Blogged by Cory at boingboing.net: Dan Gillmor on entertainment industry attempts to re-engineer the information superhighway with toll roads, and worse. Did I use the wrong metaphor? Isn't this about copyright? Well, yeah, but it's really about distribution, no? Essentially they want to control (prevent?) development and innovation so that competing distribution channels are nipped in the bud.

This is also relevant... yesterday or the day before, I channel-surfed to E! and found one of their talking heads running down the RIAA's new commercials, in which recording artists like Britney Spears and Shakira discourage their fans from swapping (stealing!) music files. Surprisingly, the guy from E! said this was the wrong approach, dissing fans for, well, being fans when you should be appreciating the intensity of their devotion to the music ... and the record companies should be figuring out how to fix their business model to fit the digital, networked world, because it's happening whether they like it or not! Whoa! E! has a clue!

Here is what it all means. To protect a business model and thwart even the possibility of infringement, the cartel wants technology companies to ask permission before they can innovate. The media giants want to keep information flow centralized, to control the new medium as if it's nothing but a jazzed-up television. Instead of accepting, as they do today, that a certain amount of penny-ante infringement will occur and then going after the major-league pirates, they call every act of infringement -- and some things that aren't infringement at all -- an act of piracy or stealing. Saying it doesn't make it so.

Not content to have total control over copyrighted material, the cartel has persuaded Congress to keep extending copyright terms. The companies that wail about ``stealing'' have themselves hijacked billions of dollars worth of literature, music and film from you and me. The public domain hasn't grown lately, and that's a betrayal of everyone but the tiny group of mega-companies that owns copyrights to old classics.

The large landowners pushed through legislation to enclose common land everywhere. Initially all community members got a plot of this enclosed land. But the value of the land in common was greater than the sum of it's parts. People who could make a living with the unenclosed common land no longer could make do with the tiny plot of land they got in return. After a couple decades the results were in: the poor were no longer self-supporting; they had been forced by economic pressures to sell their land and become wage-slaves in the slums of surrounding cities, or for the large land-owners.

. . . not all smart mobs are going to be benevolent. People get together to cooperate for reasons that are not very benevolent, hence the word “mobs,” which has a kind of edgy resonance with “lynch mobs.” I don’t want this to sound too utopian. I believe that there’s potential – as there has been with the PC, the Internet, the alphabet, the printing press – for civilization and individuals to elevate the human condition. But the printing press, the Internet, and the telephone did not change human nature, and people with evil purposes have certainly been able to use those technologies to perform destructive acts more effectively.

Christopher Null, executive editor at the now-defunct Ziff-Davis title Smart Business and now editor in chief at CMP's New Architect magazine, says, "There are a lot of companies we wrote about without making judgments -- it was left to the reader to judge. It didn't occur to us to go into depth and look at the fundamentals. We wanted to scoop someone on the next big thing, not be the guy who brought the party down."

The deal here is that Cory's in town for a writer's workshop, but reserved a day to wear his EFF hat and talk about one particular dragon that EFF's been chasing: the broadcast flag, about which more later. I'm intent on blogging as much of the talk as my fumble-fingers will allow...

The talk:

Hollywood's legislative agenda... the broadcast flag and beyond. EFF has been around for 12 years, began with traditional police state stuff.

Entertainment industry has tradition of attacking technology: the piano roll, the radio (sued by vaudeville), television (would destroy cinema!), "the Betamax affair"... the latter being the first consumer VCR. In Betamax case, argued that the ability to make a full copy of a broadcast work would not be a fair use (in terms of copyright). It was illegal enough that the VCR should be kept off the market, they argued. The Supreme Court got the case, and the thing that shook out of it was the Betamax principle: a technology is legal so long as it has substantial non-infringeing uses. This principle is under attack.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 1998. Illegal to defeat a copyright measure. Regionalization system for DVDs. This is a control that limits distribution. John Johansen in Norway figured out how to break the content scrambling system and allows you to move from one region to another, override copy protection. It was called DeCSS - Johansen is facing trial for creating a piece of code.

Content Protection Status Report

Broadcast Flag: an example of what has changed between Betamax principle and today. What's changed is that tech companies have stopped looking out for the interests of technology companies... have acquired media companies. Sony made its mark on a generation with the Walkman - but all Walkmans in five years will be solid state. Sony entertainment won't let them make a player that will play MP3s because Sony Entertainment doesn't want to support MP3 format. They're giving up a giant, lucrative market segment. There's been a capture of tech interests by entertainment interests. - Broadcast Flag is the kind of thing that will succeed because people won't understand it.

