EarthLink wins spammer suit
Another good precedent. Defeating spam through exisitng laws looks more promising.
Friday, 19 July 2002
DRM Is Theft
Reports on the Commerce Department Workshop are appearing everywhere.
Grant Gross has written a good account of the workshop, and an outline fo the debate. The Register reprinted this, and CNET had an account by Declan, who put up photos too, as well as a story on Kuro5hin & Slashdot (oddly, an identical one). Most of them printed the "DRM is Theft" slogan of NT Fair Use. I'd like to quote none other than Jack Valenti in support of this idea:
The single centralizing principle on which this whole rostrum rests is this: If you cannot own, if what you own cannot be protected, you don't own anything and that goes for Clint Eastwood or the most obscure person in this industry or anybody in any industry. If what you own cannot be protected, you own nothing.
[...]
The last sentence of the fifth amendment, and I urge all of you law students to read it again, because the fifth amendment is not merely that you can't testify to incriminate yourself. The last sentence says you cannot take anybody's private property, not even the Government, without giving them just compensation for it. It is that "takings" clause that is the heart and muscle of this memorandum by Professor Tribe.
DRM takes control of your computer, and hands it over to those who would sell you music and movies. It's not just the First and Fourth amendments any more.
Grant Gross has written a good account of the workshop, and an outline fo the debate. The Register reprinted this, and CNET had an account by Declan, who put up photos too, as well as a story on Kuro5hin & Slashdot (oddly, an identical one). Most of them printed the "DRM is Theft" slogan of NT Fair Use. I'd like to quote none other than Jack Valenti in support of this idea:
The single centralizing principle on which this whole rostrum rests is this: If you cannot own, if what you own cannot be protected, you don't own anything and that goes for Clint Eastwood or the most obscure person in this industry or anybody in any industry. If what you own cannot be protected, you own nothing.
[...]
The last sentence of the fifth amendment, and I urge all of you law students to read it again, because the fifth amendment is not merely that you can't testify to incriminate yourself. The last sentence says you cannot take anybody's private property, not even the Government, without giving them just compensation for it. It is that "takings" clause that is the heart and muscle of this memorandum by Professor Tribe.
DRM takes control of your computer, and hands it over to those who would sell you music and movies. It's not just the First and Fourth amendments any more.
Monday, 15 July 2002
Welcome back Marek
Not just this
All of you who work to get by. All of you who work because you have to. All of you doing the loveless work, boring work. All of you who didn't pick your job out of passion, I want you to know that YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION. Thank you for cleaning my bathroom in the hospital. To the lady who changed my bed sheets I thank you. Thank you for the shitty plastic cups of Jell-O and warm chicken broth and thank you for taking the trash out of my room. I don't want to deny appreciation to any person, no matter how loveless and boring job they may be doing because the circumstances in their life did the choosing for them. You are all Human Beings and all you ever have to do in life is to BE HUMAN and then DIE.
but also this:
Valenti personifies for me people who live in here and now and are excluded from History and History Making. His interests are here and now and protection of here and now into the perpetual future of here and now. His notion of Copyright, of property is not one of progress of creating works of art so the next artists could draw from the previous. His notion is of a zero-sum copyright, as if there were finite amout of ideas in the world where one has to come up with one and then build a fortress around it so noone else can use it to extend it or derive from it.
Go Marek
All of you who work to get by. All of you who work because you have to. All of you doing the loveless work, boring work. All of you who didn't pick your job out of passion, I want you to know that YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION. Thank you for cleaning my bathroom in the hospital. To the lady who changed my bed sheets I thank you. Thank you for the shitty plastic cups of Jell-O and warm chicken broth and thank you for taking the trash out of my room. I don't want to deny appreciation to any person, no matter how loveless and boring job they may be doing because the circumstances in their life did the choosing for them. You are all Human Beings and all you ever have to do in life is to BE HUMAN and then DIE.
but also this:
Valenti personifies for me people who live in here and now and are excluded from History and History Making. His interests are here and now and protection of here and now into the perpetual future of here and now. His notion of Copyright, of property is not one of progress of creating works of art so the next artists could draw from the previous. His notion is of a zero-sum copyright, as if there were finite amout of ideas in the world where one has to come up with one and then build a fortress around it so noone else can use it to extend it or derive from it.
