Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Jan-Benedict Glaw
2003-04-28T11:13:56Z

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On Sun, 2003-04-27 09:59:59 -0700, Larry McVoy <lm@bitmover.com>
wrote in message <20030427165959.GC6820@work.bitmover.com>:
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 04:21:06PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:

> The open source community, in my opinion, is certainly a contributing
> factor in the emergence of the DMCA and DRM efforts. This community
> thinks it is perfectly acceptable to copy anything that they find useful.
> Take a look at some of the recent BK flamewars and over and over you
> will see people saying "we'll clone it". That's not unique to BK,
> it's the same with anything else which is viewed as useful. And nobody
> sees anything wrong with that, or copying music, whatever. "If it's
> useful, take it" is the attitude.

See, the open source (or free source) people are _not_ interested in
marketing. They're addicted towards technical evolution. By locking new
technologies (like BK) against free use, you slow down evolution of
other "products" (it's a word from hell; I'd rather only talk about
programs). Well, away from companies and money, what do you think? Would
technical evolution get faster if your "idea" is eg. only one year
protected? ...if official standards (think C99) and any other
books/texts/media would belong to public domain after two years?

I think this would fasten evolution in sizes of _magnitudes_! And I
consider this a good thing (over giving companies the possibility to
rest some time because they earn money with licenses and patents).
Instead that, I'd like to express that there's no time to spend on
earning money from what _had been done_ but better spending any time on
doing further development (and leaving old things off).

> This problem is pervasive, it's not just a handful of people. Upon the
> advice of several of the leading kernel developers, I contacted Pavel's
> boss at SuSE and said "how about you nudge Pavel onto something more
> productive" and he said that he couldn't control Pavel. That's nonsense
> and everyone knows that. If one of my employees were doing something
> like that, it would be trivial to say "choose between your job and that".
> But Garloff just shrugged it off as not his problem.

I think there's everything alright. Abroad that, why not simply let
Pavel do whatever he likes to do at his spare time?

> Corporations are certainly watching things like our efforts with
> BitKeeper, as well as the other companies who are trying to play nice
> with the open source world. What are they learning? That if you don't
B
> lock it up, the open source world has no conscience, no respect, and will
> steal anything that isn't locked down. Show me a single example of the
>community going "no, we can't take that, someone else did all the work

You see this as stealing. I think of further enhancing what's currently
available! Don't rest on what had been done, proceed with evolution!

> to produce it, we didn't". Good luck finding it. Instead you get "hey,
> that's cool, let's copy it". With no acknowledgement that the creation
> of the product took 100x the effort it takes to copy the product.

That's what the README and the THANKS file is for. I like reading them a
lot. This is, because I have some respect to people starting new ideas.
...and I've got some respect for those who coded it. That's what the
AUTHORS file is in place:)

> Do you think that corporations are going sit by and watch you do that and
> do nothing to stop you? Of course they aren't, they have a strong self

They better start developing again.

> preservation instinct and they have the resources to apply to the problem.
> The DMCA, DRM, all that stuff is just the beginning. You will respond

Yes, I fear that.

> with all sorts of clever hacks to get around it and they will respond
> with even more clever hacks to stop you. They have both more resources
> and more at stake so they will win.

Why not simply face the _real_ problem? It's like "Is somebody allowed
to exclusively earn money from some idea/music/software/... for longer
than, say, half a year or a year or the like?"

My answer: No. If we socially accept these money-making machines, we
accept slowing down the creation of new ideas/music/software/..., just
because we give a lot time to their respective creators to wait for
money flowing in.

> The depressing thing is that it is so obvious to me that the corporations
> will win, they will protect themselves, they have the money to lobby the
> government to get the laws they want and build the technology they need.
> The more you push back the more locked up things will become.

Companies will win as long as lawa are like they are just right now (or
as long as current direction is kept). Consider the opposite: consider
peoples all over the world to think that it would be better to only
protect I/M/S/... for half a year; after this time, everything is public
domain. (Of course, laws had to be changed for this.)

I think this would be a better world's vision than today's view out of
my window...

MfG, JBG

--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw@lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481
"Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg
fuer einen Freien Staat voll Freier Bürger" | im Internet! | im Irak!
ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(IRAQ_WAR_2 | DRM | TCPA));

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