DRM and Democracy

jar writes to tell us Bruce Perens has a short editorial on why DRM could have an impact on much more than just our record collections. From the article: "Within the last century, electronic communications have increasingly become the vehicle of democratic discourse. Because radio and television broadcasting are expensive with limited frequencies available, the wealthy have dominated broadcasting. The Internet and World Wide Web place into the common man's hands the capability of global electronic broadcasting. [...] In order to protect democratic discourse in the future, the Internet must remain a fair and level playing field for the distribution of political speech. The full capability of the Internet must remain available to all, without restriction by religious, business, or political interests."

Comments

Yeah maybe,

[2.7182]

But probably not. The truth of the matter is that there will be a 100 petabyte flashdrive that people hand around that has ALL of music on it and the issue will be moot.

Why Net Neurtality legislation is so important

[elrous0]

This subject really applies more to "Net Neutrality" than DRM. When big media controls the pipes, they effectively control the internet, unfortunately. We should stop that now, before it's too late and the Internet becomes every bit as locked-down as the airwaves and big media outlets.

-Eric

Re:Why Net Neurtality legislation is so important

[Zeio]

Until we have public key voting and the ability to verify that the votes we cast were counted (verification of the vote should be able to be done online or at kiosks at City Halls, Post Offices and Police Stations) we don't even have a democratic constitutional republic.

DRM, DMCA, the Patriot Act are making aggressive progress against the rights of "The People," where there seems to be a basic assumption of guilt.

Back to the problem. If you don't know how the votes were tallied and that the elected officials were really the ones who won and have more than two parties allowed in each election (for all intents we have a two party exclusive system here in the US) we are going to keep getting these empty suit politicians.

Both the GOP and the Dems are screwing the public so bad with illegal junk un-constitutional legislation it hurts to watch.

Focus on how we count votes and making voting VERY transparent and verifiable online and may be able to make inroads.

That's true, but...

[malraid]

the issue is that most people (in the US at least) don't care about democracy. They use the Internet to search for thinds that require little actual thinking. Right now top searches for Google are: the omen, french open, and father's day. The issue is that people just don't care. People don't care that their liberties are taken away as long as the can watch the game on tv and look for porn on the net.

Re:That's true, but...

[Kadin2048]

I think your example of Iraq is flawed in a number of ways. The question there is not `why didn't gun ownership topple his regime?' But `why wasn't his regime toppled, despite a populace that was relatively well-armed?'

I think the answer there is because quite a few people didn't hate his government as much as we'd like to think they did. Maybe they weren't real fond of it, but generally they didn't hate it enough to take to the streets and start shooting. People will deal with quite a lot of repression for their government, if it keeps the lights on most of the time and the water flowing and the gasoline cheap. Saddam did that, and outside of the Kurds I'm not sure if the general population was ever as rebellious as we here in the U.S. like to think they were.

Second, although I'm as big a proponent of gun ownership as anyone, the value of a single person with a gun is limited. Several people with guns is better, but still probably ineffectual in the long run. But a few thousand people with guns, acting in concert, is an army. So really, in order to make much use of your 2nd Amendment rights, you have to be able to exercise your 1st. It's the ability of people to talk and organize that makes them dangerous, particularly when they're armed.

Conversely, you can keep even an armed populace docile, if you can squash dissent early before it has a chance to grow, and you can keep people from talking about what's bothering them, and realizing that there are other people who feel the same way they do. I suspect Saddam's government operated this way quite effectively. Even if you have a gun, you're a lot less likely to do something by yourself than you are if you're standing with other people who share what you believe.

I very much doubt that the drafters of the Constitution ever thought that any one particular right would act as a check against tyranny by itself; rather, it's a combination of our rights: that of the press, of speech, of assembly, to bear arms, to not have soldiers in our homes, which together make it more difficult for a government to oppress the populace. Without any one of those, our position would be substantially weakened versus an oppressive regime; conversely none of those alone would be able to protect us.

Uh...

[everphilski]

the issue is that most people (in the US at least) don't care about democracy. They use the Internet to search for thinds that require little actual thinking. Right now top searches for Google are: the omen, french open, and father's day.

No... yeah of course those three are going to be popular because they are common. Plenty of people make uncommon searches. But the thing about diverse searches is ... if we all made the same diverse searches ... wait for it ... they woudln't be uncommon or diverse anymore! Just because the most popular searches are brain-dead doesn't mean everyone is brain-dead, it just means that there is a common thread among people.

Re:always ask for a refund

[dick pubes]

Nonsense.

Whatever conditions appear when you play the disc are not part of your agreement to buy the disc. You bougth one copy of the DVD, you own it. No question about it.

