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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.'"
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