Go Marek
Saturday, 13 July 2002
more on DRM panel
A group from New York, including Richard Stallman, is going to protest the Congressional DRM meeting below. details here
Friday, 12 July 2002
How I'd present if invited to that panel
If I could present arguments as part of the panel, here's what I'd do to illustrate the points from my brief.
1. Church-Turing is about Emulation. I'd bring my iBook running OS X, and show it emulating 9 to run a CD-ROM I published 6 years ago. Then I'd show it running Virtual PC, to run another Windows CD I published in the same timeframe. It even emulates a VT-100 so it can run Emacs.
Then, I'd show it running MacMAME to run a Video Game from 20 years ago. That MAME is running the code from the original ROMs, and thinks it is on some custom CPU and graphics card is the point about the futility of a trusted client - the computer industry does not oppose the CBDTPA because we're bloody minded, but because it is the CompSci equivalent of legislating Pi to be 3.
Other emulators such as ReBirth or Reason would work too, and are more obviously emulating some other equipment.
2. Editablility. I'd show them how I can edit my kids movies in iMovie or QTPlayer or sequence a CD in iTunes. Then, I'd play the Disney Tarzan DVD that forces you to watch 5 minutes of adverts without being able to fast forward.
3. We are all creators. I'd show them my first-grade son's webpage and I'd show them one of the funny movies that he directed where he presses a button and turns his brother into a banana.
4. They don't trust their customers. If I can get one, I'd put in a Sony 'protected' CD that deliberately crashes the Mac (a felony in some states) to show exactly how much contempt.
5. Set the markets free. Online, my son could compete for customers with MPAA members. Mandating that the computers we use to express ourselves become playback engines for centrally licensed 'content' would set the US back compared to the rest of the world. Along with many others, I came here to work in the computer industry because it is a free country - free in the sense of liberty not gratis. If they abridge the freedom of speech and free markets with these ideas, the US won't be the magnet anymore.
6. The Internet is a huge boon to free speech -over 2 billion webpages are out there, showing people's thoughts, dreams and stories. Whatever you go looking for, you will find. The Web is Caliban's mirror - when I go there I find a community of intelligent discourse, wry jokes, technological assistance and the greatest works of human history, lovingly transcribed by those who care about them.
Oddly, when Jack Valenti looks there, all he finds are thieves, hucksters and crooks.
------
Another point. The MPAA or RIAA rep will at some point claim that their industries 'lost Billions' to 'piracy'. These are Enron, Worldcom or Anderson Billions. Ask him who audited them for him, and where they show up on the balance sheet.
1. Church-Turing is about Emulation. I'd bring my iBook running OS X, and show it emulating 9 to run a CD-ROM I published 6 years ago. Then I'd show it running Virtual PC, to run another Windows CD I published in the same timeframe. It even emulates a VT-100 so it can run Emacs.
Then, I'd show it running MacMAME to run a Video Game from 20 years ago. That MAME is running the code from the original ROMs, and thinks it is on some custom CPU and graphics card is the point about the futility of a trusted client - the computer industry does not oppose the CBDTPA because we're bloody minded, but because it is the CompSci equivalent of legislating Pi to be 3.
Other emulators such as ReBirth or Reason would work too, and are more obviously emulating some other equipment.
2. Editablility. I'd show them how I can edit my kids movies in iMovie or QTPlayer or sequence a CD in iTunes. Then, I'd play the Disney Tarzan DVD that forces you to watch 5 minutes of adverts without being able to fast forward.
3. We are all creators. I'd show them my first-grade son's webpage and I'd show them one of the funny movies that he directed where he presses a button and turns his brother into a banana.
4. They don't trust their customers. If I can get one, I'd put in a Sony 'protected' CD that deliberately crashes the Mac (a felony in some states) to show exactly how much contempt.
