Slashdot Mirror
Aboriginal Archive Uses New DRM
ianare writes "An application that gives fresh new meaning to 'digital rights management' has been pioneered by Aboriginal Australians. It relies on a user's profile to control access to a multimedia archive. The need to create profiles based on a user's name, age, sex and standing within their community comes from traditions over what can and cannot be viewed. For example, men cannot view women's rituals, and people from one community cannot view material from another without first seeking permission. Images of the deceased cannot be viewed by their families. These requirements threw up issues surrounding how the material could be archived, as it was not only about preserving the information into a database in a traditional sense, but also about how people would access it depending on their gender, their relationship to other people, and where they were situated."
This doesn't sound like DRM. It sounds like access control.
So this is simply a website with user management. Not everybody is allowed to see everything. This is different from DRM as Microsoft advocates it, where people would not be able to save these pages and images unencrypted onto their machines. Because, you know, they might mail them to somebody of the opposite sex!
It's highly unlikely that this website really relies on complicated DRM schemes (which would require Vista).
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
That was my reaction, but they call it a "website that's not online". However, from the sounds of it, the users probably don't own the computers, so I would still call it access control.
If it is DRM, itt appears to have a major advantage of most systems: the users want it to enforce its rules.
I've read TFA. It seems to me that this is just the result of the very will of those people to respect their own traditions and that this whole thing was made only after it had turned up that they would not accept the archive as easily without provisions for preventing potential embarassment. They seem to be doing it willingly. I'm not sure it's about superstition, it's just about social habits. You think it's silly? Fine, you have the right to have an opinion, but I'd say it's their business. And I don't feel there's a harm, unless TFA is grossly inaccurate, concerning the situation there.
Ezekiel 23:20
Great, just what the internet needs. More dudes pretending to be chicks.
Just a case of necessitating identification information upon registering the account. Could do it with a trusted-registrar scheme, where the village elders vouch for the details of those under their jurisdiction.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
Before complaining about DRM, RTFA and spend a bit of time thinking why this was done. The culture in question has a complicated set of rules about who can and cannot see certain images, rituals, etc. The anthropologist wanted to show them to the larger world without violating the rules of the culture that produced them. But wasn't the only reason: the restrictions also allows you the visitor to better understand the culture. Why? You might think that the best way to experience that culture to be shown all of it at once, but you should consider that men who live in this culture never get to see certain things. Think of it as a simulation of a culture. Use it to reflect on the assumptions you make about who is entitled to what information.
Of course they could. But to draw a parallel, in Aztec society there were no doors. A horizontal bar across the entry way, however, acted as the most secure lock imaginable, because of cultural norms. Basically the same thing here about making a fake account.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
So, assuming you have an S/O, you wouldn't mind if there were YouTube videos of you doing the linen fandango with him/her? For that matter, why do you even bother to wear clothing outdoors when the temperature is warm?
Sounds unrelated, but it isn't once you dig deeper...
See, there are, at base, some things which any given existing culture likes to keep secret. Sometimes it's simple stuff like sex, sometimes it's complex stuff like not viewing your deceased relatives for fear that their ghost will come in the night and tear up your house.
Just because someone holds the beliefs that they shouldn't view the rituals of the opposite gender, or that they shouldn't eyeball videos of "hot cheating amateur couples!" on a website, doesn't mean they're supposed to go all Aboriginal or Amish in their lifestyle. And just because you think it's silly doesn't mean that they cannot and/or shouldn't self-censor as individuals or as a community. Odds are very good that this Aboriginal resource DB was rigged by request from the community itself, so why the hullabaloo?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Given your comment, I'm wondering...
Can't they respect their own traditions without imposing technologically enforced access controls? What do they do when someone uses hard-copy information, or, to take an example from the article, a man viewing woman's rituals?
What is the point of building an access control system like this?
-- Terry
Alright troll, I'll bite.
/. because it constitutes a complex and useful method of regulating user access to the archive based on the users characteristics.
You're kidding, right? The material concerned was created by the Aboriginal people, is chiefly of concern to them, and in no way impacts on anyone who doesn't use the service. WhoTF do you think you are to tell them that what they hold sacred is "superstition mumbo-jumba", or that "the days of secret ceremonies are coming to and end"!?
This is news on
resist. unlearn. defy.
A file that can be viewed by your friend can be emailed to you. Simple userland permissions is trying to replicate.
DRM will only let the person whose profile is signed in view the image, whether it's emailed or whatever. It's a very different thing.
Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.
Except in this case, it's more like the "pasty man's" notion of perfection.
Archivists typically have to respect the rules of the communities they serve regarding access to materials. Sometimes that means, say, putting a bunch of somebody's steamy love letters under lock and key until all of the named parties have died off. Other times it means managing intellectual property rights. And sometimes you run into cases like this one, where the cultural rules regarding the material are more involved.
I still think my favorite example was a living history project - the researchers involved had been recording traditional stories. One of them was an explanatory myth about why it snows. The problem was that there was a strong tradition requiring that the story be told only when there is snow on the ground. There's a doozy of an access control problem, unless you take the cheap way out and declare that there is always snow on the ground somewhere.