About 10 years ago, America decided digital tv would be a good thing. Gave extra bandwidth for digital to broadcasters. The idea was that the American consumers would be tempted by kickass digital television content, so would drop a couple of grand on digital tv gear. Eventually the analog would come back, and be sold to cellular providers. However digital tv hasn't taken off. Americans are indifferent to the idea of consuming better content... they're too absorbed with the Internet!

Hollywood says American consumers won't buy digital tv until there are Hollywood movies on the air. They requested a concession. They don't want you to be able to record digital television. Hollywood wants to protect content with the broadcast flag... all content will have a bit. Set to 0 it would be like today, can be redistributed. Set with 1, it's protected... you can only do those things that Hollywood thinks you should be able to do... and they think you shouldn't be able to do anything with their stuff... even if there is a chance that your own stuff, produced by you, not them, will be constrained...

Standards group: Broadcast protection discussion group. Intel, Hollywood, broadcast, television members. Intel said instead of getting a law passed, determine what to build, then ask Congress to make it into a law based on standards.

Hollings, Tauzin, Dingle told the FCC they had the jurisdiction to mandate the broadcast flag without law. Tauzin has drafted mandating the flag, and dumping all analog outputs... all devices, even digital devices that can make analog output, would be gone. They've also asked WIPO to make it a treaty obligation. I.e. they're all over the place with this, so that only technologies that Hollywood wants will be allowed to come to market.

Betamax principle... we got that technology without Hollywood approving it, and we got another right in copyright. So if the only technologies built are those that Hollywood approves, the court would not have an opportunity to make uses fair.

"We need to plug the analog hole!"

There was a means to defeat the flag (analog/digital conversion). They were going to put a watermark into material that is protected by copyright. We live in an era of copyright... everything is copyrighted, once fixed. So it's not that this is going to protect copyrighted works... will protect high quality content. The watermark is invisible, but if you take it away, it will degrade the file. (Secure digital invisible watermarking created by the music industry was easily broken, so this is not an easy technology to implement so that it's truly effective.) Then make it illegal to sell an analog/digital converter that doesn't have watermark detection. So if your camcorder happens to capture watermarked content (peripherally), it turns itself off.

Lessig and the Eldred case re. copyright extension. Unauthorized vs unlawful. Constitution: the reason we have copyright is because it is good to have lots of work in the public domain, and you need to give creators incentive to create the works (i.e. copyright), the put the works in the public domain, the 'creative commons.' It wasn't considered something like the moral right of the author, which would mean that we couldn't make a lawful use, if unauthorized.

Jack Valenti has said that home taping is ruining the movie industry, yet they're making more than ever, much of it by selling videotapes.

Peer to peer networks: like the Internet, where two points communicate with no intervention by a third party (Gnutella). The Internet was built for this... and we have an avalanche of P2P that has to be stopped (they say) because of the infringeing uses (i.e. by trading MP3s). However there are some uses that aren't infringeing. Creative commons (Lessig) has created a form of license for releasing material to the public domain. But peer to peer networks must be shut down, says Hollywood. How? National Information Infrastructure hearings: said Internet's success depends on high quality content (from Hollywood!) They suggested that we could redesign the Internet, centralize it, so that you would have an intervening entity in the network. In 1995 (NII) this almost happened. Since then there's been a change, especially that tech companies might support it.

This thinking is coming back.

What can we do? Support EFF and EFF-Austin, for one.

EFF-Austin is rebooting now, and there are issues beyond the broadcast flag, like the Patriot Act. A case where University took down a web page.

Join the EFF! We are part of the DNA of the Internet, and we are going to continue to keep the Internet free.

There is this notion that there is something called content, and something called information, and something called data. To the extent that we believe that there is such a thing as content, and that it can be distinguished by a computer, we play into their hands. It's DATA!

