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CNET Interviews John Perry Barlow
slothdog writes: "CNET has published an interview with John Perry Barlow. He talks about the evils of corporate totalitarianism (Microsoft, et al), the tech industry implosion, and the DMCA."
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Corporate evilness? Microsoft market controlled corporate state evilness?
Could someone please take the Captain America comics out of the hands of the
Thank You.
I was fascinated by this article, as I like to hear anyone's opinion and gather further fodder in my ongoing anti-M$ (et al.) quest.
But when article writers repeatedly use loaded words like "totalitarianism," which we as savvy minds comprehend to be the same as "virtual monopoly by way of market cornering," they are limiting their column to a small demographic (the savvy people listed above). It is equivalent to writing in some form of geek-code that only other geeks understand.
Basically, you limit the scope of your audience by your use of vocabulary. (IE, you will only reach other geeks by speaking in lingo.)
I'm just wondering who benefits from an article of this type - the nerds all know it, the non-nerds won't even understand it.
--
Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
To quote:
Presumably, you'll do more and more purchases online, and presumably, Microsoft will make it more inconvenient for you--unless you provide your consumer data to Passport (the company's database of customer information). At some point, are you going to cave and provide Microsoft your credit card and other data?
I don't know. (Long pause. Heavy sigh.)
I'm really worried about this, and I keep praying for guidance. These are really dark times. On practically every front that I care about, the voices of the foes are winning. I have a beleaguered optimism that this isn't going to continue to be the case, but this is a time to have your faith tested, that's for sure.
The solution is simple. Turn off your computer, and do your shopping and socializing the old fashioned way. The Internet is only popular while we, the collective, see it as a required part of our life. This is a lie that we have told ourselves repeatedly.
If you wish to have your life revolve around the computer, or around the media, then you choose to be a part of this 'mass hallucination'.
My grandmother taught me a valuable lesson: Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read, and all of what you see.
Oh, I forgot. Conspiracy theories are the in thing in this new Millenium......
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
but it seems to me that a lot of sites are running many stories that slashdot can get hyped about. Linux on the desktop, microsoft is evil, DMCA is drawn and quartered in court. In a previous thread someone said that slashdot was played for fools and that the linux desktop thing was to get more ad impressions, I'm beginning to think he was right.
Of course all this insane, conspiracy bumbling I'm doing might just be alcohol induced paranoia. Maybe I should goto bed.
Q. To play devil's advocate, isn't Microsoft simply selling a product that millions of people are willing to purchase at their own will?
A. <snip> In fact, it's become totally diabolical.
Q. If Windows is so bad, why does Apple have a meager 4 percent market share?
A. Four? Really? Jesus.
Hmm... Who said religion and computer science don't mix? :-)
---Celebrate "crash Windows XP with printf" week here.
I think Barlow has alot of it slated down pretty well. The internet is becoming less free and more commercialized. Ads are worse than ever, and we're seeing a return to something I think we left off in the 80's. It's not who you are, but what you buy.
/. community.
I especially hope that people will start to reflect a bit more on theiropinions of the music industry now that JPB has said it. Royalties are bullshit. Pay for the performance, not the music.
All in all, an excellent review. I just hope this reaches more eyes than the
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
You say "Igotta report this to /. , oh, wait, that's where i found it."{?]
c-
I spent many years as a dead head, though a somewhat mainstream one (IE. i maintained a job but had a fair bit of time to tour with em as well). And then a big part of the EFF...
i mean there is no way i couldn't like or support him, you would think...
But frankly he looks like he is gettin just a little exxagerated with his claims now, i love what he stands for and all, but you will never appeal to a broad audience making such off the wall claims (even if there is some basis for a bit of it). He could serve his position much better by making very rational points supported with good fact, rather than just saying all the things he speculates could *possibly* happen someday
Since when did CNet buy com.com. I can see it now - "We're the com in com.com"
This guy mentions the word "evil" as much as president Bush does :)
The only smart quote that I noticed in the interview was : "To have a whole bunch of money at a really young age and see how completely useless it is--it trains a lot of folks in the real value of things."
The rest is not worth reading.
