Tech Loves Art

Interview with Pete Ashdown

2006-10-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

Quite a while ago, I asked for an interview with Pete Ashdown who is running for the U.S. Senate. I never got a reply back and assumed he was was a bit busy, what with running a business and running for public office at the same time. I figured living on the other side of the world from me may have also had something to do with it as well.

I was wrong. Pete did get back to me as I discovered while I was going through some raw logs, and so I present it here with my deepest apologies.

Alex H - Why did you decide to run for public office?

Pete Ashdown - Initially I was interested in backing whoever was going to be running in this race on the Democratic ticket. Senator Hatch's stands on copyright vs. the Internet had caused me concern and I wanted to see him challenged in this race. However, as I started to ask inside Democratic circles in Utah, it became apparent that nobody wanted the task. So I had to decide whether running for office was something I wanted to do. I talked to my family, employees, and friends and they were all very supportive, but they were emphatic about starting early and doing it full time. So I declared in March of 2005 and have been working on this race full time ever since.

Alex H - Utah has one of the highest rates of bankruptcy in the U.S. which a number of studies have linked to a growing entrepreneur culture in your part of the world. As the founder of a well known high-tech company, how do you see these budding enterprises working out? What are some of the pitfalls facing Utahns looking to start their own businesses, especially in the tech sector?

Pete Ashdown - The model for starting a business in the U.S. seems to have evolved into hiring a board of directors, getting a load of venture capital, advertising, then hoping to cash out with an IPO or an acquisition. I took the more traditional approach in my business of starting small, wearing several hats, not paying myself initially, and resisting acquisition for the sake of cashing out. That fiscal conservatism allowed me to not only steer the company in a direction I felt was most appropriate without the permission of a board or shareholders, but to move faster than my larger rivals. I think the largest pitfall in American business today is believing you can cash out quickly. The "five years to profitability" adage was thrown out in the 90's.

Alex H - You're campaign has taken some pretty amazing steps towards opening up the democratic process, like the Wiki for creating policy and your calendar. How are those aspects the campaign going and what has the reaction been from the public?

Pete - People find it refreshing across the political spectrum. I think many conservatives are caught off guard when they find a Democrat who is not only willing to listen, but adopt their position if it something that makes sense. Frequently, I hear the sentiment that people are tired of the bickering between the two sides more than anything else. They want to see the divisiveness end and some real solutions come forward. I believe that collaboration and transparency are cures to many of the ills of American politics. My experience so far is that most Americans want that too.

Alex H - Is there anything that particulary irks you about Orrin Hatch's policies?

Pete - His one-sidedness in the debate over copyright was a real problem for my business and for the consumer. The artist should be rewarded for their work, but I think the middle-man model that the recording industry wants to preserve is rapidly going out of date due to the Internet. Fighting it through legislation is not what the free-market is about in my opinion. Senator Hatch stated in his Presidential campaign in 2000 that the government should keep its "Grubby mitts off the Internet." If he had retained that sentiment, I most likely would not be running against him.

Alex H - What is the difference between intellectual property and tangible property?

Pete - Intellectual property can be used without depriving the inventor of using it themselves. If by this question you are trying to probe my feelings on IP, I do recognize IP protection of inventors, but believe as Jefferson did that after a reasonable time it should fall into the public domain. I think that patent review should be opened up for peer participation as long as there is some protection while that evaluation is going on. I am against frivolous, obvious, and derivative patents.

Alex H - You guys (and gals) in Utah have the lowest child poverty rate in the United States and are often mentioned as one of the best places to raise a child. How did that come about? Is it a community values thing, a public policy thing or is there something in the water?

Pete - Utah has a high sense of community. It also has one of the highest volunteer rates in the country. People here are very generous with their time and resources. My success in business has also depended upon giving away my services to non-profits, charities, religious organizations, and candidates without bias. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any other ISP or media company with a similar philosophy.

Utah tends to be an enigma to outsiders and a well kept secret to insiders. We have some of the best recreation and most beautiful scenery in the nation. Some complain about the cultural aspects, but I think some of that is responsible for an extremely energetic underground music scene. I've traveled a fair share, and although I admire some aspects of other states and countries, I would choose no other place to raise my children than where they are right now.

Alex H - Since the whole Enron debacle went down there has been quite a lot of focus on America's energy policy. What's your take on this?

Pete - Our energy policy is the greatest shame this country has. I fully blame the congress for a lack of imagination in regards to new technologies. The last energy bill that came out of the Senate had looking for more oil as its focus with a slight nod towards hybrids and alternative technologies. I want to turn that around. I do believe we need to look for more oil and build refineries, but for every refinery built, I want to see 100 windmills put up. For every well drilled, I want to see a solar chimney constructed. I want to see the scientists at Sandia fully funded in researching their hot-fusion Z-Machine. I advocate for government bounties like the Ansari X-Prize for energy research into all areas. Rapid rail transit is something that America has taken a backseat on that we need to be on the forefront again. I find it ironic that we had better rail infrastructure in the 19th century than we do in the 21st century.

Energy policy is not only responsible for the broad issues of global warming its responsible for the acute issues of mercury emissions and funding monarchies and dictatorships in oil-rich countries. I believe America needs to find a way to generate its own cheap, clean, and plentiful energy and we can do it if we had people in office that understood the possibilities of science.

Alex H - Please don't take offence at this, but there are a lot of people not living in the U.S. who think you guys are proposing and enacting some pretty whacked out laws. How do you think this has come about (or do you even agree with that statement)?

Pete - I am equally dismayed about the eroding of our constitutional rights in the United States. I believe in a broad interpretation of the constitution rather than attempting to find loopholes. Surveillance without a warrant is not constitutional and I think it shouldn't be approved by a "secret court" either. There are very good reasons to shine the light in on the process, primarily because it has been abused in the past. When the government says, "Trust us," I think everyone should be demanding full accountability.

There also been more abuse of the political system than ever by moneyed interests lobbing for their own agenda. The concern of government should be broad, but its currently being controlled by entities whose concerns are narrow. That generates laws that are very specific towards benefiting a few rather than the people.

Alex H - In the past, you've criticized a number of sections in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; a pretty significant piece of legislation which was 8 years old a few weeks ago. What lessons have been learnt since it was enacted?

Pete - My own experience as an ISP has shown me the economic problems of being forced to serve as media companys' copyright police when they have automated bots doing the reporting. I am thankful for the safe-harbor provision, but I think a request for investigation should carry compensation for execution.

The freedom to tinker with your hardware, own your media, and have fair-use is important to the consumer. DMCA prevents much of that. I want to see this power returned to the individual and the "punishing of the innocent" ceased.

Alex H - Your views on the proposed Intellectual Property Protection Act?

Pete - More effort to restrict the fair-use rights of consumers, add punitive damages beyond what violent crime dictates, and put our tax-funded public enforcement in charge of protecting private media concerns for free. The only benefit is some positive movement on archival of orphan works.

Alex H - So do you think the U.S. will ever get around to releasing a Constitution 2.0? I mean, with all the Amendments, people could be forgiven for thinking you guys were just releasing patches while working out something that would work for maybe 50 to a hundred years. Is the Constitution a "living document"? What things are, or are going to be, important to people in the long term?

Pete - The constitution should be interpreted broadly and I believe that efforts to bypass and find loopholes in the constitution deserve clarification. If not by the court then by amendment. I do not believe the constitution should be amended to restrict or contradict other protections of rights already in the constitution, nor do I believe we need to start over with Constitution 2.0. The founders of the USA had a remarkable clarity of vision about the responsibility of government and the rights of the citizen. If anything we need to work towards our laws respecting the constitution more, not less.

Alex H - Thanks for your time and good luck with the campaign.

Pete - Thank you Alex.

Pete Ashdown's website can be found at http://peteashdown.org/

The DMCA Down Under

2006-10-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

First published here.

The Australian government has been looking to make some changes to the law regarding Digital Rights (*cough* Restrictions *cough*) Management tools and like any good citizen, I decided to drop them a line with my thoughts on the Copyright Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Bill 2006.

The Exposure Drafts can be found here.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Please find my comments on the Draft Exposure Bill for the Copyright Amendment (Technological Protection Measures) Bill 2006.

116AK Section 3 (Exception - Interoperability) and 132APA Section 3 (Exception - Interoperability)

These sections do not allow for a person (such as a computer programmer) to provide a copy of a computer program to another person for the purposes of obtaining the other person's opinion of the computer program. Under this section it will be incredibly difficult for two or more people to collaborate on a project where the aim is to provide interoperability between computer programs and at some stage, someone will break the law by making an infringing copy of the original program.

Also, the only way for a programmer with limited funds available to obtain the original program which he or she intends to provide interoperability for may be by obtaining an infringing copy. In essence, this section is prejudiced against individual or hobbyist programmers in favor of large corporate software vendors.

It would be wise not to underestimate the contribution made by individual or hobbyist programmers as these people are responsible for the creation of the majority of available software and provide an invaluable service to commercial software vendors by releasing add-ons, plug-ins and patches which increase the value of the commercial vendor's products. The proposed exception for this section is a welcome inclusion, but I urge you to err on the side of freedom, rather than on the side of restriction.

116AL Section 1 and Section 132 APB

This section does not allow for "middle men" to assist researchers by providing facilities for them to trade ideas and "proof of concept" examples. It would also prevent people from improving their knowledge in particular areas where more knowledge may be of great advantage to society in general. For example, under this section it would be illegal for someone to provide a copy of a file, such as a media file, which has a TPM attached to it from that person's website. The website owner may have noticed that the file in question is sending data to the copyright holder's website but does not know what that data is. The website owner may post a message like this:

"Hey everyone, I've discovered that this file (download it here) is sending some weird data. Can anyone tell me what information it's sending and where that information is going? I don't want this file sending any private info about me".

Many people are proficient enough to provide circumvention devices, but not to create, use or modify them and many people who can create, use or modify a circumvention device are happy to leave the facilitation of their work to less knowledgeable people.

It would be ironic if someone working for the Australian government in a position of national security could only obtain the information to do their job by visiting a website made illegal under this section. After a terrorist's cypher has been broken using tools available from a public website, should the website owner be jailed for providing the cracking tools to the government officer? Would the terrorist get more jail time that the website owner?

Again, it would be wise not to underestimate the valuable service provided by individual hobbyists who may want to provide services to others in the expectation that those people will use their service in good faith.

202A

Well done. This section will go some way to ensuring that computer programmers and researchers do not suddenly find themselves the subject of legal threats. If the themes of my comments above are addressed in any material way, this section will go a long way to protecting Australians from the baseless legal threats that have become so common in other parts of the world which are now known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (or SLAPPs).

Regarding the proposed exceptions:

*Access where a TPM is obsolete, lost, damaged, defective, malfunctioning or unusable and a replacement TPM is not provided

Lost - Please include a detailed definition of "lost". It illustrate: if a commercial TPM provider goes bankrupt, their assets, including the software which can unlock the TPM, will be transfered to another party.

If the other party does not advertise the fact that they are in possession of the master keys for the TPM, it may for all practical purposes be lost. A definition of how and when a TPM may be considered "orphaned" would be appropriate.

Damaged, defective and malfunctioning - I don't think I have heard of anyone buying a product for the TPM that comes with it, so if the damaged, defective or malfunctioning TPM does not affect the consumer's ability to use the product, I can't envisage them bothering to remove it. It would probably be a good idea to allow it though.

Unusable - As the TPM is separate from the protected work, this will need to be clarified. If the TPM itself is unusable there should be no need to remove it. If, on the other hand the TPM causes the protected work to be unusable, there will need to be strong mention of interoperability with other software or devices. A TPMed work that is unusable on one device should be allowed to be removed until a TPM is available that allows it to be used on that device. For example, a TPMed music file may not play on a particular brand of mp3 player, solely as a result of the TPM. A person who legitimately purchased the music file and who wants to listen to it on the unsupported brand of mp3 player should be allowed to remove the TPM so that they may do so.

*Access where a TPM damages a product, or where circumvention is necessary to repair a product -

I have yet to see a TPM that does not damage a product. Digital "watermarking" for instance is the practice of inserting extra data into a media file so that in the event that file is found to be freely available on the internet, the person who was assigned the watermark found in the file can be tracked down. This damages the file as it is not a true and correct representation of what the artist(s) created. All TPMs damage the product they are attached to on a fundamental level - the TPM is an "optional extra" that is attached to the product after it has been created and prevents the product from being used as it would be possible to if the TPM was not attached.

Where circumvention is necessary to repair a product, I believe allowing this is just plain common sense. It is wasteful to discard something that could be fixed and I do not believe it is in our society's interest to spend further time re-acquiring a product in it's entirety, whether in digital or in physical form if less time and resources could be spent repairing it.

Regarding the exceptions for consideration:

* Making back-up copies of computer programs
* Correcting errors in computer programs
* Allowing institutions to assist people with an intellectual disability
* Making copies of works for inclusion in broadcasts, and
* Making copies of copyright material for criticism, review or news reporting by broadcasters.

I believe all of these should be allowed. All these exceptions will be of benefit to Australians and disallowing them would work to our detriment.

