RuinsOfMorning.net

Arthur C. Clarke, scientist, futurist, author, has died at his home in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

Writing about his influence on my life is difficult, as difficult, perhaps, as writing about the influence of the English language itself, so ingrained is his writing into my past reading. It is impossible to say where or when I first picked up a Clarke novel or story, or indeed what that work might have been. There is even a sense of doubt that the stories I recall are really his, that they are not some ancient tales remembered more in the blood than the mind, so essential they feel, almost archetypal. Sometimes one might even judge half of all modern science fiction works to be elaborations and deviations of ideas Clarke had penned decades earlier. But this is hardly a wonder considering the startling fact that this man had been writing for longer than most of us have been alive.

While his death was not unexpected, it still weighs heavy. There may come a time when he, his works, and their influence will be forgotten, but that is one future that is truly unimaginable.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke CBE (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008)

You may have noticed that the UK government is, with the kind assistance of Andrew Burnham MP of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, is bowing to Hollywood and the record labels' various enforcement groups, essentially handing them the power to control the uses that UK citizens may make of their internet connections. ISPs have been given until April 2009 to comply with new regulations that will force them to inspect all data transferred through their systems and magically deduce whether or not it involves the sharing of copyrighted material. In the event that sharing is suspected (nothing more is required) the ISP subscriber will receive a strike against them, if they receive three strikes their internet service will be terminated.

No allowances have been made for the technological requirements for deep packet inspection of all traffic that passes through a service providers system. It may safely be presumed that the customers will end up paying extra to have their private data transmissions intercepted and analysed. I have yet to find any comment form Burnham on the morality of cutting off an innocent user when someone else who makes use of the same connection is suspected of sharing - if one family member breaks the rules then everyone in that household loses access this increasingly essential communications service. Nor have I seen any indication from those involved that they have any understanding of the encryption arms race they are about to enter and immediately lose - that will be an awful lot of money spent and trouble caused for a system that will be worked around before it is even put in place. Naturally there is no hint of how the ISP's are to identify copyrighted works from any other shared files. And what are the procedures for proving one's innocence? How does someone with a strike based on a suspicion show that they are not guilty of sharing (baring in mind the technical hurdles already involved in proving positive proof of sharing).

The most sensible response I have heard comes from a Slashdot commenter:

"if all ISPs in the UK staged a strike by cutting Internet access everywhere for two or three days and claim that would be the only possible way to ensure their customers aren't pirating anything, I am sure that the outrage would force another look at the law. And if they did this 2 different times, like once on Thursday Friday and Saturday, it could cause direct deposit information and payroll services to be interrupted. If they did this on again a week later on lets say Monday and Tuesday, there would be so much upset and confusion that those who think they wasn't effected will be."

Personally I will be happy to lose access for a few days if it will do anything to prevent this travesty from going any further. Frankly, the harm done to individual users will not even register compared to the harm done to UK financial sector, not least the content industry. They must learn that the environment has changed and all the legislation in the world cannot change it back. Technology has moved forward and they have failed to follow. Their demise is inevitable, and is only hastened by making enemies of us all.

This is a translation of Don Reisinger's interview with the RIAA's Cara Duckworth for CNet. The translation is into English from Bullshit.

Don: Please tell me who you are and what you do.

RIAA: Cara Duckworth, spokeswoman for the RIAA.

Trandlation: Cara Duckworth, Recording Industry Ass. of America mouthpiece.

Don: What can you tell me about the college deterrence program?

RIAA: Began last February. It was becoming clearer that despite cool new legal services and the ongoing educational efforts, too many students--some of music's biggest fans--were getting their music illegally and learning the wrong lessons about stealing and the law. There had to be a deterrence factor involved so that individuals knew that along with personal consequences (i.e., viruses, spyware infiltrating hard drive) there would also be legal consequences to engaging in illegal downloading behavior. Bringing lawsuits was by no means our first choice, but a necessary step we had to take.

