At The Crossroads 226
As any number of legal and constitutional scholars have written, the Internet has breached many of the walls built around information, ideas and intellectual property.
Perhaps the primary reason the Net has been so free is its architecture, no doubt the greatest protector of free speech online and the reason that issues relating to the distribution of software and hardware are taken so seriously. If politicians, lawyers, businesspeople and journalists have grown alarmed to the point of hysteria because of the Net's wall-busting capabilities, the digital infrastructure has been freedom's best pal and the reason we are all freer than our non-wired counterparts.
Some in the media, a number of affected artists and copyright holders, and many large corporations -- even some people involved in technological movements like open source -- have a tendency to oversimplify copyright issues. Piracy, they say, is wrong, and copyright isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This is, to say the least, stating the obvious. They're right. Piracy, like murder, arson and theft, is unequivocably a bad thing. Who, exactly, is for it? And ownership of ideas is an important tradition. Unfortunately, the issue isn't that copyright is a good or bad witch, but that like the one in Oz, a very big house has fallen on it.
This isn''t a Sunday School morality play, with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. The reality is that the very definition of copyright has been shattered by the Net, along, perhaps with conventional wisdoms about piracy and theft. Finding a fair and workable response will be difficult.
The relative anonymity, the tools of encryption, decentralized distribution, multiple points of access, the irrelevance of traditional geographical boundaries, the challenges to conventional policing, the lack of systems to identify content -- those features designed by the far-sighted wizards who built the Net three decades ago have made it difficult, if not impossible, to control speech in cyberspace.
Not that people haven't tried. Congress passed not one but two Communications Decency Acts to curb speech online, and millions of dollars worth of blocking, filtering and censoring programs have been sold to schools, businesses and parents. Corporate lawyers are cranking out print and e-warning patent and copyright letters by the thousands, sometimes even the hundreds of thousands.
There is no special reason to believe that the current architecture will remain in place. The next generation of Net architects -- more and more likely to work for businesses, with radically different interests than the Net's original designers -- may well build in more controls over the movement of content and information.
Even the U.S. government is beginning to grasp the impact that corporatism is having on technology. In a California speech last week, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers noted three features of the information revolution: its dependence on brainpower more than conventional economic resources; the globalization of information technology and markets; and its tendency to produce successive monopolies, with a single firm often dominating each generation of technology and products.
Monopolies, as economists know, are obsessive wall-builders. "We can already see the beginnings of this reconstruction," writes Harvard Constitutional expert Lawrence Lessig in his book "Code; and other laws of cyberspace." "Already the architecture is being remade to reregulate what real-space architecture before made regulable. Already the Net is changing from free to controlled."
True. We are clearly passing from one phase to another, though it's far from clear exactly how free the Net will or won't remain. Technology is inherently unpredictable. No one foresaw the Internet, no one can state with certainty how it will evolve. Everyone reading this is well aware of the growing number of lawsuits, patent and copyright issues cropping up online dealing with text, ideas, music, words, software. One primary instrument of legal architecture being deployed to control the Net is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), little mentioned until a few months ago, but by now familiar to almost everyone interested in speech, copyright or intellectual property matters.
It says a lot about the sad state of media and politics that few people in the country understand how much is at stake when it comes to Net architecture and other issues directly related to this uniquely free environment.
"The architecture of the Internet, as it is right now is perhaps the most important model of free speech since the founding [of the American Republic]," writes Lessig. "This model has implications far beyond e-mail and web pages. Two hundred years after the framers ratified the Constitution, the Net has taught us what the First Amendment means. If we take this meaning seriously, then the First Amendment will require a fairly radical restructuring of the architectures of speech off the Net as well."
This is a powerful idea, much closer to Thomas Jefferson's visions -- he didn't believe ideas could or should be owned -- than to those of contemporary political leaders. He also foresaw that the politics surrounding ideas could change.
But the kind of restructuring Lessig is talking about will take time, and involve complexities and controversies beyond the existing public debates over speech and copyright, i.e. you're-a-thief; no-I'm-not.
In a way, technology and copyright have always been at war. Before the printing press, the idea of copyright was almost incomprehensible: copying was so cumbersome and expensive that nature and time itself protected an author or creator.
Copying is no longer difficult. As each generation has developed better technologies, the ability of copyright holders to protect their intellectual property has eroded to the point where copyright either has to be re-defined or abandoned.
This has brought the Net to a distinct, profoundly significant fork in the road. There are really only two choices when it comes to defining and enforcing free speech and the ownership of ideas and intellectual property. As a society, we can try to make cyberspace conform to the rules of physical space. Or we can recognize the extraordinary potential of this new culture, and invest cyberspace with laws and values and properties that are fundamentally different.
Before the Internet, copyright law and the means to enforce it were relatively simple. Cyberspace changes not only the technology of copying but also the power of law and legislators to protect against illegal copying. In a sense, the Net is a giant Xerox machine, cranking out digital copies at almost no cost, in staggering quantities, to incalculable numbers of people -- all at unbelievable speed. Pity the cop whose job it is to enforce existing copyright -- tracing and punishing violators -- online. Talk about a crime wave.
This has enormous implications for free speech and intellectual property. Technologies that work have always gotten used, whether they should be or not. It's still true. People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can. People who can use technology to comment freely, distribute code, challenge authority and criticize powerful corporate interests will do so, not only because they have the right but because they are able. This is the immutable reality of cyberspace, the new political consciousness emanating from the Internet.
All along the Internet Edge, legal and political conflicts are intensifying over the ownership of music, patents, programs, code, content and ideas.
This battle will sorely test a system that hasn't even begun to come to grips with the impact of the Internet on freedom, or on traditional models of commerce and information distribution. The libertarian ethic that has always defined much of the Internet associates government with threats to liberty. Traditionally, the libertarian is concerned about reducing the power of government. But threats to liberty change: in our time, they increasingly arise from corporate, not governmental power. And there is no mainstream political movement primarily concerned with that, in part because corporatism has acquired much of the press and now provides the primary funding for the political system.
To date, there's no consensus about which Internet choice should be made -- to make it conform to existing laws and values, or to recognize it as a new kind of space. Nor is there anything like broad agreement about what changes might be made, if there are to be any.
But the issue is becoming more distinct every day. Computer users, members of Web communities, software developers and Web site operators are increasingly confronted with lawyers, arguments and new kinds of questions about the movement of information and ideas. The Net is, as a result, in danger of losing at least some of the freedom that characterized its first decades.
The United States has always had a love-hate relationship both with freedom and government. America has been a country that self-righteously espouses the notion of individual liberty, even as many Americans and institutions from the Puritans to the sponsors of the DMCA -- have continuously tried to take it away. Since freedom involves not a single idea but a complex system of values, the struggle to define what it is is a never-ending intellectual, economic, personal and political --and increasingly, technological -- struggle, one which is now engulfing the Internet.
The Net gave America a freer culture than it had ever had, or even quite imagined. The next few years will decide if it stays that way. Were the founders alive -- people like Paine, Jefferson and Franklin -- they would find in the Internet many of their values and dreams for a free and democratic society. And they'd fight to keep it that way.
"New circumstances," wrote Jefferson in 1813, "...call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects."
Re:Coherent (moderation comment) (Score:1)
What Are You Doing About It? (Score:1)
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:1)
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Re:Unequivocably? (Score:1)
Besides, why should I be forced (at gunpoint!) to go through such an inefficient and wasteful middleman to purchase the few services I really want?
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Re:Jon, corporations are not the danger (Score:1)
But you're not seeing that corporate interests wield great power over the government, and are quite dangerous. Perhaps they would be less dangerous if they were not already receiving the benefit from the government of being a corporation. (Personally I'm opposed to coprorations in most cases - individually owned businesses or partnerships are more my style)
Additionally, a capitalist system is not inherently the only way to do things. It is the economic system that most closely aligns itself to the 'shape' of natural human liberties.
But just as we have government and laws to preserve the lion's share of our natural liberty at as minimal an expense as possible (e.g. it's illegal for you to randomly kill people - this preserves freedom in general by permitting people to exercise their freedoms without being killed) so must economic systems be bent to fit PEOPLE. People must not serve the goals of capitalism, or socialism, or communism or anything else like that.
Antitrust regulations PRESERVE the integrity of the market by preventing it from lurching into a broken condition where monopolies squash competitors in a defiance of ideal capitalism.
Some zoning I can understand - it's irresponsible to put a toxic waste dump next to a school. Other zoning is stupid, I agree - completely segregating residential areas from commercial areas is dumb; cities thrive on having storefronts underneath apartments)
And workplace regulations, while sometimes going too far, are generally another example of requiring some infringement to be taken for an undeniably better good. Largely because again, capitalism isn't perfect. Why shouldn't consumers achieve their goals by voting with their votes as well as their wallets? Both are acceptable mechanisms for PEOPLE living in a better society, at the loss of as little freedom as possible.
There are abuses. Just as frequently at the hands of corporations as people. Perhaps that's what you ought to be complaining about.
