So why not quit today?

#1. Two words: Jon Katz.

Every community has its resident gasbag. The difference
between Slashdot and other communities is that they have the
means to kick their village idiot off his soapbox, but they lack
the will. If Jon Katz is not the single worst writer for any
webzine, anywhere on the planet, alive today, then I am a
penguin. His writing manages to be endlessly meandering and
verbose, and simultaneously utterly content-free.

Notice, by the way, that I have not said a word about his
technical acumen. It's not necessary to. Katz (who, like all
opportunists, likes to paint himself as an innocent victim
whenever he's criticized) makes a big deal about how there are
"technical snobs" in the Linux user population who blast him for
not being a technical genius. To tell the truth, Katz's
inability to install even recent Linux distributions (which are
arguably as easy to install as MacOS or Windows) on a
run-of-the-mill x86 PC does testify to his general cluelessness.
However, Katz is not a programmer or sysadmin; he's a writer.
He must stand or fall based on the quality of his writing. And
his writing is totally the pits. He would never have gotten
published anywhere but Slashdot; even WIRED, cheerleaders of all
things "digital" and "decentralized", finally got tired of his
babbling and let him go. The cheesiest, most blatantly
pandering "Hookers Who Read Proust" article on Salon.com displays more literary
skill than the finest Katz screed ever to see the light of
day.

To make things worse, Katz is also a shameless opportunist who
regularly uses Slashdot to promote his books. And the Slashdot
admins go right along with it. You can't criticize someone for
their taste in friends, but you can criticize them for
continuing in a relentless and blind nepotism that destroys the
quality of the site.

No single factor wase more pivotal in driving me away from
Slashdot than Jon Katz. Even when I registered for an account
and filtered Katz out, still he made it into news items not
labeled Jon Katz---presumably to promote sales of his book.
What other webzine displays such a blatant disrespect for its
readers?

But then again, Katz's pandering, one-note "Ich bin ein Geek"
spiel may be exactly what the Slashdot audience
deserves.

Simply put, it's time to quit Slashdot, once and for
all.

#9. Slashdot is a plot by Microsoft to destroy the
productivity of Linux users.

I have friends who were once tremendously productive
programmers, until they started reading Slashdot. Then, the
endless stream of links, updated a dozen times a day no less (so
you don't go once a day to get your fix; instead, you keep a
window open and hit reload every twenty minutes or so), steadily
seduced them, until they eventually became babbling idiots,
dribbling saliva from the corners of their mouths, ranting on
the forums about the relative merits of Karma Whores and
Anonymous Cowards. Can there be any doubt that this website is
anything other than a nefarious ploy to destroy Linux by
undermining the productivity of its developers? And is there
any organization that would like to destroy Linux more than
Microsoft? (Well, maybe the Santa
Cruz Operation...) Is it any coincidence that just as the
Feds were working out Microsoft's sentence, Microsoft sued
Slashdot, resulting in a firestorm of geek ire that totally
overshadowed the monopoly ruling?

#8. Screaming 14-year-old boys attempting to prove to
each other that they are more 3133t than j00.

Need I say more?

#7. Technical opinions refereed by popular vote means
lousy technical opinions.

Before the Internet, a certain breed of deconstructionists
had a lot of fun telling everybody that "privileging of dominant
paradigms" was wrecking the world. The Internet has taught us
that privileging certain views is absolutely crucial to avoid
drowning in the ravings of idiots. On Slashdot, many articles
discuss technical issues---but comments are refereed by popular
vote, and even though the populace of Slashdot readers knows
somewhat more than your average set of people off the street,
they still tend to promote (as in "moderate up") a lot of
technical nonsense. Reading Slashdot can therefore often be
worse than useless, especially to young and budding programmers:
it can give you exactly the wrong idea about the
technical issues it raises.

The pre-Internet publishing world had magazines, newspapers, and
journals with editors. Respectable publications hired
qualified editors. Those qualified editors were educated
enough to make intelligent decisions about the quality of
content. The Slashdot model removes the editors and substitutes
popular vote, and the result (unfortunately) is that the quality
level becomes incredibly inconsistent. It was an interesting
experiment; it didn't work, not for Slashdot (though it might
work in some other population of users). Too bad. Now, it's
time to quit.

#6. Community myth that Linux is technically superior to
any other operating system in the known
universe.

People who do operating
systems research, of course, think this is a joke. Dissent
from this view in Slashdot, however, and you'd better be wearing
your asbestos fatigues.

#5. Butt-ugly visual design.

Of course, this one's a matter of taste. However, in my
analysis, the visual elements of the Slashdot site are basically
hopelessly confused and wrong. From the cryptic links in the
left margin, to the drop-shadowed graphics (hello, digital
design cliche circa 1994?), to the offensively lousy color
scheme (let's use circuit board green, because it's "News for
Nerds", right?) I can't find much to like about the design of
Slashdot.

#4. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
any and all articles that vaguely criticize Linux in any
way.

Blowhards (like the flock of irresponsible columnists over
at the Windows-boosterism rag InfoWorld) have had tons of
fun taking advantage of this tendency to drive hits to their
site. On any given day, Slashdot readers are treated to another
link to another column by another self-proclaimed pundit
declaring that Linux is (pick one) unreliable, not scalable, not
user-friendly, doomed, piracy-inducing, foul-smelling, or
un-American. And irony was that the editors of Slashdot are
falling right into the pundits' trap: inciting the Slashdot
community is the one surefire way to drive up your hit count and
hence your revenue from ad banners. Did the Slashdot editors
ever wise up? Not that I ever saw. Given how tiresome the
endless pro-Linux jihad had become by the time I quit, I have
very little desire to go back and find out whether that's
changed.

#3. Gullible editorial staff continues to post links to
bogus pseudoscience articles by crackpots.

At the time I quit, the editors were posting links to
theories of alternate consciousness, unified theories of the
universe made up by people in their garages, and the like at a
rate of two or three a week. And the number was only
increasing. If I want to read articles that promote totally
bogus pseudoscience, I'll open up the Village
Voice. We don't need another webzine filling that
role.

#2. Editorial/comment system pretends to be democratic
but in reality most content remains firmly in the iron clasp of
the editors.

The above problems with editorial could be solved if stories
could be moderated as well as comments, or if editors paid
attention to negative feedback about the posting of certain
articles. However, the editorial staff, while pretending to be
ideology-free selectors of any "interesting" content, in fact
exert tremendous power over the content of the site, because
they are the only ones who can select top-level links. They
have furthermore demonstrated, for all the reasons above, that
they cannot use this power wisely.

In fact, if you think about it, the links on Slashdot are easily
an order of magnitude less interesting, on average, than those
of Suck, Hotwired, or FEED---all of which are run by
smart editors with good taste (and two of which are dead---thus
proving that only the good die young). If you've read any of
these webzines, you'll probably agree. Rob and Hemos simply
don't compare, as editors, to Stephen Johnson or Joey
Anuff.

So, really, it's time to ask yourself: why should I read
Slashdot? Because it targets my demographic? That's a silly
reason. So why not quit today?

#1. Two words: Jon Katz.

Every community has its resident gasbag. The difference
between Slashdot and other communities is that they have the
means to kick their village idiot off his soapbox, but they lack
the will. If Jon Katz is not the single worst writer for any
webzine, anywhere on the planet, alive today, then I am a
penguin. His writing manages to be endlessly meandering and
verbose, and simultaneously utterly content-free.

Notice, by the way, that I have not said a word about his
technical acumen. It's not necessary to. Katz (who, like all
opportunists, likes to paint himself as an innocent victim
whenever he's criticized) makes a big deal about how there are
"technical snobs" in the Linux user population who blast him for
not being a technical genius. To tell the truth, Katz's
inability to install even recent Linux distributions (which are
arguably as easy to install as MacOS or Windows) on a
run-of-the-mill x86 PC does testify to his general cluelessness.
However, Katz is not a programmer or sysadmin; he's a writer.
He must stand or fall based on the quality of his writing. And
his writing is totally the pits. He would never have gotten
published anywhere but Slashdot; even WIRED, cheerleaders of all
things "digital" and "decentralized", finally got tired of his
babbling and let him go. The cheesiest, most blatantly
pandering "Hookers Who Read Proust" article on Salon.com displays more literary
skill than the finest Katz screed ever to see the light of
day.

To make things worse, Katz is also a shameless opportunist who
regularly uses Slashdot to promote his books. And the Slashdot
admins go right along with it. You can't criticize someone for
their taste in friends, but you can criticize them for
continuing in a relentless and blind nepotism that destroys the
quality of the site.

No single factor wase more pivotal in driving me away from
Slashdot than Jon Katz. Even when I registered for an account
and filtered Katz out, still he made it into news items not
labeled Jon Katz---presumably to promote sales of his book.
What other webzine displays such a blatant disrespect for its
readers?

But then again, Katz's pandering, one-note "Ich bin ein Geek"
spiel may be exactly what the Slashdot audience
deserves.

Simply put, it's time to quit Slashdot, once and for
all.

I read this book when it first came out and I've been working on a review of it myself. I figured it was an ideal candidate for a review on /. given Steven Johnson's (the author) multiple referrences to /. in the book. It is interesting to note Johnson's background in the context of site many Slashdotters used everyday. Johnson was a founder of now dead community generated content sites Feed Magazine and Plastic, which are very similar to /. in the way they are generated an community maintained. Plastic even uses Slash as its base. I found the sections pertaining to how sites like these work to be very insightful and they'd probably be of interest to anyone who's ever wondered why /. works as well as it does.

