Re: [h2o-discuss] "The right to read"

["Jon Garfunkel" <jgarfunk@bellatlantic.net>]

Pedro's comments on an essay by Richard Stallman:
>The tale is advancing a future where bad use of technology can lead to a
world
>worse than the present one.

A lesson to be learned-- in The Twilight Zone! (sorry, R.S. is not as
endearing a storyteller as his spiritual comrade-in-arms, the other R.S.--
Rod Serling).

There was an article about DRM ("Digital Rights Management") in the 7/17
Economist, including quotes from Lessig, of course, and a witty illustration
showing a DRM robotic arm recklessly stamping (c)'s all over the desktop of
a hapless computer user.

The article points out wisely that software will be insufficient to protect
information, thus hardware is needed to be wired into the PC's. Wave Systems
is developing such a "copyright chip." I assume they will wish to wire this
into printers, too, and why stop there, why not our eyes? After all, the
long eye of the law can only go as far in catching us in the act of making
illicit printings or screenings.

Lucky for us Open Groupies that history has unfolded in such a way:

1. Existing PC chips are quite sufficiently fast by now. I won't yet accept
some snoop hardware along with some better graphic rendering capabilities in
the new PC I don't need. But will typical consumers say that about future
Internet appliances?

2. The (c) symbol is a bit tricky to find in most document systems,
beginning with the fact that it's nowhere on the standard QWERTY kbd. I
still don't know whether your email reader will know what to do if I figure
out how to insert one here. (By contrast, the @ symbol has proved much more
useful).

As for the marketability of DRM systems:

I suspect that there are some professions (not too mention cults) which
depend on information protection, and will support the DRM industry. What
jolts me is that we've got software developers actually writing this stuff.
They may not embrace the agenda of {Barlow, Stallman, etc} any more than I
do, but were't they weaned on GNU utilities?

As for the rest of us, we are the beneficiaries of an ever-expanding
punditsphere, which promotes the use of the information most freely
available.

Jon Garfunkel
software engineer, GTE Internetworking