Re:Political thought and intellectual philosophy (Score:1)
Liberalism (in general) is permissive. Conservatism (in general) is restrictive; typically trying to maintain the status quo.
Like I said, the labels have gotten reversed. And besides which, in the US we have a Conservative party that's liberal economically and conservative politically and morally, and a Liberal party that's conservative economically and politically (different goals, but they attempt to achieve these goals the same way) and liberal morally.
You'll notice how both have a liberal:conservative ratio of 1:2, which is why I (with a ratio of maybe 2.5:0.5) don't see a big difference.
(in case you're wondering I'm liberal morally, mostly liberal economically save those restrictions needed to preserve an economic system that works for non-jillionares/monopolies, and mostly liberal politically save for those restrictions needed to preserve as many freedoms as possible; anarchy sucks)
At any rate, I think you're being too black-and-white. People can be nice to kids and dogs, and still crush thousands of people to get to the top. I like to trust people to do what's right, but I don't think that it's responsible to not have SOME safety net in place if people grossly abuse this trust. Think of it as a failsafe mechanism, even though emphasis is placed on not needing to use it at all. (which prevents it from being more powerful than it needs to be)
Thus, I walk on the street feeling safe from being killed, but I also like to know that if I am killed the killer is likely to be caught and punished. Relying on my kinfolk to settle scores and maintain feuds has not worked out well, historically.
Re:Coherent. (Score:1)
But I don't think that the AARP members are interested in anything in the long run
Maybe immortality programs....
Idiotic Reactions Forthcoming? (Score:1)
I've read most of Katz's postings when they're available. I thought his pieces were thought-provoking, sometimes insightful, and sometimes stupid. But what I am really disappointed with is the reactions that many people post whenever Katz's postings are mentioned here. "Katz sucks!" "Yet another one of Katz's iditotic diatribes." Iterate those as many times as you can adding some padding words, and you may possibly get 35% of the postings which will follow.
If you disagree with Katz then point out where his statements are invalid and back up your contentions with evidence. That will be much more effective than posting some variant of "Katz sucks!" and you won't come off souding like a petulant child to boot.
In a sane legal system... (Score:1)
Re:Threats to liberty (Score:1)
With respect, you're confusing the source of the problem with the tool used.
In the days of the great Trusts, the owners of the trusts bought congressmen and senators to get legal protection for their monopolies. Does this then mean that we should do without congressmen and senators? Should we have kings instead?
What brought down the monopolies was the actions of those self-same concressmen and senators, with the help of the courts and the then department of justice.
Government is a two edged-sword: it can cut the people, or it can cut of the heads of those who actually threaten our liberties. Do not try to eliminate it, lest you find yourself in a world where the corporations really do have their own armies, and the citizins have none.
--dave
Re:Jefferson (Score:1)
DonGenaro said "and also according to jefferson's vision people can be property".
Actually he said it was unfortunate that they should be property, and proposed the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia put together a fund to return the kidnapped slaves and their descendants to their homelands. [Source: The Atlantic, some time last year]
--dave
Re:we're not going to like the way this turns out (Score:1)
G27 Radio wrotethere just doesn't seem to be a way to protect .. IP on the Net without taking away our freedom to share... If there is another way, please say so.
There is, and it was discoverd partially by accident by Tim O'Reilly and friends.
I'm the financially sucessful second author of a book. It is downloadable for free, yet people insist on buying it and sending Tim money. Tim then sends me money.
Why? Because the printed book is independantly valuable: the on-line copy is better for quick reference to techniques, the paper one is better of understanding. It's more portable, can be dropped in the bath with only minor damage, and actually has a better index. The on-line copy is valuable because teh sections make useful tutorials on particular subjects, and one section has a clickable fault tree, which is cool.
That means, you see, that the products that will suffer from the net are the ones which are identical, whatever their media, the ones where there is no value added by adapting them to a different media.
Right now, this looks like folks who will suffer are the publishers of mass-market songs. Top 10 stuff, to be precise. Which isn't the whole of recorded music or the recording industry, much less the whole of music or the whole of literature.
--dave
Reasons for "Idiotic Reactions" (Score:1)
just my $0.02, but may be some of reason for Katz-bashing
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!) (Score:1)
It is nonsense to think one can own an idea, at least once you let it out of your brain and into someone else's. All this talk about Intellectual Property is NewSpeak; call it property and people can only think of it as property. Copyright and patents are not "natural" rights nor do they confer ownership in the material sense. They are privileges granted by the state to creators in order to foster creativity. Creators are allowed exclusive benefit for a time so that everyone will benefit in the long run.
This is good. Ideas are not property. Breach of copyright is not theft.
As Jefferson himself said: "Home taping is not killing music."
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:1)
The geek will inherit the earth.. (Score:1)
Re:the copying vs copyright clause (Score:1)
- This doesn't mean that the IP is worth less. And it doesn't mean the the owner of the IP should just give up protecting their property. And it doesn't mean that the whole system is flawed. It means that if you believe that your property is being taken away from you, you have to fight harder to protect it.
... if it's your property...
If it's your property, and you feel strongly in that being your property, then you need to protect it.
When you have an idea, being it a melody, a sonet, an algorithm, a novel or a simphony, till it stays inside your mind only, then it is certainly your. But is it your property? If someone else comes out with the same idea and publish it, then it is his idea, no more your, even if you know that you had that idea far before that other one was even born.
So now the idea have been published in some form by you or by someone else. I am now exposed to that idea, by reading, listening or watching it in its actual form. Now I understand that idea and I have it in my mind in the same way you had it before. Am I stoling it from you? No. Can someone force me to delete it from my mind? No. So how can the supposed owner of that idea claim to be deprived or enforce ownership on it?
Intellectual Property is a broken concept!
If you don't share it you don't own it. By sharing it you give it away.
You don't own it, you never owned it, and a law saying you own it is like a law affirming that the sun should turn around the hearth: yust a funny idiocy.
Back to the subject.
If you don't own the IP, what is the Copyright Law about?
The Copyright Law gives a temporary monopoly on the economic benefits that can (but may not) come by mean of copying, distributing or performing the actual form of the idea, to the person(s) publishing it, in exchange of their act of sharing it with all the other people, for the explicit purpose of creating an economic incentive to produce more sharing.
Now comes the last part:
It's the publishing act that generates the sharing, and therefore it's that one the actual moment when the "IP goes into Public Domain".
This is absurd and can bring to stolen property!
Let's check with a real example: a singer, well known with the name Cat Stevens, wrote and published a lot of songs and poetry. Later he converted itself to Islam religion and consequently disclosed authorship of those blasfemity he published earlier.
He tryed hard to have those ideas destroyed. Guess what? He lost. An author do not have the right to destroy his own published IP because he does not own it; its in the public domain, even if its economic benefits are still granted to him (until his copyright expires).
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Coherent....ramble..[ot] kinda (Score:1)
313173 d3(1@R@710N 0f 1nD3p3Nd3n[3 (Score:1)
Where was I... oh yes.
<flame>
I'm tempted to print out a copy of that "declaration" and piss on it, but that wouldn't count a legitimate use of office equipment, now would it? What a load of William Gibson-inspired hooey! "Our identities have no bodies"?!!!!! Comparing the Internet community to the Pre-Revolutionary Colonists? Why didn't Mr. Barlow just come out and express his 311373ness?
</flame>
*sigh* Pretension bull like that makes me question what the FSF is really all about.
George Lee
Re:Coherent. (Score:1)
You ever seen the AARP (American Association of Retired People) screaming chants in the streets?
No, but I have seen them organize letter writing campaigns to congress.
Want something to change? Speak up. Write your congress man. If you remain silent, we can only infer you are happy as a clam.
Re:Thoughtful . . . (Score:1)
And regarding television, networks have been suffering declining viewership for some time last I heard - only Regis Philbin has helped save the day
Thoughtful . . . (Score:1)
The problem I see is not as simple as corpratism/freedom/etc. It's more a problem of people not grasping basic things about human culture and living systems.
Living systems get more and more complex over time, and humans, massively adaptable, can change and grow at a stunning pace. We have adapted with culture and technology to be able to live anywhere on (or above) the planet. In general, human society and creations get more and more complex over time.
The internet is this taken to an amazing extreme, a gigantic interconnecting network, tying people and their systems together. It's an engine of change, perhaps the biggest thing since Gutenberg (as stereotypical as that sounds). It's evolving itself as well, promoting information exchange.
Sadly, a lot of people don't get it - the netcops, some companies, etc. This massive, growing, accelerating "thing" exists because it is open, it is chaotic, it is interconnected. In their zeal for control (probably due to fear and ignorance as much as greed), the want to go against its very nature.
The bizarre copyright laws can (and probably will) come back to bite people. Corporate blandness will be rewarded with indifference and lack o finterest. Innovation requires freedom - as does good, effective, commerce. Policing the net would require massive bureaucratic and legal efforts that would be better used elsewhere and would likely be ineffective. Attempts at control by individuals, governments, and corporations may result in THEM being controlled and constrained tomorrow, bound by laws backfiring and applied differently than expected.
