[ale] [OT] rant - decadence in society - DRM

[Charles Shapiro]

And YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Ron Frazier
<atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com> wrote:
> set rant on -->  set soapbox on -->
>
> This will be an off topic rant.  Tune out now if you'd rather not read
> it.  You have been warned.  Note that everything I say here is general,
> and not directed at any specific person, even if I use pronouns like you
> and we, etc.
>
> Later in the message, I'm going to rant about DRM.  However, first, I
> want to rant about decadence.  You walk into a Target or Walmart or
> Costco or ANY store.  You look over your head, there is a camera
> pointing at you.  You get to the door to walk out, there is a canyon of
> sensors you have to pass through.  You go bowling, there's a policeman
> parked outside and officers roaming around in the building
> continuously.  Heck, you send your kid to a public school, and THEY have
> cameras, policemen, and metal detectors everywhere.  You go buy a pair
> of sneakers.  They have RFID tags built in.  Your wife or relative has a
> baby in the hospital.  They put a bar code on the mother's wrist and the
> baby's wrist so the baby doesn't get stolen!  (I appreciate the
> proactive stance by the way.)  You buy a Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft
> game console for you kid at Christmas.  Someone follows you home from
> the parking lot and robs you in your driveway and takes the unit.  You
> go to the thrift store, find that really neat thing you want, and put it
> in your cart, turn your back for 5 seconds, and someone takes it out of
> your cart and buys it right out from under you.  60% - 70% of students
> surveyed say they cheat on tests.  WHY are all these things happening?
> You might say, because we can.  We have the technology for sensors and
> surveillance.  These are simply crimes of opportunity.
>
> I don't believe that is solely the case.  Caveat, I'm only 45, but I'm
> going to be speculating about events of the past.  I could be entirely
> wrong, but I don't think so.  Now, obviously, you can go back to the
> bible and read about criminals and thieves all the way back 2000 years
> ago.  We've always had policemen, jails, and criminals.  Let's do a
> thought experiment, as Albert Einstein was fond of.  Imagine we're back
> in the 1700's, the early founding stages of our nation, with a twist.
> Imagine we have the culture of yesterday, with the technology of today.
> Compensate in the thought experiment for the difference in population,
> but, imagine they had the internet, they had the electricity, the
> stores, the appliances, the cars, etc.  Do you believe that a citizen in
> New England in the 1700's would go into a Target store and have a camera
> pointing in his face at the checkout?  Do you believe he would go
> bowling and have policemen looking over his shoulder.  Do you believe he
> would be worried about his baby being stolen from the hospital?  Do you
> believe he would be worried about having the game he bought for
> Christmas stolen from him in his driveway?  Even accounting for the
> random acts of violence that occur in any culture, do you think these
> things would be a common occurrence back then?  I, for one, do not think so.
>
> I believe that, over the last hundred years, and particularly over the
> last 70 years, this nation has seen a substantial increase in decadence,
> a substantial decrease in morals, a substantial decrease in ethics, a
> substantial increase in crime.  I believe these changes have occurred at
> a rate even faster than the increases in population.  I believe that we,
> as a culture, are generally more decadent than were were 200 years ago.
> We have, in my opinion, to an alarming degree, lost some of the most
> important parts of our heritage.  We have largely left the time when
> honor, and integrity were the critical foundations of our psychology and
> our culture.  I am afraid for our culture, because I believe that, when
> honor and integrity are no longer the baseline for the culture, that the
> culture will self destruct.
>
> Fast forward back to today.  Let's talk about intellectual property or
> IP.  Here's the definition from dictionary.com:
>
> intellectual property - property that results from original creative
> thought, as patents, copyright material, and trademarks.
>
> That's not the greatest definition in my opinion, but we'll go with it.
> There are two critical components of the definition.  The first is
> property.  Property conveys rights of control, privacy, and ownership.
> (PS - I'm not a lawyer.)  The laws of all civilized nations recognize
> the existence of IP.  Then, there is the part about creative thought.
> So, how does creative thought manifest itself in the real world and
> become property.  Typically, it will be in the form of a design, a
> pattern, a picture, a musical performance, a movie, a book, a thesis,
> etc.  Copyright laws generally protect written property and
> performances.  Patents generally protect designs.  We could debate
> endlessly about the appropriateness of these laws.  I, for one, have a
> problem with software patents.  Regardless, the laws are on the books,
> and we should honor them until we change them, in general.  These laws
> give the author or creator of IP the exclusive right to control its
> distribution and / or marketing, control its reproduction or
> replication, control it's performance (if applicable), and control
> derivative works made from it.
