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John Perry Barlow On The Dangers of DRM
D4C5CE writes "In an extensive interview with one of Europe's most renowned IT publishers, EFF cyber-rights activist John Perry Barlow speaks out against attempts to bring the entire planet under the control of dangerous Digital Restrictions Management schemes overprotected by clones of the dreaded DMCA (Dumbest Mistake on Copyright in America, or something). Barlow is one of countless critics of DRM and the DMCA, including Lawrence
Lessig and many other Professors
of Law as well as Linux Kernel Guru Alan Cox and the Internet
Society. Now, are you mailing, faxing and reading these views to all of the many misguided opponents of the BALANCE Act?"
Nonetheless, he's correct.
" I fear that Digital Rights Management today is Political Rights Management tomorrow. That embedding these kinds of technological controls into the very architecture of computing has the capacity to become a form of political control in the not so distant future." this is a great article that sums up some of the most importantn issues concerning our own willingness (as a culture) to trade control for convenience. even more, it highlights why this is such a dangerous idea. its true, doctor: i'm a Your Rights Online addict.
>>> John Perry Barlow: There are three things at stake. The first is, extending a monopoly to a few large organizations about what people can or cannot know and express. This is really about the control of information and it has the potential to become over time a kind of private totalitarianism. That is not an exaggeration since it has already happened in the United States. The reason that the U.S. is behaving in the completely irrational and dangerous way that it is, is because we have erected private totalitarianism and are suffering a reality distortion field that is as dangerous as the one erupted in Germany in the 1930s. But not being driven by the government, but being driven by the media. Being driven by ourselves. I fear erecting a system which highly advantages a very few corporate channels for human intellectual exchange >>>
Amen. It seems in the past 1 1/2 years more and more proposed legislation has gotten to the point where I wonder if half my representatives can even turn on a computer or work a CD player.
Look at some of the preposterous things we have been inundated with and will continue to be until we speak up to our representatives and provide them the proper information and insight into IT laws. Right now the basis of most of it is to hinder competition and prosper monopolies ala the garage door opener lawsuit[universal remotes].
Fear Breeds Knowledge
I like the idea of DRM. I'd love to register every piece of software on my hard drive. If a virus comes through my email filter, it can't run. That's the promise of DRM. The problem is that's not how it's going to be implemented. Someone else is going to hold the keys to my software for my own good.
You're right, the term "privacy" is never written explicity in the constitution itself. However, the 4th amendment does effectively create this right, as stated:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This affirms my right to online (read: papers in electronic form) privacy (read: security). Granted, the choice of words, namely "security", is open to a degree of interpretation but I'd bet privacy is what they had in mind.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I submit for your ridicule a legal term:
ab abusu ad usum non valet consequentia
the consequences of abuse do not apply to general use (rights abused by some are still rights)
You are a big wussy. Listen to yourself man. "Wahhh, I might be killed."
.. even tho thats the way the world has been since Day One?
Thousands of people die in cars every day, yet I dont see you going to enormous lengths to ban cars.
Why fuck your neighbours just because you're too scared to live in a world where you might be attacked
Wussy!
"Old man yells at systemd"
He must be from Germany or France.
If 'privacy' was what they had in mind, thats what they would have written.
The government cant come and take your papers as evidence against you without a warrant. But if those papers happen to be in front of them, there's no law that says they cant read them.
If you're driving around with a kilo of cocaine in the passenger seat in an open ziplock bag, and a cop can see it in plain sight, he doesnt need a warrant.
If you conduct your business in plain sight - which you do - he doesn't need a warrant.
http://www.hut.fi/~jpkarna/papers/sign.htmls something like this would work quite well.
Seem
Jesus christ you're an idiot. You go around pointing out troll posts, yet you miss one from the top of this very thread.
Get off your self-righteous kick and fucking contribute something useful or shut the fuck up.
Dumb as a goddamn bag of hammers.
>I would glady trade my privelege of "online
>privacy" (whatever that means) in order to live
>safely in a world free of terror.
If you give up privileges and don't get to live in a utopia, will you still have that opinion, or will you want your privileges back?
>What makes you think that you have some inherent
>right to "online privacy" or "online freedom"? I
>don't see that in the bill of rights or the
>constitution itself, do you?