This won't stop people from trying to manipulate the net - because if they "got" the net, then they wouldn't try to control it. If anything, not only do we have to fight these manipulations, we have to educate.
Re: The Bible is copyrighted, you idiot (Score:1)
Re:Jon, corporations are not the danger (Score:1)
This becomes a problem with major media companies. Not only can they be incredibly difficult to avoid supporting, but they also control the flow of information about the world. And other businesses. So, many times, the information that would cause you to not give a private company your business is withheld because of a partnership with a major media company. Proving this is nearly impossible, yet simple reason says it happens, and even simpler reason says it happens much more often when the number of major players dwindles. Everyone is a friend or very powerful, and you don't get is pissing matches with friends and powerful people. It's not good for the bottom line. A homogenous(sp) media is not good for a free society. A homogenous media that lobbies laws to limit competition and rights of citizens doubly so.
Mmmm... take it and run with it you who claim to love the word freedom...
Run, run, just as fast as you can. Can't catch me...I'm on the other coast.
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Freedom (Score:1)
The Net gave America a freer culture than it had ever had, or even quite imagined. The next few years will decide if it stays that way. Were the founders alive -- people like Paine, Jefferson and Franklin -- they would find in the Internet many of their values and dreams for a free and democratic society. And they'd fight to keep it that way.
A Free Press. This was one of the most important issues to the founders of this country (US). A free media, the voice of the country. Many people have seen and commented on the current nature of that entity. We no longer have a "free" press in this country. We have one that is controlled by continually fewer people with increasingly more friends. You don't talk bad or even about your good friends without permission. These few powerful companies control not what we say, but often what we talk about. It's the same (roughly) as the
I run a website out of my apartment, many other people do the same thing, or use a hosting company, or some other means of making their voice heard. It's quite easy, comparatively. Compared to say..running a TV station, or a radio station, or a newspaper. Quite easy. What the Internet has allowed is for ANYONE to offer the services of a billion dollar corporation. ESPECIALLY in the area of the press. This shift of power has increased competition ENOURMOUSLY for media companies. Instead of trying to compete in the marketplace, they are competing in the courtroom using rules that they are writing through Congress. That's not how I want my market to function.
"New circumstances," wrote Jefferson in 1813, "...call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects."
I definitely feel the Internet is a new circumstance. We need new words and new concepts to define the old objects. The biggest one we need to tackle right now is copyright. The current rules are being written and lobbied for by industry against politicians who don't know a client from a server. This is being done by companies that can make sure that the general public NEVER hears about such issues, at least without some serious spin. It is up to those concerned citizens to raise awareness for the issues that they feel are important. I think redefining copyright and IP for this new century is one of the biggest challenges facing THIS country. And I think they need to redefined with the Freedom of the Internet and the Freedom of the People top of mind. If you chain my voice, can my body be far behind?
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Virtual isn't virtual (Score:2)
Or we can do something real. The Internet is not some separate world that exists freely of the 'real' world. Things that happen in cyberspace affect markets, fortunes, lives, and property. Do you think this isn't the case? Try asking the 14-year-old who was molested by a chat-room junkie. Try asking the businesses that lose money when DDOS attacks strike. Try asking artists (like Metallica) who find their songs posted to and critiqued on the Internet before they're even finished (yes folks, that's the event that prompted Metallica to take action). You can't just treat the Internet as a separate beast. You can't just say, "Well, the Internet's an entirely new beast, so we'll have to make rules for it that are about it." What are you going to do, get rid of copyright for the Internet and not the 'real' world? Are intellectual freedoms only for the Internet (or for the 'real' world, depending on how you view the whole IP issue)?
Maybe people should quit saying, "Oo, the Internet is special and different," and realize that it's an outgrowth of our current society and you can't just separate it. Should copyright law be erased? No. Ideas are free, but work is not, and things that are copyrighted are not ideas, they are the works generated from those ideas. The Internet will change society and society will change the Internet, but we can't choose one over the other. They're inextricably linked, and to say that we should create new laws for a new 'virtual' world shows a deep misunderstanding about how 'virtual' this new world really is.
Intellectual property (Score:2)
This despite the fact that you are not necessarily harming or cheating anyone - which is the only legitimate reason to restrict your freedom of action - by selling them a copy of this protected pattern.
Hence I conclude: intellectual property is not a right and contradicts a right - ie: it is a Bad Thing.
Workplace regulations (Score:2)
False. The right to self ownership includes the rihgt to self harm - including by contracting to work for an unsafe employer.
And yes, nearly all private property has changed hands countless times to and fro by theft and force over the years; "the war of all against all" is simply too complex a tangle to ever unwind. The only solution is to declare a truce and leave the property with those who now hold it. In a free system, competent people will rapidly make up the difference, while the incompetent rich will sink back to their own level.
Was copyright enforcement ever really simple? (Score:2)
These statements about the increased difficulty of copyright enforcement are only true to a degree. If we look back at the history of copyrights, it's only been for a brief window in the twentieth century that they became their most enforceable. After all, first technology had to increase to a point where copyrights were more easily defendable, before it could progress to where we are now.
I'll use some theatrical performances as a couple of examples. In the 1700's the play "She Stoops to Conquer" premiered in New York a scant few months after int opened in London. How was this accomplished? The New York impresario had friends in London who went to the performance each night, and when they got home copied down the play from memory. They then sent the pages over to New York one act at a time. The resulting event was a great theatrical phenomenon but certainly a violation of copyright. At the time there was not much that could be done. It certainly wasn't using very advanced technology; just the regular ship from London to NY.
Now we move to more recent times, the late 19th century. Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" was still running in London, while pirate productions cropped up all over the US with many of the original words and music, but in a bastardized form. G and S couldn't stop them, so they brought their own production to the US to show the public how the play was suppossed to be done.
Granted these are examples of a specific art form with its own peculiarities, but copyright of all kinds was hard to enforce before the twentieth century. Maybe the "earlier in the 20th C" is implicit in the phrase "before the internet," but I felt a need to qualify these statements in this article a little.
Wombat.
darn it. gotta get to class five minutes ago.
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!) (Score:2)
Any time a soceity is faced with the introduction of a new freedom (in this case the freeing of all information into the public domain), it takes, IMHO, at least a generation to deal with the impact. I've often thought that this is the result of the Illicit Thrill(tm) still attched in the subconscious of the generation which grew up indoctrinated into restraint. This seems to set people back into some teen-angst phase and they either mature in their behaviours or not. The second generation is then faced with some ugly spectres of the abuse of the new freedom and learns from the mistakes. It's almost another form of social Darwinism, those ill equipped to deal with the new freedom trash their nest and don't fare well.
my $0.02 of pop psychology - still cheaper than the real thing!
The only hope for the internet (Score:2)
We cannot and should not count on governments anywhere to respect, much less abide by, the notion that citizens should have the freedom to do whatever they want, even if it offends the very power and money besotted politicians whos yearning for dominion over our lives brought them to the positions they enjoy today.
Our sole hope lies in designing the infrastructure of the net itself to make legislative control of content a technical impossibility. FreeNet [sourceforge.net] goes a long way toward doing this.
I would encourage anyone with an accessible IP address on the net to download [sourceforge.net] the software and set up [sourceforge.net] a FreeNet node. If you cannot do this (no permiment IP address, or other ISP restrictions), then please consider downloading the client software and familiarizing yourself with FreeNet and how it works.
Indeed, I do not think it is at all an exaggeration to say that we as free individuals have a civic and moral obligation to run FreeNet [sourceforge.net], and in so doing keep our freedom out of the hands of politicians and the undemocratic corporate institutions for which they work.
Broadband, Threat or Menace? (Score:2)
Despite repeated predictions of their imminent demise, there are still large numbers of dialup ISPs. If you don't like your current dialup ISP, or they don't like you, there are plenty of alternate ISPs.
Broadband internet access is much more centralized. If you are lucky, you have the choice between cable and DSL. Both controlled by large corporations who are, or would like to become, vertically integrated media conglomerates.
ISPs are not common carriers. They can refuse to provide service, or discontinue service, at their convenience. If they say no servers, no Napster, no VOIP, no streaming video, no "weird" operating systems or computers, you can accept it or go elsewhere. If you have controversial social or political views, they may cut you off your service.
With broadband, there might not be any alternate service provider available. You may have the choice between access on MediaConglomo's terms or no access at all. You are fair game for anything that "enhances shareholder value". You are a consumer unit with your finger on a "buy button". Your eyeballs have been sold to MediaConglomo's corporate partners.
Quite coherent. Especially for John (Score:2)
Quite a lot of the stuff happening is not the net but the society slashing back after having enough of reactionary gerontocracies like Iron Maggie, Andropov and Reagan. It is normal for people to become more sane and no longer bring american flags in cinemas and wave them when Rocky IV kicks the butt of a russian or vice versa (when the russian "hero" kicks the but of some american or when 007 kicks 'em all). The world has gone more complex and respectively the society has gone more relaxed as the old laws have trouble operating in the more complex world.
net is a part of it. But it is not just the net.
