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Darknet: Hollywood's War
War ain't pretty, and this book delivers the goods as a primer on how digital technologies and "personal media" (podcasts, videoblogs, digital stories, Internet television, video games) are "throwing the old rules into disarray" and "shifting the balance of power begween big media and regular people." I would have liked to have seen more about Linux and open-source software, but the author is clearly aiming for a mainstream audience.
Darknet sounds at times like it could have been written by a team of Slashdotters, ripping to shreds the entertainment cartel's claims that the locks they're putting into our digital devices are for our own good, their claims that this is a fight about theft and piracy, and other distortions that the author exposes to devastating effect. (Larry Lessig, Ian Clarke, the president of Sony's Columbia TriStar studios, DVD inventor Warren Lieberfarb and a number of digital lawbreakers are just a few of the interesting characters parading through the book.)
While big thinkers like Lessig, Doc Searls and Howard Rheingold (who wrote the foreword) have constructed the intellectual scaffolding that alerted us to Hollywood's goals of fencing in the Internet and keeping the public domain from expanding, it is left to reporters like Lasica to uncover the depressing specifics of the copyright cartel's actions.
Fascinating stories abound, like the cross-industry meetings between Hollywood lawyers, gutless wonders from the consumer electronics industry, and reps from the tech sector discussing how to divide the world into region codes like the powers at Potsdam. (one studio went so far as to propose that GPS chips be placed in all computers with a DVD player so that Hollywood could enforce region coding from the sky. It's reported here for the first time.)
Or the story of what Hollywood was after in its litigation against Sonicblue's ReplayTV. According to former CTO Andy Wolfe, the studioswere intent on decreeing how long viewers could keep a program after it was recorded on a digital video recorder. They wanted to limit how many episodes of the same show viewers could record. They wanted to ban 30-sec skip buttons and to prevent fast forward from reaching a certain speed. They wanted to cap how much programming anyone could record -- a level that Wolfe's personal laptop already exceeds.
The tech industry comes in for some bruising too, as the author demonstrates how Microsoft, HP, and a raft of other tech companies are more than willing to sell out their customers (as long as all the other big boys in the club do it too) in return for allaying the fears of paranoid Hollywood studio chieftains whose nightmares consist of piracy, piracy, piracy. Lasica says it's too early to tell whether the "trusted computing" initiative is merely a Trojan horse foisted on PC manufacturers and chip makers by the silver tongue of Jack Valenti.
Anyone with an interest in how our digital freedoms are being whittled away, how the music, movie and television landscapes are about to change forever, or how a new, empowered generation of users (mostly young people) see media differently than the older crowd, would benefit from marking up their copy of Darknet (bring two yellow markers). As the author Media will change more in the next five years than it has in the past 50 years."
Lasica has been writing about citizens' media for years, and he recently founded the grassroots media site Ourmedia.org with the help of the Internet Archive. (Remember when Slashdot brought down the site on its first day?) Last weekend I heard him interviewed on NPR's On the Media, talking about why the RIAA and MPAA don't have a clue in hell about remix culture.
But don't believe me. Decide for yourselves. Check out Darknet.com, where the author has been blogging for a couple of years. (His blog readers provided the book's subtitle and they helped edit the book.) Lots of goodies on the site: a free mini-book, including new material and chapters from the book. (Especially noteworthy are The teenage filmmakers for a look at copyright law's absurdities and The Prince of Darknet for a fascinating glimpse inside the movie underground.) Also, you'll find a backgrounder on what the hell darknetshave to do with all this (I don't know, Darknet seems like a book publisher's idea of a sexy title) ... and something I've never seen from a mainstream journalist before: tons of links to sites like doom9.net, SmartRipper, Region-Free Guide, Total Recorder, Daemon Tools, isoheaven and more.
Some of this turf is no doubt familiar to Slashdotters. And, as I said, the book could have benefited from a deeper look at the history of open source software. But it's good to see these ideas getting some serious play -- finally -- in the mainstream media, and Hollywood getting some much-needed pushback.
You can purchase Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
From the review:
Damn....that's harsh...
Seriously, though, it looks like a fascinating read (especially the part about GPS chips in laptops). However, with a price tag of $25.95 list ('B&N' price: $20.76...'member' price: $18.68...why so many prices?), I think I'll just grab the torrent. ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Nice how restricting peoples rights is compared to restricting peoples rights and the deaths of millions. Really glad we care about DRM so much that we'll wage a war on it, yet happily ignore the illegal war raging in Iraq.
Yay for slashdot, news for nerds, ignoring stuff that matters!
(and karma nose diving in 3..2...1).
I like muppets.
Dear T/\/\/\/\,
It seems you have some skewed views about your posting methods.