I do. I see it between the lines. The very spirit from whence the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were forged is borne on the blood of a revolution against a government which had sought to supress dissent through any and all means.
>Get used to it or go somewhere else.
Or participate in the process of government? Or is that not an option, in your black and white view of the world?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
France. Definitely France. France has been a wussy country ever since Napoleon was put down. Ever since, they just curl up and cry "blah blah blah!" which is french for "Stop! Don't hurt me!"
the words "privacy" and "democracy" are not in the constitution. not anywhere. that doesn't mean that the right to be treated with dignity isn't protected.
Thousands of people die in cars every day
I'm skeptical of this.
Some years ago, I was under the impression that (A) drunk drivers account for the vast amount of fatalities, and (B) about 50,000 people / year die from drunk drivers.
Assuming the above is correct (can anyone show better facts?) that would work out to less than a couple hundred deaths per day.
The reason people aren't pushing to ban automobiles is because, even though the numbers sound large, the percentages, and therefore, the risks aren't. You are unlikely to personally be affected.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
>The reason people aren't pushing to ban automobiles is because, even though the numbers sound large, the percentages, and therefore, the risks aren't. You are unlikely to personally be affected.
And this is different from terrorism how?
Everyone who knows somebody who's been in a car accident, raise your hands.
Everyone who knows somebody who's been hurt in a terrorist attack, raise your hands.
That was my point.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Would you be happy for somebody to be listening in to you dinner table conversation, just to make sure that you are not planning a terrorist attack? (If you are thinking "no way, virtual privacy is a different issue to 'real' privacy", suppose that a couple of your friends couldn't make it to the dinner party and you are having a conversation on mIRC instead)
What if the topic of that dinner conversation was a (hypothetical) "accidental" police beating of an innocent suspect? Would you feel uncomfortable having that conversation, knowing that those same people could be listening to you?
What if your dinner table conversation was about planning some kind of protest, say to confront the local mayor about some abuse of government power? Would you still have that conversation if you knew there was a liklihood that the mayor could end up with tapes of your conversation? And what if your protest was going to be mildy illegal (say, a congregation in a public place for which police permission had been denied)? You might be prepared to take the consequences, indeed the media coverage would just serve to highlight the protest, but what if your conversation could be used to prevent the protest from taking place at all? (say, by arresting you prior to the protest?) Sure, there is no one getting dragged off to the gulag here, but isn't the freedom of the public to act against injustice ultimately one of the cornerstones of Democracy? What happens when you eliminate this cornerstone?
Moving onto terrorism itself, is there any evidence that existing "online privacy" was an important factor that has enabled acts of terrorism to be successful in the past?
Is there any evidence that eliminating such privacy would stop acts of terror in the future?
Even if there is no privacy for ordinary citizens, the anti-terror squads obviously need privacy themselves. It is obviously silly to have every action of the secret police being broadcast over the intenet, indeed they will be much more effective if they have total privacy. So, there needs to be at least two classes of citizens, ordinary joes, who have no privacy, and the secret police who have total privacy. How does such a two-class system fit in with the ideal, of representative Democracy? How do you keep checks on a system that is so one-sided? Who is watching the watcher?
Even if privacy is eliminated, doesn't that at best only make it harder to plan and carry out terrorism? In what sense would it reduce/eliminate the causes of terrorism?
Indeed, what impact do you think the loss of privacy would have on people who already hate the government enough to consider terrorism? Wouldn't it just make the situation worse?
Ultimately, do you think people can/should should be trusted to hold private conversations?
DRM doesn't allow the govt. to control information unless the govt. created the information. DRM allows the creator of information to control who sees it. Protesting DRM is like protesting a kitchen knife. It's just a tool. Otherwise you might as well start protesting encryption in general. What's the point of encryption for the originator of the data, if people insist that it's insecure. If you want to protest the way the RIAA or the MPAA uses DRM, that's another story.
Vote for Pedro
Of course. But the direction we are heading is along the lines of "your ziplock bag must remain open and in view on the passenger seat at all times". In effect, bypassing the need for a warrant by eliminating privacy.
Canada and the US put Iraq to shame when it comes to such matters.
The right to self defence is also clearly stated, because money pays doesn't mean the law is valid.
