Rant Buy real books, not DRM-laced bits

[cjp]

There is nothing illegal about allowing Amazon to access your machine if that is what you and they agreed on when you subscribed to their service.

By my way of thinking there are very few contract clauses that should be illegal, provided all parties agree in informed consent. Slavery, for instance, or a suicide pact. Allowing someone else to access your property is not illegal.

There seems to be some kind of a cultural difference on this between the US and most of Europe. I don't really know what to expect in the rest of the world, but if TBlaxland is right, then even Australia (which is culturally similar to the US) is more Europe-like on this point. It might well be that in most 'non-US countries' there are laws that invalidate 'unreasonable' clauses in contracts, or at least people believe there should be such laws. (*)

Without such laws, the big problem is that almost nobody reads those licenses carefully before purchasing, and by far most people completely ignore them. You can call this stupid, but this simply is reality of how people behave. This is partly caused by the fact that most contracts written by US lawyers are extremely long.

As a result, companies usually get away with placing extremely unreasonable clauses in their contracts. Usually, the number of boycotters is not commercially significant. And even if you want to boycot it, it's often impossible to avoid, except for free(**) data.

We sometimes have commercials from a non-profit organization, warning against the dangers of smoking, alcohol, drugs & so on. Maybe we should also have such warning commercials about the dangers of DRM and unreasonable licenses.

I'd also like to see a public debate on whether the government should prohibit DRM, instead of protect it.

I think the problem with DRM is that there seems to be no escape from it, at least for the moment. Sure, I can choose not to buy a Kindle, but is there some other way for me to benefit from this new technology without being trapped in the web of DRM and losing all control over things I buy?

(*) This in itself doesn't mean you're wrong, of course. The majority isn't always right. I'm just observing the difference.

(**) Free as in 'free speech': free software, creative commons, public domain & so on.

 

[tblaxland]

...Australia (which is culturally similar to the US)...

An interesting observation. I have heard the opposite opinion from those in the US, ie, that Australia is culturally similar to Europe. In reality, I guess we fall somewhere in between.

 

[Ark]

That little cartoon is the best justification for piracy I've seen yet. It's just obscene that you can spend thousands of dollars on music through iTunes, but every bit of it is forfeit as soon as you have to reformat.

Used to be that you could ensure your collection by having a rack of CDs handy, but even those files are DRM-tagged so you can only rip them so many times.

 

[Andy44]

An interesting observation. I have heard the opposite opinion from those in the US, ie, that Australia is culturally similar to Europe. In reality, I guess we fall somewhere in between.

Well, Australia and the U.S. are both "new" countries settled by English-speaking Europeans, from the "old" country, both have indigenous tribal peoples who were displaced and treated very badly, both have lots of uninhabited interior land, a frontier history, a cowboy ranching culture, and both are isolated by the sea from trouble back on the continent. So in many ways Americans and Australians have a lot in common.

Bu of course the U.S. broke with the crown and Australia didn't, so it doesn't surprise me that Australia retains much of the political patterns of Europe while the U.S. tends to buck the trend.

That said, there is lots of contract law in the U.S.; what I said above was mainly my personal opinion, not reality.

 

[cjp]

Well, Australia and the U.S. are both "new" countries settled by English-speaking Europeans, from the "old" country, both have indigenous tribal peoples who were displaced and treated very badly, both have lots of uninhabited interior land, a frontier history, a cowboy ranching culture, and both are isolated by the sea from trouble back on the continent. So in many ways Americans and Australians have a lot in common.

Bu of course the U.S. broke with the crown and Australia didn't, so it doesn't surprise me that Australia retains much of the political patterns of Europe while the U.S. tends to buck the trend.

That said, there is lots of contract law in the U.S.; what I said above was mainly my personal opinion, not reality.

But I think you're not the only one in the US with that opinion, and I think that, compared to many other countries (at least continental Europe), US law and practices are shifted towards your preferences.

When I compared Australia to the US, I did this based on a course on intercultural communication I once did. In the course, a model was used that had several different categories of cultures, and the US and Australia were in the same category(*).

Of course, in reality, cultures will often be somewhere between these categories, and the categorization is based on what the model maker thought to be the 'highest similarity'. I can imagine that for this category the US is the most 'extreme' member, acting as a kind of prototype, like China is a kind of prototype for east-Asian cultures. As a result, Australia is probably Europe-like in the perception of an American.

