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

[Ron Frazier]

You raise some very good points. I do believe that there is a larger 
cross section of the public with less regard for their fellow man or his 
property than in the past. I would tend to agree with you about the 
"little people". We could talk about growing, versus raising, children. 
But that would be really off topic. It's truly regrettable that the 
intellectual property laws are such a mess, as anyone in this audience 
that ever wants to produce a book, design, movie, music, etc. and sell 
it will have to contend with all this.

Ron

On 03/23/2011 11:27 AM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> I daresay your view of how "moral" the 1700s were might be completely
> different if you had been a slave or an indentured servant.  Decadence
> wasn't invented in 20th century America as you seem to think.   Ever
> hear of the Marquis de Sade?
>
> If you look just at the 20th century alone you'll see a lot of this is
> cyclical.  The "roaring 20s" were fairly decadent (and by the way were
> before your "last 70 years").  It was the rise of venereal (now called
> STDs) as well as the depression that and a following world war that made
> thing seem less decadent overall.   Similarly one saw the rise of "free
> love" and free wheeling life styles in the 70s only to have them come to
> a screeching halt due to a major recession and the rise of AIDS.
>
> Having grown up in the 60s and 70s and survived the intervening years
> I've seen many cycles and history repeating itself.
>
> Personally I believe the main issue with society these days is mainly
> due to the idea that children are "little people" that can be "reasoned"
> with rather than wild animals that need to be tamed and civilized to
> become functioning adults.   When I was a kid you learned to behave
> yourself because while there weren't many cameras there were many adults
> and no one felt compunction about addressing someone else's child when
> they were doing something wrong away from their parents.   These days
> you don't dare do that even if you're a teacher or other authority
> figure over a group of children because most parents simply don't want
> to believe their "little darlings" could ever do anything wrong.
>
> P.S.  "Intellectual property" is a joke.  Most of it is "owned" by
> corporations rather than by the "Intellects" that came up with the
> ideas.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Ron
> Frazier
> Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 10:58 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: [ale] [OT] rant - decadence in society - DRM
>
> set rant on -->   set soapbox on -->
>
> This will be an off topic rant.  Tune out now if you'd rather not read
> it.  You have been warned.  Note that everything I say here is general,
> and not directed at any specific person, even if I use pronouns like you
>
> and we, etc.
>
> Later in the message, I'm going to rant about DRM.  However, first, I
> want to rant about decadence.  You walk into a Target or Walmart or
> Costco or ANY store.  You look over your head, there is a camera
> pointing at you.  You get to the door to walk out, there is a canyon of
> sensors you have to pass through.  You go bowling, there's a policeman
> parked outside and officers roaming around in the building
> continuously.  Heck, you send your kid to a public school, and THEY have
>
> cameras, policemen, and metal detectors everywhere.  You go buy a pair
> of sneakers.  They have RFID tags built in.  Your wife or relative has a
>
> baby in the hospital.  They put a bar code on the mother's wrist and the
>
> baby's wrist so the baby doesn't get stolen!  (I appreciate the
> proactive stance by the way.)  You buy a Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft
> game console for you kid at Christmas.  Someone follows you home from
> the parking lot and robs you in your driveway and takes the unit.  You
> go to the thrift store, find that really neat thing you want, and put it
>
> in your cart, turn your back for 5 seconds, and someone takes it out of
> your cart and buys it right out from under you.  60% - 70% of students
> surveyed say they cheat on tests.  WHY are all these things happening?
> You might say, because we can.  We have the technology for sensors and
> surveillance.  These are simply crimes of opportunity.
>
> I don't believe that is solely the case.  Caveat, I'm only 45, but I'm
> going to be speculating about events of the past.  I could be entirely
> wrong, but I don't think so.  Now, obviously, you can go back to the
> bible and read about criminals and thieves all the way back 2000 years
> ago.  We've always had policemen, jails, and criminals.  Let's do a
> thought experiment, as Albert Einstein was fond of.  Imagine we're back
> in the 1700's, the early founding stages of our nation, with a twist.
> Imagine we have the culture of yesterday, with the technology of today.
>
> Compensate in the thought experiment for the difference in population,
> but, imagine they had the internet, they had the electricity, the
> stores, the appliances, the cars, etc.  Do you believe that a citizen in
>
> New England in the 1700's would go into a Target store and have a camera
>
> pointing in his face at the checkout?  Do you believe he would go
> bowling and have policemen looking over his shoulder.  Do you believe he
>
> would be worried about his baby being stolen from the hospital?  Do you
> believe he would be worried about having the game he bought for
> Christmas stolen from him in his driveway?  Even accounting for the
> random acts of violence that occur in any culture, do you think these
> things would be a common occurrence back then?  I, for one, do not think
> so.
>
> I believe that, over the last hundred years, and particularly over the
> last 70 years, this nation has seen a substantial increase in decadence,
>
> a substantial decrease in morals, a substantial decrease in ethics, a
