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Buffy and Dr. Varnus
Here's an Internet riddle:
What do fans of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and Dr. Harold E. Varmus, the director of the National Institutes of Health, have in common?
Both are unlikely social revolutionaries.
Both are, in wildly divergent ways, showing us how almost everything we understand about information -- who makes it, shares it, sees it, owns it - is changing.
Both are hailed as heroes by some and seen by others as impulsive, impatient and irresponsible.
For nearly all of human history, information has been a valuable commodity and a political tool. It has always been controlled by powerful elites who have been willing to fight, even kill for it. Centuries ago, the guardians of information were referred to as The Holy Circle.
Last week, it was the WB's turn to learn what the music industry and Wall Street now know: the Net is changing the rules. Now it's the medical researchers turn.
The worst nightmare of the people who control information is, of course, the Net. Many millions of individuals connected to much of the information in the world. And it turns out that their worst nightmares about the Net are becoming truer by the day. Last week, "Buffy" fans used the Net to distribute tapes and transcripts of the show's season finale, postponed by the show's craven blockhead producers in the post-Littleton hysteria (maybe George Lucas ought to yank "Phantom Menace" - Anikin does plenty of Federation and droid-bashing).
Tuesday, it was a government official, Dr. Varmus, who proposed another radical step towards democratizing information by proposing to Congress that the NIH launch E-biomed, an electronic publishing operation that would be part of the NIH's website and that would permit scientists and researchers to disclose and disseminate the results of biomedical research on the Internet, making the full texts of their reports available for the first time to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.
Dr. Varmus? proposal touched off a furious debate among medical journalists and researchers. The editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which has 240,000 paid subscribers, said "E-biomed could have a disastrous effect on clinical journals." He said subscribers would have no reason to subscribe to magazines like his - many of which cost thousands of dollars - if they could get the contents of journals free on the Internet.
But Dr. Varnus gets the Net, it's inevitabile growth and and potential for freeing up previously unavailable information. Journals can find other ways to generate funds, he told The New York Times. Societies, he said, "should not be seen as slowing a revolution in publishing that could make all journals more accessible."
Good for Dr. Varnus. One wonders how he ever got so far up the scientific and governmental food chain. His vision is far more intelligent and power than any advanced by any newspaper editor, music industry executive, TV producer or most government officials over the past few ears.
The E-biomed debate quickly took on a familiar ring. Researchers were bitterly divided about Dr. Varnus? proposal. One University of Wisconsin professor called it "among the very worst ideas I've ever heard," saying all sorts of unsubstantiated junk could be posted on the NIH website without the traditional, sometimes laborious process of peer and editorial review.
But Dr. Varnus said the new website would include some form of scientific screening and review. He said the site would have two components. Articles published in the first compartment would be subject to scientific review by members of the editorial boards of various journals. Another component would permit the immediate posting of medical research on the Net, prior to any formal peer review. Medical and scientific research could be greatly accelerated, he hoped.
Varnus said that for work to be disseminated in this way, researchers would need approval from two individuals with appropriate credentials. These credentials, he said, would be broad enough to include several thousands of scientists, but stringent enough to provide protection of the data base from extraneous or outrageous material. He said E-biomed would be a general repository of medical research where virtually any legitimate work could be posted for anyone in the world to see, from researchers to patients to ordinary citizens - the ones footing the bill for most, if not all, of the NIH's funded research.
Varnus hopes E-biomed will not only give the public access to medical information previously available only to medical professions, but that it will also accelerate its dissemination to the world. Many elites, from media to medicine to lawyers, have always argued the public is too wanton or dumb to handle so much information. They needed interpreters - like them. But the Net is proving them wrong. All sorts of information is available online that wasn't available at all a few years ago, and society seems to be holding together.
E-biomed would, Varnus said, offer instant, free access the latest reports on biology and medicine, saving money for individual scientists, libraries, labs, and Government agencies.
Physicists and mathematicians already can instantly post many of their findings, prior to publication in a journal, on a Web site operated by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico (http://www.xxx.lanl.gov). But some doctors opposed to E-biomed say biomedical research, especially clinical research, is different because it can influence care of patients.
As with the rest of society, it's striking to see just how divided professionals are about this encroachment of the Net and the Web into the turf of powerful enclaves like medicine.
While many American doctors and medical journalists said they were unhappy about E-biomed, an Australian researcher drew an analogy to the spread of literacy and printing in medieval Europe centuries ago. "Were all books going to be authoritative and accurate? Were some dangerous to society? We can imagine priests saying, "Mass printing and wide dissemination of books is O.K. so long as we insure that every book is approved by a priest review process."
If he lived in America, he wouldn't have to imagine that. That's more or less the idea most members of Congress have about how the Net and Web ought to work. That's why they passed not one, but two Communications Decency Acts.
Information visionaries like Dr. Varnus - people who can see beyond the understandable anxiety but sometimes outrageous mis-information and rhetoric - have been few and far between, especially in powerful, mainstream institutions.
It's hard to get your head around an information revolution in which the fans of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and the head of the National Institutes of Health are making a seminal point much of society still doesn't really want to hear. That would be this: the Holy Circle of interests and institutions that has controlled information for most, if not all, of human history, is going to have to share.
First, the taking of copyright material and distributing it isn't really a blow for freedom. Rather, it is a blow for crime. Or is it?
After all, the Buffy episode in question was to be the second part of a two part program IIRC. Yanking it could be construed as fraud.
That aside, as a libertarian I believe that the producers generally DO have the right to restrict distribution of what they produce and defend against those that would "steal" same to distribute under their terms. But, they have to bear the costs of such defense. When they pull a bonehead move, and anger enough people, the fact that some will no longer respect their property rights and attempt to steal from them should come as no surprise.
Bottom line: do something stupid and your defense costs go up. With the net, they can go WAAAY UP, to the point of not making it economical to mount a defense.
Governments are supposed to restrain such "mob rule", of course, but all too often the cure is worse than the risk of disease. Ultimately, the founding fathers of the U.S. believed that a focused "mob" was safer than an all-powerful government, hence the right to bear arms so as to facilitate the overthrow of same, in extremis.
Because I'm a libertarian, I have to deal with issues such as "What if someone got to own most of the water, or air? Should we respect their property rights, lay down, and die?" Morally, yes, if they didn't lie and steal to get all of such an important resource -- we're to blame for not collecting our own as well. Of course, many wouldn't see it that way, and mount an attack, which the "air-owner" couldn't resist. Again, the cost of defense when you tick people off limits just how much you can tick them off to make it worthwhile.
The net has lowered the bar where it becomes impractical to get others annoyed. I see this as a good thing.
Second: whenever change is afoot, there will be those, who, benefiting from the status quo, will seek to oppose it (Machiavelli, "The Prince").
Some profit from hoarding what they know. Others wish to share. Those others now have a relatively cheap distribution channel. They WILL be opposed by the former, lest their knowledge be diluted in value. Look for greater attempts to control, and license, this distribution channel (the internet) all in the name of the "public interest", of course. Let's strive to keep it as diversified as possible, shall we?
In Liberty,
Rene S. Hollan