Re: (Score:2)
Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace (Score:2)
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the
tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it
grows itself through our collective actions.
You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be
obtained by any of your impositions.
You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and
address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our
communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are
attempting to impose.
In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunica- tions Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams
must now be born anew in us.
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial
product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.
These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves
immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Davos, Switzerland February 8, 1996
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Re:Coherent....ramble..[ot] kinda (Score:2)
The next time you want to 'justify' piracy...just think of someone coming into your home and taking your belongings....cause that, though not exactly, is what it is--theft.
Copyright infringement is not theft. These are two separate and very different crimes.
The laws that govern physical objects do not apply to information, and vice versa.
Re:I disagree with his anti-corporate stance (Score:2)
Corporations aren't the ones inovating. Take the very concept of the news portal. It was started by a geek with an idea. The geek setup a web page that pointed to interesting news on other sites. Others like this geek's idea of what was interesting and important. More people came and saw.
"Fan" sites are another area that predated corporations. Now you corporate sponcered ones, but in the beginning it was some person who loved "x".
Most new technologies you see on the net were started by someone in their "garage". The good ones either turned into corporations themselves or were mimiced by corporations trying to get on the bandwagon. Remember even TCP/IP and HTML were ideas outside the corporate umbrella. Major companies like CISCO and SUN had their birth outside corporate control.
There is also another side to the corporate issue. There is more than one type of corporation out there. Some corporations are actively trying to control what the consumer sees. This is so they can better control the actions of the consumer. I'd say that this is they type of corporation that Kat's is talking about. It's also not just corporations that are doing this, it's governments, special interest groups, churches, etc. Groups that want to control what you hear, think and say.
Re:the copying vs copyright clause (Score:2)
Already, American copyrights last a ridiculously long time - while everything else has been getting faster and faster ("internet time") copyright actually lasts longer than ever it did before - significantly longer than the average human lifespan, in fact - this is to little advantage for individual artists, since they are mortal, but definitely in favour of corporations, which can carry on indefinitely.
Also, in the current system, you have a right to "fair use" of copyrighted material - but the very, very nasty DMCA effectively eliminates that, while paying it lip service, by making it an offence to circumvent the protection on a copyrighted work, where protection is very, very weakly defined.
Thus, big business is pushing the copyright system in the other direction to 'net forces - IMHO, to the detriment of society in general. That is why people are fighting the _new_ copyright legislation. In my opinion, both copyrights and patents should be scaled to "internet time" - Say, 5-10 years for copyright, and 2-4 years for patents.
The War on Piracy (Score:2)
The war War on Piracy will be just as devastating as the War on Drugs and it will be fought for the same reason, not to stop drugs and not to stop piracy. There is only one reason for these wars:
Power
The US war on drugs makes the government more powerful because citizen's rights must be violated to "win" it. Just one result is "no knock" police raids on people's homes in the name of the war. Those too young to remember should know that in the US before the 1970s the police had to knock at your door and let you read the search warrant before they could enter your home. When I tell young people this, at first they think I'm lying. They can't imagine such constraints on the power of the police. This constraint went away when the Supreme Court ruled that no knock warrants were ok if the police thought that somebody might be flushing the drugs down the toilet as the police were standing at the door. Now no knock warrants are common even for instances where there are no drugs.
The War on Drugs makes the politicians more powerful because they write the laws. Enough said. The War on Drugs makes the mafia more powerful because they make huge amounts of money. To the mafia, this is the American Dream. Find a product that lots of people want. Sell it. Make tons of money. Build a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your door.
Now we've come to something new: The War on Piracy. The War on Piracy makes the corporations more powerful. It doesn't matter whether the war is winnable or not. The power is the important part.
Note also, that the War on Pornography (actually child pornography) also gives the government and the politicians huge amounts of new power. For those who don't remember, anon.penet.fi was a public anonymous remailer site in Finland. You could send and receive email without revealing your identity. The site was shut down when the US sent an Interpol search warrant to the Finnish government. What was it looking for? Child pornographers. Of course, they didn't find any pornographers. That wasn't the reason for the raid. The site shut down, just as the US government wanted it to. As I remember it, he guy who ran it wrote that it wasn't worth the trouble. And who can blame him.
The internet is the battleground where this conflict will take place and it will affect all of us.
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
There are a lot of points that you can't get a group of ministers and preachers to agree with, doubly so if you include Catholics and/or Mormons (being Catholic myself, I am not flaming either). What percentage of Christian preachers and ministers believe in dinosaurs, for instance? How many believe that baptism is required for salvation? How many believe that one can fall after being saved? If you let a committee decide the true and proper use of the Bible, you would end up with some sort of watered-down Christianity where the real Truth would stand no chance.
Besides, which Bible are you copyrighting? King James, New International, The Book, another translation? Or are you copyrighting the originals, assuming that you can find the crypts they are stored in?
Copyrighting the Bible would just allow the copyright holder to bludgeon everyone, Christian and non, not aligned with that holder into legal submission. This might make some sense where there is general consensus as to who is right, but given such consensus, we wouldn't need this copyright. Even if, by chance, the Powers That Be hand the copyright over to exactly the right person or persons, you polarize Christianity into the we-have-the-copyright crowd and the we-don't crowd, and you create a new Schism where the we-don't crowd are at war with the we-have crowd in a way that they wouldn't otherwise.
As a Catholic, I belive that the Pope is the final arbitrer on this world. I still wouldn't hand him the copyright, because it would separate Catholics from other Christians even more so, without making Catholicism one whit more correct. And from my perspective, that's a best-case scenario. Handing the copyright over to someone not perfectly aligned with God (and who is?) would make it even worse.
I suppose you could hand the copyright over to God Himself (considering the books of the Prophets as "works made for hire"?). It wouldn't do much good without God coming down and defending it. As far as I can tell, God has had enough first-hand experience with courtroom drama for one eternity...
The potential for harm is enormous, and can be measured in megasouls. I think this is a Bad Idea.
Re:It's an economic thing; you wouldn't understand (Score:2)
You're talking about "should". I'm talking about "is".
-russ
Not possible *to* control (Score:2)
How do you adjust to this new reality? By denying it? Go ahead, try.
-russ
It's an economic thing; you wouldn't understand. (Score:2)
-russ
Politicians have something to sell (Score:2)
-russ
Jesus stopped the stoning (Score:2)
Sounds like a call for action against death penalties.
Oh, and which Bible do you intend to copyright? And what do you plan to do with the fair use clause? Just throw it out? There's a very good reason why religion and state are separated.
-russ
Re:Copyrights, protesters, and those in their 20s. (Score:2)
In Vancouver, most drug dealers are non-white. This doesn't mean that most non-whites are drug dealers. Likewise with my remark about the folks in their early twenties.
When you go to a publisher, part of the contract you sign grants the copyright to the publisher. The fact that you agreed to this in the contract is why they get the rights. That it is difficult to publish something without signing such a thing is a differeny, somewhat troubling matter. Indeed, the internet is very helpful for direct distribution though it's a little more difficult to get any sort of compensation through it.
I didn't follow the news coverage of the protests in Washington because I expected something similar to Seattle. I was wrong and therefore don't know much about what went on there. I talked to a number of people who went to Seattle, though. Most of them were very uninformed, and were going simply to show off their "solidarity". What does the WTO do? Take jobs away from Americans. That was the full extent of the answers I got from a few of them. The viewpoint of the majority of these people was frighteningly isolationistic. While it is true that my disagreement with that viewpoint colours my opinion of the protesters, it was their refusal to even consider the other side that really turned me off.
However, I wasn't referring specifically to the WTO protesters. Many in the environmentalist movement are much worse. "You can't cut down these trees! They're... old! We'll lie down in front of your logging trucks to stop you." "This is the habitat of the endangered (cute, cuddly animal)!" And let us not forget the SUV-driving, jetski riding Greenpeace folks who were interfering with the Makah whale hunts.
The fringes take away from the arguments of the whole, thanks to our sensationalistic media in North America. That should really sadden us all. However, the fringes do occasionally cover for the fact that the arguments behind them aren't strong enough to stand on their merit. The WTO protesters had a point, and it was valid enough. However, the benefits of a global economy in which no country can wage war on another because they are too interdependent far outweighs the minor, temporary damage done to the economy of one's own home.
------
Coherent. (Score:2)
See subject... And it's by Katz, too. Not bad.
Have you,the reader, ever noticed that the people who support copyright infringement the most strongly are nearly always those who have nothing to their name which they can lose via same? It's no coincidence that the vast majority of the rabid "open source or bust" crowd is no older than their early twenties. Of course, one could argue that this is the case for entirely different reasons, such as the fact that many have yet to mature and look at matters rationally. See: early army enlistment ages, college-aged protesters whose arguments just don't make sense.