I hope I can clarify a few things for you:
1) You appear to equate an early post filled with regurgitated article with something that deserves a +5 Insightful Mod - This is a poor assumption.
2) Your early post successes are due to your *Subscriber status. This does not make them stunning revelations.
3)
Overuse of whitespace is goddamned annoying
4)It seems your over-inflated sense of self worth has resulted in a backlash. Nobody likes a know-it-all toolbox.
5) Familiarize yourself with YHBT. Rebutting a Troll in your own whiny defence adds one more nail to the door that keeps you locked in your parents basement.
6) You are a Karma Whore. Those unfamiliar with your posting tactics are the ones modding you up. This unknowingly makes them Karma Johns. Thats kinda like entrapment. That's not nice. Some of those folks have spouses and families and are just trying to let off some harmless Karma steam.
I find my thoughts drifting to the image of you sitting red-faced with rage reading this. I'm imagining you shakily typing a calm and composed reply through a haze of hate filled tears.
Let me know how that whole belltower/rifle thing works out for you.
1992 called...they want their holier-than-thou troll back.
Trolling the trolls who troll the trolls since '92
Fascinating stories abound, like the cross-industry meetings between Hollywood lawyers, gutless wonders from the consumer electronics industry, and reps from the tech sector discussing how to divide the world into region codes like the powers at Potsdam. (one studio went so far as to propose that GPS chips be placed in all computers with a DVD player so that Hollywood could enforce region coding from the sky. It's reported here for the first time.)
Fascinating for sure but more like science fiction or out and out bullshit. GPS units don't work so well inside buildings. Hell, they don't work so well in tree covered areas (depending on the unit and antenna).
Is more than one Hollywood involved?
but the author is clearly aiming for a mainstream audience.
Expect it to become a best-seller.
Darknet sounds at times like it could have been written by a team of Slashdotters.
That's a pretty mean thing to say.
Save yourself $3 by buying it here: Darknet: Hollywoods War
So, where is the torrent for the book download?
Seriously though - why isn't this book released under creative commons?
I'm teminally incoherent
I oppose the illegal war in Iraq and the wiping out of my fair use rights and privacy rights by the demons spawned from DRM.
I also see where DRM can be a backdoor for corporate and government thieves to sneak in and steal a huge portion of even more important civil rights.
Check out Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read":
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Why has the DarkNet paper gotten this much attention? My guess is that there are two reasons. First, the paper was written by guys from Microsoft Research, and Microsoft has previously taken a pro-DRM position. The paper includes a standard disclaimer saying that it is the opinion of the authors and not of Microsoft. But still it reflects a change. In past years, conference presentations from industrial researchers, both at Microsoft and elsewhere, have shied away from anti-DRM statements, so as to keep their employers happy (although vigorous anti-DRM language could often be heard at dinner afterwards). So non-techies will put more weight on the paper because of its authors affiliation.
Only three remote holes in the default install, in more than 10 years! OpenBSD
At any rate, while the reviewer may or may not be accurately representing the book, his description of the original paper as "shoveled dirt onto the coffin of DRM as a business model" is nonsensical.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I beg the /. powers to proofread what they post. In this case, we have a missing apostrophe in the title.
Show us that you care about this website's quality!
That is the dumbest thing that I have read all day.
It's worth to point out that the large media and proprietary software interests have pretty much made this an all or nothing game. Either all information will need to be digitally controlled for all time, or it will need to be free to copy unrestricted for any purpose or reason.
It will be interesting to see how much:
1. The book sells
2. The book's topic is covered and/or promoted on more mainstream media outlets.
And then, if he's labeled either positively in a Woodward/Berstein way or "agenda" reporter way that discredits his point-of-view.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
For only about £16 or something, depending, this book sounds well worth it and I shall be buying a copy as soon as I can.
All these new technologies really do require a complete rethink of how media should be delivered as at the moment we seem to be stuck with an old model that refuses to make it easy for the consumer whilst overcharging for the inconvenience of such a service.
I don't watch TV any more because I have to then schedule my life around shows I want to see rather than just sit down and watch what I feel like, when I feel like it. Of course, to be able to do that, we seem to have to resort to bittorrent because otherwise content is simply unavailable, unless we remember to go out and buy a whole season on DVD first, which we can of course all afford to do..
Reading the excerpt itself sounds like very strong hollywood propoganda. Against everyone else including SW vendors, CE manufacturers
It's really pretty simple from Hollywood's point of view: control the distribution mechanism, something they are used to, and control access, something else they are used to. Just because it is the internet does not mean that they will not try to apply the business model that has worked well for them for nearly a century. In fact, given their history, it would be surprising if they did not.