Translation: It seems like the harder we try to make money off those ungrateful little shits the more they turn away from us. I just don't get it, I mean I don't get technology in general so how am I supposed to know about Trojans and viruses... something to do with safe sex, yes? Sony tried giving them that great rootkit for free and they just threw it back in their faces. So now we're going to start dragging our biggest customers through the courts. Makes sense when we think about it.

Don: Why college students?

RIAA: First, it should be clarified that our college campaign is in addition to the lawsuits we file against individuals using commercial ISPs to illegally download and distribute music. Second, college students have reached a stage in life when their music habits are crystallized, and their appreciation for intellectual property has not yet reached its full development. These two points coupled together present challenges to those who would like to be compensated for their creative works. Understanding the value of intellectual property is important to the future job market for many of these students--industries that rely on copyright protection employ more than 11 million workers nationwide and continue to grow.

Translation: Hey, don't get me wrong, we'll make you all pay. But students in particular just don't think the way we want them to, and we at the Ass. are now forced to brainwash them through legal means. Our understanding of intellectual property is firmly fixed in the last century and we want to make damn sure that everyone else's understanding is too. For instance, we are determined not to contemplate any alteration to the standard business model and to do our best to retard technological progress that will inevitably render that model obsolete.

Don: What group of people do you see pirating the most music?

RIAA: While college students used to be some of music's greatest fans, unfortunately that is no longer the case. I would point you to the evidence of the extensiveness of music theft amongst college campuses from Student Monitor and other market research firms to show why we are focusing some of our efforts on universities.

Translation: College brats! Those little bastards! They've got the money, how else did they get into college? They're trying to improve their chances in the job market using money that rightfully belongs to us. If you'd like to see my evidence for this assumption you'll have to buy it, just like we did.

Don: How do you respond to people who say your organization is a group of bullies?

RIAA: I have to step back for a moment. These are certainly heavy issues and none which we take lightly. When an individual is caught illegally downloading music, it sometimes happens that the person creates a stir. The reality of it is that nobody wants to get caught and most people complain when they are. The music industry has lost more than $3 billion in sales over the last few years. Bringing lawsuits is certainly no one's ideal answer--we're well aware of that. But if we had sat on our hands and chosen to do nothing about the piracy problem as the music industry was hemorrhaging jobs and lost sales, imagine what the extent of theft would be today and how the legal marketplace would be struggling to gain traction. The digital music marketplace is demonstrably better because of our efforts.

Translation: They're just whining little crybabies. Wah wah wah, they're picking on me! Wah wah wah, $10,000 per track is too much! Wah wah wah, I don't even own a computer! They're the one's not buying music, they should be giving us money and they're not! Think of all the money we're losing to people who aren't paying for things we never gave them, and trust me: you won't believe how much we never gave them. It's progress that's causing all this. What are we supposed to do just let the world move on and leave us behind? Like hell! If the only way for us to keep our jobs is to make you pay for service you no longer need then so be it. Put up and pay up!

Don: How have you addressed those huge pirating cartels overseas? Are you going for a soft target?

RIAA: Our preference--first and foremost--is to take action against the services themselves that facilitate the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted works. We are actively assisting efforts by policy makers in Washington to encourage countries whose copyright laws have not kept up with the times or who do not appropriately enforce intellectual property violations. Additionally, we are affiliated with IFPI, which represents the interest of the global music community and assists in the enforcement of copyright infringement cases outside of the U.S.

Translation: You mean the physical pirates, the ones selling counterfeit CDs? What, are you shitting me? Some of those guys are real criminals, they got guns and stuff. And they don't speak American so... you know... Oh wait, do you mean The Pirate Bay? Those fuckers! Sweden's turning into some kind of commie paradise. We gotta fix that as soon as possible and it takes money to get laws passed so we need to sue more students, on the double. That thing with getting Russia's WTO membership on the line, that was great move; maybe we could try something like that.

Don: Do you think your policy of lawsuits and settlements work?