Additionally, our reviewer leaves out the parallels between biological emergent systems (slime molds, termites, etc.) and computer systems. Johnson gives an entirely new deconstruction of the 'pacemaker' or 'queen ant' theory in both computer and life systems. Altogether, I think the book is worth the 3 hours it takes to read.

While he does say programming for the PS2 required more work, other things he said indicated that he would have welcomed a more powerful system. For instance:

KOJIMA: We finished Metal Gear 1 at the end of '98, then started right away on MGS 2. But we didn't have the hardware. PlayStation 2 wasn't out yet, we didn't know what it would be able to do. We guessed, and started work on MGS 2 anyway. We thought we'd be able to have twenty thousand enemy soldiers in MGS 2!

FEED: How many do you have now?

KOJIMA: About fifteen or sixteen (laughs). Well, with MGS 1, we only had four! The number of polygons that you need to make a character have increased. That's why the characters look so lifelike. So fifteen or sixteen enemy soldiers is quite a lot. If we were using the number of polygons that it took to make a character with PlayStation 1, we would probably have between fifty and a hundred enemy soldiers. But their appearance wouldn't be improved over before.

Are you saying 20,000 enemies wouldn't make a more interesting game? It wouldn't increase programming effort by much, as each soldier would share the animations and AI.

I don't know if anyone remembers this earlier slashdot article, which also discussed the matter of mining space. It also mentioned that one near earth asteroid (NEO 3554 Amun, about 2km wide) that was worth about 20 trillion dollars. Mind you that's in today's market, but I'd say there is more than enough economic incentive to go for it. I don't understand why NASA hasn't already - just one rock could solve their many budgetary woes for years to come, would be a tremendously telegenic venture, and would stimulate practical space technologies tremendously...

I recall reading an interesting article from FeedMag (now on ice) about a "simple" GA that produced an amazingly fast sort algorithm, but that no human could decipher how it worked. Call me crazy, but that's an example of something that simply should not be patentable.

At least I can rest easy in the knowledge that nanotech and AI-assisted design/engineering will probably negate the need for patents a few decades down the road anyway. Who needs a monopoly on an idea -- of human orgin or not -- once the rat race has ended and everyone is able to live like a king? (answer: only the regressively selfish--but that's a whole other rant.)

I recall reading an interesting article from FeedMag (now on ice) about a "simple" GA that produced an amazingly fast sort algorithm, but that no human could decipher how it worked. Call me crazy, but that's an example of something that simply should not be patentable.

At least I can rest easy in the knowledge that nanotech and AI-assisted design/engineering will probably negate the need for patents a few decades down the road anyway. Who needs a monopoly on an idea -- of human orgin or not -- once the rat race has ended and everyone is able to live like a king? (answer: only the regressively selfish--but that's a whole other rant.)

You are right...its not strictly about patents but the fact that people have been using "stuff" from *other people* for "fun and profit" even though it might not be intended that way.

That is a big ethical question in my mind that directly effects gene patents and that is what the article is about. Does US law really want parts of people to exist in perpatuity? Right now once something leaves your body who ever stores can "own" it forever.

As for other information take a look at
this article. Its the old story of John Moore who underwent treatment for cancer at UCLA. The doctors there found something unusual in his spleen that fought off the cancer. They took samples, made a patent, and basically made money. Moore's cells are worth a lot of money, probably worth more than any life insurance policy that Moore could get for himself. Besides he hasn't gotten much credit beyond just living.

This article shows some anicetoded stuff. Stuff from companies rediculously overcharging just to test for a gene that causes life threatening problems(just the test...not even close to a cure) to limitations on the number of tests per year in the hopes they can get a profitable business deal out of it.

Lets say you are a university researcher(you claim to be) and you want to do a study genes and breast cancer. Oops! You can't do that because according to Myriad Genetics, which holds a bunch of patents on genes responsible for breast cancer, they control that stuff. Heck even with express permission from Myriad a reasearch must run the test the way Myriad Genetics perscribes otherwise you risk going to court(ie. discovering a better test on their patented genes is a big no-no). How many mutations are possible on the same set of genes that may or may not cause cancer? Millions and yet Myriad Genetics controls every facet of anything to do with "genes" and "breast cancer".

You can't do research into why there are different shades of blue eyes or why men go bald even why some people sunburn badly. Hurm...I didn't realize that we needed to defend information on why some eyes are sky blue and others are more blue green. I really do believe this approach and this insane race to patent genes will cripple research. How many projects had to be scrapped because they by accident stumbled into a gene someone patented and couldn't get or afford permission to continue work?

I did get off topic but the core ethical questions is the same: the right of anyone to control their own biology. Does discovering the cure to everything that makes you ill really have to involve stomping on privacy?

The problem is that the new scheme wasn't sufficiently privatized - consumer prices were still held fixed, mostly because the power companies thought they could make a bundle that way. There was corporate greed, but also regulatory failure in that the government didn't think though the possible consequences of the new system. Market forces only applied to part of the market, so the system wasn't flexible enough to absorb rapid shifts in other parts of the market - wholesale energy prices. Privatization didn't fail in CA because it was never really tried.

An informative article on the topic: http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id =1583

Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus",

Ricochet's primary appeal is internet access on the go. As 802.11 gets more pervasive at homes and businesses, proprietary wireless networks like Ricochet don't make a lot of sense. A few people will still want coverage everywhere, but as Iridium proved, that's a pretty darn small market.

Think about it. Where do people usually use their laptops? Home, work, coffee shops, the park, the airport, etc. I imagine all of those places will have 802.11 connectivity within the next five years. AirPort access is already widely available at coffee shops in the Bay Area, and Starbucks is working to add wireless networking to all of their shops.

In the meantime though, this is really a shame. I have friends whose primary connection is Ricochet because they can't get DSL or cable. They're going to be pissed if they have to go back to dialup.

American foreign policy over the past 50 years has been so intrusive and exploitive that it boarders on criminal. From these actions no American's have ever been brought to trial, but the US has had no questions on trying others, including Germans, Japanese, Yugoslavs, Rwandans, etc (and rightfully so). The Hague has used Amerian judges and prosecuters to take down all but their own and closest allies.

Why would anything change? It's a kangaroo court.

The author of the book was highly biased, having been fired by IBM.

The title of the article was inflamitory, to put it nicely.

The whole spin towards "war is good for profits".

A lack of perspective about all of WW II.

Revisionism.

And finally, and quietly, the lawsuit that was filed against IBM (a PR stunt if there ever was one) was withdrawn.

Does 'journalism' that is that badly screwed up need to continue to see the light of day?

It's too bad Katz didn't just say, "most magazines fail and these two fit that mold". Instead there must be grand, over-arching understanding of 'phases of the net'.

NOT

Suck sucked. Get over it.

-- Multics.

P.S. Salon sucks too. What insanity is it to post things like "the us spies too much". Flawed analysis will get you closed faster than anything but missing advertisement dollars.

We maintained that there is a certain organic scale to web sites and internet companies -- really to any enterprise whatever its purpose -- and that FEED was by nature a small business that, under the right circumstances, could be a profitable one.

On a prior thread, the subject of plastic.com came up. In my prior and current opinion, plastic.com doesn't have a long-term future as a viable community. It seems, at least to me, that the operating assumptions regarding the generation of meaningful, tangible value- are inherently flawed.

Plastic.com has mistakenly assumed it could replicate the success of Slashdot simply by repurposing the Slashdot message board system for the purposes of broad-minded subjects mostly related to pop culture, pop technology and pop politics. They have failed to realize that Slashdot's success has come through its specialization. The broader the subject matter, the less compelling the appeal to a broader base of people. The narrower the subject matter, the stronger the potential appeal to a smaller base of people. They are failing because they thought if they focused on broad subjects, that all your base would belong to them. But they ain't CATS. They are on their way to destruction. They have no chance to survive, make their time.

Seriously, though- I think most people who read and participate in Slashdot would agree that there is something of a Slashdot POV that is reinforced through the editorials, through the article selection, through much of the posting activity, etc. While you see a lot of variation in the worldviews of participants (agnostics, christians, atheists, relativists, absolutists, humorists, nihilists, etc.)- the community still has several hundred thousand participants who fit the profile one-way-or-another (in short, they understand at some level the Slashdot narrative, and want to participate in and contribute to it).

What is the Plastic.com POV? There isn't one, really. It isn't created BY a certain specialized community FOR a specialized community. It is a created by a conglomerate of differently-minded interests, lacking in a coherent POV, and it feels like it. Oh sure, it has a sort of ironic, detached postmodern perspective- that is reflected in the cheeky commentary here-and-there, but come on- isn't that the standard TONE of almost web-based content sites these days? Salon, Slate, Wired News, etc.? So how original is that?

Now, Plastic.com will have two less sources funnelling a readership towards its community board. No Feed readers, no Suck readers. Who will it continue to receive readers from? Modern Humorist? (who jokingly noted in a recent press release that they were almost out of the seven-figures in venture capital they raised only a year ago, and could be in trouble?) Netslaves? (who repeatedly asks on their own site if they should discontinue the site itself since their purpose has been satisfied and frankly, Netslaves isn't exactly making anyone richer OR happier?) Inside.com? (who at their PEAK had less than 2000 paying subscribers, as noted by Poynter.org a week ago?)

I don't bear Plastic any ill-will, that isn't why I'm bringing this up. I think the concept is flawed and in time, this will be manifest. But I'd be happy to I was wrong about that.

But, backing up, it begs the question- who in the Internet content business is going to survive?

