Posted 15:19 by Mark Federman permanent link
Will copyright reform chill use of Web?

Michael Geist has this article in today's Toronto Star alerting us to the fact that Canadian legislators are not entirely immune to the siren song of commercializing the Internet, even for scholarly use.

A Canadian Heritage parliamentary committee chaired by Toronto-area MP Sarmite Bulte presented a vision of copyright that would transform the Internet from the incredible open source of information that it is into a predominantly commercial medium available primarily to those willing to open up their cheque books. It foresees, among other things, schools being required to pay for using, as course materials, Web-based information that is made publicly available - often with the poster's intention of reaching as wide an audience as possible and with no expectation of payment. ... the Copyright Act establishes a series of "user rights," known as exceptions, that allow users to freely use portions of copyrighted work for such things as research, private study, news reporting, and criticism. While Bulte recently expressed concern that these exceptions lead to "freebies," in fact it is these exceptions that ensure that the Copyright Act retains the balance needed to give creators their exclusive rights....

Although it acknowledges that some work on the Internet is intended to be freely available, the committee recommends the adoption of the narrowest possible definition of publicly available. Its vision of publicly-available includes only those works that are not technologically or password protected and contain an explicit notice that the material can be used without prior payment or permission. Rather than adopting an approach that facilitates the use of the Internet, Bulte's committee has called for the creation of a restrictive regime in which nothing is allowed unless expressly permitted. The result will be an Internet in which schools will be required to pay to use Internet materials contrary to the expectations of many creators.

Maybe Bulte will lose her seat in the upcoming election. [link expires June 3] What legislators fail to understand - repeatedly fail to understand - is that "the Internet has created an infrastructure that enables long-term structural economic growth among a wide variety of traditional industries and enterprises. We now have an environment that has radically enhanced, extended, accelerated and enabled otherwise conventional businesses to do business and to manufacture money!" (I'm quoting myself here; this is taken from a talk I'm doing this Friday at the Rotman Business School at the University of Toronto.) If we had the type of restrictions on usage, payment requirements and copyright tightening that are now being proposed and implemented via legislation around the world, we would never have had the incredible growth of the Internet, and its economic benefits.

But since when did politicians ever understand the meaning of fairy tales, like the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs, or even The Emperor's New Clothes, for that matter!
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Posted 12:23 by Mark Federman permanent link
Child Porn and the Net

This is a delicate subject, to say the least. A male nurse from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children was arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography on his computer. The police, among others, have implicated and censured the Internet for being the conduit through which all of this obscenity is disseminated. According to the reporter who interviewed me on the subject yesterday, one police officer apparently lamented that we can't just unplug the Internet for a few days to get to the bottom of these child pornography rings. Another publicly stated (on television news) that file sharing networks like KaZaA should police the content that flows through them.

As if.

As if such self-policing was technically feasible.
As if a self-policed network wouldn't be instantly circumvented by other peer-to-peer networks that are less known and relatively underground.
As if the dissemination of child pornography on the Internet via peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA isn't the best thing that has happened to law enforcement.

That's right - good ol' McLuhan reversal strikes again.

Whenever police arrest a person who has such P2P links with other like-minded, evil people, they can exploit those links to trace others with similar proclivities around the world, at least until charges are laid and news of the bust is made public. But until then, police can, and do, made considerable inroads to quickly infiltrate child porn sharing groups that lead to arrests in other jurisdictions.

The other aspect to remember is that child exploitation and pornography existed long before the Internet. It is only the volume of such material, accelerated by the power of the 'net, that has captured the public attention and caused us, as a society, to direct resources to track down and eliminate these blights on society. Without the Internet, police would be tracking people one by one, if they were given the resources to do so. And without a public outcry, that would be one big if.

So here's the quiz: What technology is the biggest boon to child pornographers? If you said the Internet, you haven't been paying attention. (Go back to the top and reread the entry!) The answer is the digital camera, that eliminates the risk of inadvertent discovery by a photolab technician. And the last time I checked, it's only Donald Rumsfeld who has been calling for the elimination of digital cameras in circumstances of sexual exploitation of innocents. Talk about someone with something to hide!
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Posted 09:46 by Mark Federman permanent link
Happy Anniversary Understanding Media!