As a self confessed libertarian, it's odd now that he's talking about the dangers of a free market economy. A place where corporations can run rampant, free of the restrictions of legislation.
Maybe he's come to realise that, yes, we do need Government. We do need a protector of our basic rights. It's a shame George W. doesn't look like the man to do it.
-- Huh, what?
Someone should make a theme song about the DMCA. Call themselves the Shire Persons and do stupid gay dances while singing it. Dress up like various Tolkien characters. Yeah.
Ever notice how Mr. Barlow looks like Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek TNG's 'Number One') is gonna look in about 20 years?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I absolutely agree that the pursuit of money is Microsoft's motivating force. But what difference does that make? The problem is that they're more than happy to take over your mind and soul to get your money. Whatever the motivation, our minds and souls are still in danger. (Well, not literally our souls--I hope. But certainly our freedoms.)
It isn't paranoia if these companies really are trying to 'take over the world', but still, I think that Mr. Barlow could have chosen some more conservative wording to avoid looking like a member of the archetype "paranoid anticorporate radicalist." Hopefully his many, many accomplishments and reputation will help the more skeptical to realize that there is some real meat to what is being said.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Yeah, and CNet is a local non-profit collective.
How's that for oversimplification?
I guess it's better than the constantly repeated line, "the utilities are facing bankruptcy due to California's failed energy deregulation experiment." The deregulation experiment (crafted by the utilities) was a total success. They wanted to see if they could rob CA blind, and they did. Nothing failed about that experiment. If you live in CA then you heard that quote approximately 1.2 billion times.
There is also the one you always hear to the effect that the judge invalidating Thomas Penfield Jackson's remedies found that MS should not be broken up. I don't think that this is true. I believe that the judge found that the circumstances rendered the judgement invalid, and the remedies had to be decided in an unbiased manner, but never said that they were the wrong remedies.
And one more disturbing collapse of journalistic integrity - keep an eye on the bold quotes in the sidelines of BBC online articles. They will "quote" someone (no brackets to indicate paraphrase or elipses to indicate omissions), but when you read the quote in the article it it slightly different. I haven't seen any that twist the meaning, but a quote is a quote - you said it or you didn't. It prevents you from using it as a source for exactly what someone said.
Sorry to rant, but it pisses me off when journalists act like idiots.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
I know I've had submissions that were along those lines get rejected, even though they were better than some of the crap that gets posted.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Not to bad had some really good comments, OTOH some of his ideas should have died with garcia though....
ahh, the egg in the basket..
He's the co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation. You can read some of the thing's he's written.
It's "Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see"
;-)
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Wow, that sure is totally off-base from my perspective. I have a great community of neighbors (who are adults who have mostly lived here for a while). They bring over fresh vegetables. We give each other copies of our house keys in case we get locked out. People watch out for potential break-ins at each other's houses.
Our neighborhood has great diversity. There are many ethnic families around who have been in the neighborhood for more than a decade. I recently read a report which demonstrated (and yes, maybe the report is BS) that the decrease in diversity was grossly overestimated. From what I can see with my own eyes, this appears to be true.
I make eye contact with people all of the time, all over the city, and often end up talking with strangers and making new friends (I got a free painting this way). I have never had the slightest problem here resulting from making eye contact (except maybe downtown, sometimes the tourists think you are going to rob them if you make eye contact - but notably, the business and financial people (who live here, as opposed to the tourists) don't seem to respond that way).
"But I really don't like the society that has grown up around the dot-communists, who are all products of suburbia and television."
There was a big problem with the manners and morality of a lot of "dot commers". People who had lots of money, but no concept of tipping were threatening to drive the cappucino-makers out of the city. It was really getting to the point where the "dot commers" were going to have to make their own cup of coffee, because no one working at a coffee shop could afford to live here without tips hat they weren't getting. I know of one group of individuals who went to the local shop every morning and often had meetings there. They would each get a beverage and breakfast and leave no tip whatsoever.
On the other hand, I spent a short time as a San Francisco "dot commer" myself, and I do not own a television, never mind cable TV. The majority of the professionals I worked with were intelligent, critical thinkers who, although they read the CNN website, didn't mindlessly believe everything that they read. They were not frivolously spending on the latest stupid gadget that the media told them to buy. They were polite and mature, and had insightfull views about the world.