Jim Romenesko's Media News had a link today to a story in which Slate publisher Scott Moore "was kind of funny, drolly knocking down anybody's ideas about what might make a dollar online... He didn't seem to think any known model will sustain a Web-media company. Because his publication is paid for by Bill Gates, he can afford to be pessimistic."

Truth be told, Moore is wrong. We see that at least The Onion has been able to make a ton of money ($2,000,000 in ad revenues alone last year, for their website only). They also have print advertising in their print publication, and several best-selling books they've released, plus "The Onion" radio news (syndicated for indy & college radio stations, mostly), and have made money optioning articles to Miramax for film development (two to date that I know of).

So, there is a hybrid new media / old media company that is making serious money in content. And, most would agree, they are the best at what they do.

Another content company making money online is Fu----company.com. Founder Pud runs the thing pretty much by himself. He's got a book deal with Simon & Schuster, he's got at least $60,000 a month in subscriber revenues to his unedited gossip / rumours database, he's got some banner advertising (prolly not too special revenue wise), and he's got f'dcompany-branded products he sells on his site (I think I read this may bring in over $100,000 this year, but I'd need to double check).

There are other Internet content players who are surviving, generating revenues and even profits. I don't know of ANY that have done so after raising venture capital. Ironically, the sites that raised capital to fund content are the ones who are dying here, there and all over the shop.

I wish I could think of some more Internet content "pureplays" that seem likely to survive, but I can't off the top of my head.

Where was I going with all this? I don't know. But now that I'm here, I think I'll rest and pretend this was where I was intending to head.

Good luck to the content players still out there, still trying to make something work while remaining independent. I feel obligated to say that after reading that 4 corporate players control over HALF of the public's internet browsing needs or some such nonsense.

All of this speculating has got me depressed. Think I'll go read some old USENET articles and think of a simpler time. A time when it looked like Netscape was going to change the world, when it looked like Microsoft had finally been bested, when Amazon was just selling books and it seemed like the people starting companies left-and-right were doing it because they wanted to make a change in something other than their personal worth.

The correct URL for the story is: http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id =1690

http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id =1690

left out a trailing zero...

• hardwiring
• punchcard command line
• smart terminal
• early GUI
• ...

After reading your piece on the WTO, I have a question for you.

What do you think of the Indymedia phenomenon?

Or, more broadly, do you feel that the increasing accessibility of digital cameras and other tools, which lower the cost of putting a strong Web-based newsroom together, might challenge the increasingly corporate system of mainstream news?

Interestingly, you don't mention Indymedia in that article, but we're a collective of people who gets equipment out to intereted people, to cover the protests on the inside.

They have connected live, streaming news about protests all over the world, including the recent UN climate talks, the WTO, the World Economic Forum, and the march of the Zapatistas to Mexico City.

Although Indymedia started in Seattle, there are IMC bureaus all over the world now.

I think they've done two important things- popularized the "movement against corporate globalization," and created a forum for debate.

The debate you talk about- between the protesters who want to fix institutions like the WTO and the ones who want to abolish them- is taking place in the discussion rooms of Indymedia. Check it out!

-perdida

"You're composed of a number of chemical elements."

Ok, we can get in to a number of silly debates regarding my obvious point. Let me rephrase that, 'highly radioactive material is dangerous, hands down, no matter what'.

and, "Containment of Incredibly High-Powered Nuclear Explosion which Burn Hotter Than the surface of the sun are potentially dangerous".

..."The state's power system is neglected and decrepit. Californians fear power plants on principle; they loathe them so much that they don't even want to replace their old, filthy power plants with new power plants that work better and are sort of okay." - Bruce Sterling

- Even bad news sources admit there is a problem with power plants being dangerous, and in some cases decreped for whatever reason. As another person mentioned, look up "nuclear disaster" in google and my point will be very obvious. I apologize if the wording left room for elitist nitpicking; it's hard to resist I know.

Hey, this is Michael the CTO at Automatic Media (parent co. of FEED , Suck , AltCulture and PLASTIC )!
We're very proud to be a part of the slash community. We've carefully considered the GPL and believe we're upholding it properly. We're also committed to sharing what we have learned during this project. The slash code lived up to our expectations and we hope that our site is an indication of the power and flexibility of /.

From the Feed article:

GEML ISN'T alone. It has a competitor, another DTD known as CellML, used to define the complex interactions that take place within cells. CellML takes an integrated approach to describing all of the processes within a living cell -- its genes, proteins, enzymes, and chemical reactions, the pathways and connections between each part of the whole. CellML seems well suited to the kinds of work that supercomputers do -- creating simulations of incredibly complex systems -- while GEML only defines the genetics that create the cell.

Doesn't this seem a more apt way of describing a living organism? Sure, it's undoubtedly more complex and expensive (financially and computationally), but if you were to set an E10000 or Cray (or maybe a high-end Sun farm) to work on CellML, wouldn't it do more in less time than having to work everything out manually with GEML?

--

Now, let's address your concerns.

The major political systems here and abroad, are republican systems parliementary systems or monarchic. These are all more alike than not. (If you have to RUN for office or STAND for it or get knighted for it, its still the same. Its NOT democratic. Get that foolishness right out of your head.)

And I suppose you have a solution to this problem? You don't? - I then suggest you read this article.

Corporations will justify anything for the bottom line. Corporations have absolutely no morals, no conscience and neither heart nor head. They don't care, they really DON'T CARE about how many people get killed, maimed and ruined by their corporate lack of conscience.
Let's begin by checking what a corporation is. A corporation is a body, formed by people, that is authorized by law to act as a single person. So a corporation is basically a group of people. If those people are immoral then the corporation will be immoral and vice-versa. Many of our fellow residents of Earth are immoral and evil, but I don't believe the majority of shareholders of big companies is evil.
Let's, however, assume that the owners and executives of a given company are immoral (evil?) and don't care if people get killed etc. Who are going to stop this big bad company? The consumers, of course! You must remember that you, the consumer, also have responsibility. If you buy products made by company you find evil, then it is your duty to stop buying products from that company. This strategy has worked pretty well over the years. Nike, for example, has improved the working conditions in it's factories because of public outcry. Shell now has a human right commissioner and most ads from that company state how nice the company is to the environment and to it's worker, just because of a "little incident" in Nigeria.

Corporationism can readily weigh profits versus the volume of lawsuits resulting from injuries caused by the products of shoddy workmanship.
Some corporations do this. If you don't like it, don't buy products from that company again and get your friends and family to do the same. Show that you care.

Corporationism can readily sell crack to kids while forcing them to fuck for food and shove me and thee to wage-slave jobs in the "maquiadoras" by rationalizing that they are merely "filling a need."
I don't know where you heard this. Selling crack to kids is illegal, no matter if you are a corporation or an individual. And I don't see much difference in an individual selling crack and a corporation selling crack. At least, the same company would have a hard time breaking into other markets than the "crack market" because of public opposition. Would you buy hamburgers from Mc'Donalds if the company also sold crack?

The internet is being dismantled by people who want to stop paying anything to produce any content but make you pay everytime you access the same old content, over and over, because its gravy, all gravy.
Now, I don't think all the free content on the Net will just disappear just because some corporations will decide to charge for content.

Feed Magazine recently did an excellent interview with Mr. Garbus. It's well worth a read!

Also, here's Mr. Garbus' personal page about the whole DVD issue, and how he relates to various aspects of it.

Best of luck to the EFF and Mr. Garbus; if they can pull this off, it'll send a message to the MPAA that the world has had enough of their strongarm tactics. Please consider joining the EFF to support the cause!

--

Feed Magazine recently did an excellent interview with Mr. Garbus. It's well worth a read!

Also, here's Mr. Garbus' personal page about the whole DVD issue, and how he relates to various aspects of it.

Best of luck to the EFF and Mr. Garbus; if they can pull this off, it'll send a message to the MPAA that the world has had enough of their strongarm tactics. Please consider joining the EFF to support the cause!

--

As I see it, the real problem with the ISS is the huge amount of money that it is sucking up, to essentially just provide an international good-will playground for military trained rocketboys. If the resources devoted to the ISS were instead diverted to substantial research on practical, conceivably -profitable- projects, such as space mining and manufacturing , there might concievably be some real non-beuracratized development of space where private citizens could have the oppurtunity to finally have a new frontier to expand into.

After all, the sun is more then halfway through it's usefull life. If intelligent civilization dosen't manage to establish a self-sustaining foothold in space while it has the chance [say, before it destroys itself, or is wrecked by natural disaster/cataclysm (perhaps, ironically enough by said very same insteller rocks)], then all of the glorious complexity and marvelous achievements of evolution [up to and including mankind] will have been for nothing.

What a waste that would be... "I am ozymandius, king of kings, look upon my works, ye mighty, and dispair"...


---
man sig

The US election is a perfect example of what you get when you have two fundamentally bland candidates who totally fail to motivate people. Send people to the polls to choose between two indistinguishable candidates, and guess what? They'll come out 50/50.

There's a good article on feed that points out:

...after all of this, there will be only one indisputable fact about the Florida vote: The margin of error was larger than the margin of victory.

It's impossible to find out what "the will of the people" is under these circumstances. No matter how you count, the margin for error will remain higher than the margin of victory. Thus, tossing a coin, asking a lawyer, or taking your life-line and calling a friend are equally valid ways of deciding who gets to be US president.

Of course, the logical thing is to just hold the election over and over again until you poor Americans get it right.