It's still true that you cannot do everything you migth like with it. But that's because of copyright-law, and not because of any legal-sounding bullshit on the disc itself.

Copyright-law prevents you from, among other things performing the work in public and distributing copies of the work.

This issue is orthogonal to DRM

[WalterGR]

A number of "Internet radio" and "streaming TV" devices and programs have become available today. Most of the products sold for this purpose only receive stations that have been enabled through the gateway site of product's manufacturer...

Imagine the problem for democracy if, when that day dawns, the manufacturers of our access devices are a few companies that have attained a market lock on Internet broadcasting, thus determining what political viewpoints the electorate can receive.

This issue is orthogonal to DRM. The problem is restricting what data sources these devices can listen to.

Re:Freedom of Speech trumps DRM

[aaribaud]

I guess the idea is that once DRM is generalized, it is a trivial matter to switch from a "non-DRMed content is allowed by default" to a "only DRMed content is allowed" stance, and then, to be able to produce content that anyone can actually see, any individual would depend on DRM providers. But surely no DRM "key holder" would even only think of deciding which content deserves being DRMed and which content should be banned, err, bared, from being viewed, or even known of.

Re:exactly...

[Kadin2048]

for another the guy seems to completely ignore open formats which will remain so either by virtue of the GPL or by virtue of the lack of a DRM specification (such as MP3) in the standard. while major outlets may end up drm'ed to hell, there will always be a format allowing people to make an internet stream on their own.

This is true, but only if people can play back data that's been encoded into one of these free formats.

I don't think it's very hard to imagine a future where the most common playback device would only play music recorded in a proprietary format: as much as I like the iPod, it's pretty close. It plays MP3 (patent encumbered, although everyone just seems to ignore that), AAC (semi-proprietary, although documented, probably patent encumbered), and Apple Lossless (proprietary, not sure if it's open or not).

Right now we don't see this as much of a problem -- after all, anyone with iTunes can encode to any of these formats. So if I wanted to make a radio show and distribute it, easy enough. But that doesn't have to be the case: suppose the next-generation of CDs weren't easily rippable, or they just came pre-encoded in one of the proprietary formats. Then there would be no need for the average consumer to have an encoder. It would be like MPEG-2 was a few years ago: you could buy a lot of pre-encoded content, but making your own was a real bitch.

Suppose also that computers by default become incapable of running code that hasn't been signed by an approval authority. Even if somebody wrote a free encoded for the non-free formats (which would probably be illegal to import and use), most people probably wouldn't be able to run it. Similarly with decoders for the free formats.

The fact that formats like Ogg Vorbis or Xiph exist won't matter if 80% of the population doesn't have an easy way of listening to them. Alternatives like that will always exist for geeks and people interested in technology, but they're pretty far from mainstream. The majority of the population lives at the whims of whatever's available on the the mass market, and given that they're allowed to vote, it's worth keeping an eye on the situation there, even if you and I and all the other people reading this on Slashdot won't be directly impacted.

Bad ordinance

[Mal-2]

So the proper answer to a bad ordinance is to drop the "i" and open up with the ordnance?

This is why those in power boil the frog. In order for them to get what they desire, there must be no flash point, no single act so heinous that the populace says "hey wait a minute!".

The fact is that when the shit hits the fan, you won't be able to fend off a tank with your shotgun. Certainly you can fend off one cop, or fight a dozen to a standoff, but if you're wanted bad enough and your location is known, you won't be on the loose for very long. You may just be sieged until you have to come out or starve, or you may have the authorities go Waco on you. Or you could just be "disappeared" and declared an "enemy combatant".

Did you know David Koresh used to walk to Wal-Mart three or four times a week? If authorities had wanted to arrest him, they could have. Instead they wanted to set a loud example, knowing full well it could go to hell in a handbasket the way it did. The War on Terra is just a logical extension of this existing policy. Both parties are responsible for putting us frogs in the water and heating it up. It's just that one of them lately has been so blatant about it -- it may yet work, or they may get tossed out for the moment. As soon as the furor dies down, it's back to politics as usual, and power grabbing as always.

Of course there is a difference in which groups get scapegoated by those in power, and there is a small handful on both sides who truly believe they are doing what is best for all concerned, but ultimately, money talks and all else walks. We don't have a voice. The bankrupting of the middle class (have you checked debt loads lately?) and of the country itself mean that dissenting voices will be too busy scrounging up enough money to "put food on their children" and not have time to cause problems for government.

Face it, your gun is only going to help you fight off your equally starving neighbor. You won't be putting up any significant resistance to air strikes, commando raids, or even SWAT teams.

Mal-2