Doctorow on the Demise of the Digital Hub

natpoor writes "Cory Doctorow writes an excellent piece in this week's TidBITS about how Hollywood is out to destroy the digital hub and what it means for citizens and open source. "In Hollywood's paranoid fantasy, digital television plus Internet equals total and immediate 'Napsterization' of every movie shown on TV." Slashdotters will know some of it, but this is the best write-up I've seen, and it is well-linked. Far more important than AOL on OSX!"

Comments

Re:Yeah I can see that.

[Maran]

The problem is, the coked-up producers and flashy lawyers have both money and political influence (the latter boosted by the former), so their paranoid delusions have a very good chance of breaking out into "Reality land".

Maran

Taoist saying

[Dutchmaan]

"When the leaders become oppressive, it means their time is drawing to a close"

This holds true for governments as well as corporations.

It's only a matter of time.

Re:Taoist saying

[Pfhor]

Well, I wouldn't sit back and wait for them to fall.

When they become oppressive, it makes it a lot easier to mobilize a movement against them. More oppression means more people realizing that the said government or corporation really needs an ass whooping. (not as elegant as the taoist saying, but most things hardly are).

Apple and Open Source.

[Grendel Drago]

See, this is why it's such a bloody good thing that Apple moved over to Open Source. Instead of being a bunch of weirdos with proprietary everything, the fortunes of a large constituency are now tied in with the fortunes of free software. Unlike the masses of clueless Windows users, the masses of clueless Mac users will be affected, will be restricted.

*poof*, we have a lobby! Declan what's-his-face was wrong, there are plenty of people directly affected by this who aren't coders, aren't geeks.

Someone wrote about creating a library of canonical "this is why the DMCA-etc is bad" examples, so that Joe Average can understand the issue. That's exactly what this columnist is doing---reaching out to the average Mac user and explaining that usage restrictions are evil.

Mmm, I've got a warm fuzzy now.

--grendel drago

Re:With due respect to /.ed TidBITS...

[teamhasnoi]

If Apple was the 'last one standing' in a battle with the AAAA (All A$$holes Association of America), I would be in line for a new Mac. The way I see it, the x86 architecture could be first to fall from the pressure of the AAAA. The motherboard makers have has long experience being M$'s bitch, what's a new pimp to them? They'll just kneel and take it. For the most part, Apple is a company that creates trends, rather than jumping on the bandwagon, or bowing to industry pressures. (I wish they'd jump on the processor speed bandwagon tho.. :P)

WAKE UP! This whole 'Battle' can be summed up as follows: The AAAA wants you to Subscribe to everything. TV, Radio, MP3, CDs, Software, Books,(add anything else you can think of) and own ALL avenues of content creation/distribution. This will give ol' Hillary and Jack the stranglehold they crave.

Fair use? Gone. Independent distribution? Gone. Any scenario where YOU control 'content'? GONE.

Senators are being paid off left and right (pun intended), the only way to fight this is to educate people who vote. Vote their asses out of office!

Call or write your Senators and Represenatives and let them know where you stand, and where they will be standing if this trend continues. Stop being the bitch of the AAAA!

Gone are the days...

[uberdave]

We have several industries that are unfair: Those industries built on selling information. Authors, entertainors, software producers, musicians, etc. have been raking in the dough by dealing in information. They have a create once, sell many times scam going. All other industries are create once, sell once. An automobile manufacturer cannot build a car and sell it many times. A bricklayer cannot lay one brick and complete a subdivision.

In the past these information sellers were protected by three things: the expense of producing a copy of their information, the fact that the information was not easily transferrable from one media to another, and by (to use a term from Star Trek) replicative fading (A copy is never as good as the master). Sure, people could photocopy books, but that is more expensive than buying the book in the first place. Sure, people can plug the output of their turntable into the input of their tape deck and record songs off of an LP, but the quality will drop. And if you copy that copy, the quality drops even more.

Enter the digital age. The media is unimportant. Audio, video, software, text are all just bits of information. They can be burned onto a CD. They can be sent over the internet. They can even be written to floppy disks. It no longer expensive to copy something. There is no longer any degradation. A seventeenth generation copy is as crisp and clear as the master. The three pillars holding up this scam are gone.

The software industry has tried various things to stem the flood. Activation codes, dongles, special floppy formats, read only distribution media. All have failed, and for the most part software companies have given up trying to copy protect stuff. They have decided to sell their software for a fair price, trusting that enough people will be honest and buy their product rather than obtaining a copy from somewhere else. Open source software vendors have realized that the write once sell many model is dead. They don't sell the software. They sell ready to use installation media. They sell professionally printed manuals. They sell help desk service and support. In short, they sell convenience.

The entertainment industry is slowly realizing that their create once, sell many business model is mortally wounded. They are trying to keep it alive with the DMCA, with various broadcast bits, etc. They will try with encryption, and other copy-proofing systems. They are even trying to control everything digital. Eventually, they will realize that it is too expensive, and too much of a hassle. People will crack any technology they try to implement. They need to reach the same solution that the software vendors reached: Either they sell the entertainment at its true market value, or they will go under. Either sell convenience, or sell nothing. The cash cow is dead.

How to explain why this is bad to your parents:

[M-2]

(From an actual conversation with my mother.)

Mom: "I don't understand why this is bad. Copying this stuff is bad, right?"
Me: "OK. What they want to do is lock this into a specific player."
Mom: "Okay..."
Me: "So, you have all your Abba and Barry Manilow CDs that you listen to while driving in the car."
Mom: "Okay...."
Me: "They want to make it so that when you sell the car, you have to buy all new CDs."

Mom understood it right away.

We need to make it SIMPLE for people to understand. The phrase, "If this happens, you'll need to buy a copy of everything for every player you own, ever" explains it.