(*) Other countries in this category were similar English-speaking countries: the UK, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand. I'm not sure what they made of South Africa.

 

[ar81]

Sure, but that's not the main problem. No matter how "nice" Amazon is about it, they still set up the system so that they can control the data you have on your machine.

Your hardware is yours.
But as you said, the music, movie and book industry owns its content.

It is like having a house.
The house is yours, but they can use it as they please because they have the keys.

I recall a time when EMPs and electronic warfare was told not to be immoral because it affected only machines, not lives. So technically they were playing with sequences of 0 and 1 in a very moral way (of course, according to them). Technically, piracy would be moralas it involves duplicating, deleting or creating 0 and 1 only. But for them it is wrong when you duplicate their 0 and 1, after paying to the company that duplicated it in your hardware. They make money, you get the data you paid for, erased.

They are playing with 0 and 1 stored in your computer.
You buy the computer, but they use it.
I bet some day they will use your machine to process their data.
I bet some day they will make you pay for the use of 0 and 1 on paper when you do math.

This is where our society is not based on property anymore, but based in custody.
So if they have the custody (software custody), they are the owners.

I can imagine a future with brain implants where you own your own brain, but they control the electrical impulses of it, therefore controlling you. Then we will be bees in a hive.

Proposed solution: Make everything free. Money is supposed to be the incentive to work, but here we make addons and work for no money. And there are people who do not produce anything but convincing people to sign a debt contract and risk other people's money, and still they make lots money and get bailed out.

Without money involved, they will have no reason to delete your book. If you remove the ability of money to be exchanged for money, world economy becomes a videogame. Losing your book because of videogame rules is silly.

This is the reason why I like to make my own music. I do not need to care about copyrights or having 50% of crap on a CD where one song costs $0.99.

 

[TSPenguin]

Proposed solution: Make everything free. Money is supposed to be the incentive to work, but here we make addons and work for no money. And there are people who do not produce anything but convincing people to sign a debt contract and risk other people's money, and still they make lots money and get bailed out.

Without money involved, they will have no reason to delete your book. If you remove the ability of money to be exchanged for money, world economy becomes a videogame. Losing your book because of videogame rules is silly.

This is the reason why I like to make my own music. I do not need to care about copyrights or having 50% of crap on a CD where one song costs $0.99.

The Venus Project is right up your alley. :thumbup:

 

[cjp]

Proposed solution: Make everything free. Money is supposed to be the incentive to work, but here we make addons and work for no money. And there are people who do not produce anything but convincing people to sign a debt contract and risk other people's money, and still they make lots money and get bailed out.

I don't know if you're serious, but I think this goes too far. Even the communists didn't do this.

Free content (like Orbiter addons) works because there only needs to be one generous person to give something for free to a lot of people. Making an addon for a thousand people is not more difficult than making an addon for one person.

It doesn't work like that in the world of material objects. A generous person might offer you a free lunch, but he/she won't offer a free lunch to all people, or offer free lunches to you for the rest of your life. This is because offering more free lunches takes more effort. Most people are only generous up to a certain point, and the few insanely generous people simply don't have the capacity to make such a large contribution to the economy. This is why, generally speaking, in the world of material objects, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

 

[ar81]

No Venus project is not right up my alley.
It was satire.

Venus project pretends to replace our current banking feudal system for a technocratic feudal system. The problem of a technocratic regime is that there is no guarantee that technocrats will provide the basic needs to those who lose their jobs and are displaced by technology.

Communism is not the answer either, because it pretends to replace our current banking feudal system with a single political party feudal system.

And in case you did not notice, it is satire too.

The only thing that I truly believe is that Venus project is crap. It will not work because their system promotes unemployment and there is no mechanism to have access to satisfy basic needs, and it centralizes power, even if they say it doesn't.

 

[Ghostrider]

The Venus Project is right up your alley. :thumbup:

Looks like archvillain stuff. In any movie, they would be secretly plotting to destroy 99% of mankind with some doomsday device to pave way for their utopia.

But since this is boring, mundane real life, they're probably crooks or high on crazy pills, probably a combination of both.

 

[ar81]

The problem Venus project has is that it is senseless. They connect a problem with something which only could be linked emotionally, not not rationally.