On an unrelated note I would like to mention that I do not and will not support any company or individual that uses a TPM on their products. TPMs create artificial barriers that will prevent me from using the protected content as I (usually) want to use it and do not protect the content in general. People who do the right thing and purchase media from legitimate channels are stuck with a crippled product that all experiences up till now show is doomed to fail, yet those who obtain infringing copies can use them freely. For example, after purchasing a computer game I will usually look online for a crack that allows me to play the game without having to insert the game disc into my PC. I don't believe that I am acting maliciously in doing this as I have financially supported the creators of the game, but I resent the fact that I am currently labeled a criminal for making that product easier for me to use.

I will continue to support distributors like magnatune.com who allow me to use my purchases without restriction and artists who are happy to let me download and share their material.

Regards,
Alex H

Anyone not interested in seeing the Australian government importing the most backward of American laws (like the DMCA) would be well advised to keep an eye on the Attorney General's website for more juicy pickings.

p2pnet Sued For Libel

2006-05-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

A brief diversion from my own writings:

p2pnet is being sued for libel. Jon Newton, the owner of p2pnet has not revealed many details but states that "I'm being sued principally as a publisher, not for something I wrote."

The main page of p2pnet will be carrying the latest news on this (so keep checking it), but it is worth noting that libel is a very serious accusation and further details will obviously show how much hot water this alternative news site is in.

The Last Card You'll Ever Need

2006-05-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

First published here.

Good lord, not again! As reported by the Sydney Morning Heral a few days ago, Australia is looking to introduce a national identity card.

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard is again dragging out the tired old, "It'll make us safer" reasoning and rather than just whinging about vague civil liberty issues, we should be focusing on specific civil liberty issues and the fact that a national ID card will not actually make us safer at all.

Bruce Schneier, Founder and CTO of Counterpane Internet Security wrote an excellent essay on national ID cards a few years ago where he unequivocally states, "everything I've learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure."

As he argues, security isn't measured by how well it works, but by how badly it fails. Anybody who remembers the complete systematic failure that allowed the 9/11 attackers to carry out that devastating attack on America will agree on this point. In such cases, 99% effectiveness is as good as having no security at all: try telling the grieving families you "almost" stopped the hijackers.

Also, if this really is going to be The Last Card You'll Ever Need, the technology for reading these cards is going to be commercial and widely used. And you can be sure that when the Most Secure Card Ever arrives, there'll be a very small, very smart group of people who'll make it their sole aim in life to hack that card. It can't NOT be hacked because the incentive to exploit the uber-card will be absolutely huge: you could be one of maybe a dozen people carrying an un-fakeable fake ID. You could slip through the cracks, rent a truck and...

That's actually a bit sensationalist because to get the new ID, you have to prove who you are using all the currently available and (according to the government) incredibly insecure forms of ID out there at the moment. People with fake IDs now can simply upgrade them and their second identities will go into the database along with everyone else's.

And that brings us to the database. There'll be literally thousands of people with varying degrees of access and some of them will abuse that access, whether for personal gain ("Mmmm, free holiday in Fiji in exchange for medical info"), social engineering ("Hi, this is Jack and I forgot the password for my social security login") or plain incompetence ("Do we really have to wipe these old hard drives twice before sending them to auction?").

Take a look at how seriously we take security now, where stolen laptops can compromise the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people and say "that will never happen here" while keeping a straight face.

Leaving internal security aside for a moment, does anybody really expect the database to actually be accurate? Only 4% of Australian organizations have someone who is ultimately responsible for the accuracy of their data, according to Australian data quality software company QAS, so the likelihood that even the basic information such as the spelling on your last name, or the possibility that your home address will be wrong, is pretty high and cause for justifiable concern.

And let's not forget "function creep" either.

A fantastic example of function creep is copyright. It used to be about letting authors exploit their work for a limited time, but it's evolved into a system whereby the author's great grandchildren never have to work a day in their lives (also known as About A Boy Syndrome). Someone, at some point, will suggest that including sexual orientation on the ID cards would be a really good idea (probably for welfare administration), but I'm betting that religion will get on there first.

And even after all that, there will still be screw ups because IDing people is a fucking boring job.

Only last week I was out on the town with some mates and at the first place we went to, the doorman handed back my ID to my friend and my friend's ID to me. We visited four other venues and it was only until we were trying to get into the last one that the doorman twigged that we were holding each other's drivers licenses. That's three people in a row who didn't look at the photos printed clearly on our cards before letting us through the doors. I really hope we have airport guards who are a bit more switched on.

Then again, at $9 per hour after tax I wouldn't be paying much attention either.

In the file sharing world, we've known since the fall of Napster that centralization is bad. Napster couldn't withstand attack from a determined foe and it would be naive to think the inevitable database that holds all the information will not be a target for hackers, viruses and well coordinated DDoS attacks.

Decentralised p2p hasn't been shut down even with the RIAA, MPAA, BPI, ARIA, CRIA, etc, throwing millions of dollars at the (alleged) problem.

Grid computing is starting to take off because (get this) it's a really good way of handling and processing lots and lots of data.

Why in God's name are people seriously proposing that we ignore these new processes and revert back to the old systems that we've been trying to get away from?

And as Bruce Schneier asks, "what good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal is here is to know someone's intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that."

Maybe a national ID card would have been a good idea when John Howard opposed it back in 1985, but as he's telling us now, "the world is a very different place". Should we really be trying to have an American-style national "feel good" drive anyway? You know, that war-with-somebody-is-better-than-war-with-nobody reasoning that gets the U.S. into hot water whenever they try it.

ID cards will not make us safer, will be very convenient for cataloguing the Australian population and have absolutly no place in Australia today.

DMCA 2.0 - Just Steal CDs

2006-04-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

First published here.

Ed Felton recently pointed out that under the proposed extensions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA 2.0 as it is becoming known as), non-commercial copyright infringement such as file sharing would carry a bigger penalty than manslaughter - up to ten years in the big house.

Compared to the average sentence for manslaughter (33 months in jail), one really does have to wonder if Lamar Smith has actually thought about his proposed bill, or if the rush of campaign contributions from Hollywood has gone to his head, because under the DMCA 2.0, you'd be better off going old school and just stealing CDs from Wal-Mart.

That's larceny and will get you a whopping 8.3 months in jail if the Wal-Mart rent-a-cops catch you on the way out.

The same goes for the increased anti-circumvention provisions that are on the table. DMCA 2.0 would make it illegal to simply have anti-circumvention tools in your possession with intent to distribute them, and it's easy to imagine a federal prosecutor arguing an internet connection serves as proof that an unlucky researcher was planning to share their 133t h4xor tools with the world.

I can see the headlines now: "File sharing Down 2%, Petty Theft up 862%", followed closely by "IP Laws Backfire On U.S., Smart Yanks Flee Country".

So what happens if you can't be bothered cracking it yourself and just go find the guy who designed the copy protection and point a shotgun at him until he posts the source code online? Well, that would add up to about 20 years. So you'd be better off just sending anonymous threats about his family - that's only worth about seven years on average, and it'd be easier to argue you weren't actually serious about the whole thing if you were to be caught.

Even if you did get sent down for it, you'd still come in three years under the sentences being handed out to geeky researchers.

And hey, if you only get five months inside for telling eBay's ceo you're going to "haunt and hurt you and your family," I'm sure there will be some one out there willing to sacrifice themselves so that everyone can enjoy unencrypted HD movies.

Or more likely, someone driven to insanity by overly restrictive DRM (and I understand "temporary insanity" goes down well with the judge). Just. Copy. Damn. Thing. To. Ipod. Ahhhhhh!

It's also easy to imagine a scenario where the author of a virus and the guy who develops a patch for it end up sharing the same cell. All the virus writer would need to do is include some rudimentary encryption in his code to ensure no anti-virus researcher would be keen to write a fix if the only way to do so would be to crack the encryption.

I wonder how many anti-virus providers would be ready to step up and fight this in court? I wonder how many of their employees would agree to work on a fix in the first place, considering they themselves would be in the dock facing a federal prison sentence?

Perhaps Lamar Smith believes some intellectual property is more worthy of protection than other intellectual property? If intellectual property is an absolute right, as some misguided people seem to think it is, we should remind them that an individual's rights don't suddenly disappear when they break the law. (Well, Guantanamo Bay aside, an individual's rights don't suddenly disappear when they break the law).

The author of an annoying, but harmless, mass mailing worm should get the same protection for their work as anyone else. Right?

What if the worm was genuinely written to explore and evaluate security holes, like to find out how many copies of a dodgy mail server are in operation? A very black hat way of going about things, but the intention behind the act may be as worthy as the corporate anti-virus researchers (and also the most practical way of fixing the problem if your warnings about security holes have been ignored previously).

Pfft! Who cares? Let the courts figure it out. They're the ones who're experienced in dealing with ill-conceived laws after they've been passed.

It seems that the entertainment cartel's men in Washington have gotten a little carried away with protecting their interests online 'cause if the DMCA 2.0 passes, you be better off giving up p2p and taking a full time job as a heroin dealer - you'd actually be able to afford the CDs and good lawyers then.

Machinima License Machinations

2006-04-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

First published here.

My first experience with machinima was watching some films made in the game Myth: The Fallen Lords. The game's "Save Film" feature had been used to record some short vids of dwarves blowing themselves up with Molotov cocktails.

Not usually riveting viewing, you'd think, but the film-makers had been hacking the game's hex code and were able to get the dwarves heads' to morph onto half a dozen flapping chickens at the moment of detonation.

From then on, I spend many hours on a crappy dial-up connection searching for and downloading other short clips made inside computer games. As the art of machinima is based on games, the look and feel is as technologically up-to-date as the games are, which nowadays is pretty spectacular: water shimmers, clouds drift slowly across the sky and blood spatters are so good that you feel queasy just looking at some very well arranged pixels.

The biggest problem with machinima now, though, is the legally gray area it falls under.

Game companies own the intellectual property behind the game and most of the artwork too, so just about any film made using computer games infringes on the game developers' copyright in some way.

Watching the machinima community from a distance, I see a lot of frustration. There are film makers out there just dying to push the envelope and explore the limits of the technology at their disposal, but anything they do that might bring them any kind of publicity (and popularity) will probably get them in a lot of legal trouble as well.

I imagine it would be like some bastard owning the rights to any music made by a guitar: you only play for your mates at parties and occasionally someone makes a "live" bootleg recording of it, but anything you do that might make you a rich and famous guitar playing hero will result in the aforementioned bastard being awarded the shirt off your back by way of statutory damages.

This is something that has stumped me for a while: Why aren't the game developers licensing their games to machinima film makers? As it stands, the game companies get no money from fan-made machinima, but plenty of free advertising ("Wow! Look at the graphics in that!") Value-adding is a well-known and often-used business practice - just take an existing product and get it to do something that will make more people buy it. It's not like the game developers have any extra work to do anyway, as there are people making films using their stuff right now.

It would however, be easy to increase a game's attractiveness to film makers by putting in some extra functionality, like releasing the level editors the game designers themselves use - virtual set designing tools in fact.

How does this sound? You buy a game with the regular $69.95 price tag. For $10 extra, you get a non-commercial Machinima License too. Using your (legitimate) product key, you go to the game developers' site and purchase an additional license for, say, $200 that allows you to get commercial sponsors for your machinima film, so you can make a small profit if your project comes in under budget. $600 buys you the right to ask for donations if people like your work. Five grand gets you the ability to stamp 10,000 DVDs and sell them in K-mart.

It might sound silly, but in comparison to the tens of millions of dollars it (apparently) costs production companies like Pixar to make their films, I wonder how many people would jump at the chance to put their creative efforts behind a legally sound machinima project? Perhaps not many, but again, how much work is involved on the game developer's part?

It's also worth thinking about how many people will start off on a cheap license and then purchase upgrades as their skill and confidence increases. Mmm...residual sales! Yum!

Perhaps game companies could even offer basic e-commerce facilities for machinima makers to sell their work. Even being legally able to stick a Revver tag in your film would benefit a lot of people. Games like The Movies and productions like Red Vs Blue (who got a special deal with Microsoft, whereby the makers didn't get massive fines and MS got free publicity) are already pushing this exciting new art form into the public consciousness.

With the game industry already a-twitter over wonderful new "episodic gaming" (or smaller games being released more often in PR-free speak) it seems remiss of this enormous industry to be ignoring the shift towards consumer generated content which, by the way, is an oxymoron if ever I heard one 'cause nobody works in complete isolation, especially script writers or directors. Perhaps the PR-free translation of "consumer generated content" is "content we don't make any money from".

Well, if that's the perceived problem, try opening up the technology to people who want to use it and will pay for the privilege.

Or sue them. That goes down really well.

.xxx Shelved. Again.

2006-04-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

First published here.

It looks like the .xxx Top Level Domain (TLD) has been side-lined again.

It seems ironic that while the U.S. is regarded (by Americans anyway) as having invented the internet, the U.S. controlled Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) has been so slow in developing and authorizing new TLDs. The .xxx domain was previously shelved last year after a prolonged campaign by conservative Christian groups and last week it was delayed again at an ICANN meeting in New Zealand.

"This is a great example of the success of the public policy advice process at work, which demonstrates that ICANN takes governmental input seriously. The ICANN Board is committed to continuing to enhance the integration of the [Governmental Advisory Committee]'s public policy role to ICANN's decision processes", said president and ceo of ICANN, Dr Paul Twomey.