Sure, independence is often a good thing, and in the case of the USA, succession was a good thing even at the expense of needing a war to do it. But you make it sound like it was a war against the great satan himself.
I would have thought, for example, that the opression suffered by the colonists in pre-revolution Americas was nothing compared with the opression suffered by, say, the blacks in the leadup to the American civil war, or the Jews in Nazi Germany, or a whole host of other examples.
I mean, there hasn't been a revolution in Britain for a very long time, but somehow they themselves managed to escape the "government which had sought to supress dissent through any and all means" through (substantially) peaceful methods. Australia too managed to escape the "tyrrany" without a war.
I think it is the third amendment that applies to the DRM situation:
Amendment III. No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The state can't require me to provide resources for enforcement technologies. In 1776 the only enforcement technology was the soldier.
Mandate code on those bastard's devices, and we'll shut em' up allright{all legally of coarse by using business to bypass our constitution and doing the government's dirty work for them}
--I'll be damn if i'll let a third grader take over my country!{polticians hollar, while clicking his heals three times;-}
ASCAP isn't all bad, but their overhead is somewhere around 50%; what happens to countries outside the US? Will they be forced to pay $X per terabyte downloaded from the US regardless of what content was downloaded? Why should my webserver's internet connection (no copyrighted content on it) pay a tax to the media companies? It's not fair.
I know it's not black and white; I like some unfair taxes like the gasoline tax. We could make it fairer by having a toll booth at each intersection where your car is weighed and charged according to it's impact on the roadways... the problem is the overhead would be insane.
I think it's clear that all content will eventually be free and music, movies, software, etc will all have to rely on two things for their revenue streams:
1) Product placement (can you say advertisments in MS-Word)?
2) Goodwill (Artists, please begin putting paypal links (or equivalent) on your websites).
Ask the Irish. The British government wasn't the worst colonial government, but they had their share of very nasty stretches. Bear in mind also that it's entirely possible that the British decided to change their policies in response to the War for Independence. When one group of colonies decides that you're acting tyranically and launches a successful revolution to throw you out, it might be a good idea not to implement the same policies in your other colonies for fear of a repeat.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Mutual destruction has a long stand reputation of keeping the peace.
heres a copy of a letter I wrote to the UK copyright office
Subject: Copyrights in the information age
To: copyright@patent.gov.uk
Dear Reader,
As society enters the information age, there are a few parallels to the industrial revolution that should be carefully considered when choosing how enforce copyright law. While my analysis is a little lengthy, I hope you take the time to read it so that you can make the best decisions about copyright enforcement and successfully guide the UK into the information age....
During the 1850's there were those in USA who believed that the entire purpose of the industrial revolution was to use inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited control and profit. Plantation masters, as they were called, envisioned a system where continuous improvement in machinery and technology would allow them to do more and more with fewer and fewer slaves. Since the plantation system was so enormously financially successful, there was no reason to believe that the future would take any other direction other than bigger plantations, more slaves, and endless profit. While there were some concerns about slavery, the plantation masters considered them like any other property right. They were paid for, there was no incentive to grow cotton without them, and slavery seemed to have been there forever. The plantation masters, who were astute at business and commerce and very well educated believed that they had nothing to fear. However, as time went on it became more and more apparent that, in order to prosper, the factory system would require an educated and mobile work force. This was at direct odds with the plantation masters whose profits hinged on being able to control and restrict the movement of large parts of the population. With billions at stake, and no impasse in sight, it wasn't long before the plantation masters were taking desperate measures to control their slave populations. Those who tried to find a compromize were useless. At first it started out with unusually restrictive and harsh laws toward slaves, and eventually resulted in a blatant attempt to break off from the union. Of course, no one in the northern states respected that boundary, so soon war broke out and well over a half of million people died.
Ok, thank you for being patent enough to read that first part, now comes the part about how this could possibly relate to copyrights and the information age.