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/27/2002 05:34:32 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/27/2002 05:34:47 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/27/2002 05:29:52 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/26/2002 05:57:29 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/24/2002 04:35:26 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/24/2002 09:43:53 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/24/2002 08:53:52 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/24/2002 06:22:46 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/23/2002 09:12:49 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

After stewing in the juices of virtual community and watching the emergence of various social networks over the last decade, Howard Rheingold thought hard about what he was seeing and came up with the concept of the smart mob. "Smart mobs emerge when communication and computing technologies amplify human talents for cooperation. The impacts of smart mob technology already appear to be both beneficial and destructive..." Howard sees a revolution and a rich field for innovation in the proliferation of digital technologies and the rapid free flow of information, but entrenched interests are trying to constrain new technologies in order to protect their interests. Example: the 'broadcast flag,' which will limit technologies you can use and how you use them. Howard's new book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, is an exploration of an important question: "Are the populations of tomorrow going to be users, like the PC owners and website creators who turned technology to widespread innovation? Or will they be consumers, constrained from innovation and locked into the technology and business models of the most powerful entrenched interests?" Smart Mobs will be released November 13, but a related web site and weblog has just launched. [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/22/2002 08:49:00 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

Friday while driving from Austin to Fredericksburg, Texas for the Renewable Energy Roundup, I was flippin' radio frequencies and landed on the persistent squeal of Rush Limbaugh. I listened for a while. I 'm not much into partisan politics, so I don't buy into the Rush Limbaugh fantasy in which the politics of the USA can be explained with a simple dualism: conservative 'dittoheads' vs liberal dunderheads. (The term 'dittohead' is revealing: Rush's followers actually celebrate their unquestioning adherence to his world-view).

But I digress... I wasn''t going to debate Rush's ideological perspective. Given his influence and his connection to the ruler du jour, however, it's worthwhile to listen to him occasionally and consider his message for its force if not its content.

On Friday, Rush was reviewing statements made in the past by national and world leaders about Saddam Hussein, noting that many who said before that Hussein is a menace to be dealt with are now urging restraint. His analysis: they beat their chests when Clinton was in office because they knew he wouldn't so anything; now that Bush is the guy, they're worried that he will take action. He implied that they're worried because they're wimps, unlike Bush.

Could it be, though, that they're worried because they've seen signs that Bush doesn't think through the implications of his actions. Unfortunately men of action are too seldom capable of the kind of introspection that might reveal potential dangers inherent in their acts. They tend to miss the complexity and fragility of the context for their actions. Where war is concerned, they might forget that their "terrible swift sword" actually consists of the flesh of young men and women who put their lives on the line to serve the political machinations set off by their leaders, often inspired by an emotional patriotism that can unfortunately conceal the true nature of the conflict. The war in Vietnam is a great example of a war the cost of which tried our patriotism over time, and led us to question the dubious decisions that placed Americans in harm's way.

What bothers me about Rush's comments, and the administration's talking points (following the Karl Rove strategy of pounding a simple message into our heads until we accept its premises), is that I don't feel complete trust that the complexities of this imminent war have been considered. I note that the one visible member of the administration who has seemed reluctant to take a military course of action is Colin Powell, the guy who incidentally has the most military experience, the guy who has the best understanding of the probable costs.

Powell's evident reluctance certainly inclines me to think twice about this storm that's brewing.

By contract, George Bush is clearly not a military man and it's questionable how well he really gets the human costs of war. Nor do we see his daughters hurrying to enlist to contribute their time, energy, and perhaps lives to the war effort. Rush Limbaugh never served in the military, and he has no children or grandchildren, so what sense does he have of the human costs others will bear? (It's interesting to note who among our leaders served in the military, and who did not.)

I'm not writing this because I oppose the idea of a war with Saddam Hussein. I'm an American, I've been concerned about terrorism for many years, I watched the World Trade Center collapse, and I'm every bit as pissed today as I was on September 11, 2001. I accept that war may be unavoidable.

But I have children and grandchildren, and the cost of war is their cost, more than mine. So I'm not a dittohead. I'll never accept Rush's packaged reality, or anyone's, for that matter.

War may be inevitable, but we should ask the hard questions along the way. And if we go to war, it shouldn't be because Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove pounded us with war talk. It should be because we made a reasonable decision, as Americans, that this war is essential to our defense and to global stability.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/22/2002 08:48:58 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Drive-by Wi-Fi


Michael Oh created a wi-fi 'war car' and parked it outside Starbuck's, providing a free alternative for Starbuck's customers (who pay $2.50 per 15 minutes of access to Starbuck's wireless network.) You can download a pdf of the Open Network specs and wireless car rig from http://www.newburyopen.net. [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/18/2002 09:47:27 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

diller & scofidio: the blur building

The Blur Pavilion is a building made of fog that's part of the Swiss National Expo 2002. I might've expected a building made of holes (swiss cheesily speaking), but this is much cooler: the building has a metal framework, but it sprays droplets of lakewater from 31400 jets, creating cloudlike walls and the blur effect. Another slick (slicker?) idea: braincoats, or raincoats that are wearable wireless nodes that react to show positive or negative affinity between wearers. (Thanks, Vernon!) [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/18/2002 09:18:39 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Tuesday, September 17, 2002
White House cybersecurity plan

