Extending governments control is mostly done for corporate interest. The government is not powerful because "the voting people" made it so. When federal government exerts undue influence over the lives of its domestic populations it's generally to benefit corporate interests. The concept of shifting regulatory structures to the "free market" is not a panacea; concentrated power will always be corrupt. Free completion is always confused by existing power structures and the existing systems economic controls. They can muscle out innovation by being left unregulated to undermine the innovator by exploiting their market position or by using the government to regulate, there is no perfect system....
But shifting regulatory structure towards local control is a good start. The problem is corporations have undue influence on resisting the process of localization. This is most apparent on the trans-national scale where trade agreements are being framed in such a way that localized control essentially negated and governments can be sued in a private international court for going against corporate interests. 1
Sorry got off topic I guess.... but the basic point about trying to define a constitution and not allowing the government or corporations to exert undue influence is a difficult but important task.
Collocation is very different from hosting on a shared server (physical places charge rent, physical space is taken up, heat considerations, electrical power, personal to deal with secure physical access etc) add a great deal to the cost. Compared to a millimeter (or less) space on a Hard Drive. You have to buy a lot for bandwidth for it to become cheep hence shared hosting is cheaper than collocation.
My point is simply that bandwidth is very cheep relative to the cost of the content if the content is being sold. So if you pay 99c for a song on itunes like 0.001% of that is going to bandwidth costs. The same will be true for films maybe 0.1% of the total cost this rivals the ratios that nike pays for manufacturing their shoes;)
This is kind of silly. BT is really not necessary if people are willing to pay for the content. Bandwidth is incredibly cheep when purchased in mass quantities. You don't see apple or Google keeling over from bandwidth costs of distributing their video content. It's like what $10 bucks a month for 250GB bandwidth (average web hosting cost)... I can't imagine how cheep it is for someone like Google. At any rate it's safe to say its pennies to the gigabyte.
This BT-WB deal is about re-branding the "bittorrent" experience into the commercial context. It confuses the open protocol with the commercial company. This is the normal commercial appropriation of sub-cultures/technologies; it happens over and over again but if BT-WB leave the protocols open it's not necessarily a bad thing. For example the commercial appropriation of Linux has not hurt its freely associative non-coercive creative qualities because they have been protected by free software copyright i.e the GPL. Likewise there are many open source and free bittorrent protocol clients which are used in much larger numbers than the commercial Bittorrent Company bittorent client. So it will be difficult to propose a system that substantially limits people's freedoms, in the context of large pool of free (as in freedom) software.
As an open protocol BT is great! BT is freely associative, participants can use it to mediate their own content distribution. So we have groups like the EZLN being their own distributors of content linking to a torrent right off of their indymedia blog. BT and other free non-discriminatory video hosting services (youtube, google video) are substantially less coercive than the systems which currently mediated the distribution of films today. So we should watch them carfully and promote their creative potential. They are a key enablers in the transition into participatory culture.
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a Chomsky quote re-interpreted as advocacy for free software:
"If its correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry for free-creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions then of course it will follow that a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized."
How much responsibility falls on Apple. After all, you can't make China change, so why not go after Apple?
You seem to be negating the influence corporate activity has on China/other "developing" countries regulatory structures. It's the active campaigning by these corporations (in their legal responsibility to maximize profit), which designs "3rd" world "regulatory" policies. Contrary to the mantra which states that "de-regulated" zones forester economic development, these zones are highly regulated only against the labor populations rather then the corporate structures.
If the pay is "dismal" even by China's standards, as one of the articles asserts, then why is anyone even working there?.... if it's Chinese police or governmental entities that don't let workers leave and/or don't let them have visitors, well...
Corporate structures are the Chinese policy. Resistance to improvement is enabled by the corporate exploitation not some government which acts in a vacuum of economic support.
I'd expect and hope, from a supposedly intelligent group of readers.... China may be further targeted.
It's really kind of amazing mental apparatus that is able to separate the activity of the exploiter and divorce it from any culpability. Of course China's labor laws are poor, and their freedoms are restricted, but U.S corporations are part of this process. Criticizing and working to transform the corporate structures which go against our basic morality is a high order concern. The loose government structures which serve as proxies to corporate/imperial rule are not the only place to target our criticism. This is especially true for smaller developing nations which have even less affect on governance.
We can ask: if the corporation was in-change of the government how would their policies be any different? I agree that targeting a single corporate activity is not that productive. A restructuring of these government sanctioned tyrannical, non-democratic concentrations of power and capital is in order.
yea that's why we need to build alternatives, subverting the supplier accomplishes little and results in exploitive relationships.
Pirating software does not make it free.
Better to spend our time participating. Abandon the cultural metaphor that something can be produced for consumption, instead produce for participation and participate as cultural practice.
Subvert the supplier only to these ends, ie remix audio, film, and only pirate software to reverse engineer it in an effort to make open source alternatives, create re-mixable media assets.
Accept this is a relativist position in the context of capital-based society. Make relative choices about how you spend your time, while maintain personal economic sustainability.
The articles somewhat confuses the concept of complexity hiding, because the article seems to narrow the definition of complexity hiding to "ease of use" GUI interface interactions, when complexity hiding is already the core development ideology for software in general. The development we do on metavid for example is dependent on huge mountains of complexity being hidden for us in software libraries command line utilities and programming environments. And what metavid does is essentially hide that complexity so that I and others can easily do complex tasks such as collectively mediate audio video streams.
What makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
I am not sure how this got posted and all but It represents a pretty linear engagement with the issue of complexity hiding.
I have replied to this article with a more complex(no pun intended) engagement with the issue. Check out the full posting here
an experpt:
The articles somewhat confuses the concept of complexity hiding, because the article seems to narrow the definition of complexity hiding to "ease of use" GUI interface interactions, when complexity hiding is already the core development ideology for software in general. The development we do on metavid for example is dependent on huge mountains of complexity being hidden for us in software libraries command line utilities and programming environments. And what metavid does is essentially hide that complexity so that I and others can easily do complex tasks such as collectively mediate audio video streams.
What makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
Dizon's article hits on is a reoccurring criticism of open source software which essentially is; open source developers are comfortable with a different level of complexity than participants who come to use that software in a different context/level of complexity. But if you look at these seemingly complex open source tools they are popular because they hide complexity very well for the context in which they are engaged. Whenever anyone chooses to engage with software they are counting on someone to have abstracted away the complexity of completing a given task, which enables them to engage at the minimal level of complexity possible to accomplish a given task. This is the same principal that governs choices among open source software systems. In the ideal Open Source development scenario, you engage with a minimal level of complexity necessary to accomplish your task and then share that solution making future engagements/enhancements that much easier.
I agree the IP issues have been greatly confused in particular what is at stake...
It's vital that the EFF should continue to fight "piracy" cases like the deCSS and campaign against things like the A-hole bill. These issues are inextricably linked to issues of privacy and systems of control. For example go ahead and try and "encrypt" your conversations on your xbox live buddy list, you will quickly notice that the xbox can't run your encryption software, only software approved by powerful central agency is allowed to run on that box. These "piracy" laws are designed to quickly change the open pc into a consumption device and bound creativity to the coercive interest of concentrated power.
Having all communication or media exchange authenticated by a central agency as either pirated material or non-pirated material is hugely problematic. The ability to critique propaganda for example could be characterized as piracy of the propagandas IP as we have seen the fair use argument never making it to court as individuals come up against the ever growing army of corporate lawyers. For example websites putting up the only audio video record of government proceedings getting take down notices by the organization that claims IP over that content.
Control over your privacy is control over machine-mediate-communication; control over piracy is control over machine-mediate-communication.
If we aim for a system of creative information exchange under capitalism we have to find a balance between systems of control and personal liberties. Without that balance we exasperate exploitive relationships, regardless if it's massive piracy by individuals or corporate piracy of culture.
Obviously the documents you mentioned should be encrypted but why does a device need to be DRM enabled to not be able to read those documents? and how does a centralized key generator system give you greater security over your "documents"?
You imply that encryption is currently broken but as far as I can tell the current systems work pretty darn well, and a DRM system actually introduces many more levels that make your data less secure... I could try and find some of the articles I read about this if you're interested...
The problem with DRM or Trusted Computing is that they de-democratize the encryption process. Instead of anyone encrypting anything to any bit-level we would have a set of central systems where key issuers give out keys to "allow" people to make applications or media. The best example of this is the game consoles where only approved media can run on those systems.
We already have very strong personal encryption systems why should we allow our devices to only be able to decrypt things that an external group approves.
Furthermore how do you know the central group does not have extra keys to your "DRM"ed content. And finally how do you or someone you trust audit their code if its not open source and locked away in closed hardware or some network server somewhere. And if it's just application level DRM then I would not really consider it DRM... just normal encryption and I am fine with that, we need to get the GPL people to more explicitly explain the difference...
Yes profit based on exclusion is limited. You can not be guaranteed future dependence by your clients when you sell them modifications on GPL code. They will always be free to change it themselves and likewise you were free to make modifications on a GPL code base and sell them to the client. (If your doing this labor for free you have a very bad business model)
If you look at the sentence you quoted it says nothing about democratic software being created out of free labor, rather its an alternative model that allows you charge a client to build off what other have done (rather then start from scratch and cost more) with the condition that what you build on is also available for others to do the same. It is exclusion-free capitalism; in essence an idealistic implementation of free markets without the concentrated power of corporations or governments gaining the exclusive right to sell you a particular service. The GPL de-monopolizes the software environment.
In the GPL the freedom to take away someone else's freedom is severely limited, but your always free not to GPL your code. As you point out "DRM isn't law and the same can be said for GPL", the problem is that DRM or trusted computing is becoming law. And remember the caveat.. whoever possible use GPL but if it does not make sense for you business model then what do I care;) I have worked on proprietary projects before they paid just like working on GPL projects pays as well except I can use the code I made in the gpl project for future projects allowing me to deliver more for less. But by all means use whatever software you like I will just continue my GPL coding and presenting arguments about why in the end it will work out better for everyone by reducing concentrated power...
Yes I was operating on the possibly incorrect assumption that DRM is not just plain vanilla encryption of personal data rather a specific set of technologies designed to encrypt media specifically do disallow the "consumer" of the media to copy the data in unapproved ways. In essence this restricts the right to manipulate media. I can think of no case where that's a good thing.