Charles Miller
--

The US election is a perfect example of what you get when you have two fundamentally bland candidates who totally fail to motivate people. Send people to the polls to choose between two indistinguishable candidates, and guess what? They'll come out 50/50.

There's a good article on feed that points out:

...after all of this, there will be only one indisputable fact about the Florida vote: The margin of error was larger than the margin of victory.

It's impossible to find out what "the will of the people" is under these circumstances. No matter how you count, the margin for error will remain higher than the margin of victory. Thus, tossing a coin, asking a lawyer, or taking your life-line and calling a friend are equally valid ways of deciding who gets to be US president.

Of course, the logical thing is to just hold the election over and over again until you poor Americans get it right.

Charles Miller
--

If the article's figure are correct, assuming two pounds of water costs about $300,000 to launch we get something over $9000 per ounce to launch

The article actually said:

At current launch prices, a day's worth of water for the four-person crew costs more than 300,000 dollars.

According to page 16 of this 28 MB document from NASA, an astronaut is allocated 5 lb of water per day for drinking and hygiene combined. $300000 / (5 lb * 4 astronauts) = $15,000 / lb.

I found this on a post in a kuro5hin.org story which has since been killed. I reposted it in another kuro5hin story and repost it here again. References for these statements are to be found in a link at the end of the FAQ.

----------------------------

[This draft #4 was prepared by Rich Cowan (rcowan@lesley.edu) with help from Paul Rosenberg, Dan Kohn, Jonathan Prince, Marc Sobel, subscribers to the Red Rock Eater News Service and the electronic mail discussion florida-recount-discuss@egroups.com, and the Yale Law School Student Campaign for a Legal Election, 127 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511 -- spin@pantheon.yale.edu]

1) Myth: Al Gore has a responsibility to concede the election.

Fact: A 330 vote margin out of 6 million votes cast in Florida is incredibly close! It is roughly equivalent to a 1-vote margin in a city with 40,000 people and 18,000 voters. It is extremely rare for an election this close NOT to be contested for several weeks until a manual recount can take place, with observers from both sides taking part and inspecting ballots. This kind of detailed recount has not yet taken place.

According to the US Constitution and the Laws of Florida, it is the responsibility of officials in Florida to certify the election results. November 17 is the deadline for absentee ballots sent from overseas to arrive. Since the election is close enough in Florida, Oregon, and New Mexico to be affected by absentee ballots, the results in those states cannot be certified before that date.

2) Myth: the number of "spoiled ballots" in Palm Beach County was typical. In a press briefing televised live on all networks on 11/9/00, Karl Rove of the Bush campaign compared the 14,872 invalidated ballots in the 1996 Presidential race to 19,120 ballots for President that were spoiled in this election.

Fact: the Bush campaign was comparing apples and oranges. There were actually 29,702 invalidated ballots this year in Palm Beach County. This is almost twice the number in 1996. "19,120" refers to only those 2000 ballots which were thrown out for voting for two Presidential candidates. The remaining 10,582 ballots had no choice recorded for President.

According to the Palm Beach County elections office (http://www.pbcelections.org), voters this year were not confused at all by the rest of the ballot. For example, less than 1% of U.S. Senate votes were invalidated because of multiple punches, compared with over 4% in the Presidential contest.

3) Myth: The Palm Beach ballot is definitely illegal due to the presence of punch holes to the left of some of the candidates.

Fact: According to the Secretary of State's office, there is a loophole in Florida law that may allow ballots used for voting machines to deviate from the rules governing paper ballots. This view has been contested by hundreds of Florida voters. The final decision on the legality of the ballot is likely to be made in court, as long as this issue could have an effect on the election.

It is possible that the ballot could be ruled illegal on other grounds, such as the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act.

4) Myth: "The more often ballots are recounted, especially by hand, the more likely it is that human errors, like lost ballots and other risks, will be introduced. This frustrates the very reason why we have moved from hand counting tomachine counting." -- Former Sec. of State James Baker, speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign at a press briefing televised by all networks on 11/10/00.

Fact: In 1997, George W. Bush signed into law a bill stating that hand recounts were the preferred method in a close election in Texas. The bill, "HB 330", mandated that representatives of all parties be present to prevent fraud. Laws establishing rights and procedures for handrecounts also exist in Florida (see Title IX, Chapter 102). In fact, the Orlando Sentinel, (orlandosentinel.com) reported that a partial hand count of Presidential ballots this year was ordered by Republicans in Seminole County, where Bush led Gore. This count took place on 11/9 and 11/10, widening Bush's lead by 98 votes. The Bush campaign did not complain about this hand count; nor did it complain about the hand count on 11/11/00 which put Bush slightly ahead of Gore in New Mexico.

There do exist machine voting systems which are fairly accurate, but antiquated punch card systems are notoriously inaccurate. They were outlawed in Massachusetts in 1997 by Secretary of State William Galvin after a Congressional primary that was also "too close to call". The problem is that if the punched-out pieces of cardboard are not completely removed from the punch card, they can obstruct the card reader and the votes will not be counted. A manual recount of such cards can clearly reveal the voter's intentions.

5) Myth: The process is unfair because hand recounts were held only in liberal areas of Florida, where Gore stands to pick up the most votes.

Fact: It is true that a statewide recount would be more fair, and the Bush campaign has every right to request one. According to Florida law, hand recount requests must come from the campaigns, not from the state. To fail to request what is commonly referred to as a "defensive recount" in conservative areas of Florida, they may be making a tactical blunder that will cost them the election.

It is also true that there were voting irregularities in the counties where the Gore campaign requested recounts.

6) Myth: "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3407 votes there. According to the Florida Department of State, 16,695 voters in Palm Beach County are registered to the Independent Party, the Reform Party, or the American Reform Party, an increase of 110% since the 1996 presidential election" -- Ari Fleischer of the Bush Campaign, 11/9/00. The 2,000 votes received by the Reformparty candidate for Congress indicate that party's strength in Palm Beach County (James Baker on Meet the Press, 11/12/00).

Fact: Of those 16,695 voters, only 337 (2 percent) are in the Reform Party according to Florida state records. The Reform party candidate for Congress, John McGuire, is connected to a more centrist wing of the Reform Party, predating Buchanan's involvement. An analysis of his support indicates that it came largely from reform-minded Ralph Nader voters.

Regarding Buchanan's vote total, the Washington Post reported that his vote percentage in Palm Beach county was four times as high at the polls as in absentee voting. Even Buchanan himself admitted on 11/8/00 on the Today Show that many of his votes actually "belonged to Al Gore". So did his campaign manager, Bay Buchanan.

7) Myth: If Gore (or Bush) ends up winning the popular vote, he really should win the election even if he loses Florida and other states.

Fact: This is not the way the U.S. Constitution is written. The Electoral College decision, imperfect as it may be, is the only one that matters. It may be possible to reform or eliminate the electoral college in the future, so that small states would no longer receive extra electoralvotes out of proportion to their population. But until this change is made by Constitutional amendment, the Electoral College is still the law of the land.

8) Myth: The Cook County, Illinois ballot from the home district of Gore campaign chair Richard Daleyis similar to the "butterfly" ballot used in Palm Beach County (reported by Don Evans, 11/8/00)

Fact: According to the Chicago Daily Herald on11/10/00, the ballots in Chicago which had"facing pages" were referendum questions which only had two punch holes, Yes and No.

9) Myth: The election process in Florida outside of Palm Beach County was fair.

Fact: Actually, thousands of irregularities in over a half-dozen categories have already been reported:

-Ballots ran out in certain precincts according tothe LA Times on 11/10/00.

-Carpools of African-American voters were stopped by police, according to the Los Angeles Times (11/10/00). In some cases, officers demanded to see a "taxi license".

-Polls closed with people still in line in Tampa, according to the Associated Press.

-In Osceola County, ballots did not line up properly, possibly causing Gore voters to have their ballots cast for Harry Browne. Also, Hispanic voters were required to produce two forms of ID when only one is required. (source: Associated Press)

-Dozens, and possibly hundreds, of voters in Broward County were unable to vote because the Supervisor of Elections did not have enough staff to verify changes of address.

-Voters were mistakenly removed from voter rolls because their names were similar to those of ex-cons, according to Mother Jones magazine.

-According to Reuters news service (11/8/00), many voters received pencils rather than pens when they voted, in violation of state law.

-According to the Miami Herald, many Haitian-American voters were turned away from precincts where they were voting for the first time (11/10/00)

-According to Feed Magazine, the mayoral candidate whose election in Miami was overturned due to voter fraud, Xavier Suarez, said he was involved in preparing absentee ballots for George W. Bush. (11/9/00)

-According to tompaine.com, CBS's Dan Rather reported a possible computer error in Volusia County, Florida, where James Harris, a Socialist Workers Party candidate, won 9,888 votes. He won 583 in the rest of the state. [11/9/00] County-level results for Florida are available at cnn.com.

-Many African-American first-time voters who registered at motor vehicles offices or in campus voter registration drives did not appear on the voting rolls, according to a hearing conducted by the NAACP and televised on C-SPAN on 11/12/00.

10) Myth: "No evidence of vote fraud, either in the original vote or in the recount, has been presented." -- James Baker, representing the Bush campaign on 11/10/00, in a Florida briefing.

Fact: The election was held just last week, so of course many instances of fraud have not yet been substantiated. Even so, authorities have already uncovered clear evidence of voter fraud involving absentee ballots.