5. Set the markets free. Online, my son could compete for customers with MPAA members. Mandating that the computers we use to express ourselves become playback engines for centrally licensed 'content' would set the US back compared to the rest of the world. Along with many others, I came here to work in the computer industry because it is a free country - free in the sense of liberty not gratis. If they abridge the freedom of speech and free markets with these ideas, the US won't be the magnet anymore.
6. The Internet is a huge boon to free speech -over 2 billion webpages are out there, showing people's thoughts, dreams and stories. Whatever you go looking for, you will find. The Web is Caliban's mirror - when I go there I find a community of intelligent discourse, wry jokes, technological assistance and the greatest works of human history, lovingly transcribed by those who care about them.
Oddly, when Jack Valenti looks there, all he finds are thieves, hucksters and crooks.
------
Another point. The MPAA or RIAA rep will at some point claim that their industries 'lost Billions' to 'piracy'. These are Enron, Worldcom or Anderson Billions. Ask him who audited them for him, and where they show up on the balance sheet.
Thursday, 11 July 2002
Disney Restrictions Mandatory
The US Commerce Department is holding a workshop on DRM.
The usual suspects are there -Jack Valenti, Mitch Glazier, Vivendi, Disney, Microsoft and Intel.
If you can't go, send in your comments or comment on my comments
The usual suspects are there -Jack Valenti, Mitch Glazier, Vivendi, Disney, Microsoft and Intel.
If you can't go, send in your comments or comment on my comments
Wednesday, 10 July 2002
Boucher gets it
Rep. Boucher Outlines 'Fair Use' Fight "The music industry needs to take off the brakes," on copy-prohibiting tecnnologies, Boucher said. "The vast majority of the Internet consuming public is honest" and would be willing to pay for online music, especially if "the music industry would agree to put its entire inventory online."
Monday, 8 July 2002
DRM consider futile
DRM a non-solution says Jon Udell:
When I worked with O'Reilly on its electronic reference library, Safari, protecting the IP was a top concern. We implemented such controls as are possible in a web-based medium, including spider detection and digital watermarking. But I'm sure I lost more sleep over these issues than Tim O'Reilly did. His experience tells him to trust his customers to do the right thing: pay O'Reilly a fair price for its content, and publicly uphold that social norm. By and large, they do. When O'Reilly content shows up in unauthorized form on the web, it's often customers who first spot it and report it.
When I worked with O'Reilly on its electronic reference library, Safari, protecting the IP was a top concern. We implemented such controls as are possible in a web-based medium, including spider detection and digital watermarking. But I'm sure I lost more sleep over these issues than Tim O'Reilly did. His experience tells him to trust his customers to do the right thing: pay O'Reilly a fair price for its content, and publicly uphold that social norm. By and large, they do. When O'Reilly content shows up in unauthorized form on the web, it's often customers who first spot it and report it.
Thanks for the oxygen
We planted 14 trees in our front garden yesterday.
I wonder how long before they absorb as much CO2 as we injected into the atmosphere driving to 4 branches of Orchard Supply to find them all.
I wonder how long before they absorb as much CO2 as we injected into the atmosphere driving to 4 branches of Orchard Supply to find them all.
Sunday, 7 July 2002
mediAgora - come and see
I've put up a first draft of my ideas about how to create an online market for digital media that takes advantage of the ease of copying and editing that digital media provides, instead of fighting this. Do let me know what you think.
Thursday, 4 July 2002
Rebooting meadows
Dave, you can't make a meadow from the top down. You need to start with small pieces, and let them loosely join themselves. And you may need ingredients you don't suspect. Here's the beginning of Kevin Kelly's description of one ingredient needed from his book Out of Control:
As an autumn gray settles, I stand in the middle of one of the last wildflower prairies in America. A slight breeze rustles the tan grass. I close my eyes and say a prayer to Jesus, the God of rebirth and resurrection. Then I bend at the waist, and with a strike of a match, I set the last prairie on fire. It burns like hell.
