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A Love Song For Napster
CyberLeader writes: "Discover Magazine has an article in both their print and online editions by musician and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier in which he conducts a thought experiment on the logical consequences over the current content control battles. A chilling excerpt: 'By 2005, every stream of sound had to present the right documentation to a pair of headphones or speakers- or the music couldn't be played. Before long people were hoarding old analog speakers. In 2006, the recording industry persuaded eBay to refuse to list them.'"
I think that it may not be that easy to get a new format (media type) accepted by the public today. My theory is that (the majority of) people buy things that a) make it possible to be even lazier and/or b) complete mundane tasks faster. Take a look at the evolution of the audio formats:
1. Vinyl - decent quality, but you have to adjust speed, place the needle, etc.
2. Tapes - good quality, easier to use. Just pop it in and press play... but you have to ff/rew to the song you want.
3. CD - very good quality, very ease to use. Has track skipping.
These are the "big" formats; the ones that caught on. Notice the pattern: they each improve on the previous format, namely they require less effort from the listener and take less time to mess with (think having to fast-forward through a tape versus instant access on a CD). So why won't a new format replace the CD? Well, what can it improve on? Nothing that a consumer would care about. Quality? CD quality is pretty damn good, especially to your average clueless consumer. Faster seek times? Any cheap CD player can seek to the track you want pretty damn quick. Just about the only thing that can be improved on is size, but the failure of the MiniDisc shows that consumers don't really care about size; the CD is small enough for them to think it isn't cumbersome, and that's what matters.
Hell, look at the astonishingly fast acceptance of DVD. DVD is essentially the home video equivalent of CDs. Consumers recognized the convenience DVD offered, and ate the shit up. I think DVD is sitting where the CD is now: it's not really going to be replaceable because, aside from improving quality, you can't really improve on the convenience of the DVD.
The bottom line for consumers is convenience.
Perhaps corperate paranoia will climax with the production of a $1 billion film that they decide not to release at all for fear that someone might actually *watch* it. Oh the horrors!
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The essay contains a classic prediction error... but it's something easy to correct.
:-)
That error is that people tend to think that change occurs in a linear fashion. This essay is certainly written that way, with an entry for each year.
In reality, change tends to occur in an exponential fashion - and predictions are always too wild in the near term and too timid in the long term. That's easy to correct - you simply "shove" the predictions from both ends towards a point about 2/3 of the way through, but it makes less interesting reading.
So, for everyone who says that "this will never happen in 4 years" you're right... but you're missing the bigger point. It doesn't matter if the actual year is 2008 instead of 2004, or even 2020. What's really important is that each step is modest and oh-so-reasonable given everything that has happened until that point, yet the cumulative effect is a disaster. Since none of this requires a massive leap in technology or law it could well happen within a generation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
This sounds like the audio version of: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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Out of curiosity, what makes you think that just because you have a Shitload of equipment that it can't or won't become obsolete?
The sad truth is that we, as consumers, really have very little control of what is foisted upon us by Hollywierd, with the assistance of our wonderful governmet. (yes, I know not everyone is in the US).
While I don't think that the storyline will play out exactly as it's written, I *do* belive that if we all just sit by and laugh at the concept it *will* come around and bite us in the ass.
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And, sadly, people will follow... forums like Slashdot are nice - but we need to be sure that the rest of the world gets to see the other parts of the big picture, too.
I agree with Smallest, don't buy the new-fangled junk, don't help SDMI... but how do we mke sure others don't do it either?