Today there are many people who believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use new technologies like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited control and profit all over the globe. The content sector, as they are sometimes called, envision a system where continuous improvement in information sharing and display technologies, would allow them to earn more and more with fewer and fewer copyright holdings. Since the content industries are so enormously financially successful, there is no reason to believe that the future would take any other direction other than bigger content facilities, more copyright holdings, and endless profit. While there are some concerns about copyright enforcement, the content industry considers them like any other property right. They were paid for or worked for, there is no incentive to make creative works without them, and copyrights have been around forever. The content industry leaders, who are astute at business and commerce and very well educated believe that there is nothing to worry about. However, as time goes on it is becoming more and more apparent that, in order to prosper, many technology industries will require the free and uninhibited flow of information. This is at direct odds with the content industries whose profits hinge on being able to control and restrict the movement of large amounts of information. With trillions at stake, and no impasse in sight, it won't be long before the content industry will be taking desperate measures to control their content possessions. Those who have tried to find a compromize have gotten nowhere. At first it seems to already have started out with extremely harsh punishments for copyright infringement and laws like the DMCA in the United States, but will eventually result in a blatant attempts to fence off all information using content controls. Of course, no one in the technology sector going to respect that boundary, so soon all hell will break loose. With trillions at stake, who knows how many people in the middle will suffer, or what they will suffer until copyrights are eternally unenforceable, but do we really want to find out.
My freedom was hurt in a terrorist attack. Does that count?
Give me a law that gives me legal protections (under IP laws) against using my name, my address, my phone number, my tv and web surfing habits, any and all information pertaining to me..
Hey folks, market is looking up. Look whats available in the Redmond Washington area.
.Net Technologies understanding is a plus.
Role: Testing enterprise applications / products built using DRM and Anti-piracy technologies and SQL Server.
Required Skills:
Strong knowledge of Digital Rights Management and Anti-piracy
SQL Server (ver. 7.0 or ver 2000) a must. Strong understanding of stored procedures, triggers, T-SQL.
Application testing methodologies and writing Test cases and scripts
Overall understanding of Microsoft technologies including Windows 2000, Windows XP, IIS, Vbscript, HTML, JavaScript, and ASP.
User Interface development and/or testing. Working knowledge with test automation tools such as WinRunner, Rational, etc. will be considered a plus.
Good communication skills
Experience:
2+ years of experience in development or testing of DRM and Anti-piracy related porducts/applications.
2+ years of SQL server developing and testing.
2+ years of experience in Microsoft technologies.
Description:
Responsible for defining and implementing application/product testing. This includes product enhancement as well as migration and regression testing for product patches and bug fixes. Develop test plans, conditions, and scenarios in support of ongoing business system operations, enhancements, and development (per request). Define and maintain a repository of test plans, cases, and scripts. Definition of performance and stress testing requirements. Understand and document key functional dependencies between supported applications. Maintain test plans based on changes due to design, delivery, and/or change control. Develop and review test cases and test scripts. Develop and review test data requirements. Developing automated and manual testing procedures.
This is a contract job.
OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.
Reposting this message elsewhere is NOT OK.
this is in or around Redmond WA
is that DRM does nothing to protect my IP.
It only protects big, rich companies. The independent writer or musician will get ripped off by the big companies as before.
C:support?
S:government hotline. how may i help you.
C:we have this nice government with this incredible uptime
S:congratulation for choosing our product
C:and lifetime warranty.
S:and?
C:seems it recently started failing and yelding inapropriate results
S:realy? yes i hear you.
C:need a replacement immediatly
S:no way! read the license carefully we can revoke any of your right any time. we are your failing government!
Look, I am as anti DRM as the next person, but I really don't care about it given one proviso. As long as I can buy a computer that is not DRM crippled (whatever the means by which that happens) then I am happy to let the "establishment" have their little DRM game. I choose not to play. I have already stopped buying DVD for exactly this reason, I don't buy RIA* music (in fact I pretty much don't buy any music), and my one concession is the cinema where (and I know about the fallacy of this point so don't bother with the critique) I am paying for the full meatspace experience of the cinema and I am happy for the cinema owner to profit from that service, and I would give that up too if needs must.
Now if it became impossible to buy a non DRM computer then I would fight harder, but it is still possible and Free Software pretty much guarantees that it is possible for the foreseeable future. There is one other avenue for concern and that is the provision of state services through the new media (online access to tax returns for example) now that needs to be fought about a little harder to make sure that those such as I are not marginalised, however that is a good fight and one that should be easy to keep winning.
