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.

May the best candidate win

2005-12-16T23:01:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

In sending its troops into Iraq, the US government engaged in an aggressive foreign policy under which it could go to war with another country because it had decided that country posed a "credible threat" to the American people.

This kind of action used to be called "attacking" or launching a "pre-emptive strike".

Whether you agree with the US being in Iraq or not, its presence there hasn't been challenged in any material way. Countries such as France and Germany have made strong statements against the actions and the United Nations isn't too happy either. But nothing has actually been done to stop the "pre-emptive strike" policy from being carried out.

So, here's the world according to the US: it's now OK to take an active part in the internal politics of another country, and it's also OK to change that country's government if you don't like it.

That's the extreme end of the spectrum, but everyone is aware American politics affect the rest of the world in much more subtle ways as well.

Take The Pirate Bay for example.

Its "Legal Threats" page is filled with take-down notices and other "orders" from US law firms. Also included on the page are The Pirate Bay's responses, which politely remind the lawyers that US laws don't apply in Sweden where the famous BitTorrent tracker is hosted (The response with instructions for where a lawyer should insert a retractable baton is my personal favourite.) The fact that an American legal firm would send a take-down notice to a Swede is quite intriguing. From reading these take-down notices, the cartel lawyers seem actually to expect to be taken seriously!

Nor is The Pirate Bay alone. Cogeco, a Canadian ISP, was also sending warnings under America's DMCA. Needless to say, the Hollywood-inspired act has no weight in Canada, although the entertainment and software cartels are doing everything they can to change that

Unfortunately, however, also now pending are several cases where US law firms are attempting to extradite foreign nationals who have never set foot on American soil but who have (according to the lawyers) committed criminal offences in the US.

This is why the rest of the world takes US politics so seriously - they affect non-Americans too!

Australia, for instance, recently signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United States which will result not only in Australia importing more American media, but American intellectual property laws as well. This is called "harmonization of the laws" and means some politician in another country gets to decide what I'm allowed to do with my CD collection.

I don't even get a chance to vote for or against this politician, and this is troubling to me because there are some real wackos in office over there.

Take Orrin Hatch for example. He made headlines in the tech world a while ago when he said copyright holders should have the ability to destroy the computers of people who violate their intellectual property rights - a couple of warnings via email and then BANG goes your motherboard.

Hatch has also been instrumental in getting copyright extended so far that most people reading this will either have two kids and a mortgage or be dead by the time they're allowed to use WWII era film footage to make a documentary. Hatch recieves a lot of money from the entertainment industry for doing this too.

A quick back-of-the-envelope number crunch shows that a $3,000 PC could be destroyed after three "violations". This puts the value of each potentially infringing file at $1,000, when an "authorized" copy could be bought for $1.00. Therefore, every violation of intellectual property is punishable-by-destruction to the value of one thousand times it's official market value. Even common law (upon which US law is based) says this is excessive. To view this in layman's terms, just ask: "Does the punishment fit the crime?"

It so happens that Swedish law isn't based on common law. But had Hatch's scheme beenallowed, it's highly probably that an IP lawyer in New York would be pushing buttons and nuking servers and PCs all over the world. If the lawyer believes he or she can legally send "take down" notices to foreign countries, the remote destruction of your computer could simply be the next "tool in the fight against piracy".

Among those challenging Orrin Hatch for his seat in the US senate is Pete Ashdown, and from reading his interview with p2pnet Ashdown seems to be a great choice for anyone who values their digital rights (such as free speech online). That includes you, but unfortunately only US citizens can donate money to help his campaign effort. Only people living in Utah can actually vote for him.

I wouldn't want to buy this guy into office anyway. I don't think lots of cash and expensive lawyers are the right way to get things done either, because those are the tactics used by the worst elements of the entertainment industries - the trade organizations who behave like the Mafia or the drug lords, doing favours for their corrupt friends and sabotaging their enemies in back room dealings with sleazy characters.

I believe in fairness, open discussion, the opportunity to achive something on your own.

I still don't want American laws to be exported to the country I live in because they're American laws, and shouldn't apply to me. This is also why a US state election has to remain a US state election.

But that being said, from what I've seen and read of Pete Ashdown, he really does have the interests of Utah's people at heart. People - everywhere - should be aware of that and hope that they are lucky enough to find a similar person to represent them in government, wherever that may be.

I wish Pete Ashdown the best of luck and hope that the best candidate wins.

FreeWANs - Part II

2005-12-16T22:58:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

Ready to start building your own free (as in open) internet?

As one regular p2pnet reader pointed out, there are always "government departments that regulate what parts of the frequency "spectrum" are used by who, and what for. Well, we know that 802.11 is the standard for local-area networks and operates within the unlicenced 2.4 GHz frequency band. The 802.15.4 standard also uses unlicenced frequency bands - 2.4GHz, 915MHz and 868MHz. There are the standards used by our mesh network.

Blocking or banning usage of the 2.4GHz band would defeat the purpose of having Wi-Fi enabled anything, so the worst case scenario involves a government requiring all users of the 2.4GHz band to have a licence. This would also include people with certain cordless phones and microwave ovens. Because the 2.4GHz band is becoming increasingly noisy with all the Wi-Fi users, the task of licensing home users would become very difficult. This problem would be compounded by all the little gadgets that have appeared which can connect to a PC via Wi-Fi ------ USB flash drives, webcams, security cameras. You name it and somebody has built one that can connect to something else via Wi-Fi.

Finding any device using a radio frequency is relativly simple - it's done by getting two receivers to listen to the transmission, pointing them in the direction where the signal is strongest, and then refining the signal on the receiver to find the missing point in the triangle created by the three devices.

The good news is that to be legally able to do this with any type of accuracy, you need to have a really cool job with the government, preferably with an FBI-type agency. And there's a very good reason for this: if anybody can do it, someone might do it to the FBI-type agency and they don't like the idea of anyone with a few radio receivers knowing where they are (like in the car across the street a drug dealer's house).

Unless the government in question is willing to pay for lots of two-person teams with expensive equipment and cars to carry them about, we'd be unlikely to see any serious attempt at locating unlicensed Wi-Fi transmitters. This government could always authorize someone else to do the tracking, but that would compromise law enforcement.

We also must remember that our hypothetical (at time of writing) mesh network is very ad-hoc. Nodes could be programmed to go offline at random intervals, making signal tracking a hit-and-miss affair. Ethernet cables can also be used too, so taking out a series of mote nodes would not necessarily hurt the traffic flow if it can be re-routed along some Cat-5 cable running between two buildings and then back into a Wi-Fi signal. Perhaps a mote node sitting up a tree with a 2GB flash drive attached? And let's not forget the cheap laptop with a solar panel and a wireless network card sitting under a sheet of plastic on top of an old warehouse.

And at the end of the day, if the multi-billion corporate machines can't stop some kid sending an mp3 to his friends, what chance to they have in stopping people from dropping wireless motes all over the place?

That's right kids, it's p2p for real. But who builds this amazing thing? The same people who build the current p2p networks - the users.

People experiment with stuff. People are generous with their knowledge. People come up weird things, like modded Xboxes, Bluetooth sniper rifles and hacks for Sony's robotic dog, Aibo. Perhaps you've just remembered the capabilities of that wireless chip in your old PDA ------ you know, the one with 802.11 conectivity...

I don't know about you, but I'd be happy to spend a few hundred bucks buying hardware to scatter around my neighbourhood.

I wonder how long it'll take for this to start happening, considering that all this hardware is already commercially available and just waiting for some clever hackers to get stuck into?

If you feel like checking out some of the gear thats around, the following should point you in the right direction.

Get hacking!

Intel - Publicly Available Devices Based on Intel XScale Technology
Moteiv - US manufacturer of motes. Also designs custom software for mote sensor networks. Check out the online shop.
Crossbow Technology - Wide range of customizable motes. Check out the online shop.
TinyOS - The Open Source Operating System that powers most commercialy available motes.
TinyDB - Home of "a query processing system for extracting information from a network of TinyOS sensors".
An Atlas Of Cyberspace - Topology maps of various networks, including the global Internet, Gnutella and IPv6 test networks. (This is what the networks look like).
$100 Wireless Laptop - Program to give computers to children in developing nations. Devices designed to be capable of forming wireless mesh networks for internet access.

FreeWANs - Part I

2005-12-16T22:56:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

After reading William Keeley's article on setting up a FreeWAN cell, I was intrigued by the possibilities of communicating over a network of FreeWAN cells. Would it be possile to connect to one outpost cell and use it to "hop" to another? Could a network of FreeWAN cells become searchable? Could this type of network be shut down in an instant by some nasty government authority?

After a little bit of digging and it seems the answers come in at: Yes, Yes and Not Really. Here's the low down.

Mesh Networks

Mesh networking is entirly based on small, self organising nodes working to create a decentralised wireless network. Take Gnutella and imagine it existing in the physical world - that's mesh networking.

The US Department of Defense has been mucking around in this field of communications since the early 1970s and is currently working on a fully fledged mesh network called the Joint Tactical Radio System for deployment in the next few years.

And what exactly do these nodes for mesh networks look like?

Obviously, that's just the controller chip, but basically, you can squeeze a outdoor-network-ready mote node down to the size of a USB flash drive. Due to the extremely small size, power usage can be a problem but a three-year working life on 2xAA batteries ain't too bad now, is it?

Some designs currently in development are even able to supplement their batteries by drawing power from vibrations in the environment around them, like those watches that get power from the movement of your wrist. Remembering where you left your mote three years ago may be a problem, but luckily there are many GPS options available to help you locate the little buggers for battery changes.

Many of these commercial grade motes run on the 802.15.4 wireless network band, with speeds of up to 250 kbps. Intel has actually been looking at mesh networks quite seriously, and have been conducting some very interesting research. For instance, Intel's EcoSense project has been looking at "how to network large numbers of inexpensive wireless sensor nodes while maintaining a high level of network performance." They came up with some cool ideas too.

Heterogeneous Networks

In another example of a multi-billion dollar company "discovering" things that were developed ages ago by Open Source programmers, Intel has worked out what an Ultrapeer is.

By taking a mesh network of low power motes and overlaying a series of high powered Intel XScale based nodes, the performance of the network can be significantly increased. The XScale mote also solves the problem of getting data from an 802.15.4 network onto the 802.11 part of the spectrum.

Experiments with the XScale overlay show that mesh networks can be greatly improved by the presence of the Ultrapeer-like nodes (wow!), and by adding even bigger hardware to the network, like a regular home router, the reliability increses even more (who’d have thought it?).

And there we have a bridge to link two FreeWAN cells.

Creating Searchable Networks

Intel takes a leaf from the FLOSS book. Again. Where there's TinyOS, the open source operating system which has become a standard for building mote networks, Intel came up with TinyDB, a query processing system.

"The ultimate goal of TinyDB is to allow people to query sensor networks without having to program them," says Mark Yarvis, the principal investigator for Intel's Heterogeneous Sensor Networking project. "Essentially, TinyDB imposes a database model on top of the sensor networks. Once the model is in place, users can do sensing tasks based on simply posing queries, similar to querying a standard database."

Intel is trying to work out how to optimize a mesh network using TinyDB. "Even in a network of completely homogenous hardware, some nodes may be underutilized. That makes them good places to cache data to handle complex group queries or similar tasks." Any sort of search engine would use the resources of these underutilized nodes, so in a network made up of mixed FreeWAN cells and smaller motes, chances are it will still be a regular PC with a few clock cycles to spare. Kind of like Ultrapeers really, except the resource barrier will be lower with TinyDB code running the show.

Unfortunately, the best application Intel can up with for this type of network is in theme parks. "One potential use is monitoring the quality of water in tanks", according to Intel, but they do make up for the mundane thinking.

"If you're at the park with your kids all day, you could use the (mote accessible) Internet to stay in touch with friends and the office as well. And the kids could download and store information for a school paper. In general, it would provide a way to stay connected," says Lakshman Krishnamurthy, Principal Investigator the Intel EcoSense project.

W00t!

Well, now we know what's possible. Next, we'll look at some of the problems you might face building your own alternative internet.

Studio Execs - Stupid White Men

2005-12-16T22:51:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

"Ok guys, here's my idea. There's a plane which crashes on a small island in the Pacific and the people left alive have to learn how to survive together. Soon, they realize that there's something weird about the island - there's some kind of mysterious creature living there and other strange things going on. It's a world waiting to be explored and we get to see the best and worst sides of the survivors as they discover the island...and themselves.

"Sounds like expensive crap."

"Ok, I have another idea, for a film this time. It's the life story of one of the world's best-known musicians. He has a disability and nobody thinks he'll be able to go very far with it. But he goes from strength to strength until his music is loved by millions and he becomes an international celebrity. Oh, and he's black."

"Black? Won't make any money".

"Alright then, how about we just take one of the most loved stories of the 20th century and film it? I know a great epic story, so the whole project just screams sequels!"

"Hmm...Ok, but only if you squash the story down to one film. Two hours maximum."

What's going on with the big studios? I just described ratings topper and Emmy Award winner "Lost", double Oscar winner "Ray" and Peter Jackson's US$3 billion revenue reaper, The Lord of The Rings.

All three had problems getting into production.

The executive who backed "Lost" left the television network halfway through the filming of the pilot over a disagreement with the network owners. "Ray" was financed with zero help from the studio that released it, and Miramax decided they didn't know enough about big budget films or sequels to make The Lord of the Rings trilogy and wanted to cut it down to a single film.

Is it really that hard to recognise a good idea when it presents itself? Or are media executives just stupid?

Cynicism aside, the answer lies more towards the former - the vast majority of studio executives are middle aged white men who don't represent the general population. Michael Moore explained this phenomenon in his book Stupid Whit Men, and while you many not agree with his politics, it's difficult to find fault with his logic.

How many women come to mind when looking at international politics? Condelleza Rice, Queen Elizabeth...um...oh, whatshername, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Just about everything else is run by men. We often have little idea who they actually are but they toil away doing their jobs the way most middle aged men would.

It's a well known fact in US politics that you can't win the White House by pitching your policies to white men. The two most important demographics are women (because they make up more than half the population), and "minorities" like latinos and blacks. Actually, white men usually back the losers.

Why then, are we happy to let them run our TV stations and movie studios? Would the quality of our entertainment perhaps improve with a little (or a lot) of input from some different points of view? Why are we letting our creativity and culture be influenced by such conservative, profit driven people?

I can understand why these guys think the way they do: they're not as young as they used to be, they like attractive young women, they never got the chance to blow stuff up or play with big guns. So in essence, they back stories they want to see.

I can understand how they think and feel because I mix with an incredibly diverse group of people: black, white, Asian, men, women, old, young, rich, poor, smart and stupid. I get the benefit from all these different points of view.

We're seeing the games industry get their act together since people realised that women like playing The Sims. It's a different experience for a different audience, which just happens to include an incredibly large number of people.

Wow, who would have thought it. Bring on the best selling PC game of all time.

When Lloyd Braun left ABC after the fight over "Lost", he asked his children whether they'd prefer to give up their TV or their computer. The kids voted to ditch the TV. They must have thought the internet had more to offer them.

Lloyd Braun is now the head of media and entertainment at Yahoo!

There's at least one middle aged white man out there with some kind of an idea about where the world is heading.

Now let's hope we can find a few more.

Best among equals

2005-12-16T22:48:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

In 2001 the Australian government introduced the Innovation Patent to protect lower level inventions which wouldn't normally meet the requirements of a Standard Patent.

This was a fantastic concept for fueling innovation for one simple reason:

The test of an Innovation Patent is that it must show a "substantial contribution to the working of the invention", even if the contribution is an obvious one that could be made by anybody who's skilled in that particular area.

Basically, this means an Innovation Patent holder can say, "Yeah, anybody could have done it, but I was the one who actually did". But because fewer resources are required to make something worthy of a Innovation Patent, the patent holder only gets eight years to exploit their invention instead of the normal 20 years.

As we still live in a "closed" intellectual property based world, this is a great step in giving entrepreneurs and inventors a reason to keep doing their thing. They can take the inventive process one step at a time. By shortening the length of the patent, there's actually a bigger incentive to keep working on the invention and this will be especially beneficial to developers of complicated works such as stem cell based medicines where there may be 40 years worth of work involved before a product is ready for market.

The idea of shorter periods for people to exploit their inventions has actually been coming along quite nicely for more than a decade in "open" intellectual property circles, and it's proving to be damned effective.

In the "open" world the challenges are bigger, yet they're met more often. Developers are constantly helping their competitors, and yet they can still be market leaders. A bright newcomer can destroy the major players with one new concept, while the defeated stalwart can claw its way back to the top just as fast.

Take the eDonkey network.

When MetaMachine released the first version of eDonkey 2000, it was a stunning piece of software and was steadily improved upon. The idea was quickly borrowed and the eMule Project came into being soon after. Being open source, eMule developed at a faster rate and development continued at a frantic pace until it became the dominant client on the eDonkey network.

MetaMachine responded with Overnet, a decentralized version of their network. Again, the concept was borrowed and the word "Kademlia" started working it's way into the online vocabulary. The Kademlia Distributed Hash Table network was jumped on my eMule users and coders alike and not long after it was declared to be "fairly stable," the developers of the popular Azureus BitTorrent client announced they'd worked a Kad-based searching method into their client. Then the official BitTorrent client was quick to announce the implementation of a similar system. Not long after that, poor old MetaMachine announced they had worked out how a user could group a bunch of files together.

In the world of "open" intellectual property, a developer doesn't have to hide his or her work from competitors. "Protection" comes from simply being the best among equals.

Some say that war is the greatest stimulant for innovation, but this can't be true. The US military had more than 30 years to develop the DARPA network, a period during which a bitter Cold War was waged and threats against America multiplied dramatically. The end result was a communications tool that could only be operated by highly trained and exceptionally skilled technicians.

Enter the CERN academic who wanted a convenient way to organize his research notes, and HTML was born. Ten years later we can communicate with anyone, anywhere. And thankfully, even the traditional "closed" intellectual property system is working its way towards a more open working environment.

Where fast moving development is the key to success, an Innovation Patent is an excellent option. However, in the place where ideas really take on a life of their own - the internet - open development will always be better both for innovators and for everyone else.

CeBit Australia 2005

2005-12-16T22:45:00.000-08:00

Orignially published here.

I just got back from CeBit Australia 2005, where over 600 companies are showing off the latest in cool tech gear. Here are some impressions:

Firstly, VoIP is IN. It's the new black. Every kind of VoIP technology is on display: the servers, cabling, backend software, PC based connection gear, handsets, earpieces, Bluetooth adaptors, small office systems, enterprise grade kit outs and half a million consultants to help you put it all together.

Mobile phones are hot too, and they're getting smaller. They're also getting some funky new designs, a stand out being from new Australian company Linophir. The E1000 cube-like device has a really interesting keypad, while the C800 looks kind of like a discman if it was shrunk to the size of a jam jar lid.

I also got my first look at a real 3D plasma screen TV. I never thought I'd say that watching an animated can of Guinness play football was an exciting experience, but Electroboard has successfully changed my view on that.

And speaking of presentation display gear, if you're in the market for an electronic whiteboard you can expect to see a lot more of it about in the near future. Everywhere I turned there was a huge screen with sales people drawing stick figures on it with sensor-pens.

Another interesting thing I realized was that technology has matured enough for a second-hand market to spring up, and I'm not just talking about selling your old hard drive on eBay either.

How would you like a used Cisco switch powerful enough to run your own phone company? Many of the tech-based companies we see today built their million dollar empires on this stuff and you can now pick it up for a fraction of what it would have cost you five years ago. (I saw ISP grade gear leases starting at less than $1000 - gives you a few ideas, doesn't it?)

Of course, there was a stack of other stuff - GPS navigation systems, foreign governments spruiking their ICT industries, PC modding gear, f*cking huge displays, routers, wireless networking cards, robots (go Aibo, go!), RFID systems, biometric locks, e-commerce providers, virus and spam killing software and a load of very silly people trying to convince the world that THEIR digital rights management "solutions" actually worked.

Getting the sales pitch from one of these DRM companies was really a very enlightening experience and lead me to an interesting conclusion: they really don't know what they're up against.

Listening to this guy ramble on about how his company's software WILL make my electronic documents secure, I mentally pulled it apart. Half the "solution" relies on methods which have already been compromised, an important part of the key management could be circumvented with a few social engineering tricks (geeks should read this as "being able to talk to people") and I'd give the rest of it a few days once an experienced hacker gets hold of it, including removal of the watermark.

I confronted the salesman with the social engineering aspect of it, which lead to the National Sales Manager being called over. I got the higher level pitch which is reserved for people who know what they're talking about, which included lots of ICT buzz words. I didn't press the matter. I just thanked the guy for his time and took a brochure.

As I walked away from the stand, I looked around at the crowd - suits, styled haircuts, promo girls, slick logos, custom built display stands, complementary coffee and free pens. I wondered how many of these people were there because they were passionate about the technology and how many were there just to sell something.

Then I watched as a kid on a skateboard sailed down the corridor and forced the suits to jump out of the way.

Twenty seconds later a security guard appeared in pursuit.

I felt much better knowing that there was at least one person there who didn't play by the rules.

Journalism By Press Release

2005-12-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

For all of us out there who are sick of reading regurgitated press releases in the always reliable (cough) and scrupulously fair (cough, cough) mainstream media be aware that contrary to what you might think, journalists do have access to a Code of Ethics.

Head over to the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics page for a look at what these guys are supposed to be doing in, "seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues".

Some of my favourites include:

Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.
Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. (A big hello to Jennifer Yu at New Century Media).
Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.
Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

My all-time favourite however, is, "Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media."

Now, here's a fun game we can all play.

Whenever you see or hear a "news article" from a "reputable" source that's obviously one sided (you know, quoting the BSA "statistics" on piracy, giving the RIAA or MPAA a free soapbox, etc.) fire off one of these pre-written emails. Just copy and paste.

If you get really good at this, you might be able to get a job as an investigative reporter!

Here we go:

Greetings Friend/Sir/Madam

I took exception with your recent report on [--------------insert description of story here].

In my view, it was seriously unbalanced, giving more coverage to one party/side of the argument than the other. Nor did it mention/explain the motives/interests of the party which received a disproportionate share of the coverage.

I hope that in the future, your publication/station/web site will present a more unbiased coverage of the issues involved in the stories you cover than it does at present.

If the quality of reporting does not rise above the copy/paste nature your publication/station/web site has used in the past, I will be forced to stop using your publication/station/web site as a reliable source of news and will cancel my subscription (if I have one) and encourage others to do the same.

Yours faithfully,

Someone Who Is Already Aware Of The Issues And Doesn't Appreciate Sloppy Reporting Practices.

The SPJ's Code of Ethics is a voluntary standard. The challenge for a professional journalist is whether or not he or she can live up to it.

The Hollywood Numbers Game

2005-12-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

"P2P robs artists of their rightful income", says the MPAA.

It would seem the movie studios themselves are pretty good at that.

Peter Jackson, who won the hearts of millions of geeks for his masterful film depiction of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," is suing the film's distributors, New Line Cinema.

Why?

According to CNN, New Line is responsible for, "... improperly deducting certain home video costs that were not spelled out in the agreement, paying an incorrect royalty rate for DVD sales, delaying the reporting of certain licensing revenue and failing to audit sub-distributors, including those affiliated with New Line. The latter claim goes to the broader issue of self-dealing, in which Wingnut accuses New Line of allowing its sub-distributors to charge a higher fee than would be expected from nonaffiliated companies."

The skeptical among us would say that New Line lacks basic math and accounting skills. But then again, with a multi-million-dollar-a-year business, one would think they were able to hire someone who can add up properly.

Any other business who can't work out where the decimal point REALLY goes would be in big trouble, at least from the tax man. But as the The Fellowship of the Ring alone has pulled in over $850 million world wide, the studios can afford to make expensive mistakes.

Anyone else think that Hollywood will come to an "arrangement" with Jackson? We can probably expect this to be "all a big misunderstanding" in the end.

This case has larger implications, though.

If New Line Cinema (owned by Time Warner Inc) simply made a mistake how do we, the public, know that this type of dodgy numbers game isn't going on in other places in Hollywood? If studios can't even add up the money they DO make, how can they possibly estimate the money they claim is lost from P2P?

Unfortunately, it's to be expected that the MPAA will come out with a statement from its well-oiled propaganda machine well before the facts are established. For decades, content providers have claimed new technology will ruin their businesses:

Late 19th century - Book publishers claim the new public libraries will destroy all incentives to take on new authors, as people will stop buying new books if they can read for free. Book sales increase dramatically over the next century.

Mid 20th century - AM radio monopolies try to suppress the new and superior FM technology. FM operates on different frequencies which are un-regulated and therefor uncontrollable. FM radio inventor commits suicide after more than 10 years of legal battles over the new technology. Revenues increase dramatically over the next few decades.

Early 1980s - Movie studios claim in the famous "Betamax Case" that Sony's new VCR will put them out of business. They enjoy a new multi-billion dollar per year industry supplying movies on tape and DVD.

Late 1990s - The music industry shuts down Napster citing that it allows wide scale piracy of recorded music. Sales and profits increase despite a hundred-fold grown in P2P.

Perhaps the fact that content providers have been wrong in every single one of these cases has made the public skeptical?

Oz "Victory" Against Pirates - MEAA

2005-12-16T22:13:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

I’ve just recieved the latest newsletter from my union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.

Yes, I'm secretly a creative type, and when I'm not overseeing an encryption upgrade into the Australian banking network, I design the lighting for live theatre shows.

I've worked in most of the theatres in Sydney, from the back rooms of pubs to the Sydney Opera House, and I'll write about that some other time.

Meanwhile, the Alliance informs me there’s been "A Victory Against Pirates" and goes on to detail how "the findings in a major music piracy case are a victory for all industries facing copyright infringements, including film and TV."

Can you guess what this is all about? I thought you could.

It’s the mp3s4free.net case where the Federal Court in Sydney found that linking to pirated material is infringement of copyright under Australian law.

Setting aside the fact that Google is probably illegal under the court's definition of linking (and so is p2pnet, come to that) I wonder if the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has thought this through carefully enough?

Of course I agree with Michael Kerin from ARIA's Music Industry Piracy Investigations that this is very "significant" for the Australian music industry.

The problem is, getting people to listen to Australian music is damned hard, especially since the introduction of poker machines killed off so many live music venues in Sydney a few years ago.

So let's look at the state of Aussie music:

Reduction in live music venues
Reduction in number of titles released annualy
Reduction in number of record company contracts with artists
Increased legislation relating to infringement of intelectual property
Increased enforcement of IP law
Increased sales of digital music players (1,000% increase over 12 months)
Lack of legal download sites
High prices on downloaded tracks (~AUD$1.89)
Severe incompatabilities between digital music players and available downloads

How are we doing so far? Add all those factors together and things start to look pretty bleak down here in Oz.

We can't easily see live music.

We can't find a great number of titles to choose from because they're not being made.

We've all got the hardware to play our music, but can't afford to buy the DRM-wrapped tracks.

To top it all off, we can now expect to get a battering from the courts if we dare to provide people with a few digital choices to expand their musical horizons.

This is indeed a victory for Australian music.

A Pyrrhic victory.

Thankfully I have caring, thoughtful union to look after me.

The headlines we havn't seen...yet

2005-12-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

Terrorists Funded By Rouge States, No Link With P2P Software
A confidential report by the US Department of Homeland Security has found that Al Qaeda operations, including the attacks carried out on 9/11, were funded by several “rouge states” including Saudi Arabia and wealthy Islamic fundamentalists. The report dismisses claims that the sharing of music and movies over the Internet helped Al Qaeda as “ludicrous”.
- The Washington Post

The BPI says your child is a thief
A British faux police organization owned by EMI (Britain), Sony BGM (Japan, Germany), UMG (France) and WMG (US) says your child is committing a crime by downloading music on the internet. Our correspondent reveals for the first time how warped disinformation releases such as this really are.
- The Times – UK

RIAA Back Flips, P2P is “Actually Pretty Cool”
An RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) spokesman said today that the music industry body will cease suing users of p2p networks. “We decided to look at some real data on this and it seems people are discovering and listening to more music than ever before," said RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol. "Our distribution costs could be slashed by 95%, which we’ll spend on finding exciting new artists. This means people will be paying less for music while having a bigger range to choose from. It’s a win for the artists and a win for the customer."
- Wall Street Journal

Morgan Freeman thinks again
“…I received a surprising amount of criticism regarding my comments on digital distribution, so I decided to actually investigate the issues myself. After looking at the DRM (digital rights management) products available, I couldn’t believe how ineffectual they are…”
- Hollywood.com

Gates smells the GNU
“We’re glad that Linux is available because it helps us to us to be competitive and make better products," Microsoft ceo told a meeting of industry executives in Seattle today. "We’d have to come up with something pretty special to compete with free.”
- CNET News

Supreme Court finds for Grokser
“This court finds that technological change and the freedom of companies and individuals to create new and innovative products is of great benefit to society. It would be irresponsible to favour marginal interests over the greater good.”
- The Hill

Glickman breaks arm, blames Supreme Court ruling
“I had a few drinks after the Grokster decision was announced and slipped on my way to the bathroom," MPAA CEO Daniel Glickman explained from his hospital bed. "I’m talking to my lawyers about possible legal action against Grokster and StreamCast. Someone is at fault here and it’s certainly not me.”
- The Drudge Report

Court Order Gags MPAA
Following claims of slander, a New York state judge has ordered the Motion Picture Association of America to supply sources to verify claims made in future press releases. In his summary, Judge Mikey Bollocks told the MPAA, “Your organization has a history of making claims that are demonstratably false. To avoid wasting our legal systems’ time in the future with groundless defamation suits, I am suggesting that you provide reasonable documentation to back up any claims you may wish to make in the future.
- New York Times

Apple Drops Suit Against Bloggers
“We were talking about the case against AppleInsider.com,” said Jimmy Whack, Apple vp of Marketing. “Someone said it’s pretty cool when people love your stuff so much that they can’t wait for new products. We all looked at each other and said, “Yeah, these guys are actually promoting our product lines for free’ so we’re dropping the suits and hoping that AppleInsider and the others aren’t too pissed at us. Really, it was all a big misunderstanding”.
- Time Magazine

Record Companies Pay All Back Royalties To Artist
Veteran performer Billy Garbled is today celebrating a cheque for $1,475,000 he received from EMI, Sony BGM, UMG and WMG. The money represents 30 years of royalty arrears. "We have fired the accountants who have been handling payments," says RIAA president Cary Sherman. "We will be making similar resitutions to other artists who have somehow been similarly overlooked in past years."
- International Musician (American Federation of Musicians magazine)

Movie Store (Mis)adventures II

2005-12-16T22:04:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

The incident at my local video rental store was actually the second irksome experience I had with DVDs last week.

About six weeks ago I found a British crime show had been released on DVD in Australia. It's a brilliant series and the quality of the acting is a tribute to British television so I decided to fork out $59.90 for two DVDs (For the mathematically challenged, that's $29.95 each DVD).

I went into Big CD & DVD Chain Store this week to pick up the second two DVDs in the series. I walked up to the stand and saw a big "NOW $9.95!" sign. Damn!

I took the now discounted DVDs up to the counter and asked the sales girl what the story was.

"These where $29.95 just over a month ago. What happened? Is there a clearance sale on or something?"

"No, but they're pretty popular at the new price. You're, like, the tenth person today whose bought one those titles", she told me.

"So are you guys still making a profit on them, or just trying to get your costs back?"

"No, I think we still make four or five bucks on them".

I did the math. Apparently the good little shoppers had balked at being asked to pay an extra $20, perhaps because the extra 400% profit for the store was a bit too high.

I also felt pretty angry that I could have bought the whole series for less than $60 instead of just a third of it if I had only waited a couple of months.

Instead of charging a low price to begin with and getting lots of sales, the Big CD & DVD Chain Store decided to charge as much as possible until their profit margin could drop to a (standard industrialised world) 40-50%.

Apart from hiring sales staff who give out confidential pricing information, there are two other possible candidates for stupidity in this situation: either I'm a idiot for paying such a high price as soon as the titles became available, or the Big CD & DVD Chain Store management are idiots for thinking I won't notice the price drop and feel ripped-off.

The first one is probably true - I should be used to this type of behaviour by media retail outlets by now.

The second one is also probably true - I did notice the price drop and I do feel ripped-off, even though I admit the stupidity on my part.

The important question here is: do I feel stupid and ripped-off? Yes, I feel pretty ripped-off after paying the extra $40.

And, yes, I also feel stupid at the expense of Big CD & DVD Chain Store.

Nobody enjoys feeling like someone has made a fool of them and in years gone by, all a customer could do was fume in silence at the retailer. Nowadays, the customer can completely circumvent the retailer and obtain the product online. This (former) customer also feels pretty happy about being able to screw the retailer for a change. As they say: once bitten, twice shy.

So I feel "bitten" and quite stupid. As a result I'm also shy and unlikely to go back to Big CD & DVD Chain Store for fear that they drop the price even further (by up to $5 without making a loss according to the sales girl).

I've since found my British TV series on BitTorrent in .ratDVD format, so I certainly won't feel stupid about over paying for it when it's sitting on my hard drive. I expect I'll feel quite pleased with myself. Unlike the trouble at the DVD rental store, in this case I have stopped being a good customer simply because there is no incentive for me to be.

Perhaps when the people in the media supply chain make a nice gesture to me, I'll think about using them again. Unfortunately, for this to happen they need to realise that I'm the one in the position of power now - I've got a choice. I like choice and I think I'll give the entertainment industry one too:

Woo me or loose me.

Movie Store (Mis)adventures I

2005-12-16T21:55:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

I had two incidents this week which really annoyed me. Both of them relate to DVDs.

Today it was a run-in with a new manager at my local video rental store. About nine months ago, I signed up for their new "Ulimited Rentals" plan, which costs $29.95 per month. I can get out four VHS cassettes or DVDs at a time and return them whenever I like without getting any late fees. This works out at around $1.00 per day for as many movies as I can watch. With no late fees, I think it's a pretty good deal.

I go to return the first two DVDs in a series and get out the next two. I arrive at the counter with my two new DVDs and hand over my membership card.

"You can only get one of these out", says Mark (as in "Hi, my name is...")

I give him blank look. What's he talking about?

"You havn't returned another New Release yet", he says. "You know you can only have two New Releases out at a time, right?"

"Uh, no, actually," I say. "I just returned the two new releases I got out yesterday."

I realise I can't speak with enough enthusiasm to give the words "new release" capital letters like he can.

"If you got those two out yesterday, then you had three out. You're only allowed to have two."

This guy is really starting to annoy me. I've been going to this video store four or five times a week since I went on the "unlimited" plan. All the regular staff call me by my first name and I call them by their first names too. I can easily spend twenty minutes talking about movies with them whenever I go in there, and I've never head of this limit on new releases before ----- because nobody ever told me. I've been taking out two or three or four new releases for nine months without any problems.

"That third one isn't a premier new release, though", I point out in the hope that this whole thing will go away. I don't need any hassles today.

"No. You can get out one Premier New Release and one New Release, or two New Releases and two 3 Night Hires, or..." he drones on.

The sections in a video rental store are just like the categories used in the cinema releases: there's Premier New Release, tied to the Opening Weekend. These are the ones you see on all the posters located in very prominant places on the shelves. Their popularity works the same way as the cinema releases - all the people who really want to see it watch it as soon as it's available.

From there a movie goes into it's regular run as a New Release. It's a "new" movie and you still pay a lot to watch it, just like you do with regular cinema tickets.

Then comes the 3 Night Hire section, where a cinema would be running Two-For-The Price-Of-One or 1-Adult-Plus-Free-Popcorn deals to milk a little bit more profit out of the film.

Right at the bottom of the chain is the Weekly. A Weekly DVD is to the rental store what a Premier DVD release is to the movie studio: The Cream. All the costs have been recouped, a tidy profit has been made and all that has to happen now is to keep the movie moving for years until someone wants to watch it. From here on, it's pure profit.

My unlimited plan is like those SuperSaver cinema booklettes where you get a 40% discount if you buy ten tickets at a time.

Mark is now pointing to a helpful poster (which wasn't there yerterday) showing what I'm allowed to take out at any one time. It's a beautiful little diagram with a matrix of all the possible combinations of rental DVDs I'm allowed to borrow.

I don't absorb any of it.

"Do you know who let you get those two New Releses out yesterday?" he asks.

"No, sorry" I reply. (It was Tim. Tim an I both like Sci-Fi, so I don't want to get him in trouble).

"Well, you can only get one of these", says Mark.

I can tell he's not going to let me have the second one, even if I ask nicely. So I take one home, pick up the third new release (which was crap anyway) and take it back to the store.

"Do you still want that second New Release?" asks Mark.

"No, I just decided to make two trips here today for the hell of it", I think to myself. "Yeah" is what actually comes out of my mouth.

As I leave, I start wondering why I should keep that idiot in a job by guaranteeing the store $30 in revenue every month. I could quite easily spend the money upgrading to an ADSL2+ net connection and just download the movies I want to watch.

Then I remember all the other staff there are really cool and how much I enjoy chatting with them. I'd really like to continue those relationships, but at the end of the day, it's all about time and money and I just wasted 40 minutes of my time on the second trip. I switched to the Unlimited Plan because it was supposed to be easier, but where Digital Rights Management annoys me online, Physical Use Management annoys me just as much in the real world.

A few more incidents like that and I may just stop being a good customer.

World's First Storyline Patent?

2005-12-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

Originally published here.

eMediaWire is reporting that "the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is scheduled to publish history's first "storyline patent" application today.

The release has Georgetown University law prof Jay Thomas saying, "The case law of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has established that virtually any subject matter is potentially patentable."

The idea that story lines could be patentable was first seriously proposed by Andrew Knight in an article for the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society. In A Potentially New IP: Storyline Patents, Knight argues that "binding case law strongly suggests that methods of performing and displaying fictional plots, whether found in motion pictures, novels, television shows, or commercials, are statutory subject matter, like computer software and business methods".

And what of the individual who filed the patent application back in November 2003?

Funnily enough, it's Frank Knight.

Kight's web site, plotpatents.com, informs visitors that "Knight and Associates consists of Andrew Knight and a team of independent contractors comprising skilled writers and experienced patent attorneys, ready to turn valuable new fictional plots or storylines into U.S. utility patent applications."

They'll be able to "help your company integrate valuable Storyline Patent protection into your portfolio of other IP protection" and "draft and prosecute patent applications on unique storylines, as well as innovations in the fields of mechanical devices, electrical devices, optical devices, medical devices, engines, software, business methods, gadgets, tools, toys, and other consumer products."

This is perhaps the most reprehensable attempt by an individual to create a job for themselves. Simply create "property" where none existed before, then charge big media companies to look after the chaotic legal issues you've created for them. What does he have to say for himself?

"Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations - the underlying storylines - instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines."

So according to Knight, we should now be paying bad writers to use an idea that they've detailed in a utility patent.

The worst part of this is that several academics have theorised that there are only actually seven basic plots that exist in literature. Amazon.com says of Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots, "there is literally no story in the world which cannot be seen in a new light: we have come to the heart of what stories are about and why we tell them."

Unfortunately, if Andrew Knight's patent application is granted, it won't be a question of what stories are about, or why we tell them. It'll be a question of whether we can afford to pay the royalties.

This article was the basis for an entry in Jon Newton's column on TechNewsWorld.com

Big Music - An optional extra

2005-11-25T23:08:00.000-08:00

I was talking to some friends the other day and heard what I thought was a most extraordinary concept. The topic of discussion was the role of trade organizations and I remarked that traditional media trade organizations are loosing their relevance and importance as the world becomes more digitized. I referred to the MPAA, RIAA and its Australian counterpart, the ARIA, and put forth the idea that these organizations would eventually die out to be replaced with different organizations.

Then the bomb exploded.

"But the ARIA is important,” said one of the people I was talking to. “It helps keep the Australian people listening to new music and the Australian music industry would start to crumble if ARIA wasn't around".

I was, ladies and gentlemen, shocked and stunned. Shocked and stunned that I’d hear a musician come out with this kind of garbage.

It's time to look at some harsh realities:

The RIAA not exist for the benefit of music lovers.
Trade organizations exist for the benefit of their members. Given that 'members' of trade organizations such as the ARIA or RIAA are record labels, the ARIA and RIAA are basically clubs for companies in the music business.

The fundamental nature of anybusiness is that it has to make a profit for the people who own it. Certain things can make businesses successful or unsuccessful. A tried and trusted method of making these things happen (or not happen) is to form a group of like-minded people to ensure situations exist which are favourable to the members of the group. Some guy called Nash won a Nobel prize for working out how all this works, so it's not like I'm just making it up.

The problems of the entertainment industry are the entertainment industry's problem.
Not yours and not mine. The fact that people in the music or film industry say something is wrong doesn't mean it applies to everyone. All it means is that those people are thinking out loud.

Most people don't particularly care what format their entertainment comes in, but are more inclined to favour something that’s convenient and easy to use one. P2P networks fit this critria nicely, hence they are popular. The "problem" is that the entertainment industry does not work on a P2P based model. The entertainment industry generally works on a physical product model, therfore any entertainment format which is not based on physical product is generally considered a "problem".

The entertainment industry cannot fix the problems of the entertainment industry.
An ultra-simple way of looking at this is to ask, "What created the problems in the first place?" An ultra-simple answer would be "We have digital entertainment in the 21st century and we don't need the physical product anymore."

As we are unable to fully comprehend the power of simple 1s and 0s, we tend to think of "digital" as "idea" or sometimes "concept" and it's quite hard to put a price tag on a "concept". I remember hearing a story of Bill Gates walking through Customs and Immigration and declaring that he was taking millions of dollars out of the country. He offered up a bunch of floppy disks containing the original DOS operating system and the airport officials laughingly waved him through as all clear.

For the entertainment industry to solve its "piracy problem," it would have to completely reverse its business model. To even being to understand the intangible it would have to let go of the physical.

This type of philosophy isn't called "New Age" without reason.

RIAA press releases are not written for the press.
Going back to the purpous of trade organizations, the RIAA has to prove to it's memebrs that it (RIAA) is doing what it's supposed to do: act for their benefit. Internal memos and industry newsletters exist for this but anything demonstrating something favourable for the RIAA has to be publicized. Anything unfavourable also has to be publicized along with an explaination of the "problem", a scapecoat to take the blame for the "problem" and a plan on how to solve the "problem". This shows how good they are when something goes right and how important they are in stoping things going wrong. This has to be done in the mainstream media because the internal memos and newsletters don't work - if it's on TV and in the newspapers it's really real.

Trade organizations are not creative in nature.
An "organization for creativity" would be an oxymoron, and trying to make one work would be just plain moronic. Luckily for them, trade orgainizations worked this out and instead became political. Being political is a difficult task because typical trade organizations represent such a narrow band of the political spectrum that they are, in theoretical terms, insignificant to the general population. In practice however, we accept that money is power. As a business's sole reason for exsistance is to make money for the people who own it, we must realize that business are pretty good at dealing with money including using it attaining the power needed to make more money.

Looking at groups of businesses like the RIAA, MPAA, BPI, IFPI, ARIA, and so on, we see they get their money from creations which are entertaining. They could be making their money from any number of other things, but they’d still act in exactly the same way because a trade organization functions as a lobby group. Every industry has lobby groups: tobaccco, retail, hospitality, pharmaceutical, automotive, etc. and they all operate on the same basic principals. The film and music industries are nothing special.

There are no creative industries.
"Creative industry" is more legitimate sounding way of describing people and companies involved in "show business". Show business is where a small group of people make money by entertaining a larger group of people. You can tell that show business is a business because one half of the term is the word "business".

Creativity can survive without show business. The world can survive without show business. We happen to keep show business around because it's entertaining and we don't mind paying money to be entertained. Something your will never hear from an artist is: "I'm only in it for the shitloads of money, free gifts, luxury hotels, drugs and women". Since nobody starts making music for those reasons, it's quite safe to assume that people would continue making music if all those things were removed from the job description, kind of like people have done for thousands of years.

Big Media does not like technology.
Even though sophisticated computer programs make it easier for film makers and musicians to create their work, the same technology is also available to anyone with a half decent PC and an internet connection. This person is now in direct competition with the large corperations who have traditionally created films and music and is therfore a threat (albeit a small one). Big Media would ideally like technology to be very expensive, as it used to be, so that only people with a lot of money can afford to be creative. In the past the only people who could make a movie or record an album were, not surprisingly, the big film and record companies.

Big Media is trying to make the best of a bad situation by "embracing new media", but given a preference it would like to be in the same place as it was 30 years ago when it controlled all the production.

An artist creates things for everybody.
Artists do not create things for their record companies or film studios. Record companies and film studios exsist to make it easier for artists to display their work to the public. A person who is a "professional musician" may recieve money from a record company, but the artist actually works for everyone. A person can be both a professional musician and an artist. The money received from the record company is actually a payment from the public to the musician. The record company is there to help the transaction happen smoothly. The record company is an "optional extra" because transaction can be performed without it.

At the end of the night my friend was actually pretty pissed with the Australian recording industry. From some of the incidents she talked about, it appears that it's exsistance has actually stopped her from getting her art out out there for people to enjoy.

There are two groups of people who count when talking about art - the artists and the people who experience the art.

Everyone else in the chain is an optional extra.

TrustyFiles - Bogus child pornography reporting

2005-11-15T16:58:00.000-08:00

This article was originally posted here. Included is the dialogue that developed between Marc Freedman, CEO of RazorPop and myself.

CROWD: A witch! A witch! A witch! We've got a witch! A witch!
VILLAGER #1: We have found a witch, might we burn her?
CROWD: Burn her! Burn!
BEDEVERE: How do you know she is a witch?
VILLAGER #2: She looks like one!

Fans of Monty Python will remember this exchange from the Quest for the Holy Grail movie and it's parody of the "burning times". Accusations of witchcraft were levelled against people with warts, long hair, strange clothes or a penchant for running around naked (among other things). This type of "evidence" was responsible for countless "trials" and the subsequent torture and execution of those unlucky enough to suffer with witch-like symptoms, like sneezing too much. Ah, how times have changed! Or have they?

RazorPop, developers of P2P application TrustyFiles, recently announced the inclusion of a "Report Child Exploitation command" in the latest release of the program. "With the addition of the child pornography file report, RazorPop continues to lead the fight to protect our children," said Razor Pop CEO Marc Freedman in the press release.

Well intentioned indeed, so how can such a revolutionary feature be effective in the online fight against child pornography?

It can't.

If you accidentally download a file containing child pornography (a misnamed file for example) and on playing it you discover it contains content which is clearly or possibly an offence against children, you can simply right-click, select the Report option and the file's name, hash(es) will be sent to the P2P PATROL along with the IP address of the person you downloaded it from and a timestamp. All well and good so far.

The real problem with the TrustyFiles reporting system is: you don't actually have to have the file in your possession to report it - you can report it directly from a search result.

While it sounds attractive to would-be paedophile hunters who don't want to get their hands dirty by downloading the file in question, this option would have to be one of the most easily abused systems ever devised.

Most filesharers have probably come across files with an endless string of keywords in the file name where the original releaser wants the file to receive as many search hits as possible. If you've ever wondered how a three minute .mpeg movie can contain everything from anal sex with horses to the entire Paris Hilton sex tape and actually downloaded one of these files, you'll have probably found that the actual video stream contains few or none of the advertised acts.

It could just as easily be a home movie of someone testing their new remote control car.

Taking the little-old-lady-with-too-much-time-on-her-hands scenario, any self-styled vigilante can now send the details of the RC car file to P2P PATROL for "independent analysis", who will then have to manually verify the contents. The problem is of course that our little old lady is capable of sending hundreds or possibly thousands of reports every day, all of which have to be verified.

Does anyone else see the problem?

Not RazorPop.

"We're a technology provider. We only provide a means of reporting. Whether or not someone wants to report it is their choice. We hope that if they use it, they use it responsibly", said Freedman in a heated exchange on the Slyck.com forums.

Nice in theory, but is the TrustyFiles reporting system too easy to irresponsibly?

Even those with the best of intentions could cause serious damage. Anyone sharing Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" (one of the 20th century's most important novels) can soon expect to be reported by anyone trying to bust those sharing "lolita" (child pornography).

"Gee wiz! There sure are a lot of sickos sharing this Nabokov type kiddie porn. I'd better report the lot of 'em!" are the kind of actions this system will encourage. And pity the poor souls at P2P PATROL and the FBI screaming in frustration as ANOTHER few hundred Nabokov novels arrive for checking. And they probably will be checked - who will take responsibility for rejecting a file because it has "Nabokov" in the title? It could be incorrectly named, remember?

And guess what? All reports are sent anonymously, so nobody can find the little old lady to ask her to "please, please stop sending us rubbish!"

So...who wants to DoS the anti-kiddie porn organizations? You can imagine the type of people who would want to do that. The tech savvy paedophile in question writes a few simple scripts to send EVERY search result to P2P PATROL, who then passes the aggregated results to the Child Pornography Hotline for further checking. A few million files to check should keep them busy for the next few decades and all while the paedophiles continue trading their special brand of content. The chance of getting caught could easily be on par with your chance of winning the lottery...or being sued by the RIAA. Or perhaps the paedophiles will simply die of old age before the reports containing their sharing habits are examined.

History has show us that bad practices are multiplied and made significantly worse by efficient automation. Ask a holocaust survivor why "convenient" and "efficient" aren't always desirable qualities in a social context.

Whether or not Razor Pop decides to remove the "Report from search result" function in TrustyFiles is obviously up to them. One can only surmise that, by choosing to keep such an irresponsible "feature" in their software, Razor Pop are more interested in promoting themselves as crusaders against child pornography than actually doing anything about it.

Marketing a product by playing on a parent's fear that their children could be exploited in such a horrible way would have to be the most morally reprehensible sales pitches ever devised.

We can now only wait for some action by Razor Pop.

Oh, and the "Report Child Exploitation" feature is only really useful if you live in the United States.

Paedophiles living anywhere else in the world can breathe easy.

By Alex H

Marc Freedman responds:

You would prefer to do nothing?

Alex,

A report based on seeing the file obviously has more value than one based on a file name in a search result. Abuse, worthless reports, and incomplete data are all standard and expected, whether it’s a phone tip, a NCMEC Internet submission, or TrustyFiles P2P report.

You miss the point of the press release. This isn’t some half-baked idea that RazorPop hatched alone. We are one tiny part of the reporting and investigation process. We closely work with the P2P Patrol, the CP Hotline, the FBI, and other law enforcement. This process was designed by them, not by us.

They receive and filter thousands of reports day. They have computer, Internet, and forensics experts. They conduct the investigations. They put the pedophiles in jail.

We will continue to work with these groups to aid their efforts. Indeed I will be happy to delete the file reporting capability if they so desire.

Marc Freedman
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles

My response to Marc:

Yes, if your actions do more harm than good

Marc,

What I am trying to impress upon you is that the P2P PATROL/CPH system for reporting child pornography is MANUAL - it requires someone to actually spend time and effort writing and sending an email to these organizations.

Your system on the other hand is AUTOMATED - quicker, easier and not much thought required to send a report. The problem of course is that P2P PATROL et al are only set up to handel MANUAL reporting.

I'm sure that those organizations are staffed by dedicated and resourceful people, but they have not said anything about whether THEY are upgrading THEIR systems to cope with a sudden increase in reports. I'm not even sure they have thought about the consequences of, for instance, a ten-fold increase.

What communications have you had with these organizations to satisfy yourself that they can afford the rate of "false positives" to climb, perhaps dramatically to say, 99 fakes to one real offending file? Did THEY suggest reporting anything and everything that MIGHT be child porn, even if the number of those reports run into the millions?

I understand your concerns in this area - I am concerned about child abuse too, but to answer you question: Yes I would prefer you did nothing if your actions cause more harm than good.

By all means, keep the reporting features for files a user has already downloaded and checked. But please, please ditch the ability to "report from search result". I am not confident that the potential abuses of this feature (both deliberate and accidental) have been studied enough to implement it safely.

Alex H

Marc writes back:

We let the experts tell us what they need

Alex,

You are correct, and we are well aware, that a report generated from a search result is significantly different in multiple ways from a report generated by a download. The reports sent by our TrustyFiles software indicate this difference and the other parties in the reporting and investigation channel handle it appropriately.

About 10% of TrustyFiles reports now appear to be likely child porn, 40% involve nudity or sex but are not child porn, and 50% are bogus or invalid. The quality of these reports is in fact better than we expected.

This is our initial offering in child porn reporting and will only improve. No one expects it to be perfect right out of the gate. As I wrote earlier, if the various parties decide the search result-generated reports, or indeed all reports, are not useful, productive, or worthwhile to process, or that more information from the user is required, then we’ll update TrustyFiles accordingly. They’re the experts in how the reports are used, not me. So that is their call.

Marc
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles

I wasn't exactly thrilled by his response:

You call these people...

Marc,

The "We're only following orders" defence holds no weight in this situation at all. Please forgive my cynicism regarding the "experts" you have been consulting with, but are you sure they are actually competant to advise you on these matters?

The FBI for example, must sanction the work of the Child Protection Hotline, who in turn enjoys the support of P2P PATROL. Unfortunatly, the people at the end of the chain (the FBI) are notorious for their ineptitude in systems design. I'm sure you have read the p2pnet article "FBI's p2p problem" describing "the FBI’s inability to share information with other law enforcers". It is quite clear that after four years and half a billion dollars the FBI has no idea about P2P networks.

(See this article for a full description of the debarcle).

You could almost say they don't know what they are talking about.

The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) "receives over 60,000 reports of suspect child pornography annually and forwards over 2500 confirmed CP reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC.org), to the FBI, to state Attorney General's Office, and to relevant international hotlines".

So they have about a 20:1 fake to real ratio at just over sixty thousand reports working full time processing the data. What happens when TrustyFiles users report six MILLION reports next year? How will that "private non-profit organization" come up with enough cash to enlarge their operation by TEN THOUSAND PERCENT? Even with your 10:1 ratio they will still be overloaded.

Consider that file sharing accounts for anywhere from 50% - 70% of all internet traffic. That's a LOT of data being transfered, so the 6 million reports per year that I mentioned doesn't seem like an exaggeration. Do you think that there are six million files out there that MIGHT contain child pornography? Sure - ALL the files out there MIGHT contain child pornography and ALL the files sitting on someone's Hard Drive somewhere in the world are able to be reported at the click of a mouse.

Perhaps nobody at the ASACP is expecting to be really sucessful in the fight against child porn so they havn't bothered to work out where on earth they're going to get that much money to fund ther operation. Will RazorPop be chipping in to pay for the infastructure upgrade?

Moving to P2P PATROL, firstly could you perhaps suggest to them next time you speak that they might be able to get a bit more credibility if their website was written with something other than NOTEPAD? Some people would say that an organization with such an important cause to defend should make themselves a bit more professional looking if they expect the P2P community to give them their help and respect. Every bit of information I could find on P2P PATROL screams "amatures" to me and I find it really hard to take them or their "advice" seriously when their website is called "Untitled Document".

As RazorPop is a member of the DCIA (the group who formed P2P PATROL) perhaps you guys could give their website a makeover? Once you've done that, perhaps you could make their policies understandable too.

In response to your "child porn reporting will only improve" comment: How? Either you can report any file you see in a search result or you can't. Perhaps if you threw this topic open for public debate you would be able to get some meaningful feedback and be able to consider the community's sugestions rather than being defensive and telling us you're only following advice.

Your advisers certainly have questionable credentials in this area, so perhaps some consultation with the people who actually built the networks TrustyFiles taps into wold be in order. If you're feeling generous, the rest of the P2P community has opinions on this too, least of all me.

Alex H

At this point, Freedman started getting a bit defensive:

What are your credentials in investigating child pornography?

Alex,

You say “Your advisers certainly have questionable credentials in this area.” That's like saying Carly Fiorina of HP was fired for incompetence. So anyone who works at HP is similarly inept.

We work with agents who do actual field work and investigation, very different from the computer networks systems fiasco. What are your credentials in investigating and prosecuting child pornography?

Your concern about TrustyFiles generating “six million reports” is unfounded. The actual volume is very low at this time. People can abuse any submission process, whether it’s from our software, the existing NCMEC web report forms, or calls to your local FBI office. If we get an abusive hacker, we’ll handle it.

The P2P PATROL web site is in preliminary form and built through volunteer work. As a non-profit group they would be happy to take your donation in cash or services to improve it.

You ask for public discussion. That’s exactly what we’re doing by providing a press release and my personally responding in forums like this. You’re absolutely right that “Either you can report any file you see in a search result or you can't.” The P2P end of this is simple. The protocols are basic. What is there to debate on the P2P end?

When I say "child porn reporting will only improve" I don’t refer to P2P networks, I refer to how CP reports are being processed and used by the CP Hotline, NCMEC, and law enforcement.

Let’s not lose sight of the objective – protecting children and fighting child porn. That will only happen when law enforcement gets the data they need and can run effective investigations. I can’t provide this feedback. You and the P2P community cannot. Only the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can.

Marc
RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles

I still wasn't satisfied:

I have no more credentials than RazorPop does

Marc,

To take your Carly Fiorina metaphor, yes she was fired for incompetence. That is to say, the person at the top was responsible for the policies carried out by all her subordinates. You can’t say everyone else at HP is inept, but like RazorPop they were just doing what they were told. So I stand by my comments that your advisers in this area are either misinformed or simply have not done enough research.

I’m sure your conversations with the actual field agents revealed that they would like as many reports as they can get – it’s just logical that they want to do their jobs. Did you inform them or did they tell you that the “report from search result” feature was open to wide-scale, or possibly crippling misuse? Again you will have to forgive my cynicism, but it is my experience that if the department responsible for communications and information gathering is inept (the FBI network systems people) then everybody else’s ability to act is stifled. Are the actual field agents geared up to cope effectively?

You ask about my credentials in investigating and prosecuting child pornography distributors. I have none, but I will tell you why I take exception to your methods of reporting.

As you probably saw in my by-line I work for an ATM supplier. If one of my programmers writes an OS program for an ATM and I don’t make sure it is checked properly it is possible that the Australian banking network could crash or be opened up for fraud or other malicious attacks. If you can imagine what would happen to a country’s economy if it’s financial networks were compromised in any way, you will understand why I take this part of my job VERY seriously. Luckily for me this is such an important issue to my country that our Reserve Bank has extremely strict testing requirements and a virtually unlimited amount of money available to ensure the network integrity isn’t breached.

So no, I do not have any experience in investigating child pornography, but please don’t get the impression that I only write “How To Secure And Maintain International Financial Networks…For Dummies” books. I am well aware of how automated systems work and how small problems can create bigger ones.

Yes, you are right that that the “six million reports” was pulled out of thin air, but I would still appreciate your assurance that it won’t happen. You will also note that I said “next year”. If TrustyFiles is lucky enough to get two hundred thousand users by the end of 2006, these users would only have to be filing an average of two and a half reports per month to achieve the six million total reports per year. Obviously the actual volume will currently be very low and hopefully you’ll be able to stop mass abuse of the system quickly. The problem however is that all the other types of system abuse you mentioned require the malicious individual to put time and effort into their attempts. The TrustyFiles system on the other hand is automated and is open to a much higher level of attack. A mass reporting worm for instance could generate millions of reports in a few hours, and the damage will be done before someone works out how to stop it. If you and the other organizations believe you can provide such high security on a minute by minute basis, good luck. You’ll need it.

On the topic of P2P PATROL’s website, I am led to understand that P2P PATROL was formed by members of the DCIA. Surely there is at least one person from the member companies with a few hours to spare knocking up a decent website? Or do DCIA members have no skills in this area? Thank you for your offer but I would prefer to donate my time and money to a worthy cause. I have seen nothing to indicate that P2P PATROL meets this criterion.

Perhaps you could tell the readers of this exchange a bit more about how these reports are aggregated and processed? Perhaps the community could come up with some improvements for the CP Hotline, NCMEC and the authorities. For instance, is it possible to report the same file over and over again, or is a “fake” recorded as such and incoming reports are checked against some type of fake database? Once a file is examined and found to be a Nabokov novel for instance, are all other files with Nabokov in the title checked against it? That would only be a very basic file name matching technique which would be checked against the file’s hash values for verification, but is there a database to save people from examining the same file twice?

Actually, perhaps you would like to invite your partners in this endeavor to join the discussion? This would certainly give them some much needed publicity for their efforts.

Again, I understand the importance of the objective – I believe very strongly in it myself and so do many others. That’s why we are concerned that the problem may not be being addressed in an appropriate way.

Alex H

Freedman then decided that RazorPop was involved in a "collaborative process", and was not just following directions:

Improving the process

Alex,

As I wrote previously, your concerns are ones that are known and we’re following to improve the process. RazorPop is not “doing what we’re told.” This is a collaborative process with several different groups involved. Like any good process, it needs to serve the customer, which in this case is law enforcement.

You and other readers are welcome to contact the DCIA and participate in the P2P Patrol, including attending meetings where these and many other issues are discussed.

Marc

I started to wonder who this guy was pitching his product to:

...is your job, not mine.

Marc,

You are essentially saying "play it our way or get lost". It is NOT my job to fix mistakes in your program or in the "collaborative process".

Every company should be able to justify it's products to the consumer, especially when it involves turning a simple file sharing application into a tool for reporting illegal activities. It aslo sounds like RazorPop needs to think about who you consider your "customers" are: law enforcement or file sharers.

I am not satisfied with your answers or explainations in this exchange and I will continue to question the methods being used.

Alex H

Freedman stopped posting after my last response. I still thought the whole idea was stupid and insensitive.

A new dumping ground

2005-11-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

For the moment, this blog is functioning as a dumping ground for all my p2pnet.net articles. I realized I've built up quite a large lump of writings and decided it was about time to put them all in one place, for my reference as well as yours.

Alex H