Today is the 40th anniversary of Understanding Media: The extensions of man, Marshall McLuhan's iconic, and greatest, work. On such an occasion, I think it is worthwhile to contemplate McLuhan's famous opening passage:

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology. Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs, it is true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their work and human association that our preceding mechanical technology had destroyed. Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message. In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. The restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology. The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machine was fragmentary, centralist, and superficial in its patterning of human relationships.

Don't you just love that "cornflakes or Cadillacs" phrase? For those among you who are trying to decypher McLuhan's enigmatic paradox, "The Medium is the Message," I can direct your attention to this essay that attempts to answer the question, so what does it mean, anyway? If you're ready to move on to your own reflections, Liss Jeffrey is hosting an online symposium on which you are welcome to comment on your favourite aspect of the book.

As a rough estimate, I would say about 80% of everything McLuhan subsequently did is in Understanding Media in one form or another. The trick is to tease it out from the mosaic form of the book. Its style suggests not the written word that causes, "separation of sight and sound and meaning that is peculiar to the phonetic alphabet," as McLuhan says, but rather the spoken word in which, "we tend to react to each situation that occurs." This can best be experienced by reading the work aloud, which is how I have tended to lead seminars in Understanding Understanding Media. In doing so, one can appreciate the verbal puns that reveal themselves in the aural form, shedding new light on the depth of meaning that McLuhan conveys in this monumental work. As well, we can begin to appreciate McLuhan the rhetorician, as he has devised the book using the tradition of the rhetorical form from the archaic trivium. When read in this way, the book seemingly organizes itself into comprehensible sections and subsections, an oral structure that is lost to the lineal, visual, typographic reader.

The influence and prescience of the book cannot be overstated: Five years before the first two computers exchanged bits across a nascent ARPANet, McLuhan predicted nearly all of the effects we are now experiencing in our society, in our work life and our global culture under conditions of instantaneous, multi-way communication.

Understanding Media began an arc in McLuhan's scholarship that culminated with his "grand unified theory," Laws of Media: The new science that was published eight years after his death. In the sixteen years that passed between Understanding Media and his death prior to the publication of Laws of Media, McLuhan expanded his notion of medium to include everything from which a change emerges, essentially everything we conceive or create. He realized that, when judged by the effects our creations have on us and the interpersonal dynamics of our world, our media - our inventions and conceptions - structure the way we think and the way we behave. By creating a vocabulary through which we can understand media, we can take control of our creations, and thereby, of our world.

That realization and gift to humankind is worth celebrating. Happy 40th!
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Posted 10:18 by Mark Federman permanent link
Today's Retrievals

David Weinberger captures the exuberation of Massachussetts becoming "sort of Canadian" by officially recognizing same-sex marriage. (And, as an aside, I really wish the "Family Values" crowd would remember the commandment about bearing false witness, and just admit that their objection on this issue is founded on the erosion of Christian values, not Family Values. The former I can buy - I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can buy it and respect it. The latter is simply obfuscation of sanctimonious hypocrisy. But I digress...)

We note the retrieval from fifty years ago, a case that is mostly forgotten - or not even known about by many people today. For today is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, that said, in part,

"separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The decision effectively denied the legal basis for segregation in Kansas and 20 other states with segregated classrooms and would forever change race relations in the United States.

At one time, those who were not white were not even considered persons under the law, let alone equal. Today, only the most avowed racists hold such thoughts. At one time, those who were not heterosexual were not considered equal under the law, especially in matters concerning inheritance, spousal support, adoption, medical decision making, corporate spousal benefits, marriage... This is a cool medium. I'll let you complete the thought.

Congratulations to justices in Massachussetts for their courage, wisdom, vision and leadership. And congratulations to all the newlyweds.
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Posted 16:17 by Mark Federman permanent link
RIAA Misleads! Democracy Threatened! Film at 11:00!

Several interesting connections to share with you that demonstrate the effects of being... well... interconnected. Let's start with those obfuscating folks at the Recording Industry Association of America, the RIAA. According to the way they cook their books - well done, if you please - they are not technically lying when they claim that their sales are down, while actual point-of-sale unit sales, dollar sales and profit are significantly up, year over year, between 2003 and 2004. This fascinating explanation of bookkeeping legerdemain gives us the key points:

There is only one logical integration of all these statistics with the recent Soundscan data: even though actual point-of-purchase sales are up by about 9% in the US - and the industry sold over 13,000,000 more units in 2004 (1st quarter) than in 2003 (1st quarter) - the Industry is still claiming a loss of 7% because RIAA members shipped 7% fewer records than in 2003.