>
> Let's talk money.  I am a firm believer that a man or woman has the
> right to benefit from the results of their work.  If you create a new
> popular novel, and you choose to sell it, you have every right to be
> compensated for the value of what you created.  You have a right to get
> paid.  If you choose to donate that work freely to society, for whatever
> reason, and you give it away, then that is a wonderful generous act, and
> I commend you for it.  But, there is no reason you should be REQUIRED to
> give it away.  It's your choice.  I would say the same thing about software.
>
> One problem with IP, in general, is that it has to be manifested in some
> form.  Let's disregard physical inventions.  Other forms of IP are
> generally encapsulated as some kind of DATA.  All the things we can
> store and transfer with our computers are examples.  Songs, movies,
> books, reports, white papers, drawings, pictures, designs, poems,
> magazines, etc.  The computer and internet technology makes it
> phenomenally easier to create these works, but also easier to copy and
> distribute these works.
>
> So, we have the perfect storm, a huge decrease in morals and ethics, a
> huge increase in disrespect for other people and property of all types,
> and a whole genre of DATA which is considered by the laws of all
> civilized nations to be PROPERTY, and the availability of technology
> that makes it incredibly easy to STEAL this genre of PROPERTY.
>
> Let's talk about Avatar, the recent phenomenally successful movie which
> I happen to like.  What is the PRODUCT?  What is the PROPERTY involved?
> Is the property involved $ 2 worth of plastic, paper, and ink in the DVD
> and case?  Of course not.  We're talking about INTELLECTUAL property.
> The property, which conveys all the rights described above to the owner,
> is the script, and the performance of that script embodied on a reel of
> plastic film, a DVD, or even a hard drive.  Now, the producers of Avatar
> spent about $ 300 million to produce the film.  I'm not even going to
> talk about whether that's too much and how much actors get paid, etc.
> It is what it is.  To make the film, they hired thousands of people and
> contracted for hundreds of services.  Remember what I said about people
> having the right to get paid for their work.  They invested this money
> in the hopes that the film would be popular enough to make them back
> their investment plus profit.  As it turns out, it was phenomenally
> successful and turned in revenues of around $ 2.8 billion if I recall.
> They absolutely have the right to get paid for their work.
>
> The problem is, that with modern technology, they don't have to get paid
> for their work.  If you went to see a movie at the 40's, you physically
> went to the theater and watched it.  Of course, we still do this today.
> You really couldn't steal it, since you had to be there, and there were
> no portable cameras that you could hide in your hat.  Now, as we all
> know, with modern technology, you can pop the DVD in the PC, rip it, and
> have a copy of the movie on your hard drive.  Then, if you are not an
> ethical person, you can have the computer make an infinite number of
> copies of the intellectual property, and distribute that intellectual
> property to any number of people.  (I'm not talking about copying the
> movie to your own PC's for your own purposes.)  The bottom line is that,
> if you distribute the movie to people who didn't buy it, you are
> STEALING, plain and simple.  It is illegal, and it is wrong, regardless
> of how technologically easy it is.  (There were some instances in the
> bible of things that were illegal and not wrong, but that's another story.)
>
> Now, I may sound like a big fan of the movie industry.  I am not.  But
> these things I'm discussing are the realities of our modern society.  I
> have to acknowledge their point of view.  I may produce a movie or book
> myself someday.  It probably won't be an Avatar, but say I spend $ 10 K
> producing a training video on how to equip your home with solar power or
> make your own fuel or a book on the same subject.  If  I were the
> producers of Avatar, or even the producer of my little $ 10 K project,
> do I want thousands or millions of people STEALING my work, and not
> giving me the rewards for my labor, you bet I don't.  So, what choice do
> they have.  Given the confluence of a tremendous drop in ethics and
> morals; and a tremendous influx of technology which facilitates the
> stealing of IP; the creators of the content feel that they have no
> choice but to impose technological measures to prevent theft of their
> work AND their revenue which they deserve by law to get.