"The grass of the field alive today is thrown into the oven tomorrow," says the rebirth man. The Gospel passage comes to mind as an eight-foot-high wall of orange fire surges downwind crackling loudly and out of control. The heat from the wisps of dead grass is terrific. I am standing with a flapping rubber mat on a broom handle trying to contain the edges of the wall of fire as it marches across the buff-colored field. I remember another passage: "The new has come, the old is gone."
While the prairie burns, I think of machines. Gone is the old way of machines; come is the reborn nature of machines, a nature more alive than dead.
I love that he has put the whole text up online so I can cite it like this. And, as Janis Ian says below, I'm sure it makes more people buy a copy.
As an autumn gray settles, I stand in the middle of one of the last wildflower prairies in America. A slight breeze rustles the tan grass. I close my eyes and say a prayer to Jesus, the God of rebirth and resurrection. Then I bend at the waist, and with a strike of a match, I set the last prairie on fire. It burns like hell.
"The grass of the field alive today is thrown into the oven tomorrow," says the rebirth man. The Gospel passage comes to mind as an eight-foot-high wall of orange fire surges downwind crackling loudly and out of control. The heat from the wisps of dead grass is terrific. I am standing with a flapping rubber mat on a broom handle trying to contain the edges of the wall of fire as it marches across the buff-colored field. I remember another passage: "The new has come, the old is gone."
While the prairie burns, I think of machines. Gone is the old way of machines; come is the reborn nature of machines, a nature more alive than dead.
I love that he has put the whole text up online so I can cite it like this. And, as Janis Ian says below, I'm sure it makes more people buy a copy.
Tuesday, 2 July 2002
Janis Ian on copying
Janis Ian takes up where Courtney Love left off
If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant?a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?
And
One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date. Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!
Go over there now and read the whole thing.
If you think about it, the music industry should be rejoicing at this new technological advance! Here's a fool-proof way to deliver music to millions who might otherwise would never purchase a CD in a store. The cross-marketing opportunities are unbelievable. It's instantaneous, costs are minimal, shipping non-existant?a staggering vehicle for higher earnings and lower costs. Instead, they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off, bleeding on everyone and making no sense. As an alternative to encrypting everything, and tying up money for years (potentially decades) fighting consumer suits demanding their first amendment rights be protected (which have always gone to the consumer, as witness the availability of blank and unencrypted VHS tapes and casettes), why not take a tip from book publishers and writers?
And
One other major point: in the hysteria of the moment, everyone is forgetting the main way an artist becomes successful - exposure. Without exposure, no one comes to shows, no one buys CDs, no one enables you to earn a living doing what you love. Again, from personal experience: in 37 years as a recording artist, I've created 25+ albums for major labels, and I've never once received a royalty check that didn't show I owed them money. So I make the bulk of my living from live touring, playing for 80-1500 people a night, doing my own show. I spend hours each week doing press, writing articles, making sure my website tour information is up to date. Why? Because all of that gives me exposure to an audience that might not come otherwise. So when someone writes and tells me they came to my show because they'd downloaded a song and gotten curious, I am thrilled!
Go over there now and read the whole thing.
Meta patties
Not much uptake on my anti-spam plan, so here's another:
Combine Vipul's Razor with lawsuits against spammers
When you get spam, you forward it to a special email address, which aggregates it and keeps your address. When there are enough copies to justify a case, the lawyers track down the spammer and file a class action, using whichever spam laws apply. They disperse the damages back via PayPal, keeping a percentage themselves.
Combine Vipul's Razor with lawsuits against spammers
When you get spam, you forward it to a special email address, which aggregates it and keeps your address. When there are enough copies to justify a case, the lawyers track down the spammer and file a class action, using whichever spam laws apply. They disperse the damages back via PayPal, keeping a percentage themselves.
DRM - Dubious Restrictions Mandated
I know I go on about DRM a bit, but other people are starting to as well. Here's A lawyer's view of DRM and, much more succinctly, Dave Winer saying (as I do) that it will fail because no-one will pay for it.
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