In Pensacola, Florida, Bush supporter Todd Vinson never received the absentee ballot he requested. According to the Associated Press on 11/9/00, it was determined after an investigation that this ballot was received by a third party, filled out with a forged signature, and then sent in. Assistant State Attorney Russell Edgar, when asked if other absentee ballots might had been intercepted, said, "I agree there may well be many more than just this one".

Much media attention on the issue of voter fraud has been focused on Wisconsin where cigarettes were offered to homeless people who were casting absentee ballots, presumably for Gore. The Gore campaign claims the cigarettes were not used to "buy" votes. On Monday 10/13, the London Times reported a suspected pro-Bush vote fraud operation in Miami involving over 10,000 ballots.

11) Myth: It is highly unusual for judges to intervene after an election. Since the designer of a disputed ballot in Florida is a member of the party contesting the election, a legal challenge is impossible.

Fact: The most fundamental right of a democratic society is the the right to vote, and to have one's vote correctly counted. The legal system exists to ensure that people's rights are not violated. Whether the person committing a violation is a Democrat or a Republican does not affect how that violation should be treated.

Elections are ultimately struggles for political power so it should not be surprising that disputes are often resolved in court. Of course judges can be biased. That is why they must explain their decisions and why bad arguments can be overturned on appeal.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1998, in connection with a disputed Volusia County election, that if there is "substantial noncompliance" with election laws and a "reasonable doubt" about whether election results "expressed the will of the voters" then a judge must "void the contested election, even in the absence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing." (source: Wall St. Journal, 10/10/00). The Journal indicated that there was little legal precedent for a revote in just one area where an election occurred. It would be more likely for a court to order a new election or to overturn the result.

These issues have arisen in other states as well. In a Massachusetts Democratic primary in 1996 for the US House, the election was so close after recounts that a judge had to make the final decision after examining some of the ballots that were incompletely punched, to determine the intention of the voter. The law clearly dictated that it was the will of the voter that mattered, and the candidate who was behind, William Delahunt, went on to win the final election. Call the Capitol Switchboard if you have any doubts at 202-225-3121.

12) Myth: Richard Nixon's party in 1960 did the honorable thing in not contesting the results of the election.

Fact: According to a column in the Los Angeles Times, 11/10/00, "on Nov. 11, three days after the election, Thurston B. Morton, a Kentucky senator and the Republican Party's national chairman, launched bids for recounts or investigations in not just Illinois and Texas but also Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, NewJersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. A few days later, Robert H. Finch and Leonard W. Hall, two Nixon intimates, sent agents to conduct what they called "field checks" in eight of those 11 battlegrounds. In New Jersey, local Republicans obtained court orders for recounts; Texans brought suit in federal court. Illinois witnessed the most vigorous crusade. Nixon aide Peter Flanigan encouraged the creation of aChicago-area Nixon Recount Committee. As late as Nov. 23, Republican National Committee general counsel H. Meade Alcorn Jr. was still predicting Nixon would take Illinois." Recounts continued into December, but did not succeed in overturning the result of the election.

13) Myth: "Governor Bush is still the winner, subject only to counting the overseas ballots, which traditionally have favored the Republican candidates" -- James Baker, Press Briefing, 11/10/00

Fact: The number of yet-to-be-counted overseas military ballots is likely to be in the range of 500 to 2000, based on the 1996 election in which there were 2,300 oversees absentee ballots overall, with roughly 60% of them coming from people enlisted in the military. According to CNN [11/10/00], the military overseas ballots that arrived before the election were already counted.

The biggest difference from 1996 is that Clinton -- who avoided the draft -- was running against Dole, a decorated military veteran.

In 2000 George W. Bush -- who avoided service in Vietnam and actually lost flying privileges in the Texas Air National Guard -- is running against Al Gore, a veteran who served in Vietnam.

It is just as possible that Gore will gain a few hundred votes from veterans as the other way around. It is also possible that the Gore ticket will pick up votes from Democratic diplomatic appointees, or temporary residents and dual citizens of Israel.

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-------------
Jacob Everist
jeverist@fairtunes.com
http://tropus.sourceforge.net

-------------------------

Motherjones suggests The United States needs International Election Observers like any other Banana Republic. Given that the Republican districts in Florida primarily used OptiScan systems which show significantly less error than the Punch Card Systems used in primarily Democrat area such as Palm Beach county, one wonders if this was just one of many approaches used to skew election results. There have been many accusations from Florida regarding voting irregularities, from a previous Republican mayoral candidate who had a an election overturned from absentee ballot fraud who was involved in an "Get out the vote" absentee ballot vote drive, to a large number of allegations regarding voter intimidation and outright fraud. Welcome to the United States, where we citizens don't have the right to vote unless we agree with the decision of our power brokers.

This just disgusts me.

Look at the kind of kelp they were getting. fraud, anyone?

What's slightly more disturbing is that the article goes on to say:

Suarez now sits on the executive committee of the Miami-Dade Republican party and was specifically involved this year in helping get out the Republican vote

but not unexpected. He may be the greatest chess player of all time but I don't think he could maintain that level of playing forever. People seem to become less able to perform intellectual feats as they get older. Kasparov beat Karpov when Karpov was 34. Kasparov is about 37 now. He's getting close to that age where one is no longer so sharp. Here's a good article on aging from Feed.

There is a link to the complete transcript of the show.

I highly recommend Singh's book (he helped produce the NOVA show). It gave enough of the history and the essential parts of the mathematics.

Also a key reason that the Field's medal is restricted to under 40 is that it was considered that a mathematician does his best work under 40. An interesting article about aging and science is on www.feedmag.com.

There is a link to the complete transcript of the show.

I highly recommend Singh's book (he helped produce the NOVA show). It gave enough of the history and the essential parts of the mathematics.

Also a key reason that the Field's medal is restricted to under 40 is that it was considered that a mathematician does his best work under 40. An interesting article about aging and science is on www.feedmag.com.

I wouldn't say it's a 'great' history, as it casts Nelson as an out and out eccentric with a drive to an Augean task which has been fraught with more disaster than Apple, which Nelson has refuted himself. Check out this link for a better view, or dig through the Xanadu project site or Ted Nelson's homepage.

how many hackers use hallucinogenic drugs? i think perhaps the common link between mystics, zens, trippers, programmers, etc... are the desire to program, alter, and most of all explore complex systems. they wish to understand that which most people...or nobody at all understand, and make use of it.

this reminds me of an essay that was posted on slashdot a while back. i cant find the article, but here's the essay...The Academy and the Ecstasy

echo-e

• JR Tolkien [if you don't think he counts see: Engines of Our Ingenuity: C.S. LEWIS AND TOLKIEN ] What would geek life be without Lord of the Rings?
• Larry Wall, what would geekdom be without Perl? See Feed Mag on Larry Wall: Divine Invention

am a "hacker", and am also a born-again Christian. So I guess I broke the trend ;-)

Did you know that Larry Wall is a Christian? I learned this in Wired, October 2000. He's also a PK.

disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan. picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. ev en if th e parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)

FEED: What's the evaluation process when you decide to take on a case like this?

GARBUS: I think you decide based on the significance of the case: What are the values that get involved? What are the social values? Why is it worth spending the time and energy? And it seems to me what this case basically deals with is balancing First Amendment values -- the right to an open Internet, the right to free speech, the right to the preservation of fair use with software materials -- against the claims of the people like the MPAA that permitting fair use just allows for piracy and the bringing down of their industry. I think it's the question of how you achieve that balance, protecting the artist/publishers who are entitled to be paid for the work that they do, while on the other hand making sure that other people can use what is appropriate for them. It's a balancing act.

I also think what the case will probably deal with or will affect is how the entertainment business or how the media business will change because of this new technology. Generally what happens is the law sets up a cage under which the technologies operate. Here the technology is outstripping the law, and the law is going to have to adjust somewhat to the technology. Law is based on two hundred years of precedence, and I think the precedent is the structure, and I'm not so sure that that structure can handle these demands. So the question is how do you build new structures, and what are those new structures going to be. And this is going to be the first case to define those.

FEED: How would you distinguish the DeCSS case from the Napster disputes of late?

GARBUS: The most important difference is that there's been no piracy that they've found through the use of the DeCSS. There are a lot of reasons why that's so: because it takes so long to download, etc., etc. Now, if there's no piracy, there's absolutely no reason why this DeCSS shouldn't be discussed, explained, posted. If, in fact, there was substantial piracy coming from it -- or the potential for enormous piracy -- then one might come to a different conclusion. But clearly here, based on all the testimony to date, there has to be a better balance. There was a case here -- the Betamax case -- where the movie companies came in, and they said you shouldn't have VCRs. You shouldn't be able to copy movies that come off TV because that's an infringement. And the court said, "Yes, it may be an infringement. The question is, is it a substantial infringement, and what are the other values that it serves by permitting that infringement?"

The other thing this case is about, which is very interesting to me, is that it's kind of going to be an Internet legal trial in the sense that some of the people on the Internet and some people who deal with the Internet are very interested in this particular trial -- and every document, witness's word, judge's ruling, and lawyer's call will be on the Internet within a day. Now, a federal court -- such as this court with Judge Kaplan -- is closed to cameras, but can't be closed to the Internet. There's going to be this extraordinary high-stakes battle for the control of the Internet on the Internet. In the sense that O. J. Simpson was the first TV trial, this becomes in a peculiar way the first documented Internet trial.

FEED: Now, tell me if I'm getting this correctly. It seems to me that there are three layers to free speech elements of this case. There is the fair use element, which is that the technology itself enables people to take small samples from DVDs and "quote" them effectively in their work. There's the right of the cryptography community to discuss techniques of getting through encryption schemes in some kind of public way. And then there's also a question, if I understand it correctly, of people linking to pages where these things are discussed.

