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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."
While in a theoretical world, this makes sense, in reality this isn't what's happened. When you look at the distribution of wealth (or knowledge, or access, or whatever), you find that since the internet these gaps have grown bigger, and while the big players may be new, the truth is out of the billions of sites online, the top thousand sites get 99.99% of the traffic. How's the democracy? How's that "power to the people"? While new technologies may come out that gives the "little guy" a voice for a while, this period goes away quickly as either entrenched companies jump into the fray (i.e. Microsoft/Apple/Dell) or new companies spring up (i.e. Google/Ebay/Amazon). -Jason Gravity Switch
I disagree. A large portion of the millions of new blogs have been created to rant. Check the search terms and popular tags on technorati. There's a lot of political discussion going on. Google isn't the only gateway to information. Millions of people are reading political blog posts in their RSS readers every day.
Developers: We can use your help.
Ah, and Bruce, sorry for being a grammar nazi, but please: Effects =/= Affects.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
While the broadcasting treaty raises much concern, the only reference to DRM has to do with proprietary formats being limited.
I'm sorry but as much as I am against DRM I don't think his example regarding internet radio streams holds water.
for one existing laws do the same thing without DRM. Major internet and satellite radio streaming companies already require contractual agreements and presumably the proprietors of the streams can "filter out" politically undesirable speech.
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Anything with DRM should have a message on it similar to the "WARNING: SMOKING KILLS" warning. I don't want a small label I have to search for - it should be big, clear, and standardised. The exact same logo/warning message should appear on every product. Something like "Warning: This product uses Digital Rights/Restrictions Management" would do the job.
Anyway, if anyone accidentally buys a product with DRM, they should be entitled to a refund. It is for all intents and purposes a defect, if you thought the product you were buying was a movie/music that you could use however you like.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
From the site:"The purpose of this web page is to serve as a focal point for investigations of the parallels between perhaps the two greatest qualitative jumps in communications capabilities of the last millennium - printing and internetted computers"
Further the same site has referenced a number of relevant papers:
" There is a wealth of information available on and off the Web that talks about printing and/or the Internet and/or their social and cultural implications. Since the interest of this web site is in the parallels between printing and the Internet and what they might tell us about policy about the Internet, only a small subset of such papers will be relevant to that understanding. Though even the concept of what is relevant will evolve, there are at least two general topics that should remain relevant:
understanding the parallels and divergences between printing and the Internet
understanding the history and impact of printing"
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Actually in my book, its as long as I have my firearms. The government can claim to do this that and the other thing, however with an armed populace, the goverment must still tread softly. You know what kicked off the American Revolution? The British going after an armory. Also we have a republic, not a democracy, we elect representatives to vote for us. The problem is, most representatives now days no longer care about their voters, instead the care about those willing to shell out money into their pockets. At this point as well, voting in the US doesn't do much good. If the voters vote something down, whoever's affected complains till they get their way. Case in point, Seattle's Safeco Field. Voted down twice by the voters of Washington state, yet we're paying for it anyway. Same thing for the recent governers race. She lost, and had complained till she won, immeadiately after she hiked our gas prices by 10 cents, *when it was already 2.80 a gallon*. And a better example of how messed up that was, if you look at it county by county, she only won maybe 3, however King is so big, that they can tell the rest of the state what to do. Including telling farmers they cant shoot varmits, or telling farmers how to run their farm, costing farmers money and livestock. That ordinace was repealed after a riot almost insued in downtown Seattle.
Most people dont search google for political items anyway, they watch CNN, CSPAN, FOX News, etc. I would much rater watch a debate, than read a transcript. Its the difference between reading something, and hearing the tone in their voice.
I do care about all the bull that they're doing, however complaining to your REP doesn't get anything done any more. I've tried, more people care than what you think, but also alot of those that don't care, used to but they see the system being so corrupt, they look at it as a waste of time.
On that note, I can do and say what I want, becase if they want to come and arrest me over bull, I wont just go quietly, I'll shoot back.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
So: "Hollywood, may I have approval to forward a copy of my home videos of my newborn to my mother?" And they could say "No" or charge a fee for their permission!!! That was too much even for DRM arms supplier Intel to stomach.
The moral of the tale? Keep in mind that the people who asked for this sort of control over your life and your works are still around -- and probably still eager to gain this sort of unwarranted power.
Reference: http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/022802vasdasz
The issue of subsidized players is quite distinct from DRM.
A very strong argument can be made that devices that deliver content MUST be open to playing non-DRM-constrained content from ANY source.
In fact I believe the FCC mandated this for radios and TVs. Basically a TV or radio station was not allowed to distribute players that would receive only their frequency.
It would be an excellent idea that anyone who creates a DRM would be required to allow anyone who publishes content to make use of that DRM. Publishing someone else's material would of course be illegal, just as stamping DVDs without someone else's material is.
But to imply that DRMs are incompatible with free speach is simply stretching things a bit too far. Ensuring that all players will continue to play non-DRM material is all that is required to preserve the essence of public discourse. Letting small publishers use the Big Boy's DRMs would be nice, but certainly not essential.
I respectfully disagree with your perception that this has nothing to do with DRM. Take Bruce's article, posted by Technocrat.net, for example. It got slashdotted, and we were all able to click on a link to see it. But suppose Technocrat.net had wrapped it in DRM, and the click took us to a "pay 25 cents to view it"? Or worse, we got a message saying "sorry, this article is available only to AOL customers"? Moreover, while Bruce, RMS and others may want to have their speech unwrapped, the wealthy tend to have access to additional "exclusive" speech because they can pay to finance a business model built on artificial scarcity. For example, a service that provides excellent intelligence reports on legislative initiatives in Congress, available only to those who can pay a lot -- having calculated that they can make more money charging a lot to a few than charging little to many. The very fact that others are excluded from the information adds value for those who wish to pay for it. Plus, the artificial scarcity often has nothing to do with copyrights and such. Disney, for example, has experimented with DRM designed to prevent lower income people least likely to pay full price for new DVDs from being able to watch them used or rented. Why? To eliminate competition from rental, re-sales and gift markets. Bruce is right. This is serious stuff.
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