Well. Nice to know that ICANN bows to U.S. government "input" anyway. I wonder why they even bothered going to New Zealand? It's not as if the rest of the world has any real influence on ICANN. I don't know: perhaps the ICANN board wanted to see Middle Earth for themselves, or go hang-gliding or something.

The Australian government has spoken out against a sexy internet address in the past, but then this is the same government that banned internet casinos from operating here in Australia and lost all their tax revenue when the sites relocated offshore within hours of the law being passed.

I've stopped taking the Oz government seriously whenever they talk about the internet because it's obvious the people who write the policies are the kind of people who open email attachments called really_funny.pic.of.u_and_me.exe. You know, those "what's a linux?" kind of people?

They probably run your government too.

There are many views on the subject of a .xxx domain, but they can be summarized pretty easily:

a. No! Bad idea!
b. Yes! Great idea!
c. Who cares?

Here's a quick breakdown:

No! Bad idea!

This is the view of onservative Christian groups who hold a lot of political clout in the US. The cynical among us say this is because those groups actually like being outraged by obscene content because it allows them to continue holding the "moral" high ground when trying to ban or restrict pornography. If pornography is everywhere, it's a lot easier to point to when making an argument against it.

That's it really.

Yes! Great idea!

This is my personal view and it's based about half on logic and half on my philosophical beliefs, which often seem to overlap.

The logical part of the argument is basically that there are Top Level Domains for a reason. That reason is to divide up the internet into usable chunks that can be categorized for the benefit of people creating content and for people consuming the content. For example, www.random-research-institute.EDU is a government funded teaching institute that researches how people process information in their daily lives. www.random-research-institute.org on the other hand is a fascist think tank that encourages the study of eugenics to breed out the weaker members of society and create a super race to colonize the moons of Saturn.

Which is fine, because the only way we know that we have free speech is if we allow every wacko out there to say what they like as well, and if they want to set up a private organization to help them say it, great. But put it under a .org domain so I can distingush it from infromation that may be politely described as more useful.

So that's why we can't and shouldn't try to bung everything under the regular old .com domain - humans need to organize stuff. We do it unconsciously and after a little bit of experience, we tend to follow the same organizational patterns as everyone else seems to. Then every so often someone comes along and suggests formalizing an ad-hoc system that has been in use for a long time.

Like how to tell people that you've got smut on your web site, for instance.

Punch "glasses for women" into Google and you'll get a variety of results. Some of the sites offer a ranges of specs with feminine designs and attractive prices and some will offer you an insight into the strange world of myopic paraphilia. Luckily, Google can filter out most of the fetish sites with the SafeSearch option, but that isn't something you can use to block these sites completely. You'd need to block them at network, or ISP, level if you wanted to do it properly, which is why a lot of porn sites wanted the .xxx domain in the first place.

From the pornographer's point of view, they want people visiting their site to become customers. To do that, you need a credit card.

Minors typically don't have credit cards, ergo having minors visiting your web site is a waste of time for them and bandwidth for the site owner. Couple that with the all the horror stories of stolen credit card info and trojan horses, and you come to realize porn site operators have their work cut out getting people to actually trust them enough to pay for the hot stuff in the first place. Then there's the whole compliance with Title 18, Section 2257 of the U.S. Code, and the various Age Verification Systems. Wouldn't it be nice of you could voluntarily have your raunchy site regulated up to the eyeballs as proof that you want to do the right thing and keep the kiddies out?

Had the .xxx domain been allowed, what probably would have happened is that a large number of adult sites would have kept their .com names and used them as the entry page (with the standard "I Agree to the terms, etc") and redirected visitors to their main site hosted under a .xxx domain. This would have provided an extra layer of verification, especially in the corporate environment, where the network admin could simply block access to the entire .xxx TLD.

Click on "Enter HardcoreHeaven.xxx" at work and you get a great big screen telling you to get your kicks on your own time, buddy! It would be pretty simple to do at an ISP level too. Got kids? Call up your ISP and get them to block the .xxx domain. They usually offer filtering software anyway (sometimes by law) so from the ISP's point of view it would be much easier to just stop people going to certain domains than create block lists of every adult site they can find.

This leads to the I-have-no-opinion opinion. There are a lot of people with a lot of reasons why a .xxx would be a good idea. Some of them are even the porn sites who want a nice, quite little corner of the net where nobody will bother them with hysterical "won't somebody think of the children" rantings 'cause they did think of the children and asked for a space the children can be kept out of to prove it. The people who don't want a .xxx domain can only offer feeble excuses such as, "it will legitimize pornography".

Does it need to be "legitimate"? I mean, it exists doesn't it? Should we be having a discussion on the fundamental nature of reality and our place in the space-time continuum instead?

So if you don't have an opinion, get one.

One of the main arguments for a .xxx Top Level Domain is that the individual can choose whether they want to visit those sites or not, so check out the (still hopeful) registry operator and the sponsoring organization, see what they have to say and make up your own mind.

http://www.iffor.org/ - International Foundation for Online Responsibility
http://www.icmregistry.com/ - ICM Registry

Does Superman Have Rights?

2006-03-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Being a fan of the graphic novel medium, I always find it interesting to see how these stories transfer to the big screen. Some of the most visually inspired films of the last few years are based on comics and graphic novels, and considering some of the attributes of the medium, such as a pre-conceived "story board" it's not surprising that directors are keen to move these often striking static images to full motion films.

I've always wondered how the original artists feel about their work being transferred to different mediums though. Did Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell like the film version of From Hell, with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham?

Answer: No. Campbell said "anything that meant anything was ditched" from the film script.

Alan Moore's V for Vendetta has now just made it to the big screen, thanks to the Wachowski brothers.

Recently, Moore told The Independent, "All I'm asking [the producers] for is the same kind of deal that they had no problem extending to Siegel and Schuster (the creators of Superman). I want them to say, 'We're not going to give you any money for your work, you're not going to get any credit for it, and we're not going to put your name on it.' I don't see the problem."

Perhaps it's the previous butchering of his work that has led this great artist to shun any adaptations of it. It is certainly understandable that he wouldn't want his name on something he doesn't like.

With that in mind, perhaps now is a good time to take a retrospective look at revolutionary document that was published back in 1988 by veteran comic artist Scott McCloud:

A Bill of Rights for Comics Creators

For the survival and health of comics, we recognize that no single system of commerce and no single type of agreement between creator and publisher can or should be instituted. However, the rights and dignity of creators everywhere are equally vital.

Our rights, as we perceive them to be and intend to preserve them, are:

1. The right to full ownership of what we fully create.

2. The right to full control over the creative execution of that which we fully own.

3. The right of approval over the reproduction and format of our creative property.

4. The right of approval over the methods by which our creative property is distributed.

5. The right to free movement of ourselves and our creative property to and from publishers.

6. The right to employ legal counsel in any and all business transactions.

7. The right to offer a proposal to more than one publisher at a time.

8. The right to prompt payment of a fair and equitable share of profits derived from all of our creative work.

9. The right to full and accurate accounting of any and all income and disbursements relative to our work.

10. The right to prompt and complete return of our artwork in its original condition.

11. The right to full control over the licensing of our creative property.

12. The right to promote and the right of approval over any and all promotion of ourselves and our creative property.

McCloud says, "the Bill never generated much noise in the industry - and I wouldn't want to exaggerate its influence - but in looking over its articles more than a decade later, they provide an interesting snapshot of our attitudes at the time, and of the climate that was fueling self-publishers, progressive business people, and artists trying to reinvent the comics industry."

Perhaps now is a good time to take a look back and see if there's something in that document that's relevant for us today. I, for one, think there is.

Bush, Google and Porn

2006-03-20T19:05:00.000-08:00

First published here.

In my mind, the most amusing aspect of the Bush administration's attempt to grab users' search information from Google is the reason they actually want the info in the first place.

The Bush administration claims it's trying to prove how easy it is for minors to come across pornographic content. They tried using the Internet Archive, but didn't get much. (So, in case anyone wanted to know whether archive.org is a kid-friendly, the US government says "yes!").

The really funny thing is that making the net safer for children could have been partially achieved by the creation of a .xxx Top Level Domain. Unfortunately, Bush's own Department of Commerce helped kill the idea - apparently, acknowledging the existence of pornography somehow legitimises it, perhaps in the same way that acknowledging the existence of HIV/AIDS means that risky sexual practices are suddenly okay. I don't know - false logic and backward thinking seems to be the hallmark of a functioning government these days.

As far as the Bush White House is concerned, forcing Google to hand over search data serves two functions:

1) They don't have to dip into the Republican war chest by doing the research themselves; and,

2) They get to establish a precendent that kills the 4th Amendment, in case they want to sponge info from other companies in the future.

US District Judge James Ware said he was reluctant to give the Justice Department everything it wanted because of the "perception by the public that this is subject to government scrutiny". Weeell, so long as the US government isn't getting everything it wanted, that's fine. If they're only handing over a little bit of private information, it'll be okay. Provided they're not violating the Constitution much, I'm sure the public will feel reassured.

Sarcasm aside for a minute, I wasn't aware you could do some thing that's "partially" unconstitutional. I always thought is was one of those binary states: constitutional or unconstitutional. Alive or dead. Pregnant or not pregnant. That was one of the things that made me feel really uncomfortable when I heard about it - so long as you compromise, you can can ask for the most ridiculous things. People will ignore the outlandish request and focus on how "reasonable" you can be in reaching a compromise:

Crazed Dictator: I want a hundred nuclear bombs! Muhahaha!

United Nations: No way! No nuclear bombs!

Crazed Dictator: Okay, ten bombs then!

US Court: We'd like to thank you for being so reasonable. Request for ten nuclear weapons granted.

In case you're still not convinced that this is simply the big government trying to beat big tech companies into submission, you might like to consider the fact that AOL, Yahoo and MSN have aready handed over their search data, exactly like the Department of Justice wanted in the first place.

In terms of raw data, any statistician would tell you they have more than enough to work out how much smut there is on the net. The only possible thing Google could help them with is determining whether it's a lot, or a hell of a lot.

To take this case as far as they have can only mean the Bush administration is more interested in proving they can get the data than doing anything useful with it...which they could have done to some extent by letting people put .xxx after the name of their raunchy web site anyway.

µTorrent Interview - March '06

2006-03-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Alex H: Last time we spoke you guys had just released µTorrent 1.1.4. Now you've just released µTorrent 1.5. How far has µTorrent come with the 1.5 release? What's new?

Ludde: µTorrent 1.5 is a significant release that's a big milesone for us. The new major changes in 1.5 are support for Protocol Encryption (i.e. Message stream encryption) and Peer Exchange (a feature that lets peers interchange peers with each other, and reduces the need for a working tracker, it makes BitTorrent more distributed). A lot of work has also been spent on optimizing the downloading speeds, µTorrent should now download much more efficiently than before.

In combination with this, a new algorithm for optimized disk accesses has been implemented. Previous versions would hit the disk much more often, while the new automatic disk cache tries to minimize this.

The time between releases, a whopping 2 months, is the longest time ever in µTorrent's history. This shows that 1.5 is really a big change compared to 1.4 (The number of changes is well over a hundred), and we've worked to perfecting it down to the smallest detail.

Other notable things that have been added since 1.1.4 (when you last interviewed us) include:

* RSS Reader: Allows µTorrent to automatically fetch releases (such as TV-shows) as soon as they are released. This helps µTorrent to become a better content-on-demand platform, since it will automatically help users download the content they need. A nice RSS tutorial can be found on the webpage for the users that are unsure about how RSS works.

* Unicode support: The same executable can be used both in Unicode mode (windows 2000 or later) or in ANSI compability mode (windows ME or earlier). This is a quite unique feature for native Win32 programs. Unicode is a relatively new universal way of representing characters inside the computer, which means that µTorrent is compatible with foreign torrents (such as those with chinese filenames), while still being able to run properly on old platforms. Support for old platforms like Windows 95 is an important goal for us, not because the user base is there, but it shows that we care about how the application performs for all users.

* Mainline-DHT: This was added in µTorrent 1.2. It means Distributed Hash Table, and is a nice technology that really minimizes the dependency on the tracker. DHT allows µTorrent to receive peers through a distributed network of peers, so the tracker is not needed.

We've come a long way since 1.1.4, now µTorrent is really one of the serious contenders in the BitTorrent scene. We concentrate on adding mainstream features that are easy to use, and benefit the majority of the user base, and thus µTorrent is geared towards both normal users and "expert" users that know the inns and outs of their computer.

Alex H: Who makes up the µTorrent team now?

Ludde: The µTorrent team consists of:

Ludvig Strigeus (ludde) - Sole µTorrent Developer
And some of the most notable members of the µTorrent community:
Giancarlo Martínez (Firon) - Support technician and my right hand.
Timothy Su (Ignorantcow) - Website designer
Maciej Trebacz (mav) - In charge of translations
Carsten Niebuhr (Directrix) - Working on the upcoming webinterface
Ludovic Arnaud (Ashe) - Working with website efficiency/admin frontend

Then there are a bunch of other people hanging around in the IRC channels/Forums helping people and helping me.

Alex H: µTorrent worked with Azureus to develop the Message Stream Encryption specs. What does it do and how does it do it?