If I put out some statement I don't want the power to disallow others from altering or sampling my statement.. I can PNG sign the statement to maintain my authored identity as to not allow impersonations with altered text... but that is very different from encrypting the whole thing and disallowing others from accessing it ways that I do not approve of.
I don't think the GPL3 is forbidding encryption, perhaps they should clarify their definitions of DRM?
Paralleling contemporary political discourse Jonathan Zuck writes up a criticism of the GPL 3 drawing on lofty metaphoric comparisons and misguided "followers" of misguided "leaders". This culminates in a comparison of Stallman to some medieval Dominican priests unwilling to accept the "renaissance" of free software appropriation into proprietary systems. Like other political issues, the argument ultimately breaks into different definitions of freedom.
Let us consider some of Zucks proclamations:
"Like Savonarola, Richard Stallman takes a similarly religious stance on software development, rather than a practical one"
Here Zucks is discrediting the "practicality" and "freedom" that the GPL provides by comparing it to his specific definition of practicality that is essentially the practicality for corporate exclusion and appropriation. As an independent programmer when an entity makes enhancements to your code base and then sells your application as a web service it may be more "practical" for your code license to include a network service clause allowing you to build on the enhancement made to your code base. Sure this limits the possibility for a company to invest in creation of the service given the uninsured rights of exclusive service, but the company can always chose not to appropriate your code or have a more liberal business model. The commons does not solely exist for appropriation and exclusion. The GPL is different from the "public domain" because it ensures derivative freedoms.
"With GPL 3, Stallman has drawn a bright line and offered the world a match."
Here again I believe Zuchks is making a very common rarely acknowledged assumption that the reduction of concentrated power in any way is the end all destruction of civilization as we know it... we are not so lucky it will take much more work to undo the exclusion and restrictions of freedom inherit in our current systems of control and governance.
DRM-only devices are definitely a step in the wrong direction. It gives concentrated power the ability to seriously restrict the freedoms of its "consumers". Or more essentially makes profoundly undemocratic assumptions about communication being a form of unidirectional consumption. We can already see the consequences of such cultural assumptions in the toxicity of our mental environment played out most distinctly in commercials, corporate branding and second order social consequences of depression and high usages of mood altering drugs. When people are told creativity is the exclusive right of the gifted, and the devices that mediate our world enforce this assumption we are quickly headed towards profoundly undemocratic systems of control what we could call "un-free".
If we dare use Zuchk metaphor, we can see the priests tried to hold onto their exclusive right of interpretation of the bible or the natural world and they were threatened by the de-exclusivisation on natural world interpretations. The text content they put out was now malleable and brought abut religious segmentations. If the priest could have DRM'ed their religious interpretations of the natural world it would have been a lot easier but instead all they could do is "burn" unauthorized interpretations ie trusted computing self destruct button if running non-DRM approved content. Our natural world for better or worse has become our media environment hence the strong oppostion to Trusted Computing systems.
And finally Zuchk offers us:
"Stallman has made a proposal that greatly restricts the use of GPL code. This new GPL may bring chains to the cause of freedom".
Again I think Zuck may have a definition of freedom that includes maximizing potential for growth of capital irrespective of whether that growth is democratically accessible or via concentrated centers of power. He or anyone else is free to write their code under these conditions but (whenever possible) we chouse other conditions for our code well aware of the consequences of applicability to non-democratic commercial projects.
I could not agree more everyone should support the very important work being done with Wikipedia. There has been talk about the problems of the wiki institution shaky financial footing etc. Why don't they add advertisements? Or why don't they more closely integrated with corporate or government institutions?
Some have insightfully pointed to distributed distribution. Some argue that it would be impossible or impractical...I disagree, in fact distributed distribution should be one of the primary efforts of wikipedia supporters. If the aim to truly free information they should go about thinking how they can de-contextualize it from the wikipedia-brand/ institution. To free information we must aim to maximize possibilities for non-coercive free association. To accomplish these goals within our capitalist context we must align with institutions that can concentrate power to the point of which it is beneficial to the collective, wikipedia is one such institution. But at the same time we should do this with an end goal of freeing the information from the context provider. To do this we should do some serious thinking about distributed distribution.
As many of the posters have identified non-profit institutions are vulnerable to corruption, coercion, capital mismanagement, government regulation etc. Free culture should aim to dismantle exclusive information distribution within its own institutions, in effect supporting wikipedia as something larger than its-self. We can already loudly applaud database dumps, the open source backend, and openness of the foundation, but let us not assume that wikipedia as a mediator of free information is the end goal because then we might be left with another Google when the potential of participatory culture is so much greater.
Also your analogy is misplaced. It would be more analogous to archiving broadcast television or radio. While its certainly problematic the internet archive does offer a system for exclusion of content.
The suite should be criticized as frivolous and economically detrimental to the archive foundation rather than debate what is not applicable in this case. Furthermore the archive does not have a lot of capital to go after. People who sue nonprofits are truly misguided. For the cost of your layers you could likely become a board member or buy a substantial say in its dealings.
The more interesting case will be when the TV broadcasters and Newspapers sue Google for (video.google and news.google respectively). Google being a corporation does have lots of capital and has profited off its archiving could afford comparable legal representation and would more or less be a fair case to set precedents for formal archival permissions.
But your overall sentiments are valid. Suing the archive foundation is just mean & uncreative.