GARBUS: Exactly. Right now the MPAA has got an order from the court which makes it possible to stop the posting of the DeCSS. The MPAA has now made a motion to expand the injunction to include linking. Now, the New York Times has talked about this case on its Web site. The New York Times has linked when it talks about the right to carry the DeCSS. Under the logic of this case, if you ban linking, you can stop places like the New York Times from doing that. The Associated Press, both in its pieces of paper and its Web site, has also referred to linking sites. Now, the New York Times is allowed to say that crack is being bought on 120th Street -- a different kind of linking -- without being told that it can't say that because it's going to be a participant in the crime that ultimately occurs. So I think the linking and posting, while separate issues, are related. If you now went to the Disney Infoseek site, you would find references to DeCSS -- you would get through that site the exact thing that Disney's trying to stop in this suit. You would find that the search engines that are owned by these very plaintiffs do exactly the same thing that they're trying to stop. They link. What the MPAA is doing is trying to stop certain people from linking.

FEED: It seems to me like this has been an issue from the early days of the Web: Linking itself as a technology has challenged a lot of our assumptions about the legal status of copyright and free speech, and so on. And we've still not figured out how to handle it.

GARBUS: Right. I think nobody has quite figured it out. What happens if you link into the Coca-Cola code, and you know that everybody can get that secret formula? Is Coca-Cola entitled to protection? We do have trade-secret laws. My estimate is that there probably have been three hundred thousand downloads of the DeCSS now in the United States. Now, once that's out there -- putting aside the question of whether it should be out there -- how do you put it back? How do you enforce trade secret laws? A different legal system is going to have to be constructed to deal with these issues on the Web. And this case is going to play a large part in that construction.

FEED: Is there a case from your past that this most resembles, or does it seem very different because of all the technological issues?

GARBUS: I think the technology makes it really different. Take the matter of operating systems -- there's another and very separate issue that you have with the Linux operating system. One of the reasons that there's so much interest in the DeCSS is that DVDs are not yet licensed to play on the Linux operating system. Now, to bring us back to the Betamax case, is Linux like a VCR? Can the motion-picture industry control distribution from the very beginning to the very end? Maybe the only platforms that can play DVD are those that pay the licensing fees. Or can you have other systems? Is that a violation of antitrust? Years ago, they made the motion-picture studios give up their control over theaters because they found it was a violation of antitrust. There are similar issues here.

FEED: Obviously the objection in terms of the piracy question is that the technology and the bandwidth is expanding so fast that in a few years software like DeCSS will enable widespread piracy. I mean, you look at the case of Napster -- three years ago, what goes on now with Napster and audio files was impossible because downloading a three megabyte file was ridiculously slow over a 14k modem. But now it takes thirty seconds.

GARBUS: I think that this process of copying data will always be longer and more expensive than traditional pirating methods. But one really can't project out until the end of time. Let's assume that at the end of the year, one percent of the total piracy is caused by the DeCSS, and let's presume that the discussion is there are First Amendment values with respect to the discussion of the DeCSS. How do you balance that? Now, in the Betamax case, the court did balance it. They said there will be infringements, but we don't look upon that as substantial infringement. We don't look upon that as infringement sufficient to override, let's say, a fair-use defense. So I don't rule out the possibility of piracy. I know enough now about the way things are copied to believe that, no matter how good the machinery ever got, there would be faster and more inexpensive ways. But as of today, nobody that I have spoken to can claim that any particular movie that was ever shown on the Internet ever came off a DVD, and nobody is even claiming that.

But in the end, I think Napster was too difficult a case for the court to accept at this time. Our case may be too difficult for the court to accept at this time. Piracy has a very large and powerful meaning. In the Rio case, a witness testified about the negative and positive effect of piracy. I don't think anybody believed it. No one wants to hear it. In the Napster case, there was -- if you want to use that word -- piracy. People were downloading files; you had ten million criminals. I think the problem is with the DeCSS if you have ten million criminals, what do you do then? And the other issue is how quickly the copyright holders have to move. Look at what happens in something like this MPAA case: A small group of people find out about these potential violations, and they bring a lawsuit. And then there's an extraordinary proliferation. Probably if the MPAA had left it alone, fewer people would have heard about it. If the MPAA weren't claiming that you could make these wonderful copies, that people were making copies, then I think most people would have left it alone. So I think that what this case may teach the MPAA and other copyright holders is that you can exacerbate a situation by trying to stop something that really is not affecting you.

Share your thoughts on DVD piracy, copyright protection, and the ramifications of the DeCSS case in the Loop.

Photo of Martin Garbus by Bruce Davidson

© FEED Inc. 2000

http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.2.html
introduction: http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.html

FEED: What's the evaluation process when you decide to take on a case like this?

GARBUS: I think you decide based on the significance of the case: What are the values that get involved? What are the social values? Why is it worth spending the time and energy? And it seems to me what this case basically deals with is balancing First Amendment values -- the right to an open Internet, the right to free speech, the right to the preservation of fair use with software materials -- against the claims of the people like the MPAA that permitting fair use just allows for piracy and the bringing down of their industry. I think it's the question of how you achieve that balance, protecting the artist/publishers who are entitled to be paid for the work that they do, while on the other hand making sure that other people can use what is appropriate for them. It's a balancing act.

I also think what the case will probably deal with or will affect is how the entertainment business or how the media business will change because of this new technology. Generally what happens is the law sets up a cage under which the technologies operate. Here the technology is outstripping the law, and the law is going to have to adjust somewhat to the technology. Law is based on two hundred years of precedence, and I think the precedent is the structure, and I'm not so sure that that structure can handle these demands. So the question is how do you build new structures, and what are those new structures going to be. And this is going to be the first case to define those.

FEED: How would you distinguish the DeCSS case from the Napster disputes of late?

GARBUS: The most important difference is that there's been no piracy that they've found through the use of the DeCSS. There are a lot of reasons why that's so: because it takes so long to download, etc., etc. Now, if there's no piracy, there's absolutely no reason why this DeCSS shouldn't be discussed, explained, posted. If, in fact, there was substantial piracy coming from it -- or the potential for enormous piracy -- then one might come to a different conclusion. But clearly here, based on all the testimony to date, there has to be a better balance. There was a case here -- the Betamax case -- where the movie companies came in, and they said you shouldn't have VCRs. You shouldn't be able to copy movies that come off TV because that's an infringement. And the court said, "Yes, it may be an infringement. The question is, is it a substantial infringement, and what are the other values that it serves by permitting that infringement?"

The other thing this case is about, which is very interesting to me, is that it's kind of going to be an Internet legal trial in the sense that some of the people on the Internet and some people who deal with the Internet are very interested in this particular trial -- and every document, witness's word, judge's ruling, and lawyer's call will be on the Internet within a day. Now, a federal court -- such as this court with Judge Kaplan -- is closed to cameras, but can't be closed to the Internet. There's going to be this extraordinary high-stakes battle for the control of the Internet on the Internet. In the sense that O. J. Simpson was the first TV trial, this becomes in a peculiar way the first documented Internet trial.

FEED: Now, tell me if I'm getting this correctly. It seems to me that there are three layers to free speech elements of this case. There is the fair use element, which is that the technology itself enables people to take small samples from DVDs and "quote" them effectively in their work. There's the right of the cryptography community to discuss techniques of getting through encryption schemes in some kind of public way. And then there's also a question, if I understand it correctly, of people linking to pages where these things are discussed.

GARBUS: Exactly. Right now the MPAA has got an order from the court which makes it possible to stop the posting of the DeCSS. The MPAA has now made a motion to expand the injunction to include linking. Now, the New York Times has talked about this case on its Web site. The New York Times has linked when it talks about the right to carry the DeCSS. Under the logic of this case, if you ban linking, you can stop places like the New York Times from doing that. The Associated Press, both in its pieces of paper and its Web site, has also referred to linking sites. Now, the New York Times is allowed to say that crack is being bought on 120th Street -- a different kind of linking -- without being told that it can't say that because it's going to be a participant in the crime that ultimately occurs. So I think the linking and posting, while separate issues, are related. If you now went to the Disney Infoseek site, you would find references to DeCSS -- you would get through that site the exact thing that Disney's trying to stop in this suit. You would find that the search engines that are owned by these very plaintiffs do exactly the same thing that they're trying to stop. They link. What the MPAA is doing is trying to stop certain people from linking.

FEED: It seems to me like this has been an issue from the early days of the Web: Linking itself as a technology has challenged a lot of our assumptions about the legal status of copyright and free speech, and so on. And we've still not figured out how to handle it.

GARBUS: Right. I think nobody has quite figured it out. What happens if you link into the Coca-Cola code, and you know that everybody can get that secret formula? Is Coca-Cola entitled to protection? We do have trade-secret laws. My estimate is that there probably have been three hundred thousand downloads of the DeCSS now in the United States. Now, once that's out there -- putting aside the question of whether it should be out there -- how do you put it back? How do you enforce trade secret laws? A different legal system is going to have to be constructed to deal with these issues on the Web. And this case is going to play a large part in that construction.

FEED: Is there a case from your past that this most resembles, or does it seem very different because of all the technological issues?