Keep in mind that Hollywood has largely tried to stifle technlogical innovation outside of their control: they complained about television, because it would keep people from the theatres. Then, they mastered that medium and made even more money because of it. Then, later, they complained about VCRs, because it would allow people to record films and not pay them for the privilege. Then, as with television, they mastered that medium and made even more money because of it. They resisted DVDs initially because it would be easy to make "perfect" copies from a DVD, and they put on an exceptionally weak encryption scheme to thwart that from happening. Of course, the 'DRM' was thwarted, people now copy DVDs, and guess what: Hollywood makes more money because of DVDs.
Now comes the internet. As usual, Hollywood is resisting this new technology and are saying what they usually say: it will cost them money. However, if history serves as a guide, they will eventually master this medium too and make money because of it.
There is piracy, there is little doubt about that. While it does prevent some sales of DVDs or movie tickets, in some cases it has gone the other way and has drawn interest into a film or a TV show. There is much speculation that the producers of Battlestar Galactica conducted a quiet stealtht marketing ploy by allowing their show to be distributed via BitTorrent and other P2P vectors -- and it worked. BG gained an audience, and surely some of it came from those who had downloaded earlier episodes. Now, the same is being said of the new Doctor Who. Surely, few Americans would see it if it were not for the illegal distributions. There is a lot of interest in this new show and it is surely because of P2P, because the show is not available in any form (legally) in the USA.
At the end of the day, all of Hollywood's fighting will turn to gradual acceptance. Whether or not it is on their terms is their and the market's choice. The internet is here to stay, and so is piracy. Instead of focussing on preventing piracy, perhaps Hollywood should add enough to the value propostition that piracy is an afterthought. Many would gladly pay to get electronic distributions of shows via the internet, and it is up to Hollywood to get out of their office chairs and to figure out how to profit from it. History says that they will, but it does not foretell WHEN they will.
to use something like those The Truth smoking commericals.
MPAA exec 1: Let's put GPS chips in all computers so were can track if they are playing their (well really ours ) DVDs. If they don't play it in the right region, be know the exact location and can order congress to bomb it.
RIAA exec 1: Well GPS isn't selling albums right now, they can't even break into the top 100...all because of piracy. The CD has 3 songs on it and at $18.00 with our "shifty" copy protection we should be making billions. Instead some kid holds down the shift key when he played it on his PC and now it's all over the internet. We only sold one copy because of this.
RIAA exec 2: I think he meant those tracking thingies, not the group.
RIAA exec 1: Have you even heard of GPS...they are the bomb, here, I just got their album torrent from suprnova.
MPAA exec 1: dumbasses
Closing: It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't true
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
"Last weekend I heard him interviewed on NPR's On the Media, talking about why the RIAA and MPAA don't have a clue in hell about remix culture."
I beg to differ with Lessig and the rest on the benefits of public domain. Let me suggest to you the biggest benefit is not some vague cultural gain when an item goes into public domain. The big benefit is MORE JOBS MAKING NEW STUFF.
How much public domain stuff is on television, radio, books? Almost none. It doesn't make sense to promote a public domain work because anyone could come along and release the same item, leeching off your marketing and undercutting you on price.
So public domain works are available to use, but not worth marketing because you can't get an exclusive on them.
Now consider the other extreme: infinite copyright & perfect DRM. Sony/BMG/Vivendi etc. simply sells music recorded centuries earlier by long dead musicians, endless re-releases from one generation to the next. For the next gazillion years. No work is done, computers send out the files, and take the money -> no jobs.
You have to let works expire into the public domain (free from DRM) to force companies to make new stuff because 'new stuff' = jobs.
Actually, that could be bad or it could be good. Was that crack team of slashdotters drawn from the bottom 1% or to top 1%? (Ok, on average, it's be pretty bad, though.)
As a supporter of fair use, I always try to download a free copy of a song or movie instead of paying for it.
The war on corporate greed (RIAA etc) will not end until artists come to realize that it is wrong to gouge money out of people just for appreciating a creative work.
True art comes from creative desire, not the profit motive. Michelangelo did not make his masterpieces with the intent of charging admissions, and neither did Mozart. Greed-obssessed "artists" of today would do well to learn fromt their example.
Support fair use!
Well, at least you've got it all figured out :-)
Their main fear is not illegal copying; their main fear is films becoming too easy to produce and distribute. Then the expensive studios wouldn't be needed, since any amateur could produce a film just as good as theirs for a fraction of the price. The loss of their money trees is what they fear.
If you want to do some real good, go out and put your money where your mouth is, and buy a copy of this and send it to your senator or representative. Enough of these copies show up, and either the legislators themselves or their staff will read it. From what I've seen on the Hill, having the staff aware of it goes a long way towards the legislator being aware of it, as no one has their ear like their own staff.