How does it work? Imagine this. You come to me and I describe your personality in detail and I say "stars are enlightening me" and I describe problems you have in your life, and you say "wow, it is all true". Then I say that you need to give me all your money because stars say so. What is the problem there? That there is no connection between problem and solution, the problem is that it is a scam that uses emotional and no rational connections. This is exactly what Venus project does.

If I say that climate change is a problem, you may say "he is a democrat" (follower of Al Gore), if I say it is not a problem, then "he is republican" or "he is in the other side of democrats". But in the rest of the world people are not democrats or republicans.

There is a problem of labeling people: Communist or capitalist, money or Venus project, black or white. It is a binary vision of reality, an ideological vision. Calculators use bytes, so you can use 256 labels, not 2 like binary bit ideologists.

Venus project is a stupid proposal, senseless, not viable. And this debate brings the opportunity to show how binary visions work, and how binary people are scammed by senseless proposals in either side.

 

[Andy44]

Proposed solution: Make everything free. Money is supposed to be the incentive to work, but here we make addons and work for no money.

I will be honest, ar81, I regard many of your posts as lunacy and move on. But as "communist" and crazy as this sounds, there is a growing wing in the libertarian movement (an extrememly un-communist bunch of folks) which wants to do away with intellectual property (IP).

Their assertion is that IP is an artificial creation of government, not "real" property. They are referring specifically to copyright and patent laws.

Data, whether its electronic, symbols on a printed page, or grooves in a vinyl record, is just data. If I buy a book or a record, I own it, and therefore I own the ink and the vinyl with the unique grooves. But somewhere along the way, the record company owns the "shape" of the grooves, or the "pattern" of ink. Where does my ownership end and theirs begin? The line has moved very far since the beginning of the internet age, only 15 years ago. Only lawyer and legislators determine the location of that line.

Compare that with my car. I hold the title; it's mine, plain and simple. The auto manufacturer and the dealer have no claim to it at all. It's a solid object, I paid for it, and I own it. Nobody needs a lawyer or a judge to explain this; all humans are wired to understand possession of simple personal property, it's Natural Law.

The anti-IP crowd has a good point: the current corporatist government is using IP to empower itself and its cronies at the expense of individuals, and IP also stifles innovation in many cases, but I don't think you can abolish it altogether.

That said, most of your post is loopy. Game theory and experience tells us that you can't "make everything free". Sure, you could pass a law abolishing money, but people will find some other medium of exchange. And the free-rider effect says that people will get lazy and take stuff for free. Might as well pass a law making a blue sky illegal.

Pure fantasy.

 

[tblaxland]

Compare that with my car. I hold the title; it's mine, plain and simple. The auto manufacturer and the dealer have no claim to it at all. It's a solid object, I paid for it, and I own it. Nobody needs a lawyer or a judge to explain this; all humans are wired to understand possession of simple personal property, it's Natural Law.

Yes, but what would happen if you were to make a duplicate of that car and try and sell it (or give it away) in competition with the original manufacturer? I dare say you would find yourself in trouble for copyright infringement. In this regard, your car is no different to your vinyl record or compact disc or even your (paid for) downloaded mp3. The only real difference is that it is much harder to make a copy of a car than it is to make a copy of an mp3. I do agree that once you have purchased an mp3, "they" should not be able to come and take it away again, much like "they" can't come and take you car away (except in special circumstances). If you made a copy of your car, even if it infringed copyright, I don't think they would be able to take your original away. More relevant to the original post, if you purchase a stolen car, the authorities do have the power to take it away from you, but only with due legal process. Both products should be treated equally.

 

[Andy44]

Well, maybe it's a bad example. But it's not my theory, anyway. I was just pointing out that there is a school of thought out there with an argument for abolishing IP.

I'm not entirely sure that's really possible. If it is, it would require a large and painful realignment of the economy.

It's an interesting thought experiment, though. Using the car example, Chevy wouldn't have to worry about losing money on Corvettes, because most people can't make a copy, and even if I had the machinery to make copies, Chevy could use their brand identity to continue doing well. But they would be compelled to make the best Corvettes.

The IBM Personal Computer is a real life example of this. All these clones out here, HP, Dell, Compaq, Toshiba, Acer, the list goes on, including clone chip makers like AMD, etc. And yet IBM is still doing well as a company, even still sells PCs and PC-based laptops. Allowing others to clone their machines actually made the market grow huge and helped along innovation, and IBM still has a reputation as an electronic powerhouse company.