Forget the confusing percentages, here's an oversimplified example: I shipped 1000 units last year and sold 700 of them. This year I sold 770 units but shipped only 930 units. I shipped 10% less units this year. And this is what the RIAA wants the public to accept as "a loss."

I'll go a step further. This fact, that [RIAA president, Cary] Sherman seems to confirm, should logically mean a smaller percentage of returns. But, shouldn't fewer returns mean higher profit margins and faster turnaround; and shouldn't that be good for both the retail and wholesale side of the industry? "Sure," admits Sherman today...

The simple explanation for why this works is that the retail side of the industry has done what every other distributor/retailer has done - reduced inventory cycles, in this case, from 10 weeks' supply in stores to about 2 weeks' supply in order to better manage their businesses.

But still the RIAA blames their supposed, and very profitable, "loss" on pirates, and as a result, continues to lobby governments all over the world - now including Canada - and the World Intellectual Property Organization, to tighten so-called anti-piracy laws. But tightening these laws will control much more than music and other artistically-oriented intellectual property. They will also control our ability to participate fully in 21st century democracy.

Governments throughout the last century operated their respective democracies by tightly controlling and managing information. That's why, for instance, there was such a strong push to enact Freedom of Information, or Access to Information statutes in most of the progressive, Western democracies. But these laws are always subject to governmental oversight, and information released is usually - and literally - covered by redaction. With the rise of our interconnectivity, however, information "leaks" out onto the 'net every so often. Little bits of information here, a photo there, embarrassing video or audio clips seemingly everywhere. Each by itself could be explained away, or simply ignored. But placed in electronic proximity of one another and accelerated around the world at light speed, these bits emerge into a revealing patterns of action, inaction or intentionality that those in power might prefer to have kept under cover - right, Trent Lott?

Such patterns that help to reveal truth are what some are calling "emergent transparency" that reveal the true workings of government and power-brokers worldwide. They are becoming central to true participatory democracy in our time. This network-enabled "freedom of information" allows people to make up their own minds about issues, and sometimes reach conclusions about policy that significantly differ from government policies, actions and activities undertaken by those who were nominally democratically elected. The process of democracy happens long before we go to the polls, and freedom to access to information that is independent of government sources, control and mediation is vital to the health of democracies in our contemporary world - regardless of what certain administrations might want to believe.

So what does all this have to do with the RIAA's lobbying for tighter controls on intellectual property? Glad you asked! The same mechanisms that would control the so-called pirates, would also control the content vital to emergent transparency, and put the controls far beyond the reach of citizens. The control would ultimately rest with corporations that some might judge to be a tad too cozy with those in power. Just ask Michael Moore how this works.

One thing the "Debacle in Iraqle" has highlighted tremendously well is the disconnection between the will of the people and the actions of their governments in countries like the U.K., Australia and Poland. In the United States, government agencies tightly controlling direct access to influential information maintained support for Bush's actions equal to, or better than, partisan divisions. Only the revelation of the Abu Ghraib photographs caused support to nose-dive. Imagine the potential policy differences that might have occurred had the American public had more transparent access to information. Now imagine what might happen with less.

Film at 11:00? Only from press agents embedded with the government.

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Posted 18:35 by Mark Federman permanent link
Saddened, But Not Surprised

The breaking news today about the beheading of Nick Berg is stunningly tragic, but not surprising. Violence begets violence. That is the message - the effect - of the Middle East conflict, the lessons we should be learning from Israel and Palestine. Violence begets violence in a manner that is ever-escalating until either one side unilaterally screams, "ENOUGH!" and backs away, or both sides are completely and utterly destroyed. And what is the response from the White House?

It shows the true nature of the enemies of freedom. They have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. We will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice.

What an ironic expression in the face of the revelations of torture in Abu Ghraib prison - the "enemies of freedom ... have no regard for the lives of innocent men, women and children," including those who are being held - and indecently violated - by those "enemies of freedom," Americans under the direction of Americans, with the complicity of the American administration.