It's said that a handwritten letter gets more attention, as it clearly conveys the time and effort the sender put into it. Well, purchasing a book and sending it takes not only time, but money as well, and will get attention.
We have to make sure that Congress understands the truth of what's going on.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
As a supporter of fair use, I always try to download a free copy of a song or movie instead of paying for it.
What an f'ed up definition of "fair use". Fair use is media backup or transfer once you have paid for the original media presentation of a work.
The war on corporate greed (RIAA etc) will not end until artists come to realize that it is wrong to gouge money out of people just for appreciating a creative work.
Artists have always either been commissioned for works, or charged for uncommisioned works displayed for sale in galleries. This has been true since long before either copyright or fair use existed conceptually.
True art comes from creative desire, not the profit motive. Michelangelo did not make his masterpieces with the intent of charging admissions, and neither did Mozart.
Pure. Unadulterated. Crap. Both Michaelangelo and Mozart were both commissioned to create most of their works; even the most famous examples were for profit. Mozart particularly earned box office revenue for symphony presentations.
And, again, that is typical of artists throughout history, prior to "intelectual property" law. The first plays and musicals were done by roving acting troupes who would "pass the hat" afterwords.
Please keep your mucked up version of history private from now on.
Destroying an asset (by asset, I mean copyright's government-created monopoly, not the copyrighted work itself) for the purpose of creating jobs, is a bad idea. If you were to generalize that thinking, then suddenly it becomes a great idea to nuke cities (or use your diabolical weather-control machine to conjure hurricanes) for the purpose of creating construction jobs. Injure people to create medical jobs. When a puppy reaches the age of 2 years, make people put their puppy into a shredding machine, so that they'll need to buy more puppies, thereby creating puppy ranching jobs. (BTW, in case anyone is wondering, I'm talking about very cute puppies, who have big eyes, floppy ears, and who lovingly lick you and never crap on the carpet.)
Swell. On the books, you end up with a greatly expanded economy. But off the books, everyone is miserable and poor. A good rule of thumb: destruction is a bad thing.
Creating jobs is not a worthwhile goal in itself, and it is not necessarily good for the economy. Whenever a politician talks about how great he is, just because he's going to create jobs, I know he is a scumbag.
The reason copyrights (and patents) should expire, is simply quid pro quo. We give the creator a temporary (and hopefully very profitable) monopoly on the work, and they eventually give us the work itself. Everybody comes out ahead. The idea is that the alternative (not giving them a monopoly) results in them never giving us anything (they don't create or release the work).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I agree totally... we need copyright to expire after a fair period, say 14 years. And we need DRM providers to register the encryption keys with some third-party service, be it Microsoft, some other certification company, the gov't, or some combination of those groups. The keys are released to the public after the copyright date is up, and the locks are removed.
I work for a DRM company, so I know how simple this would be to implement. I don't have any personal problems with using DRM for business systems, but infinite copyright is a load of crap, and I think that's the real issue people have problems with.
To which I say, "GOOD!"
If they want a protected file format, let them create a digital format of their own. Let them try to sell it and watch the public refuse to adopt it. Will they? No. More likely insist on crippling current industry standards and equipment to suit their paranoia.
It's been said before but bears repeating. This isn't about reality. Logically they know every copied file is not a loss of money as most people would not have spent their money on it in the first place because most of what is being traded is craptastic fluff to distract them from their lives.
As long as they can keep repeating their lie long and loud enough however, they know the short attention span and lack of dedication to careful thought on the part of their audience will let it essentially become the truth and allow them the coveted mantle of victimhood.
The people who resisted the VCR for the surface reason that it would result in piracy and financial loss but in reality did so because they feared having to meet a new standard in product quality to avoid their materials being rejected at the theater and sent straight to video with lower immediate proceeds are not victims.
I must get around to buying this book for the amusement.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
some one fighting for money artists? bethoveen? SHAKE-S-PIERRE ? OR Britney spear... wrong! error! I'm telling you! NOT MODDING: I DONT EXIST :P
what's with the all references to coffins in todays stories? Did someone die?
Consumers have the right and the duty to consume, northing more or less; unless you are in an economics class, the word you should use is "citizen."
Best Slashdot comment ever
no they won't
the internet will destroy them
the internet obsoletes them and will destroy them and they know it
I'd really like to see a book on the similarity between big corporations, especially in the U.S., and Soviet ministries. There was a technology pundit on Charlie Rose this week who applied just this label to:
- Cable and satellite providers
- Cell phone companies in the U.S.
- The baby bells
It could easily be extended to movie studios, media giants, Clearchannel, GM and Ford, Boeing and Lockheed, etc.