These kinds of taboos against men and women seeing one another, against talking about the dead, etc. are very common in the aboriginal cultures of Australia, and they take them very seriously. The Warlpiri language, for example, has a sort of sub-language called the avoidance register, used when people of certain familial relations need to talk to each other (a woman and son-in-law, for example) - the grammar's mostly the same, but the words are dramatically simplified, and often replaced with generic terms. And such phenomena occur in other cultural/language groups too - I believe there's something like it in Zulu.
It seems odd to you, but it's also how they want to live. They're free to leave where they live (and many do), and those that stay want to live the traditional way.
Odds are very good that this Aboriginal resource DB was rigged by request from the community itself, so why the hullabaloo?
Jingoism and bigotry posing as rational smug superiority. Nothing more.
The enemies of Democracy are
Consider it like the 127.0.0.1 goatse.ch line in your /etc/hosts file.
Why, I do believe you have come across the simplest explanation of the system's motivation that a slashdotter would understand.
The enemies of Democracy are
Learn what Aboriginals are really like. No, I'm not racist. I'm a realist.
No, you're a fucking moron.
It's good luck to be superstitious
I gotta say, when I clicked through on this story, I was mostly expecting comments along positive lines. This seemed to me as well to be an interesting story of how the old and the new can coexist in new models. I really didn't expect all this player-hating. Weird. I didn't realize we had so many technological absolutists here.
For an interesting story with a similar theme, I suggest this Wired article from '99.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Interesting article.
I know I shouldn't be, but I'm still mildly surprised by the sheer number of slashdotters with no class, and no ability to envision a view of the world or way of living other than their own.
anything but primitive. Often westerners (including me) upon seeing these people just see someone who lives a primitive and alien lifestyle. Over the years my whole view of the environment and our relationship with the land and each other has been completely been revised thanks to the knowledge gained gained from these true Australians. When western settlers first visited Australia all they saw were trees and bushes and no agriculture. The reality is far different in fact the Aborigines have for thousands of years been cultivating the land, food is everywhere but a westerner would starve unless shown the food they were standing on. Using fire management and spreading seeds (selection) Australian aborigines created a traveling smorgasboard that spanned thousands of miles. To have such a complex agricultural system (that puts western agricultural methods to shame in an environmental comparison) one must also have a very complex social system based on respect not just for the living but the dead. Many of you who eat your plastic food and live your broken sitcom social lives will sit back and laugh at such a people but the reality is they are laughing at us but are to honorable to tell us. If your after more info go watch a documentary series called "The Bush Tucker Man", well worth watching and a real eye opener.
"Jingoism and bigotry posing as rational smug superiority. Nothing more."
I'd say ignorance even.
The reason why this is important, is due to the critical need for anthropologists to win the trust of many of these ancient tribes to study the practices so we can learn a bit more about how hunter gatherer societies organise. Back in the earlier days of Anthropologists studying Aboriginal tribes, the Aboriginals, knowing "whitefulla" had no real ability to use the dances and rituals in the "magical" way Aboriginal religions see them, they freely cooperated and would show the rituals etc. However a series of incidents, where the rituals where shown on TV and then seen by neighboring tribes, thus unleashing "curses" or whatever, led to most of these tribes stopping from trusting anthropologists to respect the conditions of the cooperation. This particularly occurs with gender specific rituals. "womens business" rituals are not to be seen by men (white men included), and unless the anthropologist can guarantee this, she won't be shown the ritual. But oftentimes she cant, and so anthropology never gets to study it.
Systems like this, where the community gets to decide the 'rules' of accessing the multimedia (a bit like creative commons even) means that the Anthropologist can finally win the trust of the tribe to do the studies needed to piece together the mysteries of traditional Aboriginal life.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Precisely, this is why some TV programs over here warn aboriginal and torres straight islanders that "this program may contain images of deceased persons".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The company I work for developed a web based knowledge repository like this back in 2001 for Galiwinku in the Northern Territory. Unfortunately the project derailed, I'm not sure why (being only a lowly developer and all), but was probably due to funding reconsiderations or somesuch. We had a working system which covered the different groups, sexes, groups within the sexes, age, location, and a few other things I can't recall now and can't check back up on because the development site is all written in the Yolgnu language. It was an amazing amount of data to work with though, and one thing I didnt see mentioned yet, is that it isn't JUST about limiting who has access to what, it also defines what aspect you are presented with regarding a given item - eg: a given plant may have one story attached to it in relation to a women's group from wherever, but a totally different one for male elders elsewhere. So it's not just about keeping people out, it's as much to ensure individuals receive the right information for their affiliations complex as they may be. Most painful access level components I've ever worked on.. ever..
Have you never encountered a single sex school, either? They're restricted on traditional, but silly grounds. Educational institutes exist that bar my entry based on gender, I fail to see how this is different, except that it comes from a culture that you aren't totally immersed in, so you can see the seemingly silly restrictions. I promise you that when it's boiling hot, and you're going to work in a suit and tie, your cultural norms look fucking ridiculous to any Aboriginal still living a traditional life.