Propaganda affects the young much more easily than those who are older. On a similar tangent, I've noticed that the Catholic Church now performs its confirmation ceremonies several years earlier. Presumably this is because me and a good many friends who were from Roman Catholic families opted out. Very unlikely that this was an isolated incident.
Personally, I'm all in favor of open source, though I disagree with one of the two major licenses. I just don't demand that everything I use be such. I know that it's just a vocal minority of the Linux and Slashdot communities that feel otherwise, but they certainly are vocal.
I had several paragraphs more but as they are local issues, they would be meaningless to nearly all of you. Insert some bitching here about a vocal minority of your choice.
For what it's worth, people inclined to mod me down should use overrated. I get a kick out of it. Especially when the moderator is just disagreeing [slashdot.org] with me.
------
Re:Coherent. (Score:2)
No soy un combarde anonimo.
I don't know that I would consider you part of the group I was referring to. Everyone is fully entitled to make their own decisions. More power to you for boycotting non-free software. The people I'm talking about are those of the opinion that anyone who dares to pay money for some piece of software is a heretical fool. Don't even get them started about those who dare try to make money off of closed source software.
By virtue of the fact that you are not imposing your beliefs upon others, you are not a foaming at the mouth zealot.
(literal meaning, of course, people who don't like hearing the word zealot used on this site)
------
Good point, Legoboy; Bad point, Jon Katz (Score:2)
Bad point, Jon.
Why lay such blame on 'corporatism'? If I ask the government to give me the deed to your house -- and they do it -- does that mean that there is a problem with people like me? Or, is the problem a bankrupt policy that can be so easily manipulated?
Of course people are greedy. That's hardly the core problem however. Their ability to use the mechanisms of the state for their own gain is the heart of the real issue.
Re:the copying vs copyright clause (Score:2)
There is an interesting analogy to look at here. Once the printing press made Bibles widely available to the masses, it was the beginning of the end for the absolute power of the Catholic Church. The people could now read their own Bibles, and make their own interpretations, and tell the Church to piss off. Martin Luther wrote his theses, and the Protestant movement was born.
Today, a free net presents a threat to government abuses and the power wielded by the media and corporations. While these groups always continue to have uninformed consumers who continue to look to them for pre-digested 'content' (think AOL Time Warner and how many people use them as their ISP), they don't want anything to undermine their power. So their corporate lawyers will lash out at any perceived threat, using the fuzzy IP laws as their basis. Few are able to outspend the corporations in court, so the corporation ends up on top.
Re:A simple thought (Score:2)
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before? (Score:2)
Bond is British not American (Score:2)
Devil Ducky
Re:Boundaries (Score:2)
Devil Ducky
Re:Coherent. (Score:2)
- Winston Churchill
The young are always the most active in the search for truth and justice. It's the way we're wired. And sometimes it doesn't make a lick of sense but that's because they are reacting with their hearts, which is why protests with youth in them are usually motivated and fiery. You ever seen the AARP (American Association of Retired People) screaming chants in the streets?
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
//rdj
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
The word AMONG combined with the word ALL, means EVERYONE, all people.
This is quite dangerous to do with a translation. The original may state this clearer. The same problem exists with the non-destinction in english between "vrij" (free as in freedom) and "gratis" (free beer). That also reminds me: Any 'misuse' of a text would have to refer to the original text, not a translation.
//rdj
Tired of the World (Score:2)
Does anyone else ever look around and just want to throw their arms up in despair, give in to the marketing, and go buy a Brittany Spears CD, some pants that are 4 sizes too big, and watch MTV all day long?
Kintanon
Re:Tired of the World (Score:2)
Oh please, if you've got the free time to post on slashdot you aren't exactly homeless and starving...
I'm 20, I have a mortgage, car payments, bills, etc... So what? That doesn't make the constant barrage of marketing any less crushing, it doesn't make the massive amounts of crap going on in the world any less depressing.
The attitude of 'I have more important things to worry about than whether or not the world is going to hell in a handbasket' is exactly why the world is going to hell. Wake up, do something nice for someone, try to make the world just that much more pleasant to live in.
Kintanon
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
Stop twisting the words of the bible for your own evil purposes.
Psalms 67:2, "That Thy way may be known on the earth, Thy salvation AMONG all nations."
The word AMONG combined with the word ALL, means EVERYONE, all people. Among all nations means that people in every nation will know salvation. This amount could be 1 person per nation, or every single person in every nation. The word Among does not automatically mean that not everyone will have salvation.
Also, how do you draw a connection between the book of John and the book of Psalms? The book of Psalms is a book of Hymns, it contains very little actual information. The book of John contains much of the direct words of Christ, the two books do not reference each other. I think you need to spend some more time reading the Bible and perhaps praying for guidance. You are hopelessly lost...
Kintanon
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
So unless he's reading the original he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Kintanon
Re:New uses for copyright (Score:2)
The Psalms were meant to be sung, they were being sung in the court of David. Do you even bother to read the book? If you know Hebrew you have the distinct advantage of being able to do so, so go read it. The Book of Psalms is a book of poetry, hymns, songs, whatever. Just because something is a Hymn doesn't mean it has to be sung by a choir.
Kintanon
Article Moderation: -1, Redundant (Score:2)
Geez.. (Score:2)
Too much! You're really preaching to the choir on these "moral implications of the modern era" essays that you write. I whole heartedly agree with you on almost all of the subjects that you write about, but I must say that it just seems to me that you are trying to win over your "target crowd" by over analyzing certain topics.. (this one included)
Maybe this is just a pet peeve of my own, but I consider it bad(read:pathetic) journalism. Report the stories that matter, and when it calls for a lengthy essay discussing moral implications or privacy, write it then. As a general rule of thumb, most people don't like to hear the same thing repeated over and over...
Just my feelings, no harm meant.
~Marshall
--
Homer: "No beer, No TV make Homer something something";
Marge: "Go crazy?";
Homer: "Don't mind if I do!"
we're not going to like the way this turns out (Score:2)
I do want to see IP protected to the extent that it fosters the creation of more science and art. The free exchange of thoughts and ideas seem more important to this end than guaranteeing profit.
I think the direction we are heading is a "royalty tax" on our network connections. The RIAA already receives money for blank audio media as it is. They get this money regardless of whether they produce anything or not. I think they'll be more than happy to have the same type of tax placed on our Net connections. I doubt the MPAA will be far behind in finding a way to do this as well. Is this what it's going to take for things to be "fair?" I think it will suck having a powerful recording industry that's state sponsored, but it's the only effective way I can see for them to stay in business. Not that I'd mind seeing the RIAA go out of business--there are plenty of non-RIAA bands and labels that would benefit if they did.
numb
Re:the copying vs copyright clause (Score:2)
if you're able to explain why your patent is unique and is your intellectual property, there shouldn't be a problem.
as I've mentioned, how many of these bullshit patents, once challenged, have actually stood up in court or in practice?
Re:It's an economic thing; you wouldn't understand (Score:2)
Royalties are not based on the extraction $ vs. copying $. Royalties are so that a company can allow use of the technology that they spent time and money researching and developing or in the instance of music, time and money spent for a band to produce an album and put their intellectual property (the actual music) into a publishable format. The ability to extract royalties depends on the item being copied being cheaper to develop from scratch to mimick the original rather than it being cheaper to copy in the sense of copying files.
When you copy an mp3 and pass it around, you aren't recreating the music from scratch, you're duplicating the file.
Now go out to K-mart and try to buy yourself some real logic.
What's Katz Doing About It? (Score:2)
The funny thing is that Katz is actually a good writer. Maybe not a good writer for geeks, but a good writer overall. But this article just doesn't cut it. It is talk-talk-talk. Give me a damn list of things I can do. Give us a list of things we can do. What action does he expect?
Give me buttons to push, applications to write, web sites to create, programs to code. Give me ideas about databases that would rock. Where are the checkboxes? We're geeks
I'm going to yak if I hear too much more about the Evil Empire of Corporatism. What are the steps to improvement Katz? Where are the action items ? And what about those of us that work for an Evil Empire Company? We need $$$ and we have people to feed.
If you could have anything Katzmeister, what would it be? Give us the beautiful vision.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord. [webword.com]
Lessig personal website, more stuff like above (Score:2)
Lots and lots of papers in the same vein as the above article, but much more in-depth.
Re:Jon, corporations are not the danger (Score:2)
The DMCA is about PROPERTY RIGHTS That's property rights in copyright. But it's still a propery rights law.
Note I am not saying anything so silly as there should be no private property or that there shold be no intellectual property. But the basic problem is, in fact, what is property in the net-age, and what is necessary to protect that property.
Lessig's website for CODE book (Score:2)
http://code-is-law.org [code-is-law.org].
That's the website for Lessig's book, CODE and Other Laws of Cyberspace
It has excerpts [code-is-law.org]
Possibly the best paragraph JK has written (Score:2)
This has enormous implications for free speech and intellectual property. Technologies that work have always gotten used, whether they should be or not. It's still true. People who can download text, columns, games, ideas, music and software will do so, if for no other reason than because they can. People who can use technology to comment freely, distribute code, challenge authority and criticize powerful corporate interests will do so, not only because they have the right but because they are able. This is the immutable reality of cyberspace, the new political consciousness emanating from the Internet.