Ludde: It is basically an encrypted wrapper around the BitTorrent traffic. This makes it a lot harder for Internet Service Providers to block or throttle the BitTorrent traffic, as they can't determine as easily if the traffic really is BitTorrent. Blocking is obviously of interest to them, since it has been estimated that at least 30% of all Internet traffic is BitTorrent.

All data packets are encrypted with a key generated at run time, so there is no way for a 3rd party to observe what kind of files that are being transmitted by just analysing the packet stream. However, characteristics of the BitTorrent protocol, such as packet sizes, or the fact that a client connects to a large number of peers, can still be used to infer that BitTorrent activity is going on, so the encryption is not a universal solution.

Alex H: Can the PHE specifications work with other protocols, or is it a BitTorrent-only thing?

Ludde: It was designed to be as general as possible, and to not be dependent on BitTorrent, so it can (in theory) be used to encrypt other protocols. Just like SSL can be used to encrypt other things than HTTP.

Alex H: What was it like collaborating with rival developers? Was it just "Team µTorrent" and "Team Azureus", or were there other individuals involved too?

Ludde: We are not really "rival developers" even though we work on "competing" clients. I have a healthy relationship with the Azureus team and we're cooperating openly. My goal is not to destroy Azureus. I want to provide a lightweight alternative to Azureus for the people that believe that Azureus's requirements in terms of CPU/Memory are too high.

Alex H: Last week Slyck.com published a story that revealed a deal between a company called PeerFactor and Ludvig Strigeus, µTorrent's developer. How does µTorrent fit into this? Is Ludde working for the "dark side"? Have you sold out as some people are claiming?

Ludde: I can't believe how much this deal has been blown up. The whole hysteria started with the Slyck.com article saying that µTorrent is cooperating with RetSpan and working with Anti-P2P organizations. Later the article was updated because that statement was factually incorrect. Yet I believe a large number of users still have doubts about µTorrent's legitimacy.

The deal as such is not even about µTorrent. I will provide the company (PeerFactor, a startup company started in late 2005), with a small DLL-file that can be used for one thing only - Downloading files from BitTorrent network. The deal is not between µTorrent and PeerFactor, and it does not affect µTorrent. I'm just using some of my expertise to help them develop an application that webmasters can use to publish big content on their websites. I don't even give out any source code.

I can't show you our agreement, but µTorrent is not even mentioned in our deal. There are no mentions of any Anti-P2P ideas, and PeerFactor owns NO rights to the BitTorrent code. The deal is just between me (Ludvig Strigeus) as a developer and PeerFactor. It's not related to µTorrent at all. The license has no malicious intent towards P2P users, and it does not affect µTorrent in any way. The contract explicitly states that they can only use it for the designated purpose, and not for anything else such as monitoring P2P users.

Alex H: Who was at the meeting with PeerFactor?

Ludde: I have not even met anyone in person, I havn't even talked to them on the phone! All our communication has been on e-mails and IRC. This is not a big contract. It's just a small side project to try to get some payment for the effort involved in writing a Bittorrent protocol stack.

Alex H: What does this .dll file do exactly?

Ludde: The DLL file component that I have exports a few basic functionalities such as

* Start downloading a torrent
* Stop it
* Pause
* Remove it
* Determine how many % was downloaded.

It contains no functionality whatsoever for retreiving IP-addresses of peers.

The DLL file wasn't written specifically for PeerFactor. It's a generic download DLL with a small size/footprint that I have developed as a separate project. I just made some minor adjustments so it would meet PeerFactor's requirements.

Alex H: Do you know, or can you speculate on what PeerFactor plans to do with the .dll?

Ludde: The goal is to use unused bandwidth of Internet users to distribute big files, like trial games, free trial music and trailers. It is not related to fake files.

Alex H: How is the deal structured? Is it a straight sale or a lease? Is there some kind of royalty payment to Ludde?

Ludde: It's a 6-month lease. PeerFactor will evaluate if the DLL fits with their requirements. No source is involved, and all ownership to the code belongs to me. I have not been paid anything, but if the service turns out to work, I will get some form of payment. I don't have an employment contract with PeerFactor. I do not work for them, and they do not have control over any decisions I make related to µTorrent.

Alex H: PeerFactor has ties to French anti-P2P company RetSpan. Is there still a relationship there?

Ludde: No, the person I've been in contact with has assured me that there is no relationship at all between PeerFactor and RetSpan. I trust him, and if it turns out that there is a connection, I will not work with them.

Alex H: The µTorrent website was put on a block list a few days ago. How did it happen? Is there anything on the µTorrent website that is a security risk for users?

Ludde: These blocklists are created by a bunch of over-paranoid people (Bluetack). The software PeerGuardian has temporarily handed over list creation to Bluetack, and Bluetack prefers to be better safe than sorry. Their decision was based on incorrect facts, and it will take some time before the block gets removed.

Alex H: There is a certain level of mistrust directed at closed source applications like µTorrent. Why is the µTorrent source code not available? Will µTorrent ever be open source?

Ludde: There are no plans to make µTorrent open source. If µTorrent becomes open source, it will result in hacked clients, or companies modifying the code and creating malware clients. If µTorrent is closed source, I can make sure that the quality of µTorrent stays high and that it doesn't become a bloated client. Further, it makes sure that the source code is not used by dubious companies or for dubious purposes.

Alex H: Is there anything in the µTorrent source code that would be considered a security risk to users, such as a "phone home" component or something that builds up a profile of the user?

Ludde: Not at all, µTorrent has an optional feature (enabled by default) that sends a unique random ID number when checking for new updates. This is used solely for the purpose of computing how many users that are actively using µTorrent. Azureus does the same thing, so it's nothing special really. A lot of internet-enabled programs do this without even telling the user. With µTorrent you have the option to turn it off if it's of concern to you.

Alex H: µTorrent is free, but donations are accepted. What other kinds of work have you done to make ends meet? Is there anyone you would refuse to work for?

Ludde: Working with an Anti-P2P company is certainly not a good idea, considering my interests in making the best BitTorrent client. I would not do that. Apart from that, I don't know. I will have to evaluate any possible offers and see if they match with what I think is fair and makes sense.

Alex H: I asked a similar question to this in our previous interview: How do you see BitTorrent developing over say, the next three years?

Ludde: This is a very hard question to answer. I definitely believe P2P is here to stay. I think ISPs will get a bigger role and start developing solutions to help P2P instead of working against it, for example cache mechanisms. I like the new law in France that legalizes P2P, and I hope that more countries will follow.

I think we'll start seeing BitTorrent more in embedded devices, such as set-top boxes. More services will be developed around BitTorrent to distribute legal content, and subscription based services such as high quality movies-on-demand instead of renting DVDs in the rental store.

Alex H: Thanks for your time, and good luck for the future.

Ludde: Thanks.

µTorrent Interview - October '05

2006-03-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Alex H: Who makes up the µTorrent team?

µTorrent: Ludvig Strigeus (Ludde; Swedish) is the author and programmer of µTorrent. Serge Paquet (Vurlix; Canadian) has the project leader role, by coordinating releases, maintaining the website/forum, helps with debugging and helps the translators.

Alex H: With so many other BitTorrent clients out there, why did you guys decide to build another one?

Serge: There are three reasons that lead to the development of µTorrent. First, I got sick of large, slow and inefficient applications hogging all my resources so I wanted to build something tiny and powerful. Second, I was interested in the BitTorrent protocol, because it is simple, effective and relatively well documented (and I also downloaded a lot using it). Making an efficient BitTorrent client seemed like a good place to start. Finally, Ludde was looking for a project to work on and liked the idea. µTorrent was born.

Ludde: I'm somewhat obsessed by making tiny and resource friendly programs, and when Serge brought up the idea I thought sounded really interesting. I didn't plan to make a full featured client at that point, I just wanted to learn about the protocol and it seemed like a fun and challenging task to make a resource friendly BitTorrent client. I worked on it for a month or two and then I stopped developing it. Then I didn't work on it for a year, and now like a month ago I finished the remaining pieces and released version 1.0.

Alex H: What are some of the biggest changes between 1.1.3 and 1.1.4?

µTorrent: The network subsystem was partly rebuilt to a different model to accomodate the many faulty antivirus/firewall software in use today. The change even seems to have lowered resource usage slightly. Also new is better handling of skipped files within a torrent.

Alex H: µTorrent is REALLY small (1.1.4 is 91KB) how did you manage to squeeze so much code into one .exe file? What can you tell us about the development process?

µTorrent: µTorrent was built to be as tiny as possible from the very beginning. To achieve this, we avoided the use of many heavy libraries (notably C++ standard Library, stream facilities in particular) and put together our own substitutes. Finally, the executable was compressed to half its size.

Alex H: How does µTorrent, compared to other BitTorrent clients?

µTorrent: µTorrent performs extremely well. It is unrivaled in CPU/Memory usage and very high transfer speeds have been achieved. At this rate, the competition will soon be left in the dust.

Alex H: What are some of the goals you've set for the next version? How about the version after that?

µTorrent: Currently we're working on internationalization (unicode) to enable more people to use utorrent. We're also working towards DHT (decentralized mode) to help downloads where trackers die or go offline. We try to listen as much as possible to the quickly growing userbase, and by being active in the forums, we get a good idea of what users want.

Alex H: How do you see the BitTorrent protocol developing over, say the next three years?

µTorrent: BitTorrent's strength comes from many peers downloading the same (ideally few) torrents at the same time, exchanging pieces and increasing the swarm's efficiency. The more peers (the more popular) the torrent, the higher the swarm's overall throughput. The difference between BitTorrent and file sharing networks is that the distribution is focused. With the introduction of unattended downloading (usually through RSS), it's become possible to quickly distribute very large volumes of data as it is made available. It is the process of efficiently streaming (focusing) this growing volume of organised data that is becoming an active area of development.

Alex H: Has there been any contact between you guys and Bram Cohen?

µTorrent: Not yet. Perhaps we will get in touch when we reach the stage of improving BitTorrent itself.

Alex H: There is a lot of positive feedback on the µTorrent forums. What's your reaction been to the feedback?

µTorrent: The feedback is overwhelming. It seems that we hit a soft spot; an efficient BitTorrent client has been coveted by many users who were previously subjected to the higher CPU usage of python, memory usage of Java's VM, or their client's bad behaviour. µTorrent offers an attractive solution to many users.

Alex H: As a P2P application developer, are you concerned about any legal action against µTorrent?

µTorrent: Not really. Like the original BitTorrent client, µTorrent is a tool that helps download large files and reduce server load: nothing more, nothing less. µTorrent does its job, and it does it well, regardless of the use people have for it.

Alex H: What do you think file sharing applications actually accomplish?

µTorrent: File sharing applications accomplish many things. They lower distribution costs. They increase the availability of content. They help distribute that content faster. And it's all made easy and accessible. But more importantly, it sends a message: the information super highway is finally living up to its name.

Alex H: Thanks for talking to us, and good luck with the project.

Childhood Memories: Locked Away

2006-03-07T19:20:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Everyone has at least one story they remember from their childhood, maybe from a picture or comic book, a television series or a movie. In later life we look back fondly on those stories, thinking "Wow! I remember that!" as we see them sitting on the shelves of a bookshop or a video store or increasingly online, where we suddenly find there are thousands of other people who remember those stories and who congregate in message boards or newsites dedicated solely to keeping them alive.

My little ball of childhood glee is Wind In The Willows, made by the legendary British studio Cosgrove Hall.

Continuing on from their 1983 movie of Kenneth Grahame's classic childrens book, Cosgrove Hall developed Wind In The Willows into a highly successful and award winning stop motion series (stop motion animation? Think Wallace & Gromit). In fact they made, five 13-episode series out of it, plus another full length movie. Cosgrove Hall managed to do the seemingly impossible: take a much loved classic and do a screen version that was faithful to the book. It won awards. It was lauded in the press. Princess Margaret turned up for the premiere.

I remember my mother liking it too because it was one of the few shows on television that was guaranteed to contain absolutely no swearing, violence, dangerous stunts or anything else that might influence a young mind for the worse.

She (illegally) made compilation tapes of the series as they aired on TV and I'd watch them over and over again. Over the years, those old VHS tapes degraded or were accidentally taped over and now I only have four and a half barely watchable episodes out of the sixty five that were made.

Now, after more than 20 years, thousands of production hours and millions of happy children, you'd think you'd be able to buy Wind In The Willows on DVD, wouldn't you?

Well, you can't. The original movie was released in 2004 by A&E Home Video. Series 1 was only released on DVD less than a year ago. Series 2 made it a few months later. A&E plan on releasing the second movie in a few weeks time but, get this, don't really feel like releasing series 3, 4 or 5. Oh, and any/all DVDs released will be Region 1 encoded, with no plans to even distribute them outside of North America and Canada.

This is why I hate media producers with a passion. To a Wind In The Willows fan like myself, this is akin to only releasing the first two Lord of the Rings movies on DVD, or George Lucas deciding that he's not going to release The Empire Strikes Back in a Collector's Edition Star Wars boxed set. Over the years various companies have taken Wind In The Willows and done the usual release-three-random-episodes-and-forget-about-it routine, but this is the first time anyone has released entire seasons at a time. Now they don't think the "demand" will remain steady.