The excellent documentary on Burt Rutan and SpaceshipOne, "Black Sky: The Race for Space", is playing on Discovery Science this week, a mnust see if you haven't. Towards the end of the second part the aero engineer made the point increasingly everyone is made to feel they can't do anything amazing unless they are part of a big corporation or government. They wanted to show 20 guys, with a little of Paul Allen's money, could do something only 3 giant governments have done previously, put a man in to space(and they broke the altitude record for an air launched vehicle dating to the X-15 in 1963). There are numerous barbs at NASA, Boeing and Lockheed and the role they've played in completely wrecking the U.S. as a space faring nation since the end of Apollo.
Anyway the gist of the proposed book would be that all of America's giant corporations keep touting free enterprise and free markets while they in fact want no such thing. They want free markets but only for them and they WANT any potential competitors snuffed out. They dont want any government regulation of them but they are delighted with regulation, or holes in the same, that allows them to destroy their competitors and to protect their dominant position. They increasingly have more politicians and lobbiests than inventors and engineers. They want to snuff out competition with patent law, regulation, government subsidies(loans, tax breaks, contracts), and predatory monopolistic practices, all the while ranting that there is to much government regulation and they are fans of free markets, though increasingly they write all those regulations. Increasingly there one and only innovative business plan is to move their work force to the cheapest possible labor market to cut costs, so they can continue to be rpofitable for a time though the increasingly don't invest in developing new and innovative products.
The conclusion of the story. In many mature industries the U.S. has ceased to be a free market economy. Free enterprise wasn't a victim of government regulation or Socialism. It was the victim of a few giant companies that came to dominate each market, and now use armies of lawyers and lobbies to destroy competition. American corporations in particular are starting to atrophy and can't compete on a global stage against companies who are really innovating and doing real R&D. John McCain recently pointed out how sad it is that innovative technology like hybrid vehicles is all happening in Japan and not Detroit(who are instead just licensing Japanese technology). Detroit in particular has a long history of innovating only when they are compelled to. American companies no longer compete through innovation, they only vie to protect their position with lawyers and lobbyists.
You can still have stellar new companies like Google but its typicaly only in very new markets with no entrenched players. The only counterpoint I can think of at the moment is in the airlines. The totally corrupt big three have been virtually destroyed by new competitors like Southwest who observed U.S. airlines were brutually inefficient and not providing the service people wanted, and created a new lean economic model and managed to succeed in spite of the entrenched position of the big three, and frequent government subsidies which keep them afloat.
@de_machina
Your idea of writing-your-congressman will have just as much effect as the *Ban-The-Bomb* buttons did back in the 60's.
We are up against illegal forces in the government and assorted undertainment industries-- who *THINK* they hold all the cards.
The Fluff (like your talking about), or *stopping* what we are doing, are not only NOT going to change these scumbags in power, but it's not an option for the Citizens of Earth.. PERIOD!!
Now these *forces* are resorting to tactics including scarring and putting little children in jail and ruining their lives, for downloading legal data.
Now because these *forces* are using violence (being arrested, jail, and all the assorted activities that go with this course of action, it is only fair to say that any opposing side (ie joe consumer, hackers (I mean programmers..) can hardly be expected to *resort* to the same tactics, since *The-System* is siding as-usual against the individual.
However I personally am not against using the same actions against the recording industry, and their co-conspirators/supporters, with the aid of deputised citizens, posses, assorted gang-type -- sudo-vigilante antics!!
Although I do admit, that hopefully, simply continueing on with the likes of torrents, etc, will probably be enough to cause the old-guizers in power at the likes of the RIAA to have a stroke and drop-ded first. :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
RIGHT!!
So there!! take that!!! :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Because selling it gets the author some money.
And selling paper copies while distributing it online under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 doesn't? Try telling that to Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Some people will pay a premium for a professionally bound paper copy.
Quick solution; require IP to be registered annually - for a fee. If the IP is truly valuable ,(from a commercial standpoint), the fees will be paid. If not, the works revert to the PD.
I agree that a copyright that is not blanket-licensed in some fashion should be taxed like land, but how would that be compatible with international treaties that require governments to recognize foreign authors' copyrights without any formalities?
By the same logic, <sarcasm>BSD style open source software obviously doesn't exist since no one in their right mind would ever release code of marketable value to the public at no charge.</sarcasm>
Your logic may hold in the field of infrastructural computer programs, which are often not appreciated by residential users, but where is the BSD style open source music? Where are the BSD style open source movies?
It's really pretty simple from Hollywood's point of view: control the distribution mechanism, something they are used to, and control access, something else they are used to...