I suppose, though, that some IP would have to be protected to cut down on fraud. Company trademarks, for instance. You could build a competing Corvette, but you'd have to give it a different name and couldn't put a Chevy emblem on it.

In any case, something will have to change in the near future, or we'll be buried by all this IP nonsense. Putting people in jail or fining them unbelievable amounts of money for downloading a few songs is neither just, not fair, nor sustainable. I predict some key court cases will come up in the next few years.

 

[Hielor]

Well, maybe it's a bad example. But it's not my theory, anyway. I was just pointing out that there is a school of thought out there with an argument for abolishing IP.

I'm not entirely sure that's really possible. If it is, it would require a large and painful realignment of the economy.

It's an interesting thought experiment, though. Using the car example, Chevy wouldn't have to worry about losing money on Corvettes, because most people can't make a copy, and even if I had the machinery to make copies, Chevy could use their brand identity to continue doing well. But they would be compelled to make the best Corvettes.

The IBM Personal Computer is a real life example of this. All these clones out here, HP, Dell, Compaq, Toshiba, Acer, the list goes on, including clone chip makers like AMD, etc. And yet IBM is still doing well as a company, even still sells PCs and PC-based laptops. Allowing others to clone their machines actually made the market grow huge and helped along innovation, and IBM still has a reputation as an electronic powerhouse company.

I suppose, though, that some IP would have to be protected to cut down on fraud. Company trademarks, for instance. You could build a competing Corvette, but you'd have to give it a different name and couldn't put a Chevy emblem on it.

In any case, something will have to change in the near future, or we'll be buried by all this IP nonsense. Putting people in jail or fining them unbelievable amounts of money for downloading a few songs is neither just, not fair, nor sustainable. I predict some key court cases will come up in the next few years.

The problem here is that a very large amount of time and money is invested into developing the first version of something. If Chevy spends the time and money to develop a Corvette, and I can go and start making copies, I can sell mine for less since I don't need to recoup the development costs. They did the work, and I benefit from it without them benefitting.

 

[Andy44]

Only if you have the tooling and capital to do it, end even then Chevy may have some techniques or technology they use in the car that you can't reverse engineer. Lack of IP doesn't mean lack of trade secrets. And those who can pay for it will still want a "real" 'Vette instead of a copy.

But that's a manufacturing discussion.

Focusing more on pure IP, I read an article that the writers in England during the 1800s benefitted greatly from the spread of pirated copies of their books passed around the American west among people who considered books to be luxuries. The rampant pirating made the writers famous, and the publishers could then charge more for "official" copies with nice bindings.

Some pop groups have experimented with this recently. Radiohead's last album was offered for free download at first, and later sold on a CD with a jacket and cover art.

I am guessing, though, that's a lot easier for Radiohead than it is for a dirt-poor band just getting started.

 

[Ghostrider]

There is no need to abolish IP but there's surely a need to reform it, especially when it comes down to enforcing it. Treating customers as enemies is no way to run a market, and the hysteria about copyright protection has to end.
Can you download Shakespeare's works for free? Yes, they're in the Public Domain. Can you still buy them? Yes, in every good bookstore. Do people still buy them? Don't know about you folks but I do, I have them all in a hardcover edition and several cheaper paperbacks. I suppose ol'Willy isn't making a dime out of them anymore but it's not like he has any use for money at present.
However this stuff is out there like a lot of other works in PD, and this pretty much grants that it will be available forever. Should copyright be extended to forever plus one year, like some big media types want, it would grant editors the ability to erase knowledge from the face of Earth, literally, by not printing it anymore. This is bad. Granting editors the ability to modify or erase works on digital media instantly also raises the ugly head of censorship - as I already mentioned in another post. It's not about books, either.
Suppose you can only get videogames on digital delivery format, to be authenticated by a server. The day your oh-so-wise rulers decide you shouldn't be playing Fluffy Bunny Chainsaw Massacre anymore because it's bad for your weak mind, they only have to force the issue with the game's IP holders and hey presto, your game is gone. Poof. You may have shelled out your hard-earned money for it but it doesn't matter.