Well, considering the fact you can convert anything from analogue to digital with less than $500 worth of equipment and software, what is the damned problem here? Hell, give the master tapes to me and I'll do it for free. If you can't be bothered making pretty packaging and sending out stock to hundreds of shops, why not make an .iso file and release the content via BitTorrent? I gather there are a number of torrent sites around who'd just love to distribute legal content, even if few people in the media business actually care about it.

Content producers are so blasé about their damned important intellectual property it never fails to astound me.

Take the BBC as a prime example.

During the 60s and 70s they managed to wipe thousands of programmes by taping over them. Tape was expensive and, well, nobody really wanted to watch this stuff again, did they?

To this day, there are huge holes in the BBC archives where episodes Dr Who, Z-Cars and Dad's Army should be, but aren't because nobody could be bothered storing them. Well guess what? People do want to watch this stuff again.

People buy boxed sets of TV shows. People buy boxed sets of old TV shows. People dedicate hours and hours of their free time trying to track down missing episodes of progammes like The Goon Show in some strange kind of modern day media treasure hunt.

We don't need great catastrophies like nuclear war or global warming to destroy our culture. All we need to do is let the media companies store it for us and everything will be gone in a few decades.

Salary Caps For Actors?

2006-03-06T19:43:00.000-08:00

First published here.

One of the problems with using a "Shock and Awe" strategy in battle is that you can never tell if it works. Imagine Mel Gibson's William Wallace in Braveheart announcing to his small army of Scotsmen, "Aye, the only reason we beat the fooken English is because we lifted our kilts and waved our genitals aroond". A blood spattered Celtic warrior turns and replies, "Nah, fightin' for our homes and families gave us the courage to defeat them".

"It was the cock-waving I tell yer!" screams Wallace.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has favoured the cock-waving approach in its battle against its perceived enemy (its owners' customers). The plan is to sue large numbers of people and publicize the actions in the hope everyone will be too scared to oppose them and, after years of using this tactic it seems to be failing.

Patti Santangelo is the most recognisable person to stand up and fight the RIAA's accusations in court, and just when things seemed to be going the RIAA's way, too!

The MPAA (Motion Picture Associatioin of America) on the other hand has tried the "surgical strike" method, and has been having much more sucess. Their actions last week against a number of Torrent and Newsgroup sites have already seen a number of those targeted close shop. More will probably capitulate as the MPAA drags out the court procedings and stretches the indexing sites' legal budgets to zero.

The RIAA and MPAA have so far been reactionary in their dealings with new p2p technology. Little, if any, effort has been made by them to address the root cause of their problems - perceived loss of income.

The typical tech company approach to this kind of problem is to get a bunch of smart guys, stick them in a room with tens of millions of dollars worth of cool toys and tell them to come up with something brilliant. It works more often than not, as well. Simultaneously, company executives sit down and work out how to fight a holding action against their competitor. How long can they maintain their current profit margins? How can they reduce overheads? How much coffee to the engineers need before the "something brilliant" is ready for market?

This is NOT something the movie studios and record companies are doing. There is, however, one tried and true way of reducing costs during tough times: salary caps.

I don't know about you, but whenever I see some actor receiving a $25 million dollar payment for doing a movie I get really worried for the movie studio. Don't they know they're being decimated by file sharing? Haven't they heard that their entire industry is poised on the edge of bankruptcy? How can they possibly afford to fork out twenty five million bucks and continue saying that I am the f*cking problem to their bottom line?!?!?

Unfortunately, the entertainment industry isn't run along the lines of a free market and even "free" markets are regulated to make sure they stay free. If there weren't regulations in place, they'd be called "anarchic markets" and there'd be thriving, legal industries producing and selling everything from nuclear bombs to organs harvested from African children.

So No. You can't do whatever the hell you feel like in a free market. We came out of the trees, got civilized and made rules which can be changed as and when they need to be to ensure there's some level of fairness in the world.

Salary caps were introduced to professional sports to maintain the competetive environment, otherwise a rich team would simply buy all the best players and win every game. As you can guess, this would be pretty damned boring to the fans who'd quickly lose interest. As people stop going to games, less money comes in. When income drops to a certain level, the game goes bankrupt.

It's well worth noting as well that salary caps were partly introduced to professional sports to keep the fans happy. I imagine it would be very difficult to watch a player earing $20 million a year screw up and continue believing they were worth $20 million a year. Anger towards the player for dropping the ball, anger towards the team for overpaying someone who drops the ball, anger towards the league for crying hardship this season and putting up ticket prices...

Until the MPAA starts being proactive and sorting out the problems in their own back yard, I'm not going to feel guilty for sneaking into a ball game...er...downloading a movie.

Special Competition!

Pick the three things you'd most like to be enforced on the MPAA's member studios:

1. Half of all actor salaries over $10 million dollars must be given to charity.

2. No actor or director may recieve more than $20 million for their work on a film.

3. 20% of all profits over $100 million made on any movie must be used to fund projects by emerging directors.

4. All sequals must contain 90% of the "stars" that appeared in the first (sucessful) movie.

5. People or companies with a financial interests in a film must be disclosed in the credits.

6. Songs appearing in a film's "official soundtrack" must be audible for at least 20 seconds during the film.

7. Any actor nominated for an Oscar must have performed in at least one stage production during the previous year.

8. No studio executive may receive more than $5 million dollars in salary or benefits while their employer is engaged in legal action against individual file sharers.

9. All studios must give 5% of their after tax profits to an independent organization for the purposes of commercializing p2p technologies.

10. Any person working for an MPAA member studio must take a short course in alternative licensing, such as the Creative Commons.

Answers on a postcard please. Or better yet, send them directly to the MPAA (and you never know, they might send you a poster or something).

Office of the Chairman and CEO
Washington, DC
1600 Eye St., NW
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 293-1966 (main)
(202) 296-7410 (fax)

Los Angeles
15503 Ventura Blvd.
Encino, California 91436
(818) 995-6600 (main)
(818) 382-1795 (fax)

New York (Anti-Piracy Office)
One Executive Blvd. Suite 455
Yonkers, NY 10701
(914) 378-0800 (main)
(914) 378-0048 (fax)

Jury nullification and Santangelo

2006-02-27T17:57:00.000-08:00

First published here.

With the upcoming Patti Santangelo case looming, the subject of jury nullification provides interesting food for thought.

As virtually everybody who knows anything about it knows, virtually nobody knows anything about jury nullification. So what the hell is it? (And try saying it three times fast as a mental warm up too.)

Wikipedia gives a good summary: Jury nullification is a jury's refusal to render a verdict according to the law, as instructed by the court, regardless of the weight of evidence presented. Instead, a jury bases its verdict on other grounds. Historically, examples include the unjustness of the law, injustice of its application, the race of a party, or the jury's own common sense.

WTF?

Okay, there's actually some logic behind the idea that a bunch of ordinary people can just decide the fate of their fellow citizens. There is also Article Three of the US Constitution behind the idea as well but I like the logic, so we'll run with that for the moment.

You get to vote for someone to represent you in your country's government. That representative has a hand in deciding what the law is. That representative is just as likely as anyone else to go completly bonkers and pass a law punishing people for holding a banana in an unauthorized manner (and there a weirder laws than that out there!).

Some cop, who's just doing his job, arrests you for holding a banana in an unauthorized manner. You go before the court. The judge informs everyone that there's a statutory sentence for illegal banana holders and you're looking at ten years in the slammer if found guilty...and you're guilty as hell. They've got video footage of you holding the banana in a manner that's clearly against the law. They've got two dozen witnesses who saw your criminal banana-clutching activities with their own eyes. They even have a forensic expert who can demonstrate how the markings on the banana could only be made by someone gripping it in a way that the law says is illegal.

You opt for a trial by jury and they acquit you because that law is just fucking dumb. That's jury nullification in practice: the last defense of the citizenry against an unjust (or insane) government.

But they don't tell you that you can do it.

In Sparf v US, the court decided that the judge has no responsibility to inform the jury of their ability to nullify a case...and there's actually some logic behind that as well.

The government works for you. Right? It's your servant. Right? It exists solely for the benefit of you and your fellow citizens. Got it?

Now, isn't it a bit strange that your servant should be the one to tell you everything you're allowed to do? You're the master, here, so you should know what your rights are, dammit! The court simply rattles through the legal procedure, part of which is something along the lines of, "...you should find the defendant guilty or not guilty". That's it. They don't tell you what you can do because you're supposed to know that already. It's a de facto power that you have, akin to taking your ball and going home if you don't feel like playing any more.

Sure, the score may be tied with ten minutes of game time remaining, but you can still just walk away if you feel like it.

If you think this all sound a bit screwed up, maybe ask yourself, "why bother being judged by a jury of your peers if the court judge is simply going to force them to find you guilty?" I mean, it's only the 6th Amendement. Why do we need the Constitution when we have all these other great laws like the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure? Or that Alaskan law that makes it illegal to feed alcoholic beverages to a moose?

Could it be that it's 'cause the US Constitution is pretty damned important? You know, guaranteeing certain things like the government not depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law? That kind of thing.

As John Adams put it: "It is not only his right but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." Now that's coming from the guy who helped write the Delclaration of Independence, became president of the United States and saw his efforts later expressed in the US Constitution.

His resume suggests that we shouldn't simply ignore his views on citizens' involvement with the law.

Then again, John Adams spent most of his life fighting for freedom, justice and independence from ghastly laws, so what does he know about modern America?

Oh, wait...

It's interesting to consider the idea of jury nullification in light of some of the lawsuits being flung around at the moment, especially the case of Patti Santangelo, who's opted for a trial by jury in her case against the RIAA.

Who knows? Maybe the citizens of New York state serving on her jury will finally tell the record companies that they're not prepared to choose corporate profits over ordinary people.

Maybe some of Santangelo's jurors were unlucky enough to have bought a rootkitted CD from Sony.

Maybe the damages the RIAA is asking for are just so ridiculously high that the jury will acquit her out of sheer bloody-mindedness. The concience of the individual is a fickle beast, but somehow I get the feeling that the RIAA is really scared of people thinking for themselves.

It undermines their whole business model.

Buying into corporate PR

2006-02-15T22:12:00.000-08:00

First published here.

I first heard about Download Legal on p2pnet. The entire Download Legal site is a joke (well I was laughing anyway) and deserves to be ripped to shreds, so I'll start with their "testimonial":

"Sometime around age 14 I downloaded my first mp3. If I think about it I can remember hesitating...I was paying, trading away moral clarity - the ability to say without reservation I am a moral person, someone who weighs the consequences of his actions, a good person."

That's as ar as I'm prepared to quote from it. The rest of it reads like a the story of a heroin junkie who found Jesus and the Almighty. Next is the "Why Legal" page which lists "The Effects of Piracy on Younger Individuals". According to these guys, downloading:

"Threatens entry level jobs - Reducing software piracy by just 10 percentage points worldwide would generate 1.5 million jobs and add $400 billion to the world economy, according to a study released by the Business and Software Alliance and IDC."

Ah! This would be the widely discredited fluff piece by the BSA and IDC. So that we're clear, the study they cite is the one described as "presented in an exaggerated way...They [BSA and IDC] dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms."

Who would have thought that an industry trade organization would be economical with the truth in furthering their own aims? Shock! Horror! There's also the fact that some of that pirated software is being used by people in poorer countries who could never afford it to begin with and who are now using it to earn a living for themselves, rather than starving to death or working for three cents an hour in a Nike sweatshop (or worse).

According to Download Legal, though, it's the billion dollar multi-national software companies who are really, really hurting!

"Many unknowingly engage in illegal acts and face the consequences - The online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished by up to 3 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Repeat offenders can be imprisoned up to 6 years. Individuals also may be held civilly liable, regardless of whether the activity is for profit, for actual damages or lost profits, or for statutory damages up to $150,000 per infringed copyright."

This claim is just too weird to refute properly. I'm guessing those punishments are meeted out by some jurisdiction in the United States, but it would be nice to see which laws they're talking about (so that I can remind myself why I will never live in the US). I was particularly taken by the muddled last sentence where "actual damages or lost profits" are inferred to be one and the same. They're entirely different things: actual damages are found where someone is out of pocket in real dollar terms. Lost profit is where someone could have had a pocket with more cash in it than they actually do.

Drugs Are Bad. Downloading Is Stealing. Mission Accomplished. Dressing up empty slogans with empty figures only results in empty slogans with empty figures...and I still live in Australia so none of those "crimes" apply to me. Well, it won't be an American judge passing sentence at least.

"Cost of legitimate copies increase - The street price will rise if most consumers switch to illegal copies. The resulting demand in the market for legal copies will decrease, thereby causing the manufacturer's price to increase in order to partially offset the reduction in sales attributable to piracy."

This section is a brilliant display of "logical fallacy": all cats have four legs. My dog has four legs, therefor my dog is a cat. Err...

Now does anyone here think manufacturers who increase their prices during a glut in the market will stay in business for long? What actually happens in the scenario put forward by Download Legal is that the manufacturer lowers its prices to compete with the other sources of the product and sells shit-loads at a lower price to make up for the limited premium market. If there was a dramatic drop in the prices of DVDs, would you buy more of them? I would. My house would be filled with perfectly legal $2 DVDs.

