DRM

MIT Media Lab Dialogue on DRM with Richard Stallman, Joi Ito and Danny O’Brien

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MIT Media Lab DRM 2

“We must destroy DRM. There can be no peace with DRM. A product with DRM has been designed explicitly to stop you from doing things” said Dr. Richard Stallman…

Synopsis: Will the future of the Web include Digital Rights Management? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the MIT-based international standards body in charge of “bringing the Web to its full potential” is in process of deciding if they should continue their work on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). The recommendation of EME by W3C would standardize the use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) across browsers. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has petitioned W3C to stop all work on EME and DRM-related technologies. The W3C will consider adopting a DRM non-aggression covenant drafted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) at its Advisory Committee meeting at MIT next week.

This is an open invitation for genuine person-to-person dialogue with people from MIT, FSF, EFF, and W3C about DRM on the Web (and any other topics of importance to the Web).

Speakers:
– Joi Ito (Media Lab)
– Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation)
– Danny O’Brien (EFF)
– W3C Team Member(s)
– Moderator: Harry Halpin (W3C)

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Copyright Was Just The Beginning: Cory Doctorow on the Coming War on General Computation

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I have always been a huge fan of Cory Doctorow’s – I read his books, I listen to his podcast, I watch his numerous and always ground-breaking keynote speeches and I value his insights and expert opinion.

This time, however, Cory outdid even himself.

Below you can watch Doctorow’s seminal keynote speech given at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

In addition, since the original video recording was released under a creative commons licence and given the immense importance of the topic, I decided to post the audio via my Singularity 1 on 1 podcast.

So, you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the full video recording below. I hope you find it as inspiring, as enraging and as profound as I did.

Enjoy!

 

Abstract:

“The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

And general purpose computers can cause harm — whether it’s printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs.

The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other “trust” mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can’t inspect or terminate, that run without users’ consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don’t want them to.

The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.

Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.”

To read the full English transcript of Cory Doctorow’s keynote speech click here. (Read German version here.)

Audio Update:

Cory Doctorow’s Interview with CBC’s Spark on the coming war on general-purpose computation

 

Video Update: Cory Doctorow at Google – The Coming Civil War over General-purpose Computing

Who governs digital trust?

Doctorow framed the question this way: “Computers are everywhere. They are now something we put our whole bodies into—airplanes, cars—and something we put into our bodies—pacemakers, cochlear implants. They HAVE to be trustworthy.”

Sometimes humans are not so trustworthy, and programs may override you: “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” (Reference to the self-protective insane computer Hal in Kubrick’s film “2001.” That time the human was more trustworthy than the computer.) Who decides who can override whom?

The core issues for Doctorow come down to Human Rights versus Property Rights, Lockdown versus Certainty, and Owners versus mere Users.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/gbYXBJOFgeI[/youtube]

 

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Will 2012 Be 1984: DRM and SOPA are Breaking The Internet!

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Imagine a world where someone has a monopoly over the media, backed by the power to ban personal privacy and political dissent and capable of preventing people from public gathering and collective discussion without due process, judicial review or any evidence!

Sound familiar?!

Some of you might venture a guess that the above text reads like a passage from George Orwell’s 1984.

Others might say that it sounds like the situation under the totalitarian regimes of the former Eastern Block or any other contemporary autoritarian.

It is vital to realize, however, that this is not only fiction. This is not just the situation in some geographically obscure country stuck in the last 6 seconds of the evening newscast.

This is infact the future reality that we might be facing today, here, in the “free world.”

This is Canada, the United States and the European Union.

Attempts at removing privacy switches and settings on the internet, Digital Rights Management (DRM) software which literary takes over your computer and legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Canada’s Bill C32 and the notorious European internet disconection laws for cutting people off from the internet without due process, judicial review or even the spec of any evidence, are threatening our freedom.

Are we not following in the steps of Syria and China in building national firewalls, even if it is “to block pirates”?

Can we have global phenomena such as the Arab Spring in such a context?

Did we forget that the Russian government used software piracy as a pretext for confiscating activists’ computers and the Chinese government used it to silence the 2008 Beijing Olympics critics and other political dissent?

Are we not outraged to hear that Congressional staffers behind SOPA get shiny new jobs as entertainment industry lobbyists?

So, what can I do, you may ask?

Well, you can start like Seth Godin by asking and finding out Who wants to break the internet?

Then you can watch the short 4 min SOPA video backgrounder and 1 (or both) of the Cory Doctorow videos below to learn about the issues in the easiest way possible.

Cory takes us beyond the idiotic dichotomy “copyright protection is good” vs “copyright protection is bad” and instead asks a very simple question:

What do we want copyright to do and how do we accomplish that?

The answer is easy: We want copyright that fosters innovation and protects the rights of content creators while providing the best net benefit to consumers.

Then we look at what we have now, get angry, get off our sofas, pick up the phone or start our word-editors and begin making a lot of noise.

We write to our congressmen!

We name and shame the people and companies who challenge our freedoms!

We name and shame the politicians who prefer to serve the above sorry lot rather than their true constituents!

We sign up the petition at AmericanCensorship.org

We kick ass,  get things done and change the world!

We stop SOPA and prevent 2012 from becoming 1984!

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A Short 4 min Backgrouder: Protect IP/SOPA Breaks the Internet

 

Khan Academy explains SOPA/PIPA

 

The Fall Of SOPA

The SOPA debacle explained in 3 minutes.

 

Clay Shirky’s TED Talk on Why SOPA is a Bad Idea

 

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