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Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.

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Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Companies Must Respect My Rights as a Customer

Actually, I started last year with my refusal to buy Sony electronics. I bought a Canon digital camera and a Sharp minidisc player/recorder because of Sony's insistence on putting recording restrictions into their Walkman minidisc units. (Oh, I also have one of the older Apex AD-660 DVD/CD-R/MP3 players that came out before the asinine Macrovision analog copy protection that makes all modern DVD players useless with older TV sets.)

But now the battle is getting harder. I need a new laser printer. I print hundreds of pages a week for document reviews and I want a nice, speedy, duplex black-and-white printer. Until Carly made her speech at CES I was all set on this HP printer, which I can get for $750 at Office Depot.

But not now. I will not spend my money with a company whose CEO thinks I am nothing but a consumer (I despise that word) of useless media crap from Hollywood and the Copyright Cabal. I am not a consumer. I am a customer. And I will not be treated like a criminal.

So I need a replacement for the HP2300d printer. Suggestions are welcome. I've looked at a few alternative offerings but they cost considerably more. All ideas are appreciated. Oh, and that HP DVD writer I was going to buy... Not a chance.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:35 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Spreading the DMCA

"Costa Rica needed a little more time to complete its participation in the CAFTA, and we're very pleased it has joined its Central American neighbors in this cutting-edge, modern FTA (free trade agreement) designed to expand trade between neighbors and friends.

[...]

"Costa Rica's full participation in CAFTA will streamline trade, promote investment, slash tariffs on goods, open trade in services, protect advanced intellectual property, and strengthen labor and environmental conditions."

Let me help you understand the jargon.

• Cutting edge -- a colloquialism meaning to cut away competition for big American corporations
• "neighbors and friends" -- a phrase used to describe weak, economically disadvantaged countries who agree to implement hideous intellectual property laws to protect big American corporations
• modern -- a term describing whatever is currently in vogue with big American corporations
• advanced intellectual property -- "The Simple Life", MTV, Britney Spears, "My Big Fat Obnoxious Whatever", "Cheaters", Jerry Springer

Lessig, and others have written for some time how the DMCA was being spread surreptitiously by the U.S. Trade Representative via international treaties. Many things America gives to the world are good and wholesome and beneficial. The DMCA is not one of them. It is a cancer born of the greed and avarice of a small handful of media companies who act as if the most vital function of a roof is to keep rain off the television [paraphrasing Bob Frankston]. But spreading it we are.

While the EFF and others are working diligently to rid us of the DMCA scourge we're simultaneously pumping it into the veins of the world economy like a vindictive doper -- sticking it to the rest of the world by pushing our anti-competitive, anti-innovation, corporatist intellectual property disease onto innocent victims. In many cases the DMCA is precisely the wrong kind of IP law developing countries need. But that's just all the more opportunity for big American corporations.

One need not be anti-capitalist or anti-copyright to see the flaws in the DMCA. It far outstrips any reasonable protection of property and moves into the invasion of privacy, restriction of speech, and restraint of trade all while criminalizing normal, everyday behavior that is both culturally and customarily accepted. Rather than promoting the sciences and useful arts it makes thieves of ordinary citizens -- school teachers, librarians, street rappers, and juveniles.

Artists and creators have some property rights in their creations. But the public also has a right to grow its domain and to exercise Fair Use. That was the deal with copyright. It was an intrinsic transaction -- limited protection in return for a public contribution. We should return to that balance and stop spreading bad law. Developing countries have enough difficulty stabilizing their economies. They need innovation, not lawsuits. They need creativity, not intellectual property mausolea. And they need our best ideas, not our worst.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:36 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Monday, January 26, 2004

Who's Listening While You Drive

The 9th Circuit Court has issued a split decision [pdf] overturning a lower court ruling granting the FBI request.

[...] One feature of the System allows the Company to open a cellular connection to a vehicle and listen to oral communications within the car. This feature is part of a stolen vehicle recovery mode that provides assistance to car owners and law enforcement authorities in locating and retrieving stolen cars. The same technology that permits the interception of the conversations of thieves absconding with the car also permits eavesdropping on conversations within the vehicle.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), realizing that the System can be used as a roving "bug" and following the procedures mandated for "bugging" private individuals suspected of criminal activity, sought and obtained a series of court orders requiring the Company to assist in intercepting conversations taking place in a car equipped with the System. [...]