RIAA: Absolutely. Since we began this initiative, we've seen a P2P problem that once was growing at dizzying speeds essentially flatten out. People are now more aware of what is legal and illegal when it comes to downloading music. But more importantly, bringing lawsuits is only one piece of the pie--we are actively investing resources in the education of students of all ages on the value of music and importance of copyrights and, perhaps most importantly, music companies are continuously partnering with exciting new services that offer fans an array of innovative opportunities to access their favorite music.

Translation: P2P has stopped growing. That means we're winning. There is absolutely no need to interpret this result as a saturation of the P2P market. You don't honestly believe that everyone who is going to share is already sharingm do you? No. That was us. We did that. And we're going to press our advantage by continuing to terrify your kids into thinking the way we want them to, and we'll pay for that by suing the ones that don't learn. See how that works? Also, we're going to find ways to monetise just about everything you can do with music, including things no one's thought of yet. That will make everyone feel better about it.

Don: Why do you think you're such a disliked organization?

RIAA: I don't agree with the loaded premise of the question. In some online quarters, there may be lots of heat about the tough stands we sometimes must take. But amongst the general public, the favorability ratings of the record industry remain as positive as ever and surpass other forms of entertainment like movie or TV studios. I believe my answer to question No. 5 can apply here as well. But let it be said--the RIAA is much more than lawsuits. For example, we also are responsible for the Gold & Platinum program awarding artists who have achieved successful album sales and are active proponents of free speech in music. But no one likes lawsuits, and no one likes to get caught. It's not an ideal situation for any party involved. But with all the new, innovative legal alternatives in the marketplace (and more emerging on almost a daily basis), the music community is proactively offering fans ways to avoid lawsuits and get their favorite music at affordable prices.

Translation: Nonsense, there are lots of people who like us. It's just the ones we take money from or whose business model conflicts with our own that seem to have a problem. Like music lovers... and artists... and consumer groups, and electronics manufacturers, civil rights groups, Swedish communist politicians, anyone who has spent more than a few minutes actually thinking logically about the issues... oh, and the record labels too, those guys have seriously got the hump these days. Hmm, I guess we've bribed a few musicians and politicians into liking us though. And once our plans come to fruition and music lovers have no other option but to do what we tell them, we'll just tell them to like us. It'll be great!

Don: How do you respond to the people who say you're going after grandmothers and young children when you should be going after real criminals in gunships?

RIAA: I'd give them the facts and encourage them not to believe everything they read that aggressively villainizes the organization. We have a physical antipiracy unit that assists law enforcement agents in shutting down piracy operations both big and small. Oftentimes street peddlers selling bootlegged copies of music are also involved in large-scale drug and weapons trafficking, and we find clear evidence of that on raids. As for individuals themselves, we have no way of screening defendants based on demographics, socioeconomic status, or perceived sympathy. Upon initial discovery of a violation, we have an IP address, a sampling of the files that were shared, and a timestamp of the activity. We consistently follow the prescribed legal process to obtain identifying information and always try to be fair and reasonable in resolving each of our cases.

Translation: We'll go after anyone who crosses us, period. We're totally ruthless. Hell, if you're dead we'll just take what we need from your family. You remember that now, next time you start up your BT client. We use technology that produces a set of numbers that provides incontrovertible proof that the people we say guilty are guilty. We don't need to worry about network architecture, or shared IPs, or multiplexing and all that confusing stuff, that just misleads the courts. All they need to know is that we can prove anything we need to with numbers... Except street peddlers, they don't have IP addresses so they're harder to come by. Imagine if we put enough people out on the street to find those guys, there wouldn't be anybody left at the office to sue students.

Don: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

RIAA: Regarding our college initiative, a university's role in reducing the level of piracy on its campus cannot be overemphasized. We have consistently said that the more proactive a school is in the education of its students regarding its IT and enforcement policies, the offering of great legal alternatives so that students can have access to their favorite music (at deeply discounted prices or even for free), and most importantly, implementing effective technology that helps protect the integrity of its network, will lead to fewer instances of violations and fewer instances of hearing from us--a win for everybody!