What might also happen is that Hollywood will have to cut down on their stupendously big budget movies. Well, cut the costs anyway. This cost cutting may affect the poor, starving $20-million-per-movie stars. It may affect the five course on-set catering. It may even go as far as paying executives less than $15 million dollar a year or selling off the spare Lear jets. Hey, times are hard!

"Stifle opportunities for aspiring artists - Successful projects pay for the ones that may not recover their costs. For instance, Usher and Coldplay are paying for the newer bands the label is gambling on. This situation exists for both music and movies. If this ability to finance riskier projects is lost, the diversity and choice of projects presented to consumers will decrease, with only projects that appear to be 'sure things' receiving support."

Yeah, we're really head-over-heels for plastic, made-for-Top-Of-The-Pops "sure things". These guys seem to forget that p2p takes all the packaging/handling/distribution cost and takes them down to ZERO.

Call me old fashioned, but I was always taught that reducing costs means things cost less. As in costs less to get an artist out there into the minds of the people with the cash. Less as in not having to ship a piece of plastic from Malaysia to the U.S. and drive it into the Walmart loading bay. That kind of less. Most musicians end up having to pay back the cost of their "development" to their record labels companies anyway, so the record company is essentially doing the same as the local bank does when it lends you half a million bucks to start a business like an ice cream parlour with six foot wide flat screen TVs.

This last point is complete rubbish, simply because it only gives the record company line. It mentions nothing about the independent artists who are now in direct competition with the incumbent record companies. Competition is good for the innovators, but bad for the incumbents. Real world economics suck if you're an incumbent. Sorry guys, market forces and all that.

I really can't remember reading anything that buys into the corporate PR line as much as Download Legal does. I mean, come on guys! You're young! You're supposed to be questioning the world around you, not simply accepting and promoting it! People tried doing that with organized religion and look where it ended up.

So in time honoured tradition, I blame the parents, while at the same time sending them my sympathies. And please also spare a thought for all the poor teachers out there thinking "I tried to help them discover the benefits of an independent mind. Where did I go wrong?"

Hey Download Legal, pass the Kool Aid.

Hollywood's Golden Goose

2006-02-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Who would have guessed the taxpayers of Germany are actually among the biggest contributors to Hollywood's bottom line?

Investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein recently exposed the enormous tax shelter that allows Hollywood studios (or any other movie maker, for that matter) to reap multi-million dollar tax windfalls through a series of clever on-paper transactions.

This is how it's done:

A section in the German tax law allows German corporations to get an immediate tax deduction on any cash they invest in films, including borrowed money. It doesn't have to be a German film either - no filming in Germany, no German actors or crew - just a film that's produced by a German company. The film doesn't even have to be in production, so long as the German company owns the copyright and is included as a recipient of the film's earnings (when it's actually released) it counts as "produced in Germany" for tax purposes.

Along comes a Hollywood studio which sells the copyright and production rights to the German company. The German company then leases those rights straight back to the Hollywood studio ('cause that stuff is "property" and if you can own it, you can lease it out). The German company also gives out a Production Service Agreement and a Distribution Service Agreement that allows the Hollywood studio to produce and distribute the film.

Now the tricky part: the Hollywood studio give the German corporation an "advance" on the film's earnings instead of any kind of percentage. As far as the German taxman is concerned, this meets the requirement of the German company to get some of the "profit" from the film. The Hollywood studio then buys back the rights to the film for less than what it sold them to the German corporation for, meaning the German corporation makes a tax deductible loss on the deal which can be defered to whenever it wants to claim it.

In selling the rights back to the Hollywood studio the German connection is severed, leaving the German taxpayer to make up for the German company's "loss".

Epstein gives a great example of this little scheme in action:

Consider the case of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

A Munich-based tax-shelter fund, Hannover Leasing, had a corporate shell pay $150 million to New Line Cinemas for the movie's copyright, which it simultaneously leased back to a New Line affiliate. It also entered into agreements for New Line to produce and distribute the movie.

At the end of filming, New Line Cinemas paid the German company the agreed-upon minimum advance (which approximately equaled the interest on the initial investment) to honour the pretence that the Germans had participated in the profits. For engaging in these strictly paper transactions, New Line "earned" $16 million, a tidy "money-for-nothing" sum.

One Paramount executive admitted that his studio made between $70 and $90 million from these tax shelters in 2003 - more than it actually made from the movies themselves!

Fortunately for the good people of Germany, their government is in the process of shutting down the huge hole that's allowed the American studios to get away with this, but only after years of hundreds of millions of dollars being pulled out of the German economy.

In some ways, it's comforting to know the film industry can screw an entire country as easily as it screws individuals. It's simply another demonstration of how a corporation is designed to care about one thing and one thing only - money. As far as the studios are concerned, it's just business.

So if you've ever wondered why there are so many crap movies out there (like anything that Uwe Boll has ever made), just remember the German government was paying people to make those movies suck.

Further reading on Uwe Boll's exploitation of the loophole can be found here.

I'm not a Bad Guy any more!

2006-01-27T22:43:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Oh joy! Oh happy day! I'm not going to be a bad guy anymore.

Right now, I'm a hardened, cold-blooded criminal. I routinely commit acts that make me eligable for the same amount of jail time as somone who tortures small puppies. What goes on in this devious mind of mine? What makes me tick? What drives me to commit these heinous crimes?

I own a VCR with a functioning Record button.

In Australia, we don't have "fair use" laws. Anyone in the the fair old land of Oz who's ever popped in a tape to record The Simpsons or ripped a CD or downloaded just about anything from the p2p networks is a pirate.

See, our current copyright laws date back to 1968. To be fair, there's been a little tinkering with them over the past few years, but at no time has our government thought Australians should have the right to copy stuff for our own private use. We landed some great "fair dealing" exceptions (in 1980) which, for example, make it legal to perform a copyrighted work at home, but they but contain nothing that actually allows you to copy it in the first place, (e.g., you can invite a few mates over to watch a rented video, but not one that you've taped off the TV yourself).

Even the Issues Paper put out by the federal government in May last year acknowledges, "some consumers may believe that they can make a copy of an item that they have purchased containing copyright material, provided they do not sell the copy. On the other hand, some copyright notices placed on copyright material appear to claim that any copying is unlawful. Neither position is accurate."

In the words of one of the Australian Copyright Council's publications (imaginitively entitled "Information Sheet G79"):

"In a recent case, the Federal Court stated that whether a dealing is fair or not is to be judged by the criterion of a fair minded and honest person".

Courts will look both at whether an objective viewer would consider that:
the person is genuinely using the material for one of the purposes set out in the Act; and
their use of it is fair in that context.

Factors that may be taken into account in working out whether a use is "fair" include whether the person using the material is doing so for commercial purposes, and whether the copyright owner is out of pocket from the use (for example, where a person copies the whole of a work that is available for sale). However, the mere fact that the person using the material is not making a profit does not make it fair."

You'll note a fundamental flaw in the logic of the last paragraph, but it's coming from a copyright holder's back-patting club, so you should be used to reading that kind of trash by now.

Luckily, our fearless attorney-general Philip Ruddock is now looking to make some serious changes to Australian copyright laws. "We should have copyright laws that are more targeted at the real problem," he said late last month as thousands of Aussies were busily becoming criminals thanks to the new iPods they'd received for Christmas. "We should not treat everyday Australians who want to use technology to enjoy copyright material they have obtained legally as infringers where this does not cause harm to our copyright industries."

Wow! That's so cool it almost makes you forget about the national ID card he's trying to foist on us, doesn't it?

Under the Australian system, "fair dealing" is very different from "fair use". Fair dealing means you're allowed to copy stuff only if the copying falls under one or more of the specific exceptions set out in the Copyright Act. Australians are only allowed to copy certain things in the specific ways that the government says are okay. This is a pretty bad system because it relies on the government actively working out what's okay to copy and thinking about that kind of thing on a regular basis. We all know that goverment is a slow-moving beast at the best of times, and sloth-like it it's normal state, which is how most Australians came to be copyright infringers in the first place.

In essence, the current system means copyright holders get a better legal position through government inaction in the same way that a loan shark won't hassle you for a while, but will one day kick down your door to demand payment right now. Australian copyright holders could simply wait until something becomes popular (like p2p), then throw a RIAA-style dummy spit and start litigating.

What's on the table now is a chance to get the whole system reversed - the government states generally what you're allowed to do and then leaves it up to the courts to decide if anything in the future should go on the list of no-nos.

I'm kind of aprehensive about this whole change. At this point, no one in Australia is being sued for downloading like they are in the U.S., so we could just leave everything the way it is and not have any immediate problems.

The downside to is that one day, someone in some kind of anti-terrorism squad will work out that a great way to get search warrants is to claim there's "probable cause" for someone to be a copyright criminal (like if they've bought a DVD burner on their credit card) and use it as a pretext to start kicking down doors all over the country.

Stranger things have happened and we have been lulled into a false sense of insecurity...

If we do get "fair use" laws though, there's also the danger that the Australian laws will someday be "harmonized" with US law, meaning the good people of Oz may be restricted from doing quite common things under something resembling the DMCA, which everyone else in the world currently uses to ridicule Americans for not keeping a hand on their governmental tiller.

(Note to anyone not familiar with the "harmonizing" of laws - In theory, this is when two countries agree to work under the same law for the purposes of making it easier to trade with each other. In practice, it means that the U.S. has worked out how to export their laws as well as their products, to other countries. Being in legal harmony with America basically means they get to decide what you're allowed to do until you elect a government with enough balls to tell them "thanks, but no thanks").

Copyright owners have an incentive to meet user expectations. That's not me speaking, that's the federal government's position via Attorney-General Ruddock, and while I'm tempted to say something sarcastic about that statement (like "No shit, Sherlock") I think I'll have to wait until I see how badly they bollocks it up before commenting further. Looking at the Australian government's past performance in this area, I might have to wait a while for that chance.

With that all said, I think I'll go revel in my criminal genius by watching something I taped off the TV last week.

DRM and Dead Musicians

2006-01-27T22:36:00.000-08:00

First published here.

I was out shopping last weekend and I ran into the most pathetic excuse for a sales pitch I've heard in a long time.

Being a fan of old jazz, blues and the big band sounds of the 1930s and 40s, I'm one of those people with a huge collection of bargain bin CDs. P2P is great but sometimes I just can't be bothered searching for the old obscure stuff which, for some reason, seems to only be popular with people on very unreliable 56k connections.

Having 40 or 50 half completed mp3s in my download queue for months is a real pain, so every now and then I just go out and buy the cheap compilation CDs. I figure five bucks for 30 odd tracks is pretty good for the amount of time and effort I save (hmm...wonder what would happen to the pirate hoards if all CDs were $5?)

So I walked into the local record shop, heading for the Jazz/Big Band section where I found a CD with a nice mix of old sounds. I took the five dollars out of my wallet, looked at the CD case again and what did I see written in very small print on the back?

"This disc contains Copy Control technology. Problems may be enountered on some playback devices."

This was just stupid. All the musicians featured on the CD have been dead several decades, for a start. We're talking about the Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller kind of era, here. Normally, I refuse to buy any CD with DRM crapware, but I really wanted this one. Maybe I'd be lucky. Maybe it would play alright on my laptop.

I decided to ask the sales guy.

"Hey man, this says the CD might not play properly on some playback devices. What does that mean?" I asked him.

"Does it? Let me see", he looked at the small print, comfortingly entitled "WARNING". "Yeah that just means you can't copy it", was the answer.

"Yeah, but it says the CD might not play", I reminded him.

"Yeah, you might get that in car CD players", was the response.

"What about on a PC?"

"Yeah, you might get issues on a PC CD player too".

"Like what?"

"I don't know".

"Does it depend on the program I use to play it?"

"Yeah, maybe".

"Like, would I get problems on Windows Media Player".

"Maybe".

"Or WinAmp?"

"Dude, I don't know".

Now the situation was moving past stupid into the realms of ridiculous.

"Would it be related to the drive brand?", I asked. "Would a Teac DW-224E be okay?"

"Mate, I really don't know."

"Well, can I return it if it doesn't play on my laptop?"

"I don't think so. I'll have to check with the manager".

"Has nobody ever asked this before?'

"No. You're the first." He gave me a dirty look while saying that.

"Look mate", I said, (yes, we Aussies really do speak like that) "This CD has the little Compact Disc logo on it, so it should play in any CD player that also has the logo."

"Man, it's only $5. It's no big deal", was his reply.

Aha! The truth comes out. It doesn't have to be a good product. It doesn't even have to be a functioning product. Apparently, consumers (sorry, customers) are just going to keep handing over money for physical CDs, regardless of whether they can play the music contained on them and without thought for whatever software may be automatically installed on any device the DRM makers can get it to work on.

I have some suggestions for the retail sector on this:

1) To EMI ('cause it was their frickin' DRM) - Send out some kind of information pack to the poor schmuck behind the sales desk for when annoying customers (sorry, consumers) like me ask what the hell they're actually buying.

2) To the poor schmuck behind the sales desk - Don't be surprised if you get those kind of questions in the future. Not everyone is prepared to take a punt on whether the thing they fork out their cash for will actually work.