This is so true, but it is a fact that seems to have totally been missed by government legislators in their rush to compartmentalise and control the net. No matter what regulations they put against doing certain things, people will go and do them anyway because they can.
This means that strictures aimed at preventing certain people from doing something (e.g. pirating music through Napster) will do little to prevent those who want to do it, but instead will restrict and hamper those who have legal and valid reasons for doing the same.
Under a structure as open as the net there is never going to be a way to 100% police what everybody is doing, and the people that are going to get around such barriers are those who the barriers are there to stop. The only people regulation harms are those who are doing nothing wrong.
Re:Idiotic Reactions Forthcoming? (Score:2)
Agreed. A lot of people seem to have a go at him for posting stuff "we already know". Well, duh, that's the point. I always thought that the idea was that Jon would take an idea, write a piece around it, so that it would provoke discussion of the topic. I don't think he was ever intended to be some kind of "visionary".
The net has changed the de facto rules... (Score:2)
They used to be: "It is illegal, but if you really want it, you can get it"
Now they read: "It is illegal, but if you feel like it, you can get it,... easily"
We are going to have bad laws (Score:2)
Once we accept that we are going to have bad laws, we can then take the next step: not only working with our congresspeople to see these laws repealed/amended but also to work towards creating sensible legislation that will protect the users, creators and infrastructure of the internet.
We cannot just sit here and make commentary after commentary - we have to make sure we are heard. Right now the major corporations and organizations (MS, RIAA, MPAA) have our leaderships ears. Hence, they are controlling what kind of legislation is being put out there. Send links to articles and threads to your congressman, to your senator, to your city mayor and your state governor, because laws and regulations are being considered on all levels.
Re:Threats to liberty (Score:2)
If you want to give a slap in the face to the corporate interests behind George W. and the Gore-Bot 2000, you should call your local Green Party organizer right now and ask how you can get involved. Ralph Nader [votenader.com], the Green Presidential candidate, is committed to reducing the influence that corporations have over our public life [votenader.com]. Consider the following items from the Concord Principles [votenader.com], the platform that Nader is running on:
You may say that it's pointless for Nader to take on these issues, since he "can't win". Well, I would argue that someone with his name recognition and integrity can and will be a credible third party candidate; but even if Nader loses, if he pulls ten or fifteen percent of the vote, he will be heard. Remember how nobody cared about the budget deficit until Ross Perot made it his defining issue in 1992? Nader can do the same for the way corporations screw us over every day. Nader's fighting an uphill battle to get on the ballot in several important states [votenader.com], and you can help [votenader.com] just by gathering a few signatures to get him there. Even if you're not the Green type, if you care at all about curbing corporate power in this country, you owe it to yourself to at least check out the man's Web site and hear what he has to say.
-- Jason A. Lefkowitz
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!) (Score:2)
Sure some people might go ahead and steal your work but they might have less incentive to do so. Cheaper prices and all. Most snot-nosed teenagers and 20-somethings would not benifit from your type of work. Wouldn't it be nice if the artists instead of the corporations could make the profit and decide what to charge the public? The only difference between idealism and reality is implemetation.
The claim that one cannot own an idea is nonsense in many cases. If not for the person who wrote a given book or came up with a certain idea, then that book or idea would simply not ever have existed.
I never made that claim, although I do beleive it to be true. Your assertion that an idea or work of art would never have come about if not for a particular person is true in some cases but not in all. Many ideas, and discoveries have come from more then one source at the same time, although I will agree that art generally is a creative work of the artist and not something that more than one person would have come up with. I don't beleive that ideas can be owned. I do believe that the person that originates an idea that benifits society should for a limited time have rights to that idea. However the key here is limited time. Nothing should be kept from public domain for the lifetime of the artist plus 20 years.
Artists should be able to make a living off of their work. However any artist that is more interested in money then art is not an artist. Maybe a craftsman, for in my mind what seperates an artist from a craftsman is the objective of their work. An artist works for the sake of art a craftsman works for money. That does not mean that a craftsman has any less pride in the creation just that the goals are different.
Re:Threats to liberty (Score:2)
We now have a nation by the corporations for the corporations, with no easy way to take it back. Before somebody comes up and says this is a democracy you can vote. I want to say sure I can vote but the choices of who I can vote for have already been decided. How many times in the last hundred years have write in canidates been elected for a major office?
changes past and coming? (Score:2)
But there was a second stage to this. In the 1800s the printng press took another step forward, and books got cheaper to make once again. At this point knockoff copies of books became common; if you read biographies of popular 19th Century writers you'll find that many of them were constantly complaining about and taking on unauthorised printings of their works. And during this time it became much cheaper to reproduce artwork as well.
In the mid-1900s the photo-offset press addded on more step to this process. For not too much of an outlay anyone could be a print shop for short runs. While this didn't hurt bookpublishers much, I suspect that it did cause a decline in the sales of music scores and plays - fairly pricy items that small performing groups needed only a few copies of.
Electronic methods have made it even cheaper to copy, and removed most barriers to the distribution of the copies (actual the distribution is the copying process). So now the original publishers are being hurt, and fight back.
This may be signalling another major change in the publishing business. Perhaps the creators - author, producers, performers - will begin to bypass the publishers, go straight to electronic distribution, and take their chances on how many people use the product without payment vs. paying for it. I've heard that King did alright on his recent electronic release, earning more than he would have with a sale to a standard print outlet even with the amount of pirating that went on.
Cheap copies are a big part of historical changes in obscenity laws, too. The authorities were not very worried about porn so long as it remained limited in its distribution, the expense of making copies kept it in the hands of the wealthy. Cheap printing and cheap image reproduction allowed the masses access to these materials, and lead to a large increase in laws attempting to control it.
Porn also drove the cost reduction of many technologies. The printing press was quickly used to print such. The small businesses turning out naughty photos in the later 1800s help boost sales of photographic equipment and bring the prices down. As for VCRs, need we speak?
The same is holding true with the Net. So long as the dirty pictures were being passed about by some members of a small handfull of taxpayer subsidized egghead weirdoes then the government wasn't really worried. But let just anyone at it, and it's a hot issue.
Note that the cost of producing material things has come down over the same time period, jsut not so dramatically. Check how someone in the 13th and 16th centuries would think about buying a dozen drinking glasses/mugs, and then what it cost today. But manufacturing of material objects is still not as low cost as the copying of ideas, people will still pay for real matter implementations of someting.
These changes are much of what is driving the economy to the service side - currently there's no easy way to replace a person doing something for you. Good scifi robots could change part of that, but creative services would still be in demand. In the langer term these trends may lead to more creators looking at their work as the orginal creation of something, for which they receive compensation, and not the ownership of the creation itself.
Boundaries (Score:2)
nothing to our names, eh? (Score:2)
One of the checkboxes was:
- Do you want to copyright the dissertation?
I checked NO.A couple of hundred pages, myriad graphs, eight years of intense work. (And no, it wasn't something wimpy like comp-sci).
So yes, some of us have put our (work, if not money) where our mouths are.
Have you open-sourced some code today?
Inverted (Score:2)
It seems to me that it would be much more accurate to say:
A freer culture than we ever had before has created the Internet and its distinctive architecture.
When the Internet was still the exclusive playground of universities and government, the "culture" you are talking about was dialing in to stand-alone private BBS systems.
If the Internet ever becomes less usefull to hackers and geeks, we will simply go elsewhere (along the lines of the "Walled City" in William Gibson's "Idoru"). Have no fear: If "the spine" was taken down tomorrow, and replaced with Al Gore's pirate-free, carefully monitored, kid-friendly, politically correct "information super highway" we would have our own replacement up and running within the year, paid for with our "day jobs" supporting the corporate net.
What it comes down to is that the Internet needs geeks to function, not the other way around.
Re:Why wasn't it controlled before? (Score:2)
Fact: the United States collects over one trillion dollars in revenue every year.
What could a trillion dollars do? Imagine what would happen if the billions devoted to the War on Drugs was suddenly freed up for other interests (Social Security, improving public education, a decent space program, a more intelligent defense program, social reforms, et cetera ad nauseam).
Yet this money is wasted in an ideological war that cannot be won.
The United States government is not full of stupid people. Most certainly, it is not run by stupid people. These people may act stupidly, they may come across as stupid, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they are, for the most part, not stupid.
So why this flagrant misuse of resources? It serves three purposes, one of which you touch on below:
The result of the War on Drugs is generally that the poor and/or minorities end up in prison.
First, the War on Drugs creates a large oppressed underclass, fit only for minimum-wage jobs or those considered odious to the powers that be. This has the dual effect of providing a cheap workforce and having an element that can by its mere existence threaten other segments of society: "Be good, or you'll end up like the crack junkie over there!"