If my opinion counts for anything I would say that property rights have always served the "strong" at the cost of the week. Take the American Indians genocide for example, they where week and the law was constructed to benefit the people in power. The "tragedy of the commons "is the universal sate of being for those who had to be "taught" that there was no such thing as a commons.
Fast forward to today, it's no different; those in power dictate the rights to property.
Just look at the distribution of waste facilities in lower economic zones. Your "property rights" are less meaningful if you are a marginalized member of society. Take the unquestioned solution of putting our collective nuclear waste on the Indian reservations, or the neo-liberal policies that privatize national natural resources in Latin America while flooding their markets with heavily subsidized proprietary GMO crops for lower prices then it's possible for local producers to make food. These agriculture biz properties are protected by IMF loan conditions and US hegemony in the reign, we don't overthrow popular elected politicians for fun its part of a property strategy. The leaders of county are the leaders of the country because they accept these policies. (Although it's certainly not black and white and there are interesting things going on there presently)
These conditions forces economic dependence and corporate "development" loans that then have to be paid back with conditions set by the IMF which "recommends" privatization of everything from higher education to water supplies. This results in the need for more loans as malnutrition rates rise and huge sectors of the population are forced into welfare or starvation. The corporate investor's property must be respected while the commons property is meaningless because they lack any meaningful power. Those that resist with out violence are ignored and those that refuse to be a victim are what we call terrorists guerrillas. To be fair if the word terrorist was popular in English vocabulary around 1770s it's likely what colonial separatist would have been labeled.
The world is "an illiterate, grey, dull, dreamless place, except in the strongholds of the most powerful, who would take the non-property of the weak and keep it for themselves."
You must have missed press dispatches from the marginalized from all over the world.
There is hope , collective ownership of collapsed structures of the neoliberal agenda. Take the reclaimed factories in Argentina, for example. This bottom up, no leaders no political party, direct regional democratic approach to property is contrary to the powerful dictating property relations. In many of these factories all workers are paid the same, and collectively own the factory, your argument would dictate that they would have no incentives to work or that no work would be done. On the contrary these factories produce jobs and are more efficient than when the factory conditions where dictated by "bosses" who set property relations.
For more info check out the film "the take"... azureus magnet url torrent available here: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:YPOK5WERSLJDU5LUQ3OHZ4QKE45J4O BD
I am always amazed that there is no way to copy a path name to the finder/explore window? That is the biggest killer of productivity that I notice anyway.
maybe you should take a look at the The Project for the New American Century. It states pretty clearly very early on that we are entitled to peruse our capital interests using war. Having a key portion of the worlds energy supply in close alignment with the US government-corporate leadership is a capital interest.
Their are lots of other reasons for invading as well... such as establishing a client state from which you can launch military operation in the region, normalizing relations with the Iraqi markets, and setting an example for other countries that question US hegemony.
Last of which is helping Iraqis which we are certainly trying to do in the sense that a lot of people believe that is what we are doing there, but it was certainly not the first priority for the goverment leadership of the US. It would have been much easier to help Iraqis by not supporting Saddam though the worst of his atrocities or if we not imposed genocidal sanctions against the people of that country, or if we had not lifted the no fly zone to allow Saddam to crush the Iraqis as they rose up against him, etc.
I'm 65 if I could just put 7.15% of the SS tax into a low interest savings account. Hell, at least I'd get something even after inflationary depreciation. Anyway, that's my suggestion: let me out!
I like your plan and I am sure that you personally would be successful in your savings of resources for when you can no longer generate capital. But I am confused about what your recommending for the people that opt out and then find themselves with no capital and no means to generate capital.
Do we consider that act financial irresponsibility as morally wrong and punishable though depravity of basic living standards, and recourses?
Or is your financial behavior not strictly a moral characteristic? Can person act honestly, "word hard" with the best intentions, and perform a valuable service for the society yet be abused by government or corporate entities that regulate the rewards and savings given to individuals for this service?
Is an individual morally responsible for the mismanagement of funds that occur in a market with high regulation for individuals and low regulation for corporate entities? Should the collective assume the debut of unsustainable corporate behavior in terms of corporate bailouts, and environmental degradation?
Is the market balanced in terms of individual power and corporate power to dictate the distribution of collective capital relative to service performed? (collective capital here refers to more then just taxes, think environment and shared resources) Or do corporate entities have more clout in the distribution of collective capital? Do they share in the burden with the collective or do they primarily benefit from it?
If we had a more idealized free market system I imagine the answer to those questions would be trivial and the problem of SS would be marginal, but the market is heavily regulated by federal entities in ways that hurt certain individuals chance of contributing to their prolonged well being. One is not free to negotiate their wage at wall mart for example or have menginfull od. One is not free to collectively organize in the same way that those with capital can collectively regulate or undervalue the labor market.
If we could first establish a system that actually relates to free market principals, then we can discuss the potential of individual moral responsibility for capital acquisition. But free market principals are an idealized state of mind as unachievable as communism.