Besides, you can have a thriving market without hysterical IP enforcement. Take a look at something I hold dear to my dark, evil little heart: the firearms market. There is nothing more open than that: specs are public, and everybody knows a firearms must be taken apart just to clean it so there isn't an option to hide the inner workings from the owner.
Now take a look at those pics:

Look similar, don't they? The first is an Akdal Ghost, made in Turkey while the second is a Glock 19, made in Austria. Does Glock sue the pants off the Turkey gunmakers? No, they don't. It's common knowledge in the firearms industry that designes are copied and improved on constantly. You may patent some exotic form of trigger action but someone else may make their own variant and patent it. Some of the best designs are third-generation re-iteration of a classic one.
I could make a clone of the SIG P210 (arguably one of the greatest semiauto pistols of all times) tomorrow, if I had the equipment and skills, and market it and SIG wouldn't come after me. I just would have to give it another name and not pass it off for an original P210. There is nothing stopping me.
Same about ammo: you can reload or make your own and as long as you don't sell it commercially (which would require it to be inspected for safety) you're fine. Everybody makes .308 rifle ammo, I don't see Winchester complaining.
Mind you, the firearms market is older than a *lot* of modern industries, they probably know it better...

 

[ar81]

I will be honest, ar81, I regard many of your posts as lunacy and move on. But as "communist" and crazy as this sounds, there is a growing wing in the libertarian movement (an extrememly un-communist bunch of folks) which wants to do away with intellectual property (IP).

Their assertion is that IP is an artificial creation of government, not "real" property. They are referring specifically to copyright and patent laws.

Data, whether its electronic, symbols on a printed page, or grooves in a vinyl record, is just data. If I buy a book or a record, I own it, and therefore I own the ink and the vinyl with the unique grooves. But somewhere along the way, the record company owns the "shape" of the grooves, or the "pattern" of ink. Where does my ownership end and theirs begin? The line has moved very far since the beginning of the internet age, only 15 years ago. Only lawyer and legislators determine the location of that line.

Compare that with my car. I hold the title; it's mine, plain and simple. The auto manufacturer and the dealer have no claim to it at all. It's a solid object, I paid for it, and I own it. Nobody needs a lawyer or a judge to explain this; all humans are wired to understand possession of simple personal property, it's Natural Law.

The anti-IP crowd has a good point: the current corporatist government is using IP to empower itself and its cronies at the expense of individuals, and IP also stifles innovation in many cases, but I don't think you can abolish it altogether.

That said, most of your post is loopy. Game theory and experience tells us that you can't "make everything free". Sure, you could pass a law abolishing money, but people will find some other medium of exchange. And the free-rider effect says that people will get lazy and take stuff for free. Might as well pass a law making a blue sky illegal.

Pure fantasy.

I know this post was lunacy. It was satire.:speakcool:

And I am not communist.
What happens is that if I am in the center, I am left from far right, and right from far left. In a one dimensional world of left and right, people use to label other people according to their ideas, using a binary bit vision.
I made the satire, not thinking about communism, which failed, but thinking about Amish who do not use money inside their community, and their society works fine.

IP stops innovation, as there are companies that exist specifically to buy IP property and sue big companies that invented that too and use it.

IP started as a mean to protect the work of people, so other people do not make money with other people's work.

But IP has turned from credits over content to property over content.
If a developer worked on a software, why should a publisher have the rights? Publisher did not create anything, they just had money, but the creation belongs to the people who created them.

So even credits and property are divorced. I agree with you.

 

[RangerPL]

DRM is a joke and only makes piracy bigger.

A good, reliable alternative to piracy and DRM-ridden media would kill both. People will pay good money for convenience, and it's easier to pirate things because it works and is free. DRM stuff is unreliable and you have to pay for it.

 

[ar81]

Physical book. You have the custody. They can't take your book, or destroy it, unless they trespass your home.

Digital book. You do not have custody, since you do not have the key to avoid deletion.

It seems that IP is about custody and not about property. You bought a book, it is yours. But if they can access it and delete it, rights on the digital file of the book, seems to become a matter of custody and not property.

So you pay for property, not for custody.

It is just like FSX. I bought an original because I wanted to respect the work of those who created it, and if I format my hard disk, I will have to call Microsoft call center to get a key to install. If you do not have a phone, you are screwed. It would have been easier to buy a pirate copy with a crack. (Me = Idiot for buying originals).

It seems that I have the property of a worthless disk, and Microsoft has the custody of its contents since they have the keys.

What was the advantage for me as I bought an original FSX? None.

What was the advantage for Microsoft? They made money.