3) To the poor schmuck's manager - Get a "DRM returns" policy. CDs that can't be played on devices with the little Compact Disc logo aren't technically Compact Discs because they don't follow the Compact Disc standard (called the Red Book), so don't try to hock off those pieces of plastic on an unsuspecting public. Oh, and read up on some some basic consumer law (or should that be customer law?) because I'm pretty sure you'll find something about not being allowed to sell products that don't fit their marketed description. Selling non-CDs in a CD shop could put you in a sticky legal situation.

As you can imagine, I didn't end up buying the big band compilation CD, which was a pity. Luckily I had a stack of CDs and 8 gigabytes worth of old tunes at home to soothe my frustation.

But seriously now - is John Coltrane going to be pissed at me for downloading Blue Train? I'd hate to show disrespect for the dead.

Let's hear it for Porn!

2006-01-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

First published here.

The first photograph ever was taken by Nicéphore Niépce. He'd been mucking around trying to invent a working camera and one day he got a decent shot of the view from his workroom window. It was pretty boring but encouraged by his success, Niépce dropped his pants, pointed the camera downwards and took the world's second photograph.*

God I love the adult industry. They're so with it!

If you ever needed proof that some people would never, ever buy the content they download from the p2p networks, just look at porn (as an example, although you can take that literally if you want - blame it all on me if someone catches you). Porn producers have always been at the forefront of advances in technology, often infulencing the technology itself and it's adoption by the general public.

Want to know how we ended up with VHS instead of Betamax VCRs?

The equipment for manufacturing stuff on Betamax was expensive. The VHS gear was cheap. Adult film producers didn't have the cash to spend on Sony's Betamax, so they put all their blue movies out on VHS. Guess what people did? They bought VHS players because there was more content available for that format...

...and VCRs were fantastic! It was no longer necessary to sit in a big dark room with dozens of other people wearing a raincoat with the inner pockets cut out - you could watch people getting it on in the privacy of your own home! All you had to do was make a quick dash into an adult video store, grab the video with the sexiest cover, pay your money while avoiding the checkout guy's gaze and run out onto the street again. Then someone decided you could skip that all together and get your porn posted to you, no face to face contact required!

"Woohoo!" said all the people embarrassed about being seen buying racy movies. "Woohoo!" said the pornographers as they pocketed enormous amounts of cash, (quickly followed by "hey, maybe we could spend a few extra bucks on the set next time...") Then the internet came along and helloooo new marketplace!

Sex is such a great analogy for recorded media: you can enjoy it by yourself, or with other people. Some people will pay for it, some people won't. For those that do pay, you can watch it live or watch it on a screen. You can get it free if you know where to go. You can buy lots of gadgets to make it more interesting.

And there's something out there for everyone.

The adult industry understood this all a long time ago, which is why you'll never see them jumping up and down about losing revenue from p2p. Can you imagine for a minute what would happen if the Free Speech Coalition (how's that for a cool sounding trade organization?) went around suing people for downloading? We's be seeing court cases like Fuck Me Films vs. Does 1-25.

If you thought being sued by a record company was bad, imagine having your name stuck on that public document! It would be bloody effective of course - millions of people really would stop downloading then, but at the same time none of them would be going out and buying their smut instead of downloading it - the only reason people are downloading Leather & Chains Lovin' Volume 9 is because they wouldn't be seen dead buying it in public.

Even in some parts of the western world, being caught with that kind of film would be cause for losing your job, moving house and perhaps changing your name as well.

People selling bootleg porn DVDs (ie, real pirates) actually do get busted for it, which is all right an proper but in general the adult film industry is pretty chilled about people copying for "private home viewing". Sure it would be nice for them if all the internet pornoholics started handing over their credit cards for some hot and horny hardcore action but they figure that if it ain't gonna happen, why try and force people? After all, there's way too much rootin', tootin' fun to be had just going to work every day to waste time complaining about some spotty teenager ripping them off.

Perhaps one day Hollywood will wake up and realize the porno makers are actually pulling in more money than they are, even with all their content flying freely across the net (Yes, sales and rentals of adult movies brought in more cash than the mainstream movie business did last year).

People didn't suddenly stop buying porn when the internet started getting popular - overall they bought more.

People also didn't stop buying regular content - overall, they bought more and they'll keep buying it too, provided it can be delivered to them in new and creative ways like the adult entertainment industry has been providing over the last few years.

As much as a lot of people hate to admit it, the adult entertainment industry has been a consistent leader in recorded media and has a huge impact on the shape of the world.

So, if you're wondering who'll win the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD battle, find out what type of next-gen player Jenna Jamison is buying.

* I have absolutely no proof of this whatsoever.

Malum Prohibitum or Malum In Se?

2006-01-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

First published here.

Not many people are aware of two of the most important legal concepts in the world. These ideas go all the way back to Roman times and have been the basis for categorizing criminal offences for centuries, so if you've ever wondered what the legal difference is between driving too fast and killing someone with a chainsaw, read on.

Malum Prohibitum

The literal translation is "wrong because prohibited". Basically, this means something is against the law because someone decided it should be. Think parking in a No Standing Zone or dumping a broken washing machine in the park and you're starting to get an idea of a malam prohibitum crime. There's nothing inherently immoral in doing something that's prohibited in this way, but we accept the principal that those laws are there because they help society function.

Malum In Se

Meaning "wrong in itself", an act classed as malum in se is universally accepted as Just Plain Wrong. Lying under oath, for instance isn't considered a nice thing to do anywhere in the world because when you say "I promise to tell the truth" you're entering into an agreement that you'll act in a certain way. You're giving something to people that defines who you are in a very real sense and they're give you something in return: you're giving them your word and they're giving you their trust. If that kind of primal "contract" is broken, it can never be put right. That's to say, if you dump a broken washing machine and someone catches you, it's possible to pick the washing machine up and take it away again with no harm done. If you lie to someone, the lie will always be there.

Conflicts arise when people don't agree on each other's definitions of these two types of crimes. Some would say dumping your garbage in the ocean is inherently wrong because it destroys the environment. Others would say infringing someone else's copyright is inherently wrong because it's taking something without paying for it.

Both of these acts are actually malum prohibitum crimes. People have been dumping stuff in the sea for centuries with no problems because all their junk used to be bio-degradable, like excrement or rotting fruit. Nothing wrong there, but nowadays most of our garbage isn't bio-degradable so there is a problem - but if we all agree it's a bad idea and don't do it, the problem goes away and life goes on (especially for the fish who don't die from living in toxic water).

Before copyright was conceptualized, people used to copy each other's work freely. Actually, before the printing press was invented, the highest complement you could pay an author was to copy his or her book. In doing so, you showed how valuable you thought the author's ideas were. Nowadays though, creative works have been monetized so taking another person's work without rewarding them is wrong. Really.

No, I haven't gone off the deep end. Copyright infringement is wrong. However, there's a however: copyright is only a good thing when seen in the broader social context. If we all agree it's a good idea and respect it, life goes on without great authors starving in the gutter and great actors whoring to the highest bidder.

Er...hang on.

There are great authors who can't put a roof over their heads and there are great actors who sell their talent to hardcore commercial operations. What happened?

Oh yeah. The copyright systems we have don't work.

Not everyone agrees they're a good idea in their current form. Further, there's plenty of real evidence to suggest they're actually bad for a lot of people, which is probably why those people think copyright really sucks.

Okay. Let's think broader social context: think about the poor, starving artists. Are you doing that?

Now, what about the poor, starving auto manufacturers? Or the poor, starving pharmaceutical industry? Maybe we should think of the poor, starving tobacco producers? They've had a rough time over the last few years. Should we all go out and buy a pack of Marlboros to give 'em a hand? No?

Copyright today isn't socially equitable. Things are skewed to favour one particular group of people. This inequity is wrong. In fact, it's wrong in itself. Malam in se. There's a bigger wrong here and it's not because the "ordinary" people are "stealing" copyrighted work. Theft is the act of taking something with the intention of permanently depriving the owner of the thing. Taking something without paying for it is exactly what it says. Downloading a movie doesn't deprive the owner of the movie, hence it isn't stealing (and I will happily purchase a dictionary for entertainment industry executives who don't understand what the word "steal" means).

Downloading a movie without paying for it is thumbing your nose at the idea that someone can own an idea which, in it's natural state, doesn't belong to anyone in the first place.

We can change society's values so they functions in an equitable way: people who create things can be rewarded in direct relation to how much value their creation provides to everyone else. We can also change things to help the auto manufacturers and the drug companies and the tobacco producers, if we want to.

Intellectual "property" only exists because we (collectively) think it's a good idea, but at the same time We The People reserve the right to change our minds on the extent at which it should be protected.

Malam prohibita changes as we change. Malam in se will always be Just Plain Wrong.

Sceptical About Patti Santangelo?

2006-01-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

First published here.

I've been quite saddened by some of the responses I've come across towards the Fight Goliath campaign set up to help Patricia Santangelo battle the RIAA in court.

As most people reading this are aware, this New York mom is just one of the people being targeted by the RIAA under their bizarre theory that if enough ordinary people are litigated into the ground then everyone will go back to buying CDs like the good little consumers they used be.

Doing the rounds on my favourite forums, I've come across a lot of scepticism about Patti. Here are some examples:

"Last time [I] donated any money to a cause like this it was scam. So no $$$ from me."

"methinks its a con"

"anybody remember lokitorrents?" and "Yup. First thing I thought when I saw this thread..."

I thought I might take some time to shoot down some of the unfounded doubts people may be having.

A) Patricia Santangelo wasn't running a torrent site. She's said to have been sharing music through Kazaa. No huge advertising revenue. No huge user-base. No huge facilitation of copyright infringement. Just one tiny node on a network of millions.

B) Patricia Santangelo isn't a p2p developer. She didn't come up with some great way to share billions of files with millions of other users, nor is she bundling spyware/adware with her non-existent application.

C) Patricia Santangelo can't afford a lawyer. She used to have one, but in an affidavit to Judge Colleen McMahon her now ex-lawyer, Ray Beckerman, says "(a) defendant does not appear to have the financial resources that would be required for the pretrial discovery, and summary judgment and/or trial work, that lay ahead, and (b) it is clear to the undersigned that the plaintiff's case is frivolous, so that it would be unwarranted for defendant to go to extraordinary means to finance her defense of this case."

D) Patricia Santangelo still has legal expenses. Retaining a lawyer is not the extent of the total legal fees that can be racked up fighting a civil lawsuit. Need to file a document with the court? Pay up. Need to subpoena a RIAA "piracy investigator"? Pay up. Need a one-off conversation with an expert in a particular legal or technical field? Pay up. It's not a "Lawyer costs $100/hour x 35 hours = $3,500 in legal fees" kind of situation.

E) Patricia Santangelo isn't some anonymous name on your screen, begging for money. All her details are publically available through the court documents on her case. We have photos of her with the court documents. We have videos of her on NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN and MSNBC.

F) Patricia Santangelo has opted for a trial by jury. As in turn-up-at-the-court-and-watch-the-whole-thing-with-your-own-eyes kind of trial by jury.

Now that we can see Patti isn't asking for us to "plese send bank details an i will depostit 1 million dollars 2 yor acont", what are some best or worst case scenarios?

Worst case - Patricia Santagelo runs off with all the money. The RIAA spends hundreds of thousands of dollars tracking her down so they can drag her back to court and bankrupt her.

You lose your $5 donation. The RIAA lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. Patti loses everything.

Another worst case scenario - Patricia Santagelo caves in to the RIAA and hands over all the money. You lose your $5 donation. The RIAA lose hundreds of thousands of dollars net because they've already forked out that much on legals, so they don't make a profit on the deal. Patti is spared the fate of all the others who've been sued, thanks to the kindness of people who, every day, still do exactly what she's in trouble for.

Best case scenario?

Patricia Santagelo wins. She doesn't have to pay the RIAA anything. Instead, she gets her court costs back and you get a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing your $5 donation helped stick a nail in the RIAA's coffin. Patti gets the benefit of not being bankrupted and can to go back to being a mother and a provider instead of an RIAA PR piece.

The RIAA? It gets a lot of very bad press on top of the very bad press it's already getting, and it loses a chunk of money and the ability to victimize people like you.

Unfortunately, this thing is bigger than you. Or me. Or Patricia Santagelo.

I don't have a crystal ball that will tell me if its "worth" donating to this cause. What I am doing, though, is imagining myself standing in the Valley of Elah holding a betting slip with "David - 100 Shakels To Win" written on it.

We all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. Maybe not one in the first thousand, maybe not one in the first ten thousand, but we all knew that eventually, some ordinary person was going to fight back against the huge corporate bullies.

But in fact, Patti isn't just some ordinary woman.

She's extraordinary.

Error. Aid unavailable. Please use Microsoft.

2006-01-07T17:38:00.000-08:00

First published here.

I can see it now...

Deep down in the bowels of Microsoft's Redmond complex at the end of a long, long coridor there's a basement nobody ever enters - except for a trusted handful from Microsoft's PR department. And there, immediately after Hurricane Katrina, a meeting is called.

"Okay people, I'm looking for initial thoughts on this," says the suited head of this covert sub-section. "What's the first thing that comes to you?" he asks, pointing to a young man freshly recruited from a top New York law firm. The young lawyer already has his pitch ready.

"Only Microsoft can help you survive the aftermath of a natural disaster", he says.

This sub-section is very busy.