Now comes the internet. As usual, Hollywood is resisting this new technology and are saying what they usually say: it will cost them money. However, if history serves as a guide, they will eventually master this medium too and make money because of it.
What are you saying here? That Hollywood should control the Internet as they would any distribution mechanism?
I think the end of the drama is written upon the wall. The digitally connected masses will soon remove the mass from media. Here's why:
1. The balance of power has already shifted to the masses in a sort of first mover advantage. The backlash coming from the entertainment industry is reflexive. It happens *after* networked mobs creatively, unexpectedly, disruptively take technology into their own hands. The tension between the entertainment industry and the online world simply represents that shift of power and control away from mass media.
2. What will the entertainment industry be when consumers en masse, produce their own "as good or better than" diversions? Blogs spontaneously exploded news into millions of niches, leaching the mass from news media. Cheap high tech multimedia production tools will soon provide grass roots entertainment more riveting than Hollywood fare. The imagination and creativity of crowds is absolutely capable of producing open source, distributed entertainment exponentially increasing in novelty. The mass entertainment industry will soon compete with high quality virtually free grass roots alternatives from the digitally connected masses, and take its rightful place as another niche. What "mass" will be left to market to?
3. Litigation takes a lot of time. Since technological advances also accelerate events, inflexible, knee jerk systems will eventually be overwhelmed with the speed of disruption. There will soon not be enough time to react before the next volley. Future shock paralyses the most inflexible systems first. So, ultimately, in a digitally networked world, control is distributed to the masses. But the question keeps returning: Is Big Brother a Possible Future?Will some central organization, representing narrow interests be able to control what citizens share electronically? I don't think so. The imminent emergence of open source personal self-replicating fabricators will spit out an ever growing complexity of items, all of which will be embedded with personalized computational intelligence. So, no consistent control over hardware standards will be possible. Chips will not answer to a centralized institution.
As self-replicating fabricators rapidly spread to thousands and then millions of people, they will mutate and evolve; enlisted to upgrade and propagate their own next generation. Mobjects from the collective creative energy of Smart Mobs. This spells the end of the consumer/ producer divide. What will mass marketing be without a mass market?
P. S. The rise of personal replicating desktop fabricators is one of the trends I've followed closely since October 2004. I was pleased to see CNN cover the emergence of desktop fabricators only a few days ago. The blogosphere scooped CNN by many months :)
Ted
Thoughts on the Emergence of Computing Intelligence
Did you know Sudan is CHAIRMAN of the UN Human Rights Commission? I know, amazed me too..the only country on earth that still permits slavery is chairman of a Human Rights commission. Go figure.
Sudan has also joined with Rwanda, Cuba, Libya and other fine examples of human dignity to form a UN Small Arms Conference in NYC in summer 2006 with the aim of getting civilian handguns banned....worldwide. US included.
So, in addition to the the US ignoring the genocide in Sudan, we're about to let them tell us we have to give up our handguns used for sport (IPSC/IDPA) or defense.
Didn't we used to have cajones?
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
Carrying everything in his head, safely and securely and unstealably, even he didn't know what he was carrying, from one place to another.
:-)
Its __all__ been done before. (And people ask me why I read sci-fi...
The only way to transport information safely is to NOT broadcast it. Bit of a problem for a media company since it has to let you in on the 'secret' if it wants to see any money.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
But that's not to say Congress should be left out of this discussion. They can pass a lot of crap to make things worse. And in some cases, congressmen don't know what they're voting on.
I don't know that educating Congress will effect much change. But I do think that it could help. This is a long-term battle, and we've got to start somewhere.
A higher-up at the Consumer Electronics Association told me they were thinking of buying a copy of "Darknet" for every member of Congress. (Obviously, they think it could make a difference.) I don't know that they'll do that, but the idea of bringing other voices (from the grassroots) into this discussion -- people who use digital technology but are not lobbyists, lawyers or academics -- can only help.
- jd (the author)
Works typically bring in most of their money in the first few years.
Not necessarily. Dr. Seuss Enterprises and others have argued that sometimes it takes several decades between the release of a book and the release of a film based on that book. How long was this for The Cat in the Hat by Theodor Seuss Geisel?
I seem to remember a speech at the UN. Satellite images and some guy pointing at it and saying "these trucks are where the WMDs are being manufactured." A bunch of guys I see in the paper all the time promising me they knew there were WMDs and they knew where they were.... Weird, huh? Must've been some crazy hallucination.
Cthulhu loves you.
Just as there are several Internets (Internet, Abilene/I2, and private internets under RFC 1918), there are six Hollywoods (Warner, Disney, Sony, Universal, Fox, and Paramount), not to mention Bollywood (Mumbai motion picture industry).