Translation: We're doing all we can to fight music lovers. In fact, we think we're doing too much! So we need colleges who would otherwise be sitting there minding their own business to do our job for us, preferably without any reimbursement. If they don't then we'll just wring some more cash out of the student body and use it to bribe a few more politicians to put the financial frighteners on them. That's how it works: we bribe the politicians, the politicians scare the colleges, the colleges scare their students, the students give us money. It doesn't end there, of course: once we have our claws in them we can use the colleges to collect our money for us, straight from the students, on the pretence of providing them with legal access to music. And anyone who doesn't pay must be a pirate - we can pick them like fruit!

A growing number of Swedish MPs are questioning the logic and legality of the recording industry targeting file sharers and forcing ISPs to help identify them. They have a simple and obvious solution that many of us will find familiar:

"Decriminalizing all non-commercial file sharing and forcing the market to adapt is not just the best solution. It's the only solution, unless we want an ever more extensive control of what citizens do on the Internet. Politicians who play for the antipiracy team should be aware that they have allied themselves with a special interest that is never satisfied and that will always demand that we take additional steps toward the ultimate control state. Today they want to transform the Internet Service Providers into an online police force, and the Antipiracy Bureau wants the authority for themselves to extract the identities of file sharers. Then they can drag the 15-year-old girl who downloaded a Britney Spears song to civil court and sue her."

Those of us with any insight into the industry already knew that this had gone too far, that the recording industry was seeking powers far beyond those required for commerce and that such grasping power-hungry manoeuvring was a sing of bad things to come. Now it seems they have finally push hard enough to raise the heckles of more than a few politicians. Six members of the Swedish Moderate Party drafted the article quoted above taking into account some uncomfortable questions from various government bodies including the Data Inspection Board and The Competition Authority. It draws attention to the issues of privacy, authority, due process and human rights. Since it's publication support has continued to grow and a second article has been signed by 13 members of the Swedish parliament.

Finally there are politicians who are walking into this argument with open eyes instead of overstuffed wallets. Hopefully this movement will produce something akin to reasonable and workable legislation in Sweden, something that protects private citizens and forces the recoding industry to accept that it no longer has a place in the modern world. With a little more luck, such common sense thinking will prove infectious and we will start to see this attitude spread to the rest of Europe.

In order to get your DRM-free Sony music you will need to travel to a dealer of antique physical music formats. There you must pay approximately $13 to purchase an object (very likely a piece of a dead tree) upon which has been inscribed, in a ludicrous parody of security, an arbitrary and unencrypted code (note that it will not be necessary to provide your public key). This code, when entered into the more civilized medium of a web site, will activate the download of your music.

When planning your purchase you should account for the price of travelling to and from the antique dealer. Also adjust for being forced to download an entire album including the tracks you do not want. Take note that there are only 37 albums from the catalogue that may be purchased in this manner and that at least two of those are Britney Spears and Barry Manilow. It may also be prudent to consider the fact that, while at the antique dealer, you will be able to purchase a piece of physical media containing a higher-quality version of the music for approximately the same price. At this point it will prove enlightening to compare the cost and convenience of this venture with that of gabbing a torrent.

...

Sony, you were more trouble than you were worth yesterday. You're worth even less today.

And here we have it, the epitaph that shall be inscribed on the depleted uranium sarcophagus of DRM, once all its myriad insectile limbs have ceased to twitch and are finally tucked inside:

Our download service provides files in the WMA music format or the WMV video format, which is not supported by Apple Macintosh computers. To use your music with an iPod, simply follow the steps below:

1. Save each downloaded song to your PC


2. Burn a music CD (in CDA file format)


3. Import the music from the CD into iTunes


4. Update your iPod

These well known 'burn-n-rip' instructions to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work", instructions that breach Title 17/Chapter 12/Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are brought to us by none other than... Sony!