My point is that saying that all "dot commers" are evil is totally false and prejudicial. Just think of all of the statements that have been made about all hippies. This guy should know better than to criticize based on stereotype.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Apple may have four percent of the desktop market, but here Barlow is not thinking logically. But to be fair, few people think this out.
Apple is NOT shrinking or losing by having a four percent market share. Think about it: they sell far more PCs to far more people than they ever have. They are a raging success.
What happened here is that the number of PC owners has grown by orders of magnitude since the eighties. Wintel grew, Apple grew. Both paradigms are successful.
By its very nature, Apple cannot succeed in the corporate world. It's about flair, being original, being artistic, being different. Since most of you do work corporate office jobs, you you that anyone showing such traits are not going to make it big -- conformity in large groups is essential to avoid conflict.
Yeah, a Mac is just a PC, but the idea is what counts. Try dropping an iMac into a Wintel office. Not conforming, not goodnik.
So before Barlow goes religious, he out to think of numbers of Macs used, not the proportion of the total PC base.
Well said. That guy was full of shit. I bet he will never find out how Rand and Nozick and Co. hijacked the term Libertarian.
The corporate oligarchic republics like America hand the people a few shreds of rights they call freedoms. They do this to get idiots like mrgrumpy, focused on a narrow plane of thought and stuck in reformism. He gets righteous about freedoms, when he should be after freedom.
You will never obtain liberty under any government, all governments in history have existed to protect an opulent minority from the majority. Whenever this minority feels threatened or gets rapacious you will see your so called guaranteed rights go away real quick.
Mod Roto-Rooter Man up.
I am into the copy and paste.
My point about the quote is that they modify it without notation. The quotes in the sidebar have always been there, but usually they match up with the actual quote or else there is notation to indicate paraphrase or omission. The BBC is just modifying the quotes with no indication that they are not really quotes. This means that if I say, person X said, "blah," and you say, no they actually said, "foo," we can both go to BBC online and find evidence for the accuracy of our version of the quote. This means that you can't verify what someone really said, which is important.
The other issue is that people have a right not to be misrepresented. Changing quotes like this amounts to putting words into someone's mouth, potentially diluting or changing their meaning. They would be justified to react with total outrage - "that's not what I said!" The journalist may not understand the subtleties of the quote, and may destroy the meaning inadvertently. At least with a real quote you can go back to it and say, "this is what he said exactly - make your own judgement about what it means."
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Being a confessed MS hater, you should use "i.e."
Sorry to be anal, but "IE" being in caps, I translated it out of the corner of my eye, before I had even read most of the post, as a reference to the crappiest "browser/integral operating system component" that I know of.
Again, sorry to be anal.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
That's like saying that if early car manufacturers had totally ruined the car industry through their antics that we could say - "oh well, you can always walk."
While this statemenet is true, the benefit of the automobile to society at large is great enough that it should continue to exist. Same with the internet. It is true that you don't need it but it could become something positve in life. Especially in the future - who knows what the internet could enable in 50 years.
I think the crowd that says that the internet is not a basic right and fundementally unnecessary are simultaneously correct and short-sighted.
Just clarifying the subject...
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
On the other hand, I never used to have a credit card. I never wanted one because I consider it to be a borrowing tool, and I have never been in the position where I needed to buy something which I could not afford (not that I am rich, I just don't buy it if I don't have the money).
There are two major problems with not having a credit card: 1.) I live in SF, and my family lives in MA. In order to buy plane tickets, I need a credit card (or else I have to borrow a friend's credit card). 2.) Since I never borrowed money, I had no credit record whatsoever. This could eventually prevent me from being able to buy a house that I could afford. It made it very difficult for me to get a credit card in the first place. They offer credit cards to students (worst case: mom and dad will pay), people with good credit (they will get their money back), and people with bad credit (they will get lots of money in interest payments).
So the problem arises when they make things that you really "need" contingent on participation.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
What you mean is "i.e."