Well put. I think you're absolutely right. The record labels could make considerably greater profits if they were less obsessed about piracy and more open to inventive new business models, even if they are "leaky" as the iTunes model. Same for Hollywood, with its crippled Movielink and CinemaNow services. Perfect protection is impossible in the digital age. Get used to it.
- jd (the author)
So we compromised. I'm releasing a mini-book online -- excerpts from the book, along with interview transcripts and new stuff, every Monday at Darknet.com.
Some day, book publishers will release all new works onto the Net in some fashion (perhaps with ebook DRM, perhaps not). But, alas, we ain't there yet.
- jd (the author)
- jd (the author)
No.
Not only would iTunes make less money if the had more DRM, but Microsoft is also clearly committed to dragging their feet on DRM as well because they know it's bad for business and they always have known that which is why things are the way they are and this is why Apple is said to "get it".
But it's not just Apple and Microsoft either. Everybody knows DRM is lousy for business, even justices of the Supreme Court.
Court procedings are public documents with a GPL-alike character in that they are publicly owned.
So perhaps it's no surprise that even members of the court might "get it". I forget who it was but one of the justices going into Grokster gave quite a bit of opinion on what a good idea he thought the iPod was and that such devices need to be protected against litigation. That was after pointing out that the real reason to use an iPod was not because of the iTunes store, but because of the fact that people could fill it up with free data off the Net and plenty of it. And by free, he acknowledged both Net Radio and P2P as sources of getting free data to listen to on the iPod and that this was the key benefit of the iPod. Pretty straightforward.
That was a justice of the Supreme Court. So, a lot of people "get it".
The issue they're looking at in this session is P2P obviously and I guess we'll be hearing about that any minute. But without P2P there's still NetRadio. It's all there. In fact, the variety is stunning and that's not going away fast even in the US. And even if it did, it will never disappear internationally because laws about the use of airwaves vary dramatically across nations and the legitimate tie-in with existing radio laws makes it simply a fact that has to be accepted until those laws change and that's just not going to happen, even in the US. Given that there wasn't even such a thing as web radio just a few years ago, the odds of this happening internationally in a timely manner are negigible.
So, as long as there's net radio broadcasters and people have the legal right to make back-ups of radio station broadcasts then it is legitimate to have an enormous music collection. That will fill up an iPod or even a fatboy iPod with one of these 160Gig 2.5''notebook drives for the car. And with wireless so you can just pull in and download music from inside the house.
Hell, Apple had better move on a few new products in the near-term because if they don't the cell phones are gonna beat them to it with nothing but RAM. Shoot, and why not. You won't need WiFi with a phone that does WIFly mobile. Just stream from home and up or download whatever plalist you like wherever you are anytime. At that point you can just stream it off your desktop or home file server. If you get out of range for awhile you can buffer four gigs or so onto the local cache till you get back. I mean hell just look at the idea of a file server at home. There was no consumer product categoy for file servers a few years ago, but now there you see such things being sold in retail stores along with the related category of very cheap NAT routers. Those things tend to be especially fond of notebook drives and no wonder. They're often plug-and-play. Running them together with a little SOC package makes a cute little value added toy but they're as big as a terrabyte. And look at the prevalence of GigE in the consumer market. If GigE isn't going to be helpful to someone with a major media archive, I don't know what is. Ineed, what else are you using that kind of bandwidth for in the home environment? Writing e-mails?
So the answer is definitively no. Apple would not make more money with better DRM and neither would Sony or Samsung or Toshiba or Matsushita or Benq or Tatung or Hong Hai or Flextronic. Note that Flextronics is among the sponsors of OpenCores.org and has written up some interesting SOC work that they've done using OpenCores designs. None of those companies can benefit form greater DRM and they are all aware of it at many levels. That doesn't mean the
Why should we pay any attention to theives when there are still murderers walking around free!!
Presumably both issues deserve some attention.
Good point on the Battlestar, I had no interest in seeing that show really. I was bored one day and saw that torrent and said what the hell. Got me hooked and they are going to make money off me they normally wouldn't have. Plus, I've told a few people about it. Doctor Who, I'm pretty close to checking out a couple episodes.
Sloppy ( Horrible nickname, BTW ) wrote :
... is a bad idea. If you were to generalize that thinking ...
Destroying an asset
But he was not. Applying a principle, or a model, outside the original context (i.e. for different axioms) , although interesting intelectually, does not make a valid rebuttal.
In fact, it is ones of the main arguments of the "IP"-related political debate, that the "IP" kinds of "asset" (as you call it) , are not property and should be treated differently than other government-created monopolies.
PP's (in this regard, "sloppy") generalization ignores this completely.
Working for necessity's mother.