Delicious, isn't it.

This comes via ArsTechnica.com who also note that Sony is about to follow its competitors/RIAA cronies, EMI, Universal, and Warner, in dropping DRM, starting with "1 billion tracks via the Amazon Music Store".

So we're winning. These idiots have at least begun to realised the Luddian futility of trying to recreate the limitations of the 20th Century in the 21st. But still, these anachronistic corporate structures persist, punishing people for making obvious use of ubiquitous technology, stifling any innovation that might actually make accessing our culture easier, then restricting and filtering that culture as though it belongs to them, trailing behind them a vast mantle of industries based on physical products, products that are as doomed as the jobs they now barely support, with not even a hint of an exit strategy that could save livelihoods.

They are done with providing access, they do not control the primary means of production, they are no longer an artist's only way of reaching an audience, their only purpose now is to support themselves and defend their increasingly illogical position. So long as we are asked, or even forced, to pay for a service that we no longer need and certainly do not want, the battle will continue...

Listen, Glick, the movie industry is already doing the one thing that guarantees I will never illegally download their 'products', namely they are now making such deficient, low-brow, half-assed, worthless, over-hyped, over-funded, overwritten, sub intellectual, inadequate, substandard, ridiculous, inferior, scoff-worthy, malodorous, cringe-making, mismanaged, shoddy, insufferable, incompetent and defective low-com-dom crap, that I would never ever even consider wasting one single byte of my precious bandwidth on any of it. I would be perfectly happy to see every last bit of your meritless trash forever erased from the internet were it not for the fact that you are trying to do it by introducing a radically disproportionate mechanism: ending Network Neutrality!

Don't cover your ears Glickster, you need to hear this: Shrek 3 is not important enough to bring an end to our freedom. The only reason the movie industry can say it's losing money now is because they spent way too much on producing something that nobody actually needs and nobody really wants. The Western World will not crumble because they can't turn a profit, but it might if we lose the integrity and security of the single most important communications tool in history.

One way or another the IP delusional industries are one the way out. It's only a matter of time before the average consumer figures out that their 'entertainment' just isn't worth it any more, that the busker on the street outside the cinema is a hell of lot more creative, interesting and memorable than the claptrap movie they just walked out of. How long do you think they'll watch their technology subverted, their personal data ransacked, their legally purchased media disintegrating, and their communications tapped and blocked before they think: "But I didn't even like the Bourne Appendectomy!"

Anyone invested in the movie or recording industries with even an iota of common sense should be selling up now, while their stock is still worth the ferromagnetic material it's stored on. You know it can't go on like this. It just isn't reasonable in consider this a survivable scenario for anyone involved. I mean it. Get out now. This is going to end badly, and you know it.

Glicky, you are not adding to our culture in any positive way beyond uniting the rest of us against you. You are not curing any horrible diseases. You are not on a crusade of righteousness. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are not welcome here.

This kit was bought in a junk shop in Enniscorthy about twenty years ago as a curio. Despite some effort there has been no progress in identifying its purpose.

The kit consists of a small, well-worn pouch of fine purple leather closed with a single snap fastener on a double flap (the letters GEM are stamped on the underside of the fastener cap). The pouch is approximately by 9.5cm by 6.5cm when closed, 9.5cm by 17.5cm open. The outside of the pouch shows a patch of what appears to be thick, dried ink that is flexible yet cracked in places.

There is a single, very faint Cyrillic 'R' ['Я'] on the top of the lower flap angled to the left of the fastener (too faint to show up in a photograph) which looks like the first letter of a word or phrase arcing down under the fastener. No other letters are visible.

Opening the pouch reveals a set of four polished, purple wedges, each with a small knob at the top. The wedges appear to be made from Bakelite or some other dense primitive plastic and seem to have been cut and turned rather than moulded. Each wedge is attached by a 9cm brass chain to something resembling a map pin made of the same material. The metal spikes in the map pins are irregular, some shorter, some placed off-centre. There are six loops in the pouch that hold the four wedges and two pieces of cork into which the pins are stuck.

