Hi, Jonathan, there is no doubt that one goal of the Free Software movement is to "update" (read: change) the social contract that is the underpinning of the copyright legislation. Therefore the objection to TC and DRM technologies can not solely be understood on the basis of the current copyright framework. The same is true, as you pointed out, for the DRM technologies themselves: Their implementation will violate the social contract in a number of ways.
I think there is no doubt that currently there is a battle raging in the information world. It is a battle over control. However, the battle is not between the authors on the one side and the consumers on the other side. It is big industry on the one side, and basically everybody else on the other side. To put this up front: It is no question if the author should be compensated for his work or not. The author should be able to live a decent life from his contribution to society. Of course, this does not differentiate the british pop star from the african grain farmer. The question of how authors are compensated is orthogonal to the other questions discussed: There are alternative models that may solve this question adequately, from micropayment to national funds. It is a challenge to make those alternative models of compensation work. But it is not a principle impossibility. In fact, in Germany, we have the "Verwertungsgesellschaft GEMA" which is a national fund which compensates authors of musical works for public performances of them. So, we know for a fact that such things can work. You raised the issue of control over an author's work. Should the author remain in control over the work he produced? You said that you "believe that an author should be able to control the use of their work within the limits and framework of copyright." It is interesting that you think so, because this makes you very European :) In European law, there is a "right by nature" for an author to control the use of his work. This right can not be sold or forfeited. I have not looked very deep into the historical development of this natural right by nature, but it seems to be bound to the integrity of the author as a human and his work as a product of his personality. However, from what I know, this is quite special to European law. In no other region has society come to the same conclusion. Ideas and expressions of ideas has usually been proprietarized _after_ it has been commoditized. The copyright for books has also been a product of the printing press. The copyright on music has been a product of scratching lines into a wax cylinder. To say it in the words of Eben Moglen: "Thomas Edison made it possible for music, which had been for the whole history of human beings an act of communion, a thing inherently shared, that music turned into a product, an object, a commodity. And from the commoditization of art grew the belief that art could be owned. Which made sense even when art was bumps on a thin piece of tin foil in a plastic disc." Eben Moglen continues by explaining why this social contract has eroded: "But art has returned to the formlessness from which it came. It has returned to being what it was throughout the history of human beings until Edison: it has returned being something that must be shared to exist." In his keynote to the Wizard of OS 3 conference in Berlin, where he made the above remarks, he concludes that out of the ability to share without material loss, grows a responsibility to share: "Billions of minds hungering for knowledge and for beauty, to whom everything can now be given. In a world where everything is a bitstream, where the marginal cost of culture is zero, where once one person has something, everything can be given to everybody at the same costs that it was given to its first possessor, it is immoral to exclude people from knowledge and from beauty. That is the great moral problem that the 20th century has be bequeathed to the 21st. We can eradicate ignorance at the expense of a few. We have to do it. We cannot permit the voluntary starvation of most of the minds on the planet. We have a duty; we have a joy; we are bringing to our colleagues, the human race, everything we know and everything we love; there is no higher pleasure than delivering what we love to those with whom we wish to share it, there is also no deeper moral obligation. (http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/) The Free Software community has very consciously built, on top of existing copyright law, a system where this promise is fulfilled at least for a sub-culture. It's a deeply political action, and implemented very consciously by many of us. "It puts us in contention with power", as Eben expressed it. This power now reacts, in the case of the content industry with increasing desperation (the telecommunication industry is smarter). DRM and TC are technologies which are not pushed to protect the consumer, they are pushed to exploit them. There may be a marginal industrial interest in enhanced privacy, but I think if we look at the broad picture (Windows XP security!?), and where the money goes (deals between Microsoft and Disney, for example), there is no doubt in anybody of us here what's going on. Now, here is the catch: The industrial capitalism has brought this fate upon itself. Copying devices are a commodity because of the ruthless competition that has made these devices cheaper and cheaper, and ultimatively ubiquitous. Maybe when all is said and done, we will be able to say the same about TC. Maybe we will get ubiquitous privacy due to the technology now produced. But if this is the case, then, this is my predicition, it will be because we picked it up where "they" dropped it, not because it was "their" intention all along, and because we won the larger struggle. You are now asking us to consider to support TC technologies for the privacy they can achieve if used in a positive way. We will have to talk about this in more detail, but I hope that from my description above it is clear why this is a dangerous game to play for us: Even if we are completely successful in implementing such a goal, we might ultimatively fail completely in the bigger struggle. As an example: You try to explain to your kid why every other kid in school can watch the latest Disney smash hit, but at your home protecting your privacy is more important. So, it may be that we have a knee-jerk reaction against TC not only because we fail to identify its potential for bringing privacy to computer users, but also because between losing the battle or the war, sometimes it's better to lose the battle, so to speak. This is not meant to offer a definite and conclusive opinion on TC and its applications, or on the right strategy in dealing with it. But it should offer some background and explanation. And at least it calls for some caution in determining which action to take in which context. Thanks, Marcus _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