GARBUS: I think the technology makes it really different. Take the matter of operating systems -- there's another and very separate issue that you have with the Linux operating system. One of the reasons that there's so much interest in the DeCSS is that DVDs are not yet licensed to play on the Linux operating system. Now, to bring us back to the Betamax case, is Linux like a VCR? Can the motion-picture industry control distribution from the very beginning to the very end? Maybe the only platforms that can play DVD are those that pay the licensing fees. Or can you have other systems? Is that a violation of antitrust? Years ago, they made the motion-picture studios give up their control over theaters because they found it was a violation of antitrust. There are similar issues here.

FEED: Obviously the objection in terms of the piracy question is that the technology and the bandwidth is expanding so fast that in a few years software like DeCSS will enable widespread piracy. I mean, you look at the case of Napster -- three years ago, what goes on now with Napster and audio files was impossible because downloading a three megabyte file was ridiculously slow over a 14k modem. But now it takes thirty seconds.

GARBUS: I think that this process of copying data will always be longer and more expensive than traditional pirating methods. But one really can't project out until the end of time. Let's assume that at the end of the year, one percent of the total piracy is caused by the DeCSS, and let's presume that the discussion is there are First Amendment values with respect to the discussion of the DeCSS. How do you balance that? Now, in the Betamax case, the court did balance it. They said there will be infringements, but we don't look upon that as substantial infringement. We don't look upon that as infringement sufficient to override, let's say, a fair-use defense. So I don't rule out the possibility of piracy. I know enough now about the way things are copied to believe that, no matter how good the machinery ever got, there would be faster and more inexpensive ways. But as of today, nobody that I have spoken to can claim that any particular movie that was ever shown on the Internet ever came off a DVD, and nobody is even claiming that.

But in the end, I think Napster was too difficult a case for the court to accept at this time. Our case may be too difficult for the court to accept at this time. Piracy has a very large and powerful meaning. In the Rio case, a witness testified about the negative and positive effect of piracy. I don't think anybody believed it. No one wants to hear it. In the Napster case, there was -- if you want to use that word -- piracy. People were downloading files; you had ten million criminals. I think the problem is with the DeCSS if you have ten million criminals, what do you do then? And the other issue is how quickly the copyright holders have to move. Look at what happens in something like this MPAA case: A small group of people find out about these potential violations, and they bring a lawsuit. And then there's an extraordinary proliferation. Probably if the MPAA had left it alone, fewer people would have heard about it. If the MPAA weren't claiming that you could make these wonderful copies, that people were making copies, then I think most people would have left it alone. So I think that what this case may teach the MPAA and other copyright holders is that you can exacerbate a situation by trying to stop something that really is not affecting you.

Share your thoughts on DVD piracy, copyright protection, and the ramifications of the DeCSS case in the Loop.

Photo of Martin Garbus by Bruce Davidson

© FEED Inc. 2000

http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.2.html
introduction: http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.html

FEED: What's the evaluation process when you decide to take on a case like this?

GARBUS: I think you decide based on the significance of the case: What are the values that get involved? What are the social values? Why is it worth spending the time and energy? And it seems to me what this case basically deals with is balancing First Amendment values -- the right to an open Internet, the right to free speech, the right to the preservation of fair use with software materials -- against the claims of the people like the MPAA that permitting fair use just allows for piracy and the bringing down of their industry. I think it's the question of how you achieve that balance, protecting the artist/publishers who are entitled to be paid for the work that they do, while on the other hand making sure that other people can use what is appropriate for them. It's a balancing act.

I also think what the case will probably deal with or will affect is how the entertainment business or how the media business will change because of this new technology. Generally what happens is the law sets up a cage under which the technologies operate. Here the technology is outstripping the law, and the law is going to have to adjust somewhat to the technology. Law is based on two hundred years of precedence, and I think the precedent is the structure, and I'm not so sure that that structure can handle these demands. So the question is how do you build new structures, and what are those new structures going to be. And this is going to be the first case to define those.

FEED: How would you distinguish the DeCSS case from the Napster disputes of late?

GARBUS: The most important difference is that there's been no piracy that they've found through the use of the DeCSS. There are a lot of reasons why that's so: because it takes so long to download, etc., etc. Now, if there's no piracy, there's absolutely no reason why this DeCSS shouldn't be discussed, explained, posted. If, in fact, there was substantial piracy coming from it -- or the potential for enormous piracy -- then one might come to a different conclusion. But clearly here, based on all the testimony to date, there has to be a better balance. There was a case here -- the Betamax case -- where the movie companies came in, and they said you shouldn't have VCRs. You shouldn't be able to copy movies that come off TV because that's an infringement. And the court said, "Yes, it may be an infringement. The question is, is it a substantial infringement, and what are the other values that it serves by permitting that infringement?"

The other thing this case is about, which is very interesting to me, is that it's kind of going to be an Internet legal trial in the sense that some of the people on the Internet and some people who deal with the Internet are very interested in this particular trial -- and every document, witness's word, judge's ruling, and lawyer's call will be on the Internet within a day. Now, a federal court -- such as this court with Judge Kaplan -- is closed to cameras, but can't be closed to the Internet. There's going to be this extraordinary high-stakes battle for the control of the Internet on the Internet. In the sense that O. J. Simpson was the first TV trial, this becomes in a peculiar way the first documented Internet trial.

FEED: Now, tell me if I'm getting this correctly. It seems to me that there are three layers to free speech elements of this case. There is the fair use element, which is that the technology itself enables people to take small samples from DVDs and "quote" them effectively in their work. There's the right of the cryptography community to discuss techniques of getting through encryption schemes in some kind of public way. And then there's also a question, if I understand it correctly, of people linking to pages where these things are discussed.

GARBUS: Exactly. Right now the MPAA has got an order from the court which makes it possible to stop the posting of the DeCSS. The MPAA has now made a motion to expand the injunction to include linking. Now, the New York Times has talked about this case on its Web site. The New York Times has linked when it talks about the right to carry the DeCSS. Under the logic of this case, if you ban linking, you can stop places like the New York Times from doing that. The Associated Press, both in its pieces of paper and its Web site, has also referred to linking sites. Now, the New York Times is allowed to say that crack is being bought on 120th Street -- a different kind of linking -- without being told that it can't say that because it's going to be a participant in the crime that ultimately occurs. So I think the linking and posting, while separate issues, are related. If you now went to the Disney Infoseek site, you would find references to DeCSS -- you would get through that site the exact thing that Disney's trying to stop in this suit. You would find that the search engines that are owned by these very plaintiffs do exactly the same thing that they're trying to stop. They link. What the MPAA is doing is trying to stop certain people from linking.

FEED: It seems to me like this has been an issue from the early days of the Web: Linking itself as a technology has challenged a lot of our assumptions about the legal status of copyright and free speech, and so on. And we've still not figured out how to handle it.

GARBUS: Right. I think nobody has quite figured it out. What happens if you link into the Coca-Cola code, and you know that everybody can get that secret formula? Is Coca-Cola entitled to protection? We do have trade-secret laws. My estimate is that there probably have been three hundred thousand downloads of the DeCSS now in the United States. Now, once that's out there -- putting aside the question of whether it should be out there -- how do you put it back? How do you enforce trade secret laws? A different legal system is going to have to be constructed to deal with these issues on the Web. And this case is going to play a large part in that construction.

FEED: Is there a case from your past that this most resembles, or does it seem very different because of all the technological issues?

GARBUS: I think the technology makes it really different. Take the matter of operating systems -- there's another and very separate issue that you have with the Linux operating system. One of the reasons that there's so much interest in the DeCSS is that DVDs are not yet licensed to play on the Linux operating system. Now, to bring us back to the Betamax case, is Linux like a VCR? Can the motion-picture industry control distribution from the very beginning to the very end? Maybe the only platforms that can play DVD are those that pay the licensing fees. Or can you have other systems? Is that a violation of antitrust? Years ago, they made the motion-picture studios give up their control over theaters because they found it was a violation of antitrust. There are similar issues here.

FEED: Obviously the objection in terms of the piracy question is that the technology and the bandwidth is expanding so fast that in a few years software like DeCSS will enable widespread piracy. I mean, you look at the case of Napster -- three years ago, what goes on now with Napster and audio files was impossible because downloading a three megabyte file was ridiculously slow over a 14k modem. But now it takes thirty seconds.

GARBUS: I think that this process of copying data will always be longer and more expensive than traditional pirating methods. But one really can't project out until the end of time. Let's assume that at the end of the year, one percent of the total piracy is caused by the DeCSS, and let's presume that the discussion is there are First Amendment values with respect to the discussion of the DeCSS. How do you balance that? Now, in the Betamax case, the court did balance it. They said there will be infringements, but we don't look upon that as substantial infringement. We don't look upon that as infringement sufficient to override, let's say, a fair-use defense. So I don't rule out the possibility of piracy. I know enough now about the way things are copied to believe that, no matter how good the machinery ever got, there would be faster and more inexpensive ways. But as of today, nobody that I have spoken to can claim that any particular movie that was ever shown on the Internet ever came off a DVD, and nobody is even claiming that.

But in the end, I think Napster was too difficult a case for the court to accept at this time. Our case may be too difficult for the court to accept at this time. Piracy has a very large and powerful meaning. In the Rio case, a witness testified about the negative and positive effect of piracy. I don't think anybody believed it. No one wants to hear it. In the Napster case, there was -- if you want to use that word -- piracy. People were downloading files; you had ten million criminals. I think the problem is with the DeCSS if you have ten million criminals, what do you do then? And the other issue is how quickly the copyright holders have to move. Look at what happens in something like this MPAA case: A small group of people find out about these potential violations, and they bring a lawsuit. And then there's an extraordinary proliferation. Probably if the MPAA had left it alone, fewer people would have heard about it. If the MPAA weren't claiming that you could make these wonderful copies, that people were making copies, then I think most people would have left it alone. So I think that what this case may teach the MPAA and other copyright holders is that you can exacerbate a situation by trying to stop something that really is not affecting you.