I was absolutely appalled when I read the statements by FEMA's chief information officer Barry West was defending FEMA's Internet Explorer 6-only website where victims of Hurricane Katrina could apply for aid.

According to West, FEMA's goal was to provide a service to help "a common denominator of users and that meant Microsoft...the priority was to set something up quickly," he told the BBC. The sheer arrogance of that statement should give Americans cause for embarresment on behalf of their government, (or considering FEMA's general inability to function during the Katrina crisis, more embarresment).

Yes, it was an emergency and Yes, most people do use Internet Explorer. But at the end of the day, how bloody hard is it to build a multi-browser website?

Seriously, even I know web designers who spend hours making sure their pages display properly in nine different browsers, and I find it troubling that FEMA didn't even consider non-IE users before the disaster. Macs have become much more viable alternatives in recent years, especially since Steve Jobs return to the company. And Linux distros are much more usable than they were even a year ago.

Non-Microsoft browsers currently account for a little under 20% of the total browser market-share, and those alternatives are eating away at Internet Explorer's dominence all the time.

Forty-five percent of people who applied for aid did so through the website. Around 20% of the browsers out there are not Microsoft's. A back-of-the-envelope number crunch shows about 9% of the total number of people who tried to apply for aid during Katrina were unable to, simply because they weren't customers of one particular company.

Yes, you read it right. Nearly 1 in 10 were told to bugger off and get a browser that FEMA could be bothered supporting.

Nobody can blame people for using other browsers, especially in the wake of the look-at-a-picture-and-get-a-virus debacle that MS had in the works for over fifteen years. I've certainly enjoyed being a Firefox user over the last week as people started talking about the warning pop-ups it gave.

Now I have to ask: can we see a repeat of this kind of thing with the Tsunami Warning System?

"Warning! You may be about to die from a tidal wave! Please purchase Windows Vista and try again. Have a nice day!"

What happens when people start using their computers as TVs in large numbers? "Error T057HD5. Earthquake Alert could not be displayed due to presence of Linux".

The reason we have standards is so everyone, not just some, can get the same information. Nex time there's a natural disaster, I invite FEMA and any other emergency response organization to post on slashdot and ask for help. I can guarentee you'll get hundreds of people willing to code a multi-browser website at no charge.

Or better yet, get multi-browser support now. It's not that hard.

Up, up, up on the top floor of Apple headquaters in California, Steve Jobs called a meeting of his top executives.

"If if this keeps happening, someone is going to die solely as a result of buying an Apple product instead of a piece of crap from Microsoft", he said.

"I'm sending you guys on a mission to Washington. 2002 E-Government Act, accessable information for the public, I don't care what you throw at 'em. Get those bastards to stop thinking about Microsoft whenever they want to do something. Information is a global resource Goddamnit!"

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting with the guys working on FairPlay..."

French Fries...and Action!

2006-01-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

I was being dragged around a large department store the other day for the post-Christmas sales. I hate clothes shopping for two main reasons: the first is that I look good in practically anything I wear and apparently most of the enjoyment in shopping comes from walking through miles of shops in search of something that looks good. The second is that my retail "experience" is always pretty feeble. You know, people trying to sell you a $90 T-shirt with increadible features like "Calvin Klein" written on it in big letters. As I was walking throgh this shop I was startled by a shriek from a saleswoman: "Watch out! There are fries on the ground!"

She was right. I looked down and found that I was about to step in some french fries that someone had carelessly dropped on the floor of her section. I looked up to thank her for her warning, but she was on the phone. As I evesdropped shamelessly on her conversation, it became apparent that she was speaking with the stores' maintainence department to arrange for someone to come and clean up the spilt fries. I counted nine of the little bastards, and as I walked away I heard her crying out her warning to another passing shopper.

I asked someone at the stores front deask why the saleswoman didn't simply pick them up herself. Apparently it would "diminish her creadibility with respect to the [expensive] clothes" if she was seen doing manual chores. I didn't think so. I think it diminished her creadibility with respect to her intelligence.

As an Echo Boomer (born somewhere in the 80s or 90s) mine is a typical response: just pick up the damned fries. It seems that years of Nike advertising as worked: Echo Boomers Just Do It.

A few months back, Kazaa was found guilty of encouraging copyright infringments throught its "Join The Revolution!" advertising campaign. It just so happens we are in the middle of one, but Echo Boomers don't need to be told to "Join The Revolution". Although we are social animals, we just do our own thing and if it happens to coincide with a "revolution" then so be it. The idea that someone needs to be encouraged to "Join The Revolution" assumes that young people live in some kind of existential vacume when in fact, Echo Boomers do very little without consulting their friends.

Besides, there are only two reasons why anyone goes to the Kazaa website:

1) You already know what Kazaa is, what it does and want to download it.

2) You already know what Kazaa is, how badly it performs and enjoy laughing at their advertising copy.

Copyright holders should probably be thankful that tech-savvy Echo Boomers arn't as violent as other revolutionaries have been throughout the ages. Battles for power are increasinly being fought with computer networks: information, disinformation, hacked databases full of exposed secrets and compromised security systems. Corporations are the "nouveau bourgeois" and this revolution will be just like the French one of 1789, except with fewer decapitations. Power will be taken from those who have abused it and returned to the masses.

Unfortuntatly, Echo Boomers are so good at filtering advertising and ignoring stupid laws that there is a very real danger that this younger generation won't be able to enjoy these traits in the future. Unless we start playing by the old systems a bit, all the worst type of predictions of the future may come true. Things like your inability to write an email client without paying patent royalties, your right to hold a private conversation, the game mod you're allowed to play, the server you can use without going to jail, the format you can store your digital music on.

Imagine everything that can now be done with the internet. Now imagine that you can't do it any more. You have to stop that becoming a reality, because the alternative means missing out on the benefits brought by the most technologically advanced society to ever exist on our small planet.

Write a letter, send a fax or email, call someone up and let them know you're not happy - your elected representatives are a good start. Seen a bogus statement quoted as "fact" by the mainstream media outlets? Send 'em an email telling them they're wrong and CC your frineds in while your at it. Let them know that if you're going to be spending the rest of your life in this rapidly changing world, you're not going let it be shaped by some corporate lawyers to suit the interests of big business.

Make this your little mission for 2006 and get the message out before it's too late. Just Do It™

The Goings On in France

2005-12-28T19:50:00.000-08:00

First published here.

France will probably not legalize file sharing.

Sorry, but that's the way it is. The headlines screaming about France giving the green light to file sharers have been quite misleading, but there's still some hope to be found.

For those unfamiliar with the French government, there's a lower house called the National Assembly, just like the US Congress, the Australian House of Representatives or the British House of Commons. There's also an upper house called the Senate, just like the US Senate, the Australian Senate or the British House of Lords.

Now, in France (just like everywhere else really), if you're a member of the lower house and don't turn up for work, they just carry on without you. That's what happened in this case: everyone was away for Christmas and a handful of renegades who stayed behind jammed a "pro-p2p" amendment into a bill about intellectual property rights.

The French Culture Minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has already asked that the debate be re-opened, so the pro-p2p part will probably be taken out before the whole thing goes before the French Senate to sign off on...and the French Senate doesn't have to sign off on it anyway: they can send it back to the National Assembly with a "Get Stuffed!" note stuck on the front, (or more, likely a "Va te faire foutre" note).

So everyone who was about to rush off and find a French proxy service, don't bother.

Yet.

One of the most striking issues of this development is the numbers. Only around 10% of the members of the National Assembly were there for the vote but in total, more than 5% of the people who make the laws in France said file sharing for personal use was a good idea. There may be more, too: 519 of the members of the National Assembly weren't around to vote, but will get a chance to when the vote is opened up again. When the the issue comes up a second time, the people of France will get to see who backs their interests and who sides with the (mainly American) corporations.

One other thing worth noting is the entertainment industry, represented by the likes of Walt Disney, Viacom and News Corp's Fox, say downloading TV shows and movies will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year. The thing here is, it won't cost them five billion bucks.

It won't even cost them five bucks.

It may mean they won't make $5 billion dollars, but that's in no way similar to having $5 billion in the bank and having someone come and take it away from you. This is because you can't lose something you never had in your possession in the first place.

For instance, I didn't hand over my cash to pay for a Britney Spears CD, so the music store didn't lose any money. They just didn't make as much as they might have if I had bought a Britney Spears CD, which I assure you (and them) will never happen.

This is where the entertainment industry seems to get confused and demonstrates its poor understanding of economics: they just expect people will hand over the moolah. Some Hollywood executive wakes up every morning believing that by the end of the day, his company will have sold X million DVDs and X million movie tickets.

Not any more.

The movie studio hasn't actually lost anything tangible, they simply had poor sales forecasts. They still have the movie sitting on a reel of film somewhere too, so it's not as if they can't crank up the projectors in the executive movie theatre and watch the film themselves.

"Someone stole my movie off the internet" is not the same as "someone stole my wallet in the carpark".

I don't know about you, but I feel insulted when I find out someone was really counting on me to buy something and then gets shitty at me when I don't. It's the same feeling I get when a telemarketer phones me up and then calls me an idiot for not jumping at his fantastic deal of a lifetime. The telemarketer should be able to deal with rejection as he's using an active selling technique where I actually have the opportunity to say "Va te faire foutre", but when big media companies simply stick up a bunch of posters, run TV commercials and then complain through the nose about how We The People are "stealing" from them, I get really annoyed.

So as and when the French government removes the "legal file sharing" amendment from the DADVSI bill, don't think of it as a loss to Big Media.

Look at the shitstorm it created and take heart in knowing that governments will soon have to take these issues seriously, just like they had to when the French people rejected the proposed European Constitution in May this year.

Sooner or later, We The People will get what's due to us.

And it will be sweet.

Don't Buy CDs This Christmas!

2005-12-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

First published here.

"Mein Gott!" I said to myself in a bad German accent. I was reading the Wall Street Journal's latest piece on the music industry's imminent death-by-a-thousand-cuts. Just to be sure I wasn't barking up the wrong tree, I called up a stock broker friend to make sure my understanding of the free market wasn't as screwed up as the RIAA's seems to be.

"What happens to an existing monopoly when the market is opened up to it's competitors?" I asked

"Well, the first thing that happens is the share price of the company with the monopoly takes a hit. The market has to deal with a lot more new information about the industry sector, because there is more competition. Basically the whole thing is a mess for a while until everyone works out who the biggest player is going to be; whether the old monopoly can keep it's market share or if the new companies have taken such a big chunk of the action that the original leader has lost their dominance," was his answer.

"What is a market correction then?" I asked.

"In that situation? There would be a correction happening when the market takes the new players into account and the share price of the monopoly goes down. A correction is basically a reality check."

"How's the new iPod?"

"Oh, you're talking about the music industry! (Note: This kind of quick thinking is the reason he makes about thirty times the amount of money I do every year). Yeah, they're going to have some issues to work out over the next few years. Some of the smart ones will get through it, but a lot of the guys I work with think there'll be some big falls. I'm betting there'll be at least one big implosion. There's too much money and too much disruptive technology out there for someone not to go out with a bang".

Okay, so it wasn't just me thinking the music industry is coming out with the usual crap. At a first glance, their "nearly 20%" drop in sales looks legit. I wonder why that is? I sat down and had a think about it:

To start with, it seems my personal boycott is working! I do have to give some credit to the tens of thousands of other people who also refuse to buy music from major producers who back extremist legal wars on ordinary people, but for the moment I'd like to think a lot of it's down to me.

I also happened to glance at the all important Top 20 this week. Anyone else who saw it won't have any trouble figuring out why people aren't buying music. Interestingly, a comparison with the top ten highest grossing music tours this year shows that all the top touring acts are more than a decade old. Ah, the good old days!

That 40%-down-over-Thanksgiving thing was kind of weird. Wait a minute...when did the Sony rootkit fiasco start going down? Mark Russinovich broke the news on October 31st, right? And Thanksgiving was on the 24th of November this year, right? So the CD buying public in the US had a good three weeks to freak out about CD manufacturers putting easily hacked spyware on their precious PCs before the Thanksgiving holiday came along.

Just so we're all clear, the big record companies got caught trying to fuck over their customers, right before the biggest shopping season of the year. Smart move guys.

What I think the music industry needs now is a good old Commie shake up. It needs to be nationalized. For those too young to remember, this is what used to happen when an important industry was being managed by knuckleheads and started going down the toilet: the government would take over running it. You know all those public assets that the politicians keep selling off? They used to be "nationalized industries".

Now the music industry keeps telling us how important it is, so we should obviously take their word for it. Being vitally important, it seems the music industry needs some guidance through these troubling times. I mean, look what happens when you have a privatised energy market *cough* Enron *cough*.

It looks like the "creative industries" are faced with three choices:

1. Keep doing what they're doing now (my mate the stock broker knows some great bankruptcy lawyers if anyone should need them).

2. Hand the entire lot over for the governments to sort out (he also knows some exellent people who specialize in fraud and incompetence cases).

3. Be creative (Oh! The irony!) and work through it.

Whatever happens, I won't be buying any music this Christmas and I've specially asked my friends and family not to buy any for me either.

Instead, I'll be giving an amount equal to the price of a full CD to the Salvation Army.

There are people out there who really need my cash this Christmas, and they're certainly not billion dollar record companies.