Second, the creation of this underclass gives the government free license (more or less) to pass legislation that strips all citizens of civil rights under the guise of persecuting the guilty. We have more police with broader, less well-defined powers because we have created an underclass of unruly citizens who have little incentive to obey the law.
Third, we have effectively wasted a lot of resources that could have been put to better use improving the lot of everyone in the United States and a fair number of people elsewhere around the globe. The powers that be are not interested in a good society. They are not interested in world peace. They are interested in the easiest path to power, which is to keep the public ignorant and powerless, unable to fight back or even to understand what is going on.
A War on Piracy will punish a much "higher class" (in the sense of social standing, not social fitness) of people and will get much less public support.
This would be true, but the events at Columbine have given them an effective tool to use against us: we're now "protecting the children." The freedom of access to information will be curtailed sharply, not because little Johnny wants to look at pictures of naked people, and not because little Johnny could find out information on illegal drugs or bombs. No, it will be regulated because little Johnny might find out that he's been lied to. Even worse, he might start telling people that they've been lied to as well.
These events bode ill not only for us, but for all of humanity.
The future of the internet (Score:2)
Well, just my $.02 worth.
exactly (Score:2)
--
New BIBLE patent applied for at USPTO! (Score:3)
Jon, corporations are not the danger (Score:3)
Forget corporations, stop bashing them, they are a distraction from the real problem which is the fact that the laws themselves do not respect rights.
- Porn laws and piracy laws ignore the right to free speech and thought.
- Decency laws, euthanasia laws and forced self-safety laws ignore the right of self ownership.
- Zoning rules, antitrust, workplace regulations and most taxes or tariffs ignore the right of private property.
- And so on.
A Fundamental Flaw In This Story (Score:3)
We are not dealing with a closed system here, which Katz seems to assume. The 'net could (however unlikely) be ruled completetly illegal by, say, the US gov't and then what? The access we all hold so dear would vanish overnight. The backbone providers could be forced to shut down, thus killing the access for all. What good would "virtual" freedom do us if the police could simply bust down the door of any service provider and pull plugs from the wall?
I heartily agree that a new form of freedom is at work in the Internet. Right or wrong, millions of people have begun to take it for granted, this newfound freedom. We must always remember, however, that while we "exist" on line and have certain freedoms therein, there are still physical ties that can easily be cut by any government brazen enough.
-------------
Gutenberg's eternal struggle (Score:3)
No, you couldn't. Because the government wouldn't let you.
Soon after Gutenberg pressed the first book (it was the Bible), governments sought a firm control on the written word. Where a monarchy didn't exist to firmly control printing presses, guilds sprang up to limit the ability to publish to a chosen few. They knew how much power freedom of information had. In a few decades, protestants -- who now had bibles they could read -- rebelled against catholic power and new nations were created. All because the common man now had the ability to print books.
When the industrial revolution came around, steam and electrical power gave everybody the ability to run a printing press. Small publishers sprang up and started printing inexpensive books for the masses. But the big publishers, out of greed, lobbied the government to pass laws limiting reprints of anything but very old texts. Thus the copyright law we have today.
Now, with the internet, we're at a third plateau of publishing possibilities for the common man. And it's time we decided how much free speech we really want. If we really believe speech should be free, then copyright law has to be changed or erased, and a lot of big businesses are going down. The only other option is to accept less-than-free speech. Will the populace allow that? Time will tell.
But don't tell me that it is natural for information to be considered protected property, because it isn't. IP is an unnatural phenomenon that was created by business owners in the past few hundreds of years. It's a legal construct, and like all legal constructs it is subject to review and change. Hopefully we'll begin to look at what is best for humanity, and not what is best for any one person's pockets.
--
This post is a rehash of opinions from people better than I. Particularly one column [2kjournal.com] at 2k journal. [2kjournal.com]
And finally, an example of speech that is truly humanitarian and free: Project Gutenberg. [gutenberg.net]
Re:What's Katz Doing About It? (Score:3)
The thing about this article that I like is that Katz is not giving us a list of things to do. I think this was intended to be food for thought. I think the action he expects is for us to hash out some ideas in response to his article. His article is just a starting point for a conversation. It's the comments you read and write that will give you some insight if not an exact answer. More talk is still necessary.
numb
the copying vs copyright clause (Score:3)
I think this is going just a bit too far. As the technology progresses, so does the ability to copy. When you had people carving books in stone, it took just as many hours to copy as it did to create the original... but then again, you could always have just done a rubbing to make a copy. When the printing press was invented, no longer did some monk have to write out the bible word by word in shorthand... you could crank out hundreds of them in a week. The ability to copy has always been hand in hand with the ability to create. Now that it takes 30 seconds to print a cd, it takes just as long to make a copy of it.
This doesn't mean that the IP is worth less. And it doesn't mean the the owner of the IP should just give up protecting their property. And it doesn't mean that the whole system is flawed. It means that if you believe that your property is being taken away from you, you have to fight harder to protect it.
yes, there are bogus patents out there, and protective patents (patenting just to make sure somebody else doesn't and use it against you). But if you've noticed, the bogus patents aren't standing up in court due to the judge's becoming a bit more enlightened when it comes to technology. Thusly, in filing the patent, you need to be prepared to protect your property. If not, sell it to someone that is prepared to do this.
But nothing's really changed in this area, it's just gotten a bit more over-reactive, over-protective, and overly-hyped.
If it's your property, and you feel strongly in that being your property, then you need to protect it. There is nothing really wrong with the system, it has enough checks and balances built in that nobody really gets away with pulling a fast one. I could provide tons of examples of this if required. The system is intact, so stop hyping how bad it needs to be destroyed.
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!) (Score:3)
At the moment the publishers have all the power. They decide when a book will be published. What information will be published and what price they will charge the public.
Copyright is not a natural right while freespeech is we need to recognize that fact and move on.
Threats to liberty (Score:3)
The primary threat to freedom is still governmental power. The problem is that governmental power is increasingly controlled and directed by corporate interests. The DMCA and its kin benefit and are driven by corporate interests, but they are still laws. They are backed by the threat of governmental force. Until such time as corporations begin fielding their own armies, government remains the primary threat.
Re:Coherent. (Score:3)
It's interesting, too, how times have changed. Now, it seems that "youth" on the so-called front-lines are primarily concerned with information and the ramifications of how that information is disseminated. (And belive me, I don't denigrate this; I believe it's an important battle, and one that must be fought and decided.)
30 years ago, the front-line was Vietnam -- bombing Cambodia, nightly incursions into Laos, and the difficulties (and deceptions) of withdrawing troops from Southeast Asia.
It seems to me -- and I can't really problematize or more clearly elucidate this yet because I'm thinking as I'm typing -- but that there has been a large-scale social (and perhaps economic?) shift from the ideological and political dogma of the late 1960's to the information wars that we're witnessing now. To me, at least, this shift is *from* the usual layers of a stratified society -- the poor, the middle-class, the upper-class -- *toward* something entirely different -- something that (curiously) transcends politics and even the idea of democracy. I mean, it's true on the one hand that democracy encourages all voices to join the fray -- but if each voice is equal -- truly equal -- then how is it possible to maintain the levels of hierarchical order that democracy depends upon? The idea of majority/minority (it would seem to me) disappears when a democracy in its pure form exists. Who sets the rules? Who says the majority wins? Why not the minority? I mean, democracy presupposes the very hierarchies it attempts to subvert, right?
Information 30 years ago was controlled in a way that's simply not possible now, and as a result, the stratification (or "Democratization") of society was able to be manipulated by forces outside (and inside) the system -- the government and various social services, schools, churches, etc. Now these forces are struggling against the growing "blob" of information -- the more that 'information' (and I mean information in its pure form, encompassing everything from government documents to MP3 files to propaganda) becomes available, the more the hierarchies start to lose their persusasive force.
This is not to say we've been under the illusion of democracy for 200+ years, but it's more to wonder -- and it's early in the morning -- just where democracy starts and what -- specifically -- makes democracy possible.
The answer, I think, is information -- information is the key to maintaining order. And if the order is now somehow maintained -- via the courts, most likely -- then it's not that the democracy will cease to be, it'll just be rendered impotent.
Which is to say: I think I know how much of the so-called information war will be settled: it'll be settled so that the status quo will be maintained. It'll be settled (I would think) so that, like 30 years ago, it's possible to maintain the levels of hierarchical power which facilitate the "illusion" -- bad word, I know -- of democracy.
It's a scary thing when you try to think beyond 'democracy' as we know and attempt to posit the power relations that make it possible. Are those relations democratic? How do those relations achieve their power? I would argue that it's far from democratic. This doesn't necessarily make it right or wrong -- just that, ya know, there's more than meets the eye.
Katz, you care to comment on this?
Napster is NOT theft, and I can prove it. (Score:3)
Okay, maybe I can't exactly prove it, but I have can make a rational argument for it, and that's more than most people involved in this debate can seem to do.