So, let 'em have their DRM world, it just won't be my world, and I will be happier not knowing anything about "Matrix V" but being sure that I don't participate in their little (and doomed) DRM game.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
its control over your own computer, with the ability to control changes to it, and verify them. one way is to use mtree to verify everything on your system, to/from an encrypted spec file. boot from a cdrom to check / remake the spec file (the encryption is only to prevent the spec file from being tampered with) encrypting /usr /var /home etc helps too (im doing the above on my laptop in openbsd, works nicely) unlike palladium, the above actually can protect your computer with real control. (for runtime protection, dont use cappy software (ie, outlook etc) and look into systrace, proper file permissions, etc. its hard now, but also new. what we really need are recursive sub users with definable permissions) openbsd also has kernel extensions to check things before running them, look up the trojan proof kernel papers. linux has similar mechanism in the NSA version. and a little creativity can add more to it too. for example have your login scripts owned by root and not writable by you (or any run time program acting as you) (didnt microsoft put a stop to that nsa version, or at least try to?)
theres very little in palladium (as far as i can gather from the web) that actually protects you from things like viruses, worms, buffer over runs etc. as you can see from the above, you do not need tcpa to get the protection they are advertising. (actually, its much better protection. esp. if said CD has backups of what people will try to trojan)
DRM is for content and is little more than another lock in scheme from microsoft and the "content providers" who have similar goals. (especially that of locking out anyone they dont like. in the content industries case, thats anyone theyre not making money from, in microsofts case, thats anyone else) that crap about making an email "only the recipient can read, but give to anyone else is nonsense, use pgp for that, again, its in YOUR control. that crap about content "only certain programs" can read is blatantly about vendor lock in. (and disneys blatant evil, but dont get me started on them)
fight them any way you can. our future and those of our children depend on it. microsofts biggest holds are in the browser and office software market. spread mozilla and openoffice.org like wildfire. help independant film and music if you can. educate others...
What if your dinner table conversation was about planning some kind of protest, say to confront the local mayor about some abuse of government power? Would you still have that conversation if you knew there was a liklihood that the mayor could end up with tapes of your conversation? And what if your protest was going to be mildy illegal (say, a congregation in a public place for which police permission had been denied)?
If you did protest you'd be in a public place where everyone could see you.
AS the parent said - if you're 'planning' of a protest was monitored, that is unlikely to be in a public place. If it is mildly illegal and your planning was monitored your protest would likely never occur.
"The plain simple fact is that the copying of bits to anyone on the planet without explicit authorization from the copyright holder is illegal. Users need to stop doing it."
This is false. There are exceptions to this called "fair use" that allow this copying take place.
Copyright holders in the form of large media conglomerates seem to believe that copyright gives them absolute control over how their work is used.
But this is false.
I am allowed to make backup copies for my own use. I am allowed to loan my CD's and DVDs to friends. I am allowed to sell my CD's and DVD's to strangers. I am allowed to change mediums; that is, if I have a CD, I can move it to my cassette deck or mp3 player. If I watch a movie on TV, I can record it to watch at my convenience.
All of this is OK and legal.
However copyright holders don't recognize any of this as proper or legal.
That's their problem, not mine. And DRM turns my PC into an agent of the copyright holder and in return I get nothing but less rights than I have today.
Sorry, that's a bad deal for me, and its bad policy for a free society, no matter how you try to spin it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
If people want to willingly agree to this on their computer, its fine.
But why would this be legislated as is being attempted by the media conglomerates? They view PCs as dangerous and must be under control.
Similar, to totalitarian societies where typewriters, PC's and Xerox machines are considered subversive and must be registered
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What if your dinner table conversation was about planning some kind of protest, say to confront the local mayor about some abuse of government power? Would you still have that conversation if you knew there was a liklihood that the mayor could end up with tapes of your conversation? And what if your protest was going to be mildy illegal (say, a congregation in a public place for which police permission had been denied)? You might be prepared to take the consequences, indeed the media coverage would just serve to highlight the protest, but what if your conversation could be used to prevent the protest from taking place at all? (say, by arresting you prior to the protest?)
You mean like this?
I am generally a conservative, and I do not condone disruptive protests, but even this disturbed me. In summary, the police learned that some people were going to perform an unpermitted protest, they infiltrated the group's temporary staging ground, and arrested them the night before they did anything. Sure, if the people's protest got disruptive, arrest them, but to preemptively arrest them... scary(Search on page for Puppetistas)
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.