What sides are we talking about here?
Submitted by doc on Thu, 01/05/2006 - 15:15.
On the Front Lines in Las Vegas is my latest SuitWatch at Linux Journal.
The background for the piece, I just realized upon re-reading it, is Larry Lessig's 2002 Free Culture speech, where he challenged technologists — makers of the future — to fight those who were opposing it with increasing success.
A year later Larry was calling this fight a civil war between Northern and Southern California: between Silicon Valley and Hollwood.
What I fear we are now learning, from Intel and Apple and Microsoft, is that the real division is between those who favor freedom and those who favor control. And that there are no big companies on the freedom side — not even in Silicon Valley.
Are there? Show me one who is willing to stand behind what Larry Lessig has been saying, for years, about the fight for free markets and free culture.
The technology community that matters is comprised of ronin. Free agents. Independent operators. These are the people standing together on one side of this fight.
And now, I fear, the fight will be with the companies we hoped would fight for us. In some cases our own employers.
Watch closely what Intel and Apple offer in the next week. Watch what they say about digital rights management and control of content by copyright holders. Ask what they're doing to hurt the economy and culture we've built, and continue to build, on the Net. Ask what they're doing to help it.
Ask who will stand on our side of this thing. Sun? IBM? Red Hat? We're waiting.
Not that we've done much to attract help.
separate the issue of compensation from control. The old model of distributed music was you got compensation by controlling physical objects that you distributed. Well, you could preserve that in the new Internet, by building DRM systems into everything and basically making it so no copy moves without somebody’s permission. Or, you could figure out a way to give compensation without controlling the actual underlying physical device. There are a million models for effecting that kind of compensation without controls.
We ought to focus on how to guarantee that you get compensation for your content, and give up the idea that you need to control anything in order to get that compensation.
The big content industries have shown, in the 2.5 years since Larry said that, that they are unwilling to give up control or to think creatively about how to attract and obtain compensation.
And, frankly, we haven't shown them the way, either. We didn't focus on the million other models. And now the Big Boys are getting ready to burn control mechanisms right into hardware.
Or so it appears, on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show.
I hope I'm proven wrong. I'm betting I won't.
And whether I am or not, the next question is, Who joins us in this battle, if it's not the tech companies we work for?
it's may be interesting
Our Earthly Pleasures mp3 download - By The Monument, Nosebleed, Russian Literature...
Companies on the side of freedom
Neuros Technology, http://www.neurosaudio.com/
See also their open side: http://open.neurosaudio.com/, which includes a letter from the CEO to the sponsors of the 'analog-hole bill'.
follow the money
I share your pessimism, Doc. Think Abramoff. Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Follow the money.
Why don't the musicians take control? Three or four big names would be enough to launch a gigantic collective that cuts the music companies right out of the action. My answer: it is a fallacy to assume that 'artists' are progressive or enlightened. Some are, but most aren't. Bono is busy.
We are fucked.
Corporations = Control
Of course no large corporation is going to favour giving up control; it's not in their DNA. If you are looking for larger organisations you'll have to find a non-profit, a charity, a church, an NGO or the UN to fight for freedom. Neither corporations nor these others (except perhaps the UN) are democracies and that is the problem. The only democracies that we have (at least nominally) are the nation states. It's not just a fight between control & freedom, it's between the structures that organise our world. What we really need is a new organisational structure (co-operative, non-profit democracy?) to be able to compete with non-democratic corporate interests.
For now we're just a bunch of inter-connected ronin, struggling to find the right vehicle for our energies, but without an organisational model that works. All we know for sure is that the corporation is the WRONG model.
Harold Jarche (jarche.com)
Public Broadcasting Service?
If I had to just shoot from the hip I'd list PBS as an institution that holds the public's interests close to their hearts. Likewise, the BBC appears to do well "across the pond".