> substantial increase in crime.  I believe these changes have occurred at
>
> a rate even faster than the increases in population.  I believe that we,
>
> as a culture, are generally more decadent than were were 200 years ago.
>
> We have, in my opinion, to an alarming degree, lost some of the most
> important parts of our heritage.  We have largely left the time when
> honor, and integrity were the critical foundations of our psychology and
>
> our culture.  I am afraid for our culture, because I believe that, when
> honor and integrity are no longer the baseline for the culture, that the
>
> culture will self destruct.
>
> Fast forward back to today.  Let's talk about intellectual property or
> IP.  Here's the definition from dictionary.com:
>
> intellectual property - property that results from original creative
> thought, as patents, copyright material, and trademarks.
>
> That's not the greatest definition in my opinion, but we'll go with it.
>
> There are two critical components of the definition.  The first is
> property.  Property conveys rights of control, privacy, and ownership.
> (PS - I'm not a lawyer.)  The laws of all civilized nations recognize
> the existence of IP.  Then, there is the part about creative thought.
> So, how does creative thought manifest itself in the real world and
> become property.  Typically, it will be in the form of a design, a
> pattern, a picture, a musical performance, a movie, a book, a thesis,
> etc.  Copyright laws generally protect written property and
> performances.  Patents generally protect designs.  We could debate
> endlessly about the appropriateness of these laws.  I, for one, have a
> problem with software patents.  Regardless, the laws are on the books,
> and we should honor them until we change them, in general.  These laws
> give the author or creator of IP the exclusive right to control its
> distribution and / or marketing, control its reproduction or
> replication, control it's performance (if applicable), and control
> derivative works made from it.
>
> Let's talk money.  I am a firm believer that a man or woman has the
> right to benefit from the results of their work.  If you create a new
> popular novel, and you choose to sell it, you have every right to be
> compensated for the value of what you created.  You have a right to get
> paid.  If you choose to donate that work freely to society, for whatever
>
> reason, and you give it away, then that is a wonderful generous act, and
>
> I commend you for it.  But, there is no reason you should be REQUIRED to
>
> give it away.  It's your choice.  I would say the same thing about
> software.
>
> One problem with IP, in general, is that it has to be manifested in some
>
> form.  Let's disregard physical inventions.  Other forms of IP are
> generally encapsulated as some kind of DATA.  All the things we can
> store and transfer with our computers are examples.  Songs, movies,
> books, reports, white papers, drawings, pictures, designs, poems,
> magazines, etc.  The computer and internet technology makes it
> phenomenally easier to create these works, but also easier to copy and
> distribute these works.
>
> So, we have the perfect storm, a huge decrease in morals and ethics, a
> huge increase in disrespect for other people and property of all types,
> and a whole genre of DATA which is considered by the laws of all
> civilized nations to be PROPERTY, and the availability of technology
> that makes it incredibly easy to STEAL this genre of PROPERTY.
>
> Let's talk about Avatar, the recent phenomenally successful movie which
> I happen to like.  What is the PRODUCT?  What is the PROPERTY involved?
>
> Is the property involved $ 2 worth of plastic, paper, and ink in the DVD
>
> and case?  Of course not.  We're talking about INTELLECTUAL property.
> The property, which conveys all the rights described above to the owner,
>
> is the script, and the performance of that script embodied on a reel of
> plastic film, a DVD, or even a hard drive.  Now, the producers of Avatar
>
> spent about $ 300 million to produce the film.  I'm not even going to
> talk about whether that's too much and how much actors get paid, etc.
> It is what it is.  To make the film, they hired thousands of people and
> contracted for hundreds of services.  Remember what I said about people
> having the right to get paid for their work.  They invested this money
> in the hopes that the film would be popular enough to make them back
> their investment plus profit.  As it turns out, it was phenomenally
> successful and turned in revenues of around $ 2.8 billion if I recall.
> They absolutely have the right to get paid for their work.
>
> The problem is, that with modern technology, they don't have to get paid
>
> for their work.  If you went to see a movie at the 40's, you physically
> went to the theater and watched it.  Of course, we still do this today.
>
> You really couldn't steal it, since you had to be there, and there were
> no portable cameras that you could hide in your hat.  Now, as we all
> know, with modern technology, you can pop the DVD in the PC, rip it, and
>
> have a copy of the movie on your hard drive.  Then, if you are not an
> ethical person, you can have the computer make an infinite number of
> copies of the intellectual property, and distribute that intellectual
> property to any number of people.  (I'm not talking about copying the
> movie to your own PC's for your own purposes.)  The bottom line is that,
>
> if you distribute the movie to people who didn't buy it, you are
> STEALING, plain and simple.  It is illegal, and it is wrong, regardless
> of how technologically easy it is.  (There were some instances in the
> bible of things that were illegal and not wrong, but that's another
> story.)
>
> Now, I may sound like a big fan of the movie industry.  I am not.  But
> these things I'm discussing are the realities of our modern society.  I
> have to acknowledge their point of view.  I may produce a movie or book