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
A big ad campaign usually requires big money. Don't fool yourself; the anti-smoking campaign you see has lots of money behind it, and it has media companies behind it as well. That's why you see the PSAs on TV. Do you think that you're going to get an anti-SDMI ad carried on CNN, TNT, ABC, etc.? Not a chance, since the parent companies of these networks have an interest in seeing that campaign fail. I'm not saying that what you propose can't be done, but if you don't have lots of money, then you need lots of people and one hell of an organization behind them. OK, let's see. You can have all your people wear t-shirts to spread the word, but where will the t-shirts come from? You can make them and distribute them, but now we're back to the money thing again, or you can put the designs out on a Web site and let people download them and print them, but then how do you let people know where to find the designs? Finally, as several folks have already pointed out, how do you get past the sheep factor? How are you going to convince some 15-year old kid that they shouldn't buy that Britney Spears album because they're cutting their own throat in the process? If that kid knew enough to realize the problems we're facing with the big media companies trying to gain complete control of content, then they'd also realize that what Britney Spears churns out isn't real music anyway and instead look for something produced by a real musician, but you don't see that happening. So perhaps you should forget the mainstream demographic and instead focus on audiophiles. You'd have a better chance there, IMHO, but will that market segment be large enough to, if not turn the Titanic around, sufficiently alter its course to make a difference? And where do alternative, independent artists and labels fit into this? I think they could be a powerful ally, since they're getting squeezed out by the big media companies as well. Still, many of them hate the idea of having their work pirated just as much as the major labels, since they can tolerate diminished sales less than the big companies can. Some of these guys are literally living hand to mouth. So you must convince them that this isn't about being able to copy music but an issue of the dominance of the big media companies over the entire musical domain. Still, if the big outfits won't budge, the independents may be people's only source of music. (For an example of this, read up on how BMI was created out of the dispute between radio stations and ASCAP.) Such an educational campaign could work, but it has to be carefully planned and targeted. It ain't nearly as easy as it might look. Still, I do agree that something has got to be done, not just in regards to music, but to stop this insane rush toward total control of any information that someone somewhere thinks can be sold for a profit.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Disney is a plaintiff in the DeCSS case.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
But seriously folks, maybe the next version of the "Anarchists' Cookbook" will contain instructions not on how to build bombs and make drugs, but how to build analog speakers and television sets.
How's THAT for a dystopian future?
-the wunderhorn
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Sure this is a scenario that the RIAA/MPAA hegemony would like to have become reality, and one that doomsayers will put out in the hopes of garnering reaction, but it's hardly likely.
So companies like Intel are already moving towards content protection at every stage of a signal, from your hard disk drive to the cable between your PC and your monitor. But all this will encourage is technical solutions to what will be seen by many as either a technical challenge or an unwarranted invasion of their rights.
The best these companies can hope for is that their measures will deter some of the least tech-savvy from doing things they don't like. Of course, these are generally the people who are least likely to be downloading songs off of Napster or Gnutella anyway, but that's not the point is it?
And this scenario completely manages to miss the fact that the US is not the world, and that attitudes to copyright and IP vary from nation to nation, whereas the internet has the potential to allow people in one country to access material hosted elsewhere. Short of a giant firewall a la China (not that that is particularly effective) there is going to be precious little ways of ensuring 100% control, and any exploits will be spread far and wide as quickly as possible.
So I think this is just an alarmist scare story. There are just too many flaws for it to work this way.
Lanier is not making any predictions here. He is conducting a thought-experiment to try to extrapolate the RIAA-MPAA logic to the necessary extreme.
His purpose is clearly to destroy the industry logic by a technique called "reductio ad absurdum." When you flame him for the absurdity of his conclusions, you are agreeing with him. You are proving his point, which is that the goals of the industries which are trying to exploit the producers of intellectual property cannot be achieved without an absurd result.
BTW, my favorite part of this idea is the concept that geeks who are capable of constructing an analog speaker might become the heroes of an underground economy. (Note to the irony-impaired: I do not believe this will really happen.)
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
don't throw out your CD-RWs, your CD players, your old receiver from 1993, your cassette player or your gasp turntable! keep them, use them, encourage record companies (with your wallet) to keep producing CDs compatible with current players.
if nobody buys the new fancy gear, They lose.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
My head hurts.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank