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.

Re:Yeah maybe,

[Tackhead]

> 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.

"Real Americans don't use backups, they just email a disk image to their grandmothers and let NSA handle the archiving!"
- with apologies to Linus

internet politics

[MrSquirrel]

"the Internet must remain a fair and level playing field for the distribution of political speech."
Like: 'bush is teh gh3y.' "no, gore pWnz u." 'bush/cheney ftw.' "you stole my election!"
[ANALOGY TIME] Finding political speech on the internet is like finding poop in the toilet: it's easy to find, but you don't want to see it.

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...

[PB_TPU_40]

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.

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.

Monopoly

[hummassa]

He, he:

Because radio and television broadcasting are expensive with limited frequencies available, the wealthy have dominated broadcasting.

Make that "because the wealthy have assured monopoly in the broadcasting frequencies, others could not use it". Because I don't know if you turned the dial on your radio lately, but of the 90+ possible FM radio stations, only 20+ are occupied in my city. Broadcasting equipment capable of covering short (< 40km) distance is relatively cheap (< US$ 1000 [in today's currency]) since the 1970's.

Ah, and Bruce, sorry for being a grammar nazi, but please: Effects =/= Affects.

Re:Monopoly

[Homology]

Make that "because the wealthy have assured monopoly in the broadcasting frequencies, others could not use it". Because I don't know if you turned the dial on your radio lately, but of the 90+ possible FM radio stations, only 20+ are occupied in my city.

What Pereens is talking about is that so much of the so-called "mainstream" media is owned by a few, and it is a controlling factor in reporting. So while there seems to be much choice, in reality, there is very little. The "mainstream" media serves the interests of the powerful and the rich. Look at who owns who.

The coverage of the Iraq war should give you some insights (hint: what is not widely reported).

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.

I trademark the term

[Fr05t]

... "DRMocrazy"

Next Step: PROFIT!

Orwellian?

[HumanisticJones]

While not quite on the level of taking over language and slowly redfining it so that it becomes imposible to put into words bad thoughts about the current system, the idea that companies and governments could control the net crosses into that. We've already seen the government deciding to re-classify materials resulting in libraries suddenly missing books. What will happen when they can do this with the internet too? Who in the future will be able to debate the mistakes of our day when there is no record of them open to the public?

exactly...

[plasmacutter]

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.

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.

Parallels with the advent of print

[Quirk]

I ran a quick search and came up with the following site that attempts to study the parallels between the development of the printing press and the internet. History is replete with book burnings and the suppression of books by the power elite. The Vatican Library was thought to hold untold supressed works of great import. The questions arises as to whether we have learned from the past and have wrought a sturdy enough framework of legislation and findings in law to offer the users of the internet the opportunity for free expression.

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"

Freedom of Speech trumps DRM

[scovetta]

I'm sorry, but I left my tin-foil at home on my dresser today. How exactly would DRM suppress freedom of speech (at the heart of the democratic process)? I can understand the TV/radio issue because they are finitely available resources, but the Internet is not the same. Let's say video/audio goes DRMed WMV/WMA, and maybe some DRMed DOC/HTML format becomes popular, too. So what? You can't copy/distribute out what other people (the companies) give you. Nothing stops you from distributing your own (non-DRMed) content.

Of course, if non-DRMed content was made illegal, then that would change things dramatically, but I don't see how that would **ever** happen.

DRM is a Bad Thing(TM), but I don't see it threatening democracy as the article suggests.

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:Freedom of Speech trumps DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago, then-Intel-VP Leslie Vadasz testified before Congress about DRM. One of the things he said was that Intel had been approached by people in the content community who wanted to be able to restrict devices so that you could not forward any content -- including home video -- without their approval.

We have rejected some of the more onerous controls that have been advanced by the content community, such as:

Playback controls, which could require devices to inspect all digital content and prevent playback of any content which is not approved by Hollywood.

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. pdf

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.

DRM and Open Platform are separate issues

[cait56]

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.

Re:Will anyone admit that DRM isn't bad?

[umrain]

Basically, mainstream America is fine with DRM. Implemented properly, it's a reasonable part of a solution to a the real problem of widescale IP theft.

DRM IS widescale IP "theft". An important part of copyright is that content expires into the public domain. DRM uses a technical loophole to gain the benefits of copyright with none of the responsibilities. In preventing protections from expiring, DRM essentially "steals" content from the public domain.

This is far more akin to the legal definition of theft than unauthorized copying has ever been.

A trustworthy expiration mechanism would go a long way towards legitimizing DRM systems, yet this is seemingly never implemented.

Re:More DRM FUD

[Aire Libre]

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.

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