> myself someday.  It probably won't be an Avatar, but say I spend $ 10 K
> producing a training video on how to equip your home with solar power or
>
> make your own fuel or a book on the same subject.  If  I were the
> producers of Avatar, or even the producer of my little $ 10 K project,
> do I want thousands or millions of people STEALING my work, and not
> giving me the rewards for my labor, you bet I don't.  So, what choice do
>
> they have.  Given the confluence of a tremendous drop in ethics and
> morals; and a tremendous influx of technology which facilitates the
> stealing of IP; the creators of the content feel that they have no
> choice but to impose technological measures to prevent theft of their
> work AND their revenue which they deserve by law to get.
>
> So, I have to ask myself, if I did produce such a movie or book, would I
>
> use copy protection on it.  As much as I hate to say it, I would
> seriously consider it.  The more the project cost me, and the more it
> was likely to be stolen, the more seriously I would consider it.  Now,
> some of you will probably flame me (please don't) about how ineffective
> that would be.  That's not the issue.  Copy protection would stop casual
>
> customers from casual theft.  Those knowledgeable and determined
> crackers might bypass it, and might steal the work, and might distribute
>
> the work.  HOWEVER, that requires motive and intent to break the law and
>
> commit the theft.  That is more likely to create an audit trail and that
>
> put's them into the ballpark of a prosecutable and provable offense.  If
>
> I was really concerned about theft, I would have the content watermarked
>
> in such a way that I could trace any illegal copies.
>
> Having said all that about how I would consider DRM for my own IP work,
> should I create any, I now have to admit that I really hate DRM as a
> consumer.  I TOTALLY understand why ebooks and audio books have DRM.  I
> TOTALLY understand why the publishers won't release the copyright so
> audible.com (audio book company) and kobo.com (ebook company) cannot
> sell the works without DRM.  However, there is a dark side to DRM, as
> many of you know.
>
> I recently purchased a Kobo ebook reader from one of the Borders stores
> which is going out of business.  I bought a book from Kobo which is in
> Adobe DRM EPUB format.  So, it's copy protected.  I launch the Kobo
> software.  It's Windows / Mac only, but I think they have an unsupported
>
> Linux version.  I log into my account.  I see the book I bought.  I
> connect the device via USB and click the button to sync the device.  The
>
> book is transferred.  I boot up the reader, and there it is.  Birds are
> singing.  The sun is shining.  All is good.
>
> Then, I buy two more books.  This time, they're in Adobe DRM PDF
> format.  Suddenly, things are different.  You cannot load those from the
>
> Kobo software.  You have to install the Adobe Digital Editions software,
>
> download the book, import into Adobe DE, then download to the reader.
> OK, I think.  A hassle, but no big deal.  Wrong!  OK, at this point, I
> think this software is a stinking rotting pile of rubbish, to put it
> mildly.  Every time I click a button or do anything, it pegs my dual
> core 1.7 GHz cpu so hard that Windows complains that the program is not
> responding.  OK, I can wait.  I'm patient.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.
> Twiddle thumbs.  OK, cool.  The books I bought are on my computer
> screen.  I can read them on the screen.  Wait again.  Breathe again.
> OK, I can read them slowly on my screen.  But, they work.  I connect the
>
> book reader.  Oh, now I have to authorize the computer, authorize the
> reader, and log into Adobe's website.  Blah Blah Blah.  Waste more
> time.  But, I get it done.  Now, I drag my new books over to my ebook
> reader.  It says transferring files.  Yea!  I bought two books, one
> about facebook, and one about twitter.  It says done.  I unplug the
> reader and reboot it in anticipation of reading my new purchases on it.
>
> @#$#%$^%^&&*%^&
>
> I look in the book list on the reader.  The twitter book is there, and
> is readable.  The facebook book is not there at all!  Nowhere!  (Or the
> other way around maybe.)  I go back to the laptop with Adobe DE on it.
> I can read the book just fine there.  I reconnect the reader and
> retransfer the book.  No luck.  I delete the books from the reader, from
>
> Adobe DE, redownload from Kobo, and start over.  Same result.  This is
> infuriating, and insane.
>
> Now, in all honesty, I don't know if Adobe is to blame, or if Kobo is to
>
> blame, or if the file got corrupted on their server, or what.  All I
> know is that I cannot read the book I bought on my reader.  It is very
> frustrating.
>
> Given the nature of our culture, and all the IP thieves out there, and
> the state of technology, I really don't see any alternative but that the
>
> publishers will put out stuff with DRM on it.  I understand.  I just
> wish the @$@#%#@!# thing would work like it should.   I just want to
> read the stinking book I bought.  That's all.
>
> Now that I've spent the morning ranting, I feel much better.  Now I can
> spend the afternoon trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with it.
>
> By the way, I really like the Kobo reader.  It supports EPUB format,
> which is the most universal.  I would recommend this or a similar reader
>
> to anyone in the market for such a device.  Both the Amazon Kindle and
> the Barnes and Noble Nook use proprietary DRM, which means that books
> you buy there, you can only read on that device.
>
> This took me way to long to write to proofread it.  So, I apologize for
> anything that sounds stupid due to a typo.  If anyone knows why this
> book won't read, I'd love to know.
>
> <-- set rant off<-- set soapbox off
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>    

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

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linuxdude AT c3energy.com