Violence begets violence.
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Posted 00:24 by Mark Federman permanent link
Just One Observation About the Photos

It's not as if you can fake a look of joy, even if you're following orders.
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Posted 18:42 by Mark Federman permanent link
Found Reading

Between a bunch of heavy reading, and a quick speaking trip to Rotterdam, I've been absent. (Anyone miss me?) I came across this while reading a paper on the intersection between critical postmodern theory and adult education. The excerpt comes from M.W. Apple's paper, "Educational reform and educational crisis" that originally appeared in Journal of Research in Science Teaching in 1992.

Freedom in a democracy is no longer defined as participating in building the common good, but as living in an unfettered commercial market, with the educational system now being seen as needing to be intgegrated into the mechanism of such a market. ... The unattached individual, one whose only rights and duties are determined by the marketplace, becomes ascendant.

Ain't it sadly the truth, and no more evident than today.
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Posted 12:44 by Mark Federman permanent link
The Fundamental Problem with Intellectual Property Legislation

It had never hit home as strongly as just now, when I read this interview with MPAA's Jack Valenti, by MIT's The Tech. Keith Winstein, senior editor at The Tech, discusses several of the anti-culture legislation passed in the United States, nominally aimed at so-called pirates, including the Broadcast Flag and the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But we don't have a real debate on copyright issues. We have rival camps that rarely understand each other. Virtually everybody I know and encounter on the Internet thinks Valenti's signal accomplishments are bad. He can claim credit for the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which make it illegal to build your own DVD player and well-nigh impossible to watch DVDs legally under the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as the Federal Communication Commission's Broadcast Flag, which will make it illegal or virtually impossible to build your own digital television receiver or, again, watch HDTV under Linux.

The telling part of the interview comes right at the end, with the following exchange:

The Tech: Indeed, but are you doing that when you rent a movie from Blockbuster and you watch it at home? ... I run Linux on my computer. There's no product I can buy that's licensed to watch [DVDs]. If I go to Blockbuster and rent a movie and watch it, am I a bad person? Is that bad?
Jack Valenti: No, you're not a bad person. But you don't have any right.
TT: But I rented the movie. Why should it be illegal?
JV: Well then, you have to get a machine that's licensed to show it.
TT: Here's one of these machines; it's just not licensed.
[Winstein shows Valenti his six-line "qrpff" DVD descrambler.]
TT: If you type that in, it'll let you watch movies.
JV: You designed this?
TT: Yes.
JV: Un-fucking-believable.
TT: So the question is, if I just want to watch a movie--I rent it from Blockbuster--is that bad?
JV: No, that's not bad.
TT: Then why should it be illegal?
Rich Taylor, MPAA public affairs: It's not. ... You could put it in a DVD player, you could play it on any computer licensed for it.
JV: There's lots of machines you can play it on.
TT: None under Linux. There's no licensed player under Linux.
JV: But you're trying to set your own standards.
TT: No, you said four years ago that people under Linux should use one of these licensed players that would be available soon. They're still not available -- it's been four years.
JV: Well why aren't they available? I don't know, because I don't make Linux machines. Let me put it in my simple terms. If you take something that doesn't belong to you, that's wrong. Number two, if you design your own machine, you can't fuss at people, because you're one of just a few. How many Linux users are there?
TT: About two million.
JV: Well, I can't believe there's not any -- there must be a reason for... Let me find out about that. You bring up an interesting question -- I don't know the answer to that... Well, you're telling me a lot of things I don't know.

And that's the problem. There are a lot of things that Jack Valenti - and the legislators whom he lobbies with stunning effectiveness! - don't know, and haven't realized about the issues of copyright, the evolution of culture, the cultural history of their (and other) countries, and the reversal of conventional distribution and marketing models in an age of instantaneous communications.

Some of the new rules:

• Trying to shut something down makes it grow even faster. (The "Sorcerer's Apprentice" Rule)
• Word of mouth becomes "Word of Mouse" (which happens to be the title of an upcoming book by former Warner exec, Jim Banister)
• Electronic distribution drives physical distribution. (The "Beach" Rule - how many people take their laptops to the beach?)
• Intellectual property establishes reputation; creating the experience of that intellectual property establishes revenue. (The "Coffee Theme Park" Rule - we pay a premium for the experience)

And more to come! These will be figuring into a new talk I'm developing called, "Creating a Culture of Innovation." If your organization would like to experience this talk, you can reach me through the McLuhan Program.
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