Acknowledging that we are operating in the non-idealized setting we should try and act morally and provide for the basic needs of others which can act as a small push towards balancing of the system. Its a very small request from those for which the system benefits so much. It is the least those with enough capital to sustain their needs can do given their "success" can not be separated from the genuine effort of those that worked for them, and the arbitrary primary capital acquisition which was originally taken from the collective. For example of primary capital acquisition trace back the ownership of physical property.
specifically in terms of SS reform: I don't think its a good idea to increase the amount of collective resources which are being pored into the hands of private capital entities. Not because they don't have lots of hard working people in them, just because they have no moral responsibility to the collective. That is sort of the point of a representative government is that it is directly responsible for the collective. The collective obviously does not have any representation on the private hierarchy of corporate entities. So since the free market is an idealized state of mind, we need to take that into account when we attempt to behave "morally" with collective resources.
Their no problem, just adopt an ideology of support for imperial democracy. Apparently a LOT of people supports the idea.
I will try and adopt that ideology right now.
100,000 dead... or well we don't bother to do official record keeping of the civilians we slaughter in the process. That information is not relevant in an imperial democracy project. And why would it be? we are brining democracy to them those that survive should be grateful. How can they even question our Christian God given right to kill endless amounts of people in our democracy gift to them....
Slashdot Mirror
Better native open media support would be ideal:t outlines the specs for an ideal feature set.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Ogg_Suppor
Extending governments control is mostly done for corporate interest. The government is not powerful because "the voting people" made it so. When federal government exerts undue influence over the lives of its domestic populations it's generally to benefit corporate interests. The concept of shifting regulatory structures to the "free market" is not a panacea; concentrated power will always be corrupt. Free completion is always confused by existing power structures and the existing systems economic controls. They can muscle out innovation by being left unregulated to undermine the innovator by exploiting their market position or by using the government to regulate, there is no perfect system....
But shifting regulatory structure towards local control is a good start. The problem is corporations have undue influence on resisting the process of localization. This is most apparent on the trans-national scale where trade agreements are being framed in such a way that localized control essentially negated and governments can be sued in a private international court for going against corporate interests. 1
Sorry got off topic I guess.... but the basic point about trying to define a constitution and not allowing the government or corporations to exert undue influence is a difficult but important task.
Collocation is very different from hosting on a shared server (physical places charge rent, physical space is taken up, heat considerations, electrical power, personal to deal with secure physical access etc) add a great deal to the cost. Compared to a millimeter (or less) space on a Hard Drive. You have to buy a lot for bandwidth for it to become cheep hence shared hosting is cheaper than collocation.
;)
My point is simply that bandwidth is very cheep relative to the cost of the content if the content is being sold. So if you pay 99c for a song on itunes like 0.001% of that is going to bandwidth costs. The same will be true for films maybe 0.1% of the total cost this rivals the ratios that nike pays for manufacturing their shoes
This BT-WB deal is about re-branding the "bittorrent" experience into the commercial context. It confuses the open protocol with the commercial company. This is the normal commercial appropriation of sub-cultures/technologies; it happens over and over again but if BT-WB leave the protocols open it's not necessarily a bad thing. For example the commercial appropriation of Linux has not hurt its freely associative non-coercive creative qualities because they have been protected by free software copyright i.e the GPL. Likewise there are many open source and free bittorrent protocol clients which are used in much larger numbers than the commercial Bittorrent Company bittorent client. So it will be difficult to propose a system that substantially limits people's freedoms, in the context of large pool of free (as in freedom) software.
As an open protocol BT is great! BT is freely associative, participants can use it to mediate their own content distribution. So we have groups like the EZLN being their own distributors of content linking to a torrent right off of their indymedia blog. BT and other free non-discriminatory video hosting services (youtube, google video) are substantially less coercive than the systems which currently mediated the distribution of films today. So we should watch them carfully and promote their creative potential. They are a key enablers in the transition into participatory culture.
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a Chomsky quote re-interpreted as advocacy for free software:
You seem to be negating the influence corporate activity has on China/other "developing" countries regulatory structures. It's the active campaigning by these corporations (in their legal responsibility to maximize profit), which designs "3rd" world "regulatory" policies. Contrary to the mantra which states that "de-regulated" zones forester economic development, these zones are highly regulated only against the labor populations rather then the corporate structures.
Corporate structures are the Chinese policy. Resistance to improvement is enabled by the corporate exploitation not some government which acts in a vacuum of economic support.
It's really kind of amazing mental apparatus that is able to separate the activity of the exploiter and divorce it from any culpability. Of course China's labor laws are poor, and their freedoms are restricted, but U.S corporations are part of this process. Criticizing and working to transform the corporate structures which go against our basic morality is a high order concern. The loose government structures which serve as proxies to corporate/imperial rule are not the only place to target our criticism. This is especially true for smaller developing nations which have even less affect on governance.
We can ask: if the corporation was in-change of the government how would their policies be any different? I agree that targeting a single corporate activity is not that productive. A restructuring of these government sanctioned tyrannical, non-democratic concentrations of power and capital is in order.
http://metavid.ucsc.edu/blog/?p=27
my take on the net-neutrality issues and how it will impeed the types of projects we are working on.
yea that's why we need to build alternatives, subverting the supplier accomplishes little and results in exploitive relationships.
Pirating software does not make it free.
Better to spend our time participating. Abandon the cultural metaphor that something can be produced for consumption, instead produce for participation and participate as cultural practice.
Subvert the supplier only to these ends, ie remix audio, film, and only pirate software to reverse engineer it in an effort to make open source alternatives, create re-mixable media assets.