Unfortunately, IE in caps sticks out off of the page and looks like an MS product out of the corner of your eye.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
I agreed with everything that article said, its nice to know that other people can see the light. The only problem i had with it is that he didn't come across too well. To me it sounded fine, but to others, i think he would probably sound like just-another-nutcase-conspiracy-theorist.
I especially liked the Microsoft theory - that they would try something stupid, it tied in with the whole raw-sockets thing, where MS would prove that the internet is not strong enough, and would try and implement its own closed system. The internet is definately closing - Flash, Passport, non-W3C compatable web pages. But he sounds way too confident that the corporations will loose.
IMHO, unless the mass public is very well educated about these issues, freedom will die. (no, slashdot is not the mass public, more like 0.00000001%)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Four? Really? Jesus. They really blew that one.
Allow me to put John's remarks into a little greater perspective...
John isn't just a Mac user, he's an Applemaster.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
No shit. Do we really need to hear any more crap from this sold out, ex-eff motherfucker?
I mean, if I hear about the Well or Echo one more god damn time, I'm going to throw my computer out the fucking window. I'm so sick of hearing about two bit 'visionaries' like JPB. God.
You bloke I never said anything about liberty being a left wing concept. I was just talking about how the Libertarians hijacked the term libertarian. As an anarchist, I get pissed when I hear all of these Libertarian party tools hijack the word.
I know very well that the term libertarian refered to the anarchist tradition of Socialism long before Ayn Rand and other hacks were born.
I am into the copy and paste.
Royalties are things that get paid to organizations and institutions that have thieved royalties from human beings. The idea that royalties need to be there to "incentivize" creativity is pretty abstract these days.
What you get paid for is the delivery of service. If you're talking about services, it's best not to view what is being served as a form of property.
Wow, that has to be by far the most intelligent quote I've seen in a while on the state of IP. I don't necessarily agree with everything he said in the article but the above quote is dead-on target.
--
Scott Brady
Let me guess, anarcho-capitalist?
I am into the copy and paste.
Or maybe, just maybe, he's an hypocrite. he'll only support government intervention if he can use it to his advantage.
So try as we do not to be overwhelmed by the immensity of the entities we create to produce such things as the net and space exploration it is possible we cannot do without them.
If those entities weren't there at all, the net wouldn't have needed them. It's not as if the BBS scene never thought of massively connected networks. Perhaps if the phone system had been run as a forward thinking public good rather than a protected monopoly, FIDOnet might have considered going from nightly exchanges to always-on connectivity and become 'the net'
Some things do require large entities to accomplish, such as space exploration. That doesn't mean that those entities need to be the ethically challenged abominations we have now.
There are many interpretations of the word "Libertarian", with the greatest variance found among the interpretations of those who use it to label themselves.
Some libertarians believe in a place for government. Some do not.
Some libertarians fear a corporation acting as government (a monopoly regulating the market, as Microsoft has done with their OEM contracts, for example). Others are willing to give corporations the same trust they deny the government.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Ok first, as a Deadhead - and someone who likes SCI for that matter - the statement, "I'm writing now for String Cheese Incident, which is like Grateful Dead 2.0..." is just ridiculous. I don't think the most diehard SCI fan would agree with that. SCI is a fun little jamband, the Dead was the focus of many people's lives. They're not in the same league at all.
Having said that, the problem with John Barlow is that he can't answer any questions. The interviewer was extremely friendly, led him a lot, and he still couldn't make many points.
It's easy to say now that Microsoft will be able to keep doing well because of their market share, but how did they get that in the first place? Barlow has no answer. "[Apple] blew that one," is not much of a response.
I like the guy. I like some of his ideas. Interviews like that though, only harm his cause.
Libertarianism talks about the rights and freedoms of humans. Nothing about it says that abstract constructs like corporations should get the same rights. Wanting to curb corporate power is entirely consistent with libertarianism, as far as I can tell.