Declan McCullagh reports in CNet on the administration's draft cybersecurity plan. The final report may include recommendations that, if followed, would limit online privacy. [Link]

It says the executive branch should consult with privacy groups and attempt to preserve civil liberties, but concludes that in some cases, privacy could be limited. "Allowing completely anonymous communications on a wide-scale basis, with no possibility of determining the source, could shelter criminal, or even terrorist communications," the draft says.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/17/2002 08:32:30 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Christopher Alexander on patterns in user interface development

Christopher Alexander, co-author of the classic A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, has this wiki, where he discusses applications of the pattern language principle, e.g. its impact on a user interface. [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/17/2002 08:26:38 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Sunday, September 15, 2002
You can no more win a war...

Just saw a bumpersticker with the Jeannette Rankin quote, "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." True enough, but we're not great at preventing earthquakes, either. Perhaps wars, like earthquakes, are the emergent products of irresistible forces?

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/15/2002 06:31:54 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Saturday, September 14, 2002
10 choices that were critical to the 'net's success

Dan Gillmor assembled this list, which among other things supports an understanding of the Internet - why it is what it is, and how it might have been different (see item 8 re. OSI, for instance). [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/14/2002 09:32:47 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Friday, September 13, 2002
Earth's new 'moon' is space junk

I read about this new 'moon' two days ago but avoided blogging it, because I was imagining Independence Day / War of the Worlds scenarios... or Killer Klowns from Outer Space? But I knew from experience some mundane explanation would appear, and sure enough... space junk! [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/13/2002 01:36:57 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

A promising theory of consciousness

A British geneticist theorizes that the source of human consciousness is the brain's electromagnetic field, He notes that human consciousness is more than self-awareness - it's an awareness that "can communicate complex information with a sense of self-referral." [Link]

For humans, he believes that information taken in from the outside world through our senses passes through the brain's electromagnetic field to neurons in the brain and then back again to the field, creating a self-referring loop that could be the key to consciousness.

If, as McFadden suggests, consciousness is a component of the brain's electromagnetic field, it would then likely be possible to reconstruct artificial systems duplicating the process, i.e., computers with a conscious.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/13/2002 05:59:22 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Thursday, September 12, 2002
Precious Stone


Composer Carl Stone mixes it up in L.A. Sound, that is: a sound of many sounds. Carl find the Qi in a particular sound and shakes it, rattles it, rolls it into something new and wonderful. [Link]

At intermission the talk was all about gadgetry: so much sound out of so little. I would have liked more talk about the music itself, which was powerful, astonishing and gorgeous. People still haven't made their peace with the Machine; there's less to watch, perhaps, in the spectacle of one slight, bookish, intent figure hunched over two small pieces of electronic gear than in a stageful of orchestral musicians sawing away at their sharps and flats and associated hieroglyphics. Still, there was the sense that night of music being created, the awareness that that evening's performance would be different from performances of music of the same name on other nights — in the same way that Esa-Pekka Salonen's performance of a Mahler symphony, or Pl?cido Domingo's of a Verdi aria, won't be the same on any two nights. That's why people go to live musical events in preference to collecting records — or should.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/12/2002 02:47:07 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Noah Johnson's Protest Record

Noah Johnson's coverage of the August 22 protest in Portland, Oregon, shows how demonstrations go south when the few assholes among the cops and protestors decide to act out. I especially like Noah's summary recommendation, posted below. Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Cory at boingboing.net for the pointer. [Link]

So, my fellow activists, you are now faced with a choice. You can continue sitting around talking about how great it's going to be when the Revolution comes and making your lists of who's going to be first against the wall; Bush and his cronies would love it if you do. Or you can get out and do something useful. Maybe volunteer for a political campaign. This is an election year, and lots of underfunded Democratic campaigns need volunteers. (Not being the party of the rich, they can't simply buy them.) If you really think the Democrats are no better than the GOP, well, I disagree, but there's still a lot you can do. The Green Party is doing a lot of great work on a local level, even though they haven't won much in the way of major national office yet. Support a Green candidate for city council, state Senate, board of education. Every community we improve is another important step towards making this country the place of freedom and humanity that it can and should be. Write letters to the editor of a local paper, talking to people who don't necessarily already agree with you. Preaching to the choir is easy, but converting people to the essential rightness of our cause is harder. You'll have to sound reasonable, you'll have to acknowledge other people's points of view, you'll have to tone down the rhetoric a notch. But you can do it. We can all do it. Protesting is just one of the actions we can take, and not the most important. And when it seems like your actions are pointless and you don't know why you bother, always remember the words of Gandhi: "What you do may seem insignificant, but it is of vital importance that you do it."