Characters are stamped along the edge of each wedge: "No 720903"

I have never been a fan of KISS, and I never will be thanks to the enlightened opinions of Mr. Gene Simmons:

"The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money. It's only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there's no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They've got freckles. That's a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit's mask."

'Gene Simmons: college kids killed music biz' reuters.com

Sued off the face of the earth? Have their homes and cars taken? I have to wonder if there are actually any 'kids' who would now admit to downloading a Kiss track but, Mr Simmons, do you really want them punished for seeking out your music? Do you think this will make them want to pay for anything you produce ever again?

And if we need any more evidence that this is the drivelous spoutings of a narrow-minded, over-paid half-wit we are presented at the end with this little gem:

"The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on."

'Gene Simmons: college kids killed music biz' reuters.com

... I... I don't even know where to start! Mr. Simmons, gold is expensive because it is extremely useful and attractive while at the same time being VERY RARE. Sure we could all decide that it's worth a lot less but that will just make it harder to come by because getting it out of the ground will become less profitable.

Music, Mr. Simmons, even yours unfortunately, is infinitely abundant, it can be reproduced endlessly and distributed globally at virtually no cost. It's as though music covers the streets like dirt, clogging gutters, and getting trodden unintentionally into people's homes, yet we have this ridiculous system that makes it illegal to bend down and pick any of it up. Bottom line: the monetary value of anything, including music, is inversely proportional to it's availability, if it is infinitely abundant then it's monetary value is indistinguishable from zero.

"As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy." Seriously Mr. Simmons, could you be any more establishment?

I want to see artists honoured for their success, given something that proportionally rewards their contribution to our culture. But this cannot be at the expense of our freedom to participate in that culture, the ability to use our own technology as we see fit and to remain secure in our private matters. That is why I back the concept of a Independent Democratic Blanket License, to free ourselves and support our artists. Yes, change can be scary, it will cost jobs, but it will also create new jobs, whole new business models even. Think of all the cool new media and networking technology we will be designing, building, selling and buying when we can share media without fear for our liberty. Think of all the artists who aren't even given a chance in today's market who could get their music to people's ears and get paid for it through the IDBL. Artists are not the enemy, we're fighting for their freedom too.

So, Mr. Gene "Doesn't have a f---ing clue" Simmons, get your wise on, right now, or we're leaving you behind.

Is it my imagination or is the recording industry doing the copyfight a favour?

Crunch time may be on us sooner than any of us could hope if the industry continues to make enemies this way. Think of it, they are vilifying themselves to an entire generation, poisoning their own imagined future consumer base in a vain effort to reverse time. There is are nations of kids leaving college over the next few years that have been cajoled and threatened by these idiots, that have lived in fear of being sued, of having their education taken away from them, both individually and now collectively, have seen their own technology broken by absurd legal conditions, seen their computers subverted and turned against them. These kids have seen a dying industry savagely clawing at their freedom in its efforts to preserve its own rotting carcass, becoming so ferocious and incoherent that the only possible future is self-destruction and dissolution. We don't want them around, the kids don't want them, their own artists want out, even being associated with the names of these companies has become a grave offence.

But we're far from done. We still need to see them fail and fall, broken, liquidated down to the last paper-clip to pay back the money they've extorted from music lovers, to pay for the anguish and misery they've caused, to reimburse us for the efforts we have all had to make to work around the god-awful technological atrocities they've inflicted on the world, and not least to pay for the coming apocalypse in the industries they have been stringing along for so long on the promise of a physical future, a promise which now sounds like the delusion of a fancied industrial renaissance.

Anyone who has tied their assets to the recording industry will be facing some stark choices in the next few years. Those with any sense will get out now, and get out fast.

There is no coming back from this.

The future is free.