Accept this is a relativist position in the context of capital-based society. Make relative choices about how you spend your time, while maintain personal economic sustainability.
What makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
read more
I have replied to this article with a more complex(no pun intended) engagement with the issue. Check out the full posting here
an experpt:The articles somewhat confuses the concept of complexity hiding, because the article seems to narrow the definition of complexity hiding to "ease of use" GUI interface interactions, when complexity hiding is already the core development ideology for software in general. The development we do on metavid for example is dependent on huge mountains of complexity being hidden for us in software libraries command line utilities and programming environments. And what metavid does is essentially hide that complexity so that I and others can easily do complex tasks such as collectively mediate audio video streams.
What makes open source different from closed source is not that the complexity is truly hidden rather the complexity is visible upon request. This quality of open source software could more accurately be called freedom to engage complexity. Truly free software is really good at minimizing the amount of complexity necessary to be engaged at any given context.
Dizon's article hits on is a reoccurring criticism of open source software which essentially is; open source developers are comfortable with a different level of complexity than participants who come to use that software in a different context/level of complexity. But if you look at these seemingly complex open source tools they are popular because they hide complexity very well for the context in which they are engaged. Whenever anyone chooses to engage with software they are counting on someone to have abstracted away the complexity of completing a given task, which enables them to engage at the minimal level of complexity possible to accomplish a given task. This is the same principal that governs choices among open source software systems. In the ideal Open Source development scenario, you engage with a minimal level of complexity necessary to accomplish your task and then share that solution making future engagements/enhancements that much easier.
read moreI agree the IP issues have been greatly confused in particular what is at stake...
It's vital that the EFF should continue to fight "piracy" cases like the deCSS and campaign against things like the A-hole bill. These issues are inextricably linked to issues of privacy and systems of control. For example go ahead and try and "encrypt" your conversations on your xbox live buddy list, you will quickly notice that the xbox can't run your encryption software, only software approved by powerful central agency is allowed to run on that box. These "piracy" laws are designed to quickly change the open pc into a consumption device and bound creativity to the coercive interest of concentrated power.
Having all communication or media exchange authenticated by a central agency as either pirated material or non-pirated material is hugely problematic. The ability to critique propaganda for example could be characterized as piracy of the propagandas IP as we have seen the fair use argument never making it to court as individuals come up against the ever growing army of corporate lawyers. For example websites putting up the only audio video record of government proceedings getting take down notices by the organization that claims IP over that content.
Control over your privacy is control over machine-mediate-communication; control over piracy is control over machine-mediate-communication.
If we aim for a system of creative information exchange under capitalism we have to find a balance between systems of control and personal liberties. Without that balance we exasperate exploitive relationships, regardless if it's massive piracy by individuals or corporate piracy of culture.
Obviously the documents you mentioned should be encrypted but why does a device need to be DRM enabled to not be able to read those documents? and how does a centralized key generator system give you greater security over your "documents"?
... just normal encryption and I am fine with that, we need to get the GPL people to more explicitly explain the difference...
You imply that encryption is currently broken but as far as I can tell the current systems work pretty darn well, and a DRM system actually introduces many more levels that make your data less secure... I could try and find some of the articles I read about this if you're interested...
The problem with DRM or Trusted Computing is that they de-democratize the encryption process. Instead of anyone encrypting anything to any bit-level we would have a set of central systems where key issuers give out keys to "allow" people to make applications or media. The best example of this is the game consoles where only approved media can run on those systems.
We already have very strong personal encryption systems why should we allow our devices to only be able to decrypt things that an external group approves.
Furthermore how do you know the central group does not have extra keys to your "DRM"ed content. And finally how do you or someone you trust audit their code if its not open source and locked away in closed hardware or some network server somewhere. And if it's just application level DRM then I would not really consider it DRM
Yes profit based on exclusion is limited. You can not be guaranteed future dependence by your clients when you sell them modifications on GPL code. They will always be free to change it themselves and likewise you were free to make modifications on a GPL code base and sell them to the client. (If your doing this labor for free you have a very bad business model)
;) I have worked on proprietary projects before they paid just like working on GPL projects pays as well except I can use the code I made in the gpl project for future projects allowing me to deliver more for less. But by all means use whatever software you like I will just continue my GPL coding and presenting arguments about why in the end it will work out better for everyone by reducing concentrated power ...
If you look at the sentence you quoted it says nothing about democratic software being created out of free labor, rather its an alternative model that allows you charge a client to build off what other have done (rather then start from scratch and cost more) with the condition that what you build on is also available for others to do the same. It is exclusion-free capitalism; in essence an idealistic implementation of free markets without the concentrated power of corporations or governments gaining the exclusive right to sell you a particular service. The GPL de-monopolizes the software environment.
In the GPL the freedom to take away someone else's freedom is severely limited, but your always free not to GPL your code. As you point out "DRM isn't law and the same can be said for GPL", the problem is that DRM or trusted computing is becoming law. And remember the caveat.. whoever possible use GPL but if it does not make sense for you business model then what do I care
Yes I was operating on the possibly incorrect assumption that DRM is not just plain vanilla encryption of personal data rather a specific set of technologies designed to encrypt media specifically do disallow the "consumer" of the media to copy the data in unapproved ways. In essence this restricts the right to manipulate media. I can think of no case where that's a good thing.