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/10/2002 01:19:22 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Monday, September 09, 2002
Interview, Austin Bloggers

Busy couple of days! Or "long time, no blog."

Shameless self-disclosure, if not quite a plug: yer humble servant was interviewed for the SXSW Interactive web site.

New project: a half dozen bloggers who are based in Austin launched a collaborative blog, called Austin Bloggers, today. We met at the August Weblogger Meetup for Austin at the Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/9/2002 08:19:37 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Saturday, September 07, 2002
Derek strips down

Fraymaster Derek Powazek's gone all black and white on us... check out the new imageless powazek.com, including links to his whole dang ton of projects, especially Fray Day 6, Sept 14 (Austin, Cambridge, El Paso, Grand Rapics, Guam, Melbourne, San Francisco, Tucson, DC) and 15 (Los Angeles, Copenhagen). [link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/7/2002 05:34:25 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Friday, September 06, 2002
Everything

How is everything? [Link]

EVERY-THING.NET presents a unified perspective of every thought, person, society, object and history by determining the number of their possibilities. "Every person" is determined by combining the world's supply of ova with the world's supply of sperm, and every thought determines the number of different thoughts which are possible. "Every object" determines the number of atoms containable in the universe and the number of possible molecular structures of the universe. "Every history" determines the number of histories which could have happened over 13.5 billion years and "Every society" determines the number of possible societies which could be formed from the current world population.

Calculations for every-thing.net require over 4.28 google octillion (4.28 x 10^127) years of computer processing, a duration of time 3170000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000 times greater than the history of the universe. Accurate calculations were obtained through statistics, mathematics, permutations and programming software.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/6/2002 05:14:18 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Digging Bosch

Dutch archaeologists are uncovering many of the objects seen in Heironymus Bosch's surreal art. [Link]

Almost 700 tin badges found by Dr Janssen have images ranging from the devotional to the erotic. These, says Professor Koldeweij, “use a visual vocabulary familiar to a 15th-century European audience, but not to us”. They could “read” the use of such images, such as the pedlar’s basket full of phalluses hawked by a little devil in The Last Judgement, also used on a badge found by Dr Janssen, which in this case implied that the pedlar was the “milkman” of his time, calling on bored housewives with his wares.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/4/2002 08:17:28 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Stupid cyborg tricks

Tech journalist Lisa Napoli wonders Why cell phones make us stupid? At least, that's how she spins our fascination with this particular form of cyborganic communication. This makes me think of those internet addiction / social isolation studies a couple of years ago. Perhaps the real message here is anxiety about the transition from a manageably slow, hierarchical social framework to a society in which information flows at lighting speeds and social organization mimics the flat, nodal architectures of computer networks? It's not that new information technologies make us stupid or depressed, it's that we have new ways to think about being stupid or being depressed...? (Back to Lisa Napoli's piece: time for somebody to create an etiquette for cyborgs...)

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/4/2002 05:48:18 AM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

Monday, September 02, 2002
A Chilly Jurassic Park

Japanese scientists are working to clone a mammoth from the DNA of a creature found in 1994. Mom will be an Indian elephant. The object is to create an attraction for a park planned for northeast Siberia, already populated with wild horses and musk ox. This CNN article also speculates that there are ten million mammoths buried in the Siberian permafrost. [Link]

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/2/2002 04:42:27 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

What is Neoreality?

Even manifesting his convoluted mind, Clifford Pickover's writing science fiction novels these days... the Neoreality Series. The web site for the books includes a particular Einstein quote: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." For Pickover, it's a little less persistent and quite malleable. Imagining parallel evolutions in alternate intersections of time and space, he writes about, as he says, " wild implications for multiple universes." He uses Biblical imagery, describing the Bible as "an alternate reality device" that "gives its readers a glimpse of other ways of thinking and of other worlds." [Link]

You'll visit worlds replete with beautiful women and their surgically altered brains, fractal sex, Noah's Ark, hyperspace physics, hallucinating androids, prophetic ants, vitamin B-12, cosmic wormholes, novel plastics, intelligent spiders, and quests for God and the structure of ultimate reality.

posted by jon lebkowsky on 9/2/2002 04:10:23 PM | ~permalink~ | ~post a comment~

---

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.