Theft involves taking something that belongs to someone else. The common argument in the case of Napster is that Napster users are "stealing" from record companies and artists, and that the alleged theft takes place in the form of lost sales. The underlying assumption is that the Napster user would have purchased the music had they not been able to download it for free. In many cases this simply isn't true. Most people I know aren't willing to buy a CD for $12-$15 just because they hear a single song they like. If you, the Napster user, want to be 100% sure that you can never rightly be called a thief, make a solemn vow to yourself right now that you will never again buy a CD, and stick to it. There - your actions are no longer the source of any "lost sales." After all, you wouldn't have bought the CD's anyway.
What Napster users are doing is called "unauthorized use," not "theft" or "stealing." Some would argue that unauthorized use is just as wrong, but that's another argument for another time. In any case, I suspect most people would agree that unauthorized use in this context is a lesser offense than stealing.
Another popular (and wrong) argument is that Napster users drive up the prices of CD's, or at least keep them at their current, excessively-high levels. This also is crap. CD's aren't getting more expensive; they've hovered around their current price point for years. Let's suppose, however, that Napster really is costing the music industry huge amounts of money, and let's also assume that Napster disappears overnight and all those "lost sales" suddenly aren't there to drive up the price of CD's any more. Are CD's going to get cheaper? No way - no way in hell. The prices will never come down - the only difference will be that the record companies stocks all surge due to a sudden increase in profits. Rest assured, consumers will continue to pay the same high prices they always have.
Only one thing forces down prices - competition. There is no competition in the music industry. Sure, there are multiple record companies, but artists sign with one company only, which then has a monopoly on that artist. People don't buy CD's because they want to own shiny, round pieces of plastic; they buy them because they contain music by the artists they like. It's not like a drop in Metallica CD prices is going to force down the cost of Britney Spears CD's. For competition to exist, artists would have to be able to sign with multiple record companies and let those companies duke it out in the marketplace. There's almost no chance that'll ever happen - unless, of course, something comes along that fundamentally changes the nature of the music industry. I'm not saying that Napster is that "something," but it's obviously having some real impact on the music industry, and sooner or later either Napster or something like it is going to force some major changes in the way the music industry operates.
So, does this mean intellectual property has ceased to have value? Er... no - not even close. I don't know what the ultimate impact of Napster-like technologies will be or what will change in the music industry (or any other industry based primarily on intellectual property). All I know is this: the companies who acknowledge that this technology isn't going to go away and who change their business models to take advantage of it are going to be the ones that turn a profit. The sooner a business realizes this and takes action, the sooner they'll have that ever-so-elusive "edge" over their competitors.
Freedom is a Hot Topic (Score:3)
Man this topic is a hot potato...
Some of y'all can rant about it being Katz just self-aggrandizing, but look at mainstream media. Why is any story POSTed? To be read! Ulterior motives vary, but I think mainly people write these stories because they feel the issue is important enough to publish their opinion on the subject, and they realize that while many will disagree, at least it should stimulate the public discussion that could lead to a good solution to any "problem" with the issue.
In the specific case of the "freedom" on the Internet, we are certainly facing a problem and many attacks from gov'ts and corp's who fear the implications of unrestricted information flow.
Existing "meatspace" laws only come up short because of the current difficulty inherent in enforcing them when the medium used to violate them is as distributed, twisted and mutable as the Internet's vast web of connections. The ultimate control point, of course, would be the major Telcos. They own the wires, fibers, etc, that the Internet's information exchanges travel on. Fortunately, the gov't hasn't decided to attack that point yet, probably because it would still be extraordinarily difficult to efficiently block and trace back "prohibited" packets, especially if they are encrypted.
We educated users of the Internet care about this because we use the 'net almost every day, and have come to rely upon it for much of our information gathering and sharing. It is also an important medium for disseminating ones opinions to a very large possible audience. As such, it is of course an important tool for Free Speech.
It comes back down to the existing laws and the country that spawned them, however. The Internet does have physical components, and the access points to it have physical locations, as do the users. Said physical locations are bound by the laws in that location. In countries where Speech is (mostly) Protected, like here in the US, we can expect that there will be little if any direct control over the "data conduits" and their connections to sites outside of the US. (I'm leaving IP law aside for the moment...) In countries where Speech does not have similar Protection, we can expect that there will at least be a vigorous attempt to control the "data conduits" in a similar fashion to other media. As another poster mentioned, a gov't can do considerable damage before it realises that it's goals are unattainable. However, they will not be resisted overmuch as long as the public that supported the creation of the laws still supports their enforcement. That this is difficult is not an issue to the majority, witness the current War On Drugs in the US...
Corporations are an "enemy" in this issue because they desire to protect their profits. That is their sole function, to create and protect their sources of profit. At least this is the case under current Capitolistic economic systems. If they see a threat to their profits, they will do everything in their power to neutralize that threat. This includes using their economic power to lobby for the passage and/or enforcement of laws against the rest of the public. Whether this is right or wrong is up to the individuals involved to decide, but until there is enough popular support for a change in the current model nothing significant will happen.
Perhaps the best way to ensure the continued expansion of communication and ease of information sharing would be to maximise the number of people who have access to the Internet. If everyone was on the Internet and came to value it as a vital tool for sharing information, opinions, etc. about all topics, including dissenting political ideas, revolutionary ideas, etc. then any attempt to shut off this medium would lead to a huge public outcry against such an attempt.
As it is, we do not have the support of the majority, because the majority do not have Internet access and therefore only have the information about it supplied by the predominant media forms of newspapers, radio, television and schools. And those of us who know realize that such sources are far from being unbiased, especially to those who have to work so hard to make ends meet they don't have time for anything more than the TV news soundbites they catch on the TV during meals and/or the radio soundbites they hear. Until we get the masses online, we will not have their support, and they will continue to base their opinions on the opinions of the popular media.
This is why it is so important to fight "filtering systems" in schools, libraries, and other public access locations, or at least to stimulate vigorous wide-scale public discussion about it, in order to get our point across that maximal access to information is VERY IMPORTANT to allow our children to develop into adults capable of dealing rationally with all sorts of information that they will be exposed to in their lives.
Perhaps an acceptable idea would be to get the schools to use Linux or Unix based operating systems and text-only browsers. Not only would they learn more about how the computers they use operate, but it should satisfy 95% of the parents who object to certain kinds of content on the Internet.
Of course, there are those who beleive that the role of parents and schools is to mold and socialize their kids to want to act the way we want them to, to want the same things we want, to value things the same way we do, etc. rather than teaching them how to decide such things for themselves...
If you want to preserve the access rights for "us techies", you needn't worry. It is relatively easy to get a "codeless technician class" Amateur Radio liscense, and for the motivated the higher class liscenses should be easy as well. Packet radio can and is done, and it is legal. Advances in error-detection and correction will need to be made because of the high amount of noise and the spurious contact quality from time to time. Simple encryption would defeat most attempts to "listen in". Basically a huge wireless LAN. One could also use various "line of sight" connection techniques, including lasers, microwaves, directional antennas, etc. For the truly paranoid, mobile "burst" transmitters. Transmission would be less instantaneous, but for mostly text-based information it could be very useful. Server in a van with a reciever and a transmitter. When the buffer is full, burst transmit. Coded-in callkeys to identify the intended reciever. All sorts of ideas, and all hard to track down. Especially the recievers.
You can be as free as you want to be, but TANSTAAFL...
Re:Boundaries (Score:4)
Doesn't mean it's not going to try, though.
A misguided government of a large and fairly rich country can do an incredible amount of damage during the time it takes it to realize that its goals are unachievable.
Kaa
Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!) (Score:4)
In my case, I co-wrote a book last year. I spent a lot of time researching the subject, testing the subject and writing the book. I made a modest amount of money, enough to help pay for a downpayment on my house.
If someone were to take my book, cut off the binding, and duplicate it on a high speed duplicator (perhaps a Xerox brand duplicator) and resell, I would be irked. If this were common, I may not write another book.
If someone were to use my book as reference, along with the other books in the same field, and write a new book that improves on mine, I would flattered, they added some value.
Quick, someone dig up the link about what happened when copyright was removed after the French Revolution. IIRC, literature quickly devolved into pornography, there was no incentive to create lasting works.
In summation, copyright works with a creator's greed (and desire to provide for one's family), let's not be so quick to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
George
Re:Coherent....ramble..[ot] kinda (Score:4)
Point is...although I, like others...use mp3s to find rare music or preview you it..do the same for games...or games Ill play once in a blue moon@lan parties and just want the cd to install it...and though I don't feel like a criminal..seeming how I do purchase games/cds/software etc,etc...from the very same people I "steal" from...I *ACCEPT* the fact I am commiting a crime. There is no justification. The next time you want to 'justify' piracy...just think of someone coming into your home and taking your belongings....cause that, though not exactly, is what it is--theft.
Yes, we need to protect copyright holders. No..we shouldn't give companies fucking 90 year copyrights...yes we should look out for artists, no we shouldnt go on witchhunts and hunt down the 'criminals' who d/l their mp3s...cause you know what, they are the same people who buy the album...
sorry bout that...Im just sick of all the justification