The 9th Circuit ruled that the FBI's use of the system would materially impair the system's emergency function and was not allowable. The 9th Circuit took no interest in the violation of your privacy (since you don't actually have any), rather they saw the problem as a conflict in the contractual obligation of the service provider. If the system is redesigned so that the eavesdropping doesn't conflict with its function the decision will likely be reversed.

In any case, the decision applies only to 9th Circuit jurisdiction, so those of you living in the other 45+ states better watch what you say. You never know who may be listening...

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 3:28 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Hope is Not Strategy

The Dean campaign suffered from the delusion that technology was more important than it really was -- and confused the fact that some of us cross borders seamlessly via the Internet with the belief that the Internet has some magical bonding power. Similar delusions affect almost all technologists -- thinking their technology du jour is an all-powerful, all-important platform. We're seeing similar technology delusions corrupt the entire anti-terror effort. And the uber-bond mindset is rampant in the largely self-serving blogoshpere. But such delusions are dangerous because they inure us to the real barriers and issues that arise for people who do not use or view technology the same way we do.

I've seen complaints that Kerry and Edwards began coopting Dean's message and his Internet strategies. Maybe so. Dean raised a lot of money so it is obviously a good tool to do so. The difference is these guys made the Internet a supporting strategy in a world that is only ready to deal with the Internet as a secondary or tertiary technology -- like the phone system.

No candidate today would run a campaign based the telephone. But every candidate uses the telephone. I'm not claiming the Net is nothing more than a telephone. But I am saying that, to a lot of people, the Internet plays no more important role in their life than the telephone and they are not going to make major decisions based on it. I'm also saying that, in the near future, every campaign is going to be using the Internet in some way. And they'll do it because Howard Dean raised $15 million dollars, not because of any ideas about emergent democracy.

The corn farmers in Iowa obviously didn't know how important Dean's emergent democracy was. Or maybe they thought it would emerge just fine with or without the Internet, and with or without Howard Dean. I've read some pretty striking anti-Dean editorials by Democrats here in Georgia. They don't seem to think taking the country back has anything to do with the Internet, and are singularly unimpressed that he's collected a bunch of northern, techno-elitist white folks as his "grass roots" constituency. Dean may pick back up in Vermont, but I suspect he won't last through the southern primaries. But Dean's opponents will take his Internet lessons to heart.

That brings up the second problem with the Dean campaign -- while they were doing something new, it wasn't the least bit exclusive. They acted as if their insight was unique, as if no one else would catch on, as if only they were smart enough to use the Internet to reach an audience, raise funds, get out their message. As if this new tool gave them some sort of magic powers that others couldn't capture. It was almost arrogant, but that's too harsh a word for dreamers. A better word is naive. And shortsighted.

The Dean campaign is ahead of its time, and they're right about many things. Politics of the future will be more grass roots. The Internet will play a bigger and bigger role. But the Internet will play the same role for all sides, for both the champions and the enemies of democracy. It will not grant special privileges to one set of believers over another. It will not empower one political group over another. The advantage the Deanies saw, and upon which they hoped to capitalize, was a result of simple timing. They were first out of the chute but they had no sustainable advantage, or even differentiator.

What matters most here is that the Republicans are going to use the Internet too and the last Democrat standing had better be prepared to deal with it. The Internet does not engender goodness. It engenders connectivity. Those who disagree with us can be just as effective (or ineffective) in connecting like minds. Let's not forget that in the popular election Al Gore had 48.38% of the vote to George W. Bush's 47.87 -- a separation of less than one-half of one percent. There are an awful lot of people who openly support the President's policies. To assume that there is some hidden counter-majority which the Internet can magically expose is folly.

We had best stop fooling ourselves about the magic of the Internet and begin to think clearly about how we survive. As Jesse Walker said in the December 2003 issue of Reason magazine, "These days, choosing your politics is a matter of choosing who you're more afraid of, the Washington cabal that's openly trying to erase your freedoms or the various foreign cabals that are openly trying to kill you." This is not a pretty time, and naivete is not the answer.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 1:00 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

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