If I put out some statement I don't want the power to disallow others from altering or sampling my statement.. I can PNG sign the statement to maintain my authored identity as to not allow impersonations with altered text... but that is very different from encrypting the whole thing and disallowing others from accessing it ways that I do not approve of.
I don't think the GPL3 is forbidding encryption, perhaps they should clarify their definitions of DRM?
Let us consider some of Zucks proclamations:
Here Zucks is discrediting the "practicality" and "freedom" that the GPL provides by comparing it to his specific definition of practicality that is essentially the practicality for corporate exclusion and appropriation. As an independent programmer when an entity makes enhancements to your code base and then sells your application as a web service it may be more "practical" for your code license to include a network service clause allowing you to build on the enhancement made to your code base. Sure this limits the possibility for a company to invest in creation of the service given the uninsured rights of exclusive service, but the company can always chose not to appropriate your code or have a more liberal business model. The commons does not solely exist for appropriation and exclusion. The GPL is different from the "public domain" because it ensures derivative freedoms. Here again I believe Zuchks is making a very common rarely acknowledged assumption that the reduction of concentrated power in any way is the end all destruction of civilization as we know it... we are not so lucky it will take much more work to undo the exclusion and restrictions of freedom inherit in our current systems of control and governance.
DRM-only devices are definitely a step in the wrong direction. It gives concentrated power the ability to seriously restrict the freedoms of its "consumers". Or more essentially makes profoundly undemocratic assumptions about communication being a form of unidirectional consumption. We can already see the consequences of such cultural assumptions in the toxicity of our mental environment played out most distinctly in commercials, corporate branding and second order social consequences of depression and high usages of mood altering drugs. When people are told creativity is the exclusive right of the gifted, and the devices that mediate our world enforce this assumption we are quickly headed towards profoundly undemocratic systems of control what we could call "un-free".
If we dare use Zuchk metaphor, we can see the priests tried to hold onto their exclusive right of interpretation of the bible or the natural world and they were threatened by the de-exclusivisation on natural world interpretations. The text content they put out was now malleable and brought abut religious segmentations. If the priest could have DRM'ed their religious interpretations of the natural world it would have been a lot easier but instead all they could do is "burn" unauthorized interpretations ie trusted computing self destruct button if running non-DRM approved content. Our natural world for better or worse has become our media environment hence the strong oppostion to Trusted Computing systems.
And finally Zuchk offers us: Again I think Zuck may have a definition of freedom that includes maximizing potential for growth of capital irrespective of whether that growth is democratically accessible or via concentrated centers of power. He or anyone else is free to write their code under these conditions but (whenever possible) we chouse other conditions for our code well aware of the consequences of applicability to non-democratic commercial projects.
Some have insightfully pointed to distributed distribution. Some argue that it would be impossible or impractical...I disagree, in fact distributed distribution should be one of the primary efforts of wikipedia supporters. If the aim to truly free information they should go about thinking how they can de-contextualize it from the wikipedia-brand/ institution. To free information we must aim to maximize possibilities for non-coercive free association. To accomplish these goals within our capitalist context we must align with institutions that can concentrate power to the point of which it is beneficial to the collective, wikipedia is one such institution. But at the same time we should do this with an end goal of freeing the information from the context provider. To do this we should do some serious thinking about distributed distribution.
As many of the posters have identified non-profit institutions are vulnerable to corruption, coercion, capital mismanagement, government regulation etc. Free culture should aim to dismantle exclusive information distribution within its own institutions, in effect supporting wikipedia as something larger than its-self. We can already loudly applaud database dumps, the open source backend, and openness of the foundation, but let us not assume that wikipedia as a mediator of free information is the end goal because then we might be left with another Google when the potential of participatory culture is so much greater.
and my spelling mistakes could have been corrected ;P
its a shame slashdot is not a wiki we could have strained out the inacruacies of the article post by now...
Also your analogy is misplaced. It would be more analogous to archiving broadcast television or radio. While its certainly problematic the internet archive does offer a system for exclusion of content.
The suite should be criticized as frivolous and economically detrimental to the archive foundation rather than debate what is not applicable in this case. Furthermore the archive does not have a lot of capital to go after. People who sue nonprofits are truly misguided. For the cost of your layers you could likely become a board member or buy a substantial say in its dealings.
The more interesting case will be when the TV broadcasters and Newspapers sue Google for (video.google and news.google respectively). Google being a corporation does have lots of capital and has profited off its archiving could afford comparable legal representation and would more or less be a fair case to set precedents for formal archival permissions.
But your overall sentiments are valid. Suing the archive foundation is just mean & uncreative.
by the same argument the corporation could "suck it up" and deal with the unions. Nobody owes a corporation individual negotiations.
If my opinion counts for anything I would say that property rights have always served the "strong" at the cost of the week. Take the American Indians genocide for example, they where week and the law was constructed to benefit the people in power. The "tragedy of the commons "is the universal sate of being for those who had to be "taught" that there was no such thing as a commons.
... azureus magnet url torrent available here: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:YPOK5WERSLJDU5LUQ3OHZ4QKE45J4O BD
Fast forward to today, it's no different; those in power dictate the rights to property.