Share your thoughts on DVD piracy, copyright protection, and the ramifications of the DeCSS case in the Loop.

Photo of Martin Garbus by Bruce Davidson

© FEED Inc. 2000

http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.2.html
introduction: http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.html

FEED: What's the evaluation process when you decide to take on a case like this?

GARBUS: I think you decide based on the significance of the case: What are the values that get involved? What are the social values? Why is it worth spending the time and energy? And it seems to me what this case basically deals with is balancing First Amendment values -- the right to an open Internet, the right to free speech, the right to the preservation of fair use with software materials -- against the claims of the people like the MPAA that permitting fair use just allows for piracy and the bringing down of their industry. I think it's the question of how you achieve that balance, protecting the artist/publishers who are entitled to be paid for the work that they do, while on the other hand making sure that other people can use what is appropriate for them. It's a balancing act.

I also think what the case will probably deal with or will affect is how the entertainment business or how the media business will change because of this new technology. Generally what happens is the law sets up a cage under which the technologies operate. Here the technology is outstripping the law, and the law is going to have to adjust somewhat to the technology. Law is based on two hundred years of precedence, and I think the precedent is the structure, and I'm not so sure that that structure can handle these demands. So the question is how do you build new structures, and what are those new structures going to be. And this is going to be the first case to define those.

FEED: How would you distinguish the DeCSS case from the Napster disputes of late?

GARBUS: The most important difference is that there's been no piracy that they've found through the use of the DeCSS. There are a lot of reasons why that's so: because it takes so long to download, etc., etc. Now, if there's no piracy, there's absolutely no reason why this DeCSS shouldn't be discussed, explained, posted. If, in fact, there was substantial piracy coming from it -- or the potential for enormous piracy -- then one might come to a different conclusion. But clearly here, based on all the testimony to date, there has to be a better balance. There was a case here -- the Betamax case -- where the movie companies came in, and they said you shouldn't have VCRs. You shouldn't be able to copy movies that come off TV because that's an infringement. And the court said, "Yes, it may be an infringement. The question is, is it a substantial infringement, and what are the other values that it serves by permitting that infringement?"

The other thing this case is about, which is very interesting to me, is that it's kind of going to be an Internet legal trial in the sense that some of the people on the Internet and some people who deal with the Internet are very interested in this particular trial -- and every document, witness's word, judge's ruling, and lawyer's call will be on the Internet within a day. Now, a federal court -- such as this court with Judge Kaplan -- is closed to cameras, but can't be closed to the Internet. There's going to be this extraordinary high-stakes battle for the control of the Internet on the Internet. In the sense that O. J. Simpson was the first TV trial, this becomes in a peculiar way the first documented Internet trial.

FEED: Now, tell me if I'm getting this correctly. It seems to me that there are three layers to free speech elements of this case. There is the fair use element, which is that the technology itself enables people to take small samples from DVDs and "quote" them effectively in their work. There's the right of the cryptography community to discuss techniques of getting through encryption schemes in some kind of public way. And then there's also a question, if I understand it correctly, of people linking to pages where these things are discussed.

GARBUS: Exactly. Right now the MPAA has got an order from the court which makes it possible to stop the posting of the DeCSS. The MPAA has now made a motion to expand the injunction to include linking. Now, the New York Times has talked about this case on its Web site. The New York Times has linked when it talks about the right to carry the DeCSS. Under the logic of this case, if you ban linking, you can stop places like the New York Times from doing that. The Associated Press, both in its pieces of paper and its Web site, has also referred to linking sites. Now, the New York Times is allowed to say that crack is being bought on 120th Street -- a different kind of linking -- without being told that it can't say that because it's going to be a participant in the crime that ultimately occurs. So I think the linking and posting, while separate issues, are related. If you now went to the Disney Infoseek site, you would find references to DeCSS -- you would get through that site the exact thing that Disney's trying to stop in this suit. You would find that the search engines that are owned by these very plaintiffs do exactly the same thing that they're trying to stop. They link. What the MPAA is doing is trying to stop certain people from linking.

FEED: It seems to me like this has been an issue from the early days of the Web: Linking itself as a technology has challenged a lot of our assumptions about the legal status of copyright and free speech, and so on. And we've still not figured out how to handle it.

GARBUS: Right. I think nobody has quite figured it out. What happens if you link into the Coca-Cola code, and you know that everybody can get that secret formula? Is Coca-Cola entitled to protection? We do have trade-secret laws. My estimate is that there probably have been three hundred thousand downloads of the DeCSS now in the United States. Now, once that's out there -- putting aside the question of whether it should be out there -- how do you put it back? How do you enforce trade secret laws? A different legal system is going to have to be constructed to deal with these issues on the Web. And this case is going to play a large part in that construction.

FEED: Is there a case from your past that this most resembles, or does it seem very different because of all the technological issues?

GARBUS: I think the technology makes it really different. Take the matter of operating systems -- there's another and very separate issue that you have with the Linux operating system. One of the reasons that there's so much interest in the DeCSS is that DVDs are not yet licensed to play on the Linux operating system. Now, to bring us back to the Betamax case, is Linux like a VCR? Can the motion-picture industry control distribution from the very beginning to the very end? Maybe the only platforms that can play DVD are those that pay the licensing fees. Or can you have other systems? Is that a violation of antitrust? Years ago, they made the motion-picture studios give up their control over theaters because they found it was a violation of antitrust. There are similar issues here.

FEED: Obviously the objection in terms of the piracy question is that the technology and the bandwidth is expanding so fast that in a few years software like DeCSS will enable widespread piracy. I mean, you look at the case of Napster -- three years ago, what goes on now with Napster and audio files was impossible because downloading a three megabyte file was ridiculously slow over a 14k modem. But now it takes thirty seconds.

GARBUS: I think that this process of copying data will always be longer and more expensive than traditional pirating methods. But one really can't project out until the end of time. Let's assume that at the end of the year, one percent of the total piracy is caused by the DeCSS, and let's presume that the discussion is there are First Amendment values with respect to the discussion of the DeCSS. How do you balance that? Now, in the Betamax case, the court did balance it. They said there will be infringements, but we don't look upon that as substantial infringement. We don't look upon that as infringement sufficient to override, let's say, a fair-use defense. So I don't rule out the possibility of piracy. I know enough now about the way things are copied to believe that, no matter how good the machinery ever got, there would be faster and more inexpensive ways. But as of today, nobody that I have spoken to can claim that any particular movie that was ever shown on the Internet ever came off a DVD, and nobody is even claiming that.

But in the end, I think Napster was too difficult a case for the court to accept at this time. Our case may be too difficult for the court to accept at this time. Piracy has a very large and powerful meaning. In the Rio case, a witness testified about the negative and positive effect of piracy. I don't think anybody believed it. No one wants to hear it. In the Napster case, there was -- if you want to use that word -- piracy. People were downloading files; you had ten million criminals. I think the problem is with the DeCSS if you have ten million criminals, what do you do then? And the other issue is how quickly the copyright holders have to move. Look at what happens in something like this MPAA case: A small group of people find out about these potential violations, and they bring a lawsuit. And then there's an extraordinary proliferation. Probably if the MPAA had left it alone, fewer people would have heard about it. If the MPAA weren't claiming that you could make these wonderful copies, that people were making copies, then I think most people would have left it alone. So I think that what this case may teach the MPAA and other copyright holders is that you can exacerbate a situation by trying to stop something that really is not affecting you.

Share your thoughts on DVD piracy, copyright protection, and the ramifications of the DeCSS case in the Loop.

Photo of Martin Garbus by Bruce Davidson

© FEED Inc. 2000

http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.2.html
introduction: http://www.feedmag.com/re/re340.html

The intro to the interview (here, if you need it), compares Garbus to a modern day Daniel Webster. I'm not convinced; it seems to me that he has more of a Clarence Darrow case on his hands. (From the Scope Monkey Trial, if you don't remember him.) Both were dealing with a case of the PTBs trying to squelch what is (was) a novel idea, and should have been protected as Free speech. Of course, Darrow lost....

feed story
the memorandum order (from 2600)

<//-------------//>
"I like /. but you can tell it was designed by programmers..."

link to the story

would be to here. :-)
--

I pride myself in contributing lots of humble changes or fixes to lots of projects. Still, I'm not in the business of getting my name in the AUTHORS file of every project under the sun (even though it a nice side effect of a hobby that exploded :-) My motivation is to make my life easier and more fun, while contributing to the public good.

The most flattering thing that was ever said about my contributions was hidden in the URL of an interview by Feed Magazine. When I showed this URL to my family, the reaction was "wait a sec! Bottomfeeders? Isn't that a bit derogative?". It took quite some explaining to make it clear that it was the culmination of what I've done over the years: I've joined the hordes of folks who, by submitting small patches, fixes, bits of functionality, have made the difference between making Open Source a hobby of a select few, and making it a (possibly) useful tool.

Oh well. I hope the folks at Orbiten will improve the situation (I'm sure their mailboxes will suffer the slashdot effect), and make the relative merit of their measuring methodology more clear. It is gratifying to see that someone picked up the odious task of trying to quantify what Open Source has to offer.

As a side note, I lost my previous (very well written, thanks for noticing!) reply to this message because of accidentally clicking on a banner ad on slashdot. Oh, for the irony!