Slashdot Mirror
The Need for Open Hardware
bwt asks: "With all the talk of DRM lately, it occurs to me that the entire concept depends on limiting the choice for computer hardware. OK, so the proper reaction to the copyright industry's attempts at PC market control is to be able to build a PC that they can't control. I know there have been some discussions on open hardware, but most if it was prior to the emergence of DRM as a real threat. In fact, Richard Stallman wrote an editorial in 1999 and said 'Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important.' DRM has perhaps changed that. Isn't the need for open hardware becoming critical? What is the status of the open hardware efforts?"
The real problem isn't availability of open hardware; anyone will (presumably) remain able to cobble together chips and wires and create a piece of computing equipment.
The problem will arise when you try to use your homebrew machine on the internet. There are two scenarios here.
The more likely scenario is that the big content suppliers and middlemen will pressure PC manufacturers into supplying only "DRM enabled" hardware to consumers; support for such hardware will be built into the Windows kernel and DMCA-protected against interference. What's more, a Palladium (or succeeding) web security system will interact with the trusted end-user hardware to enable net content access. In this scenario, users of noncompliant hardware will still be able to use their machines locally, and to access non-Palladium net content, but will be excluded from using the most popular OS and apps.
The less likely but still frighteningly probable scenario would involve the government (whichever government you happen to live under) passing a "net homeland security act" which would make it illegal to attach non-certified hardware to the internet. Needless to say, the certification process would be onerous and expensive for hobbyists, and would mandate compliance with DRM standards.
The latter may sound far-fetched, but consider that we already require cars to be certified as safe (and relatively non-polluting, in some states) before they're allowed to use public roads. The analogy is fairly direct.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Capitalism works perfectly well for IP as long as it is allowed to work in a (relatively) level playing field
That means that the government should work to keep the playing field level as it was intended to be. Patents should be offered for true innovation in the hardware world where no prior art existed and enforced properly when offered properly. Copyright while in existence should gauruntee the author the ability to make a profit and avoid having their works horribly abused, but the copyright protections should be limited while they exist and of limited duration, not extended perpetually.
As a side not, the dot com bubble was not capitalism failing, it was capitalism working beautifully coupled with idiot investors who overvalued entirely too much. The solid internet commpanies such as ebay thrive to this day, the ones with good prospects such as amazon.com and netflix.com are still around with time to prove themselves, and the weak one(who really wants to buy cheese graters or petfood online at a specialty website????) died as they should have. The only little glitch in the bubble was caused by mass stupidity and rampant overvaluing, which are not problems in the system itself.
Well, it's not as open as it was in the early 80's when IBM used to sell technical reference guides for PCs which contained the actual circuit diagrams. Those of us who worked at PC clone companies found these to be immensely useful.
You might argue that IBM ended up losing out to its competition in the PC market and shouldn't have done this. I believe, however, that the open nature of the PC eventually resulted in a total market sized hundreds of times larger than what would have resulted under IBM's total proprietary control. They probably made more profit in PCs, PC-based servers and PC software over the last 20 years than they ever would have if the system weren't open.
Their relative share of the pie was smaller, but the pie turned into a monster pie. Moreover, other clone companies pioneered the concept of the very profitable PC-based server. IBM stole this idea back and created their own lines of servers. The PC pie became richer, too.
There's even a control case to check this theory: witness the what happened when they tried to go back to a closed hardware system with the PS/2. It wasn't a poster child for success.