OK, I've had a few minor slips, I've flirted with easily breakable protection schemes, but my computers have all been free and clear of strong DRM for a quarter of a century now.
The top entry on the darknet site is a link to another blog and that writer's experience with Adobe's digital rights management. That really struck home for me, because it was a similar experience in the early '80s that led me to studiously avoid strong digital rights management for longer, I suspect, than the term has been around.
Almost 25 years ago I found myself huddled in a corner of a computer lab at the University of Houston with one of the local pirate software geeks getting a pirated copy of the game "Wizardry" copied over the legal version on my original floppy. Why? Because the copy protection on the diskette was so aggressive that after saving a game on a slightly mistimed floppy drive, once, it would only ever allow me to play the game using that same drive... and of course a drive whose timing has started to drift is not long for this world.
Wizardry was the last copy-protected game I bought. But, of course, that was no big deal, it was only a game. I don't need to play videogames. If I have to, I can write them myself, so I'm not jonesing for them at all.
Copy protection, of course, is a form of digital rights management, and that one bad experience immunized me to the appeal of DRMed software. Any DRMed software, because while it's no big deal to find yourself missing a videogame it's a much bigger problem if your OS depends on some kind of acid test.
More recently, I've had to email Apple and get them to clear all my authorized computers from their database at the iTunes Music Store because a flakey hard drive and a series of system reinstalls had caused me to exceed my maximum allowed authorizations... and you can't "deauthorize this computer" when "this computer" is now a cloud of quantum states no longer entangled with any physical hardware. This wasn't a big deal, most of my music is stuff I've ripped myself (got the CDs right here) and I had audio-CD backups of most of the tracks I'd bought BECAUSE I didn't trust DRMed content... and this sure reinforced that mistrust nicely.
I've since made ABSOLUTELY sure I've backup copies of my music on audio CDs before I considered any purchase "complete". No big deal, as long as I can do that... and besides it's only music, I can listen to the radio. But I'm going to make sure that any DRMed content I buy in the future has a backdoor... at least through the "analog hole" (so you can keep your watermarked music, Jack, I'll learn to play the piano before I buy any of that stuff).
But getting back to software... I refused to upgrade to Windows XP, because an operating system with DRM in its heart is way outside my comfort zone me, and it was the prospect of having to do so that finally got me to pay the "Mac Tax" and buy a Macintosh instead of dual-booting between FreeBSD and Windows... so I guess I should thank Microsoft for giving me the necessary nudge to make the switch.
The rumors I've heard about Apple using some kind of hardware DRM from Intel to keep people from running Mac OS X for Intel on generic clones really bother me: if the alternatives are a DRMed operating system from Microsoft or a DRMed operating system from Apple or giving up on popular commercial software completely, I guess I'll ride the Power PC bus until the wheels fall off and see if the world's come to its senses five years or so down the road. I don't really believe Steve Jobs is stupid enough to do that, the nudge-nudge-wink-wink protection in iTunes and Cory Doctorow's comments about the differences between his discussions with Microsoft and Apple are encouraging.
So, anyway, avoiding software and media with strong DRM hasn't been any great hardship, so far. But it's early day's yet... with luck I've got at least another quarter century of avoiding DRM ahead of me. I'm confident I can do it, one day at a time.
open source personal self-replicating fabricators
I think we're a long way from that. What people are demonstrating now is self-repair, using largely complete components, and fabrication of macro-scale objects. Devices that can replicate electronic and especially digital circuits to a fine enough precision that second or third generation machines actually work? I don't see that any time soon.
I love it how the author responding seriously to a question regarding licensing gets mod'ed flamebait.
That is if aaronsorkin indeed is the author. The wonders of internet credibility at work.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Thank you for reminding us that limited copyright and patent terms force companies and individuals to have to keep moving forwards, to get their profits from new material, not build a company that lives by sitting on a golden goose for decade after decade until long after it's obvious to everyone else that they don't really have anything innovative or new of their own any more.
Logically they know every copied file is not a loss of money as most people would not have spent their money on it in the first place
You can't really just assume logic though. One of the problems I've found with habitual liars, particularly those that make outrageous claims, is that they tend to believe their own lies. This happens either at the outset over the lie, or as they manipulate both themselves and others in an attempt to justify/hide/realize the lie.
I never followed the debate closely enough to've heard of Jack Valenti before. I'm now in chapter 3 and it's abundantly clear he's a jerkoff.
Cheers and thanks.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
I would like everyone who believes that the war in Iraq was justified and worthwhile to enlist in the military, or send a loved one to that war. Please. Put something you value on the line, because it must be worth it.
If you are not willing to do that, then don't state the war is justified. Any war that I support I would be willing to fight in (or let my child fight in). Anything else is chickenshit.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.