Just look at the distribution of waste facilities in lower economic zones. Your "property rights" are less meaningful if you are a marginalized member of society. Take the unquestioned solution of putting our collective nuclear waste on the Indian reservations, or the neo-liberal policies that privatize national natural resources in Latin America while flooding their markets with heavily subsidized proprietary GMO crops for lower prices then it's possible for local producers to make food. These agriculture biz properties are protected by IMF loan conditions and US hegemony in the reign, we don't overthrow popular elected politicians for fun its part of a property strategy. The leaders of county are the leaders of the country because they accept these policies. (Although it's certainly not black and white and there are interesting things going on there presently)
These conditions forces economic dependence and corporate "development" loans that then have to be paid back with conditions set by the IMF which "recommends" privatization of everything from higher education to water supplies. This results in the need for more loans as malnutrition rates rise and huge sectors of the population are forced into welfare or starvation. The corporate investor's property must be respected while the commons property is meaningless because they lack any meaningful power.
Those that resist with out violence are ignored and those that refuse to be a victim are what we call terrorists guerrillas. To be fair if the word terrorist was popular in English vocabulary around 1770s it's likely what colonial separatist would have been labeled.
The world is "an illiterate, grey, dull, dreamless place, except in the strongholds of the most powerful, who would take the non-property of the weak and keep it for themselves."
You must have missed press dispatches from the marginalized from all over the world.
There is hope , collective ownership of collapsed structures of the neoliberal agenda. Take the reclaimed factories in Argentina, for example. This bottom up, no leaders no political party, direct regional democratic approach to property is contrary to the powerful dictating property relations. In many of these factories all workers are paid the same, and collectively own the factory, your argument would dictate that they would have no incentives to work or that no work would be done. On the contrary these factories produce jobs and are more efficient than when the factory conditions where dictated by "bosses" who set property relations.
For more info check out the film "the take"
can people spot a troll when they see one?
I am always amazed that there is no way to copy a path name to the finder /explore window? That is the biggest killer of productivity that I notice anyway.
maybe you should take a look at the The Project for the New American Century.
It states pretty clearly very early on that we are entitled to peruse our capital interests using war. Having a key portion of the worlds energy supply in close alignment with the US government-corporate leadership is a capital interest.
Their are lots of other reasons for invading as well... such as establishing a client state from which you can launch military operation in the region, normalizing relations with the Iraqi markets, and setting an example for other countries that question US hegemony.
Last of which is helping Iraqis which we are certainly trying to do in the sense that a lot of people believe that is what we are doing there, but it was certainly not the first priority for the goverment leadership of the US. It would have been much easier to help Iraqis by not supporting Saddam though the worst of his atrocities or if we not imposed genocidal sanctions against the people of that country, or if we had not lifted the no fly zone to allow Saddam to crush the Iraqis as they rose up against him, etc.
I like your plan and I am sure that you personally would be successful in your savings of resources for when you can no longer generate capital. But I am confused about what your recommending for the people that opt out and then find themselves with no capital and no means to generate capital.
Do we consider that act financial irresponsibility as morally wrong and punishable though depravity of basic living standards, and recourses?
Or is your financial behavior not strictly a moral characteristic? Can person act honestly, "word hard" with the best intentions, and perform a valuable service for the society yet be abused by government or corporate entities that regulate the rewards and savings given to individuals for this service?
Is an individual morally responsible for the mismanagement of funds that occur in a market with high regulation for individuals and low regulation for corporate entities?
Should the collective assume the debut of unsustainable corporate behavior in terms of corporate bailouts, and environmental degradation?
Is the market balanced in terms of individual power and corporate power to dictate the distribution of collective capital relative to service performed? (collective capital here refers to more then just taxes, think environment and shared resources) Or do corporate entities have more clout in the distribution of collective capital? Do they share in the burden with the collective or do they primarily benefit from it?
If we had a more idealized free market system I imagine the answer to those questions would be trivial and the problem of SS would be marginal, but the market is heavily regulated by federal entities in ways that hurt certain individuals chance of contributing to their prolonged well being. One is not free to negotiate their wage at wall mart for example or have menginfull od. One is not free to collectively organize in the same way that those with capital can collectively regulate or undervalue the labor market.
If we could first establish a system that actually relates to free market principals, then we can discuss the potential of individual moral responsibility for capital acquisition. But free market principals are an idealized state of mind as unachievable as communism.
Acknowledging that we are operating in the non-idealized setting we should try and act morally and provide for the basic needs of others which can act as a small push towards balancing of the system. Its a very small request from those for which the system benefits so much. It is the least those with enough capital to sustain their needs can do given their "success" can not be separated from the genuine effort of those that worked for them, and the arbitrary primary capital acquisition which was originally taken from the collective. For example of primary capital acquisition trace back the ownership of physical property.
specifically in terms of SS reform: I don't think its a good idea to increase the amount of collective resources which are being pored into the hands of private capital entities. Not because they don't have lots of hard working people in them, just because they have no moral responsibility to the collective. That is sort of the point of a representative government is that it is directly responsible for the collective. The collective obviously does not have any representation on the private hierarchy of corporate entities. So since the free market is an idealized state of mind, we need to take that into account when we attempt to behave "morally" with collective resources.
crap this ideology adaptation did not go well