>
> So, I have to ask myself, if I did produce such a movie or book, would I
> use copy protection on it.  As much as I hate to say it, I would
> seriously consider it.  The more the project cost me, and the more it
> was likely to be stolen, the more seriously I would consider it.  Now,
> some of you will probably flame me (please don't) about how ineffective
> that would be.  That's not the issue.  Copy protection would stop casual
> customers from casual theft.  Those knowledgeable and determined
> crackers might bypass it, and might steal the work, and might distribute
> the work.  HOWEVER, that requires motive and intent to break the law and
> commit the theft.  That is more likely to create an audit trail and that
> put's them into the ballpark of a prosecutable and provable offense.  If
> I was really concerned about theft, I would have the content watermarked
> in such a way that I could trace any illegal copies.
>
> Having said all that about how I would consider DRM for my own IP work,
> should I create any, I now have to admit that I really hate DRM as a
> consumer.  I TOTALLY understand why ebooks and audio books have DRM.  I
> TOTALLY understand why the publishers won't release the copyright so
> audible.com (audio book company) and kobo.com (ebook company) cannot
> sell the works without DRM.  However, there is a dark side to DRM, as
> many of you know.
>
> I recently purchased a Kobo ebook reader from one of the Borders stores
> which is going out of business.  I bought a book from Kobo which is in
> Adobe DRM EPUB format.  So, it's copy protected.  I launch the Kobo
> software.  It's Windows / Mac only, but I think they have an unsupported
> Linux version.  I log into my account.  I see the book I bought.  I
> connect the device via USB and click the button to sync the device.  The
> book is transferred.  I boot up the reader, and there it is.  Birds are
> singing.  The sun is shining.  All is good.
>
> Then, I buy two more books.  This time, they're in Adobe DRM PDF
> format.  Suddenly, things are different.  You cannot load those from the
> Kobo software.  You have to install the Adobe Digital Editions software,
> download the book, import into Adobe DE, then download to the reader.
> OK, I think.  A hassle, but no big deal.  Wrong!  OK, at this point, I
> think this software is a stinking rotting pile of rubbish, to put it
> mildly.  Every time I click a button or do anything, it pegs my dual
> core 1.7 GHz cpu so hard that Windows complains that the program is not
> responding.  OK, I can wait.  I'm patient.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.
> Twiddle thumbs.  OK, cool.  The books I bought are on my computer
> screen.  I can read them on the screen.  Wait again.  Breathe again.
> OK, I can read them slowly on my screen.  But, they work.  I connect the
> book reader.  Oh, now I have to authorize the computer, authorize the
> reader, and log into Adobe's website.  Blah Blah Blah.  Waste more
> time.  But, I get it done.  Now, I drag my new books over to my ebook
> reader.  It says transferring files.  Yea!  I bought two books, one
> about facebook, and one about twitter.  It says done.  I unplug the
> reader and reboot it in anticipation of reading my new purchases on it.
>
> @#$#%$^%^&&*%^&
>
> I look in the book list on the reader.  The twitter book is there, and
> is readable.  The facebook book is not there at all!  Nowhere!  (Or the
> other way around maybe.)  I go back to the laptop with Adobe DE on it.
> I can read the book just fine there.  I reconnect the reader and
> retransfer the book.  No luck.  I delete the books from the reader, from
> Adobe DE, redownload from Kobo, and start over.  Same result.  This is
> infuriating, and insane.
>
> Now, in all honesty, I don't know if Adobe is to blame, or if Kobo is to
> blame, or if the file got corrupted on their server, or what.  All I
> know is that I cannot read the book I bought on my reader.  It is very
> frustrating.
>
> Given the nature of our culture, and all the IP thieves out there, and
> the state of technology, I really don't see any alternative but that the
> publishers will put out stuff with DRM on it.  I understand.  I just
> wish the @$@#%#@!# thing would work like it should.   I just want to
> read the stinking book I bought.  That's all.
>
> Now that I've spent the morning ranting, I feel much better.  Now I can
> spend the afternoon trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with it.
>
> By the way, I really like the Kobo reader.  It supports EPUB format,
> which is the most universal.  I would recommend this or a similar reader
> to anyone in the market for such a device.  Both the Amazon Kindle and
> the Barnes and Noble Nook use proprietary DRM, which means that books
> you buy there, you can only read on that device.
>
> This took me way to long to write to proofread it.  So, I apologize for
> anything that sounds stupid due to a typo.  If anyone knows why this
> book won't read, I'd love to know.
>
> <-- set rant off <-- set soapbox off
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
>
> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT c3energy.com
>
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