In my conversations with Barlow, I've found it difficult -- in fact, impossible -- to break through and explain to him that reality, for ordinary, mortal non-celebrities, isn't at all like what he experiences. Barlow is able to champion the abrogation of intellectual property because -- having been the exponent of a wealthy ranching family and graced by the sheer good luck of falling in with the Grateful Dead via a high school acquaintance -- he has never had to struggle to earn a living. He hobnobs with "big names" (such as the Kennedy family) to whom few others have access. And he has never wanted for attention, popularity or adulation.... Wherever he goes, Deadheads fall at his feet, begging him to autograph T-shirts and other objects. He is thus utterly unable to understand the artist who struggles mightily -- and perhaps produces much better work that Barlow ever has or will -- but was not struck by fortuitous lightning. Barlow has plenty of money in the bank, and is paid outrageous sums to write articles and give speeches which are barely original (most merely repeat the same things he's said before, and/or borrow shamelessly, and often without attribution, from the work of others). Never having truly worked in his life, he finds it easy to say that artists should work for "tips." In short, he's out of touch with reality, and probably wouldn't find it pleasant if he had to contend with it.
John Perry Barlow is at times entertaining. But his sweeping, ex cathedra pronouncements should be interpreted with these things in mind, and taken -- by the critical reader -- with a few tons of NaCl.
--Brett Glass
This is precisely correct. Any group or person with absolute (or close to absolute), centralizing power must be democratically accountable to the people. However, simultaneously, we have to beware a centralized government that becomes too big, and thus too resistant to the voices of the people. A new check-and-balance needs to be created.
I favor the creation of a _third_ power force in the US and around the world: An augmenting governance mechanism coming straight from the people, using Internet technologies as a catalyst and ballot initatives as a basis. A deliberative, meritocratic assembly of the people who continuously make nonpartisan, legally binding decisions based solely on the merits of individual issues (but also don't trample individual freedom) is what's called for.
While this form of "more direct" democracy would appear to serve only as a check on our elected representatives, it also serves as a check on the overextending of corporate interests. For example, an assembly of citizens can very well decide to deliberate and vote on a resolution to boycott a company's products and then execute that without creating law, as boycotting is already a derivative right of all citizens in a free society.
The bottom line is that the people themselves have to start taking more direct action (either individually or collectively) against the centralized forces that menace them. Yes, it may seem to make more sense for the government to solve all or most of these issues. But if we allow government alone to work to protect us from corporatist control, then we end up with a government that's too big to not only be ineffective in protecting us, but also becomes a nasty, over-taxing, repressive bully itself.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Right, and he slightly misses the point. He talks about totalitarianism being caused by "corporate capitalism in a completely unregulated environment", but excessive regulation is precisely the problem. Without government guns enforcing the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Infinite Copyright Act, UCITA, and other consumer-hostile legislation, these corporations would not anywhere near as much a threat to liberty as they are.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Agreed and the fight to effect such changes is, ah well, noble truly; but we have only just emerged from the grip of 19th century industrialism when robber barrons did indeed haggle over the world. The newest catchwords in progressive democracies are government "efficiency" and government "tranparency". We're nowhere near having institutions consistently exhibiting these characteristics but then too we have only just brought information online in an unprecedented way. It may be our new found ability to gather, analysis and disseminate information at heretofore incredible rates that is generating the frustration with social artifacts like pork barrel politics and BIG business.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Blind me! Anarcho-capitalism[sic]. You cannot get more ultra right wing than that. Anarchism is against all forms of domination, not just the state, this would extend even to Capital. This precludes anarcho-capitalism from the greater anarchist tradition.
I am into the copy and paste.
...to be able to define words?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Holy cow, as a believer in many things free, let me just say i believe he not only does not represent many people in the EFF, but he may actually alienate a fair amount of them with the hard line he does take. Obviously, it's his right, but i don't put MS anywhere near the totalitarian regime he describes, and I do not place them in the AOL/TW, Vivendi, Newscorp group at all. For better or worse, MS does not have the capability to influence the message in the world (barring some simplistic alterations of the message based on the browser). AOL/TW has the power to make news go away. MS is just a software company, they don't control any kind of reporting.
Though I prefer avoiding using labels, he seems a lot more communist/socialist than I feel comfortable with, and it annoys me when movements get painted with the views of some of their more extreme members. My $0.02.
"Which companies or organizations constitute this totalitarian regime?"
When I read this I thought it said prostitute instead of constitute. I laughed to myself over my error until I realized that prostitute was probably a more accurate word to use in this case...
If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.