Re: [SLUG-POL] Sony and DRM

From: Norbert Cartagena (gnorb@tampabay.rr.com)
Date: Sun Dec 29 2002 - 22:30:17 EST


Paul M Foster wrote:
> I guess I must be the last one to have heard about this. I just read an
> article in the MoneySense section of the Tribune that says that Sony
> plans to lock up its CDs so that you will need Sony software to play
> them. This is supposedly a move to counter file-sharing systems like
> those that succeeded Napster.
>
> I'm not sure that I have all the details right. But if this is the case,
> are we reaching an era where it's just not worth it to buy CDs any more?
>
> Paul
>

Paul;

If we're not there yet, then we're certainly close. Copyright protection
of intellectual property is supposed to protect the creator of the work
in dispuite. The record companies, however, have taken this protection
and twisted it beyond measure, to the point where copyright now means
that no one has the right to share intangibles such as music (and, for
that matter, ideas in general) with others, unless by their approval
(regardless of the creator's wishes). No longer is it a matter of
protecting the creator from fraud or intellectual theft (such as having
a set of "beats" stolen by one artist to be used by another without
propper credit and/or compensation). Rather, it is now a matter of
guaranteeing that the music company will have a steady source of income,
regardless of the performer - after all, performaers can be replaced,
talent can be found, but you can't trully recreate an idea. An idea can
be created, then molded and remolded to create another idea entirely
(ie. art imitates life imitates art imitates life imitates...). Now, if
you control the idea at the source (ie. the creator), and the idea is
the water which flows to feed other ideas, then you not only own the
lake from which the water comes from, but you also own the water, no
matter whose streams it happens to run in. Frightening thought.

Though I agree with tighter copyright protection for music (after all,
it IS still property and if you're to use it, be fair about it, in
accordance with the wishes of the creator), so long as the megalithic
music companies make the regulations, no true freedom will exist between
the creator and that for whom the music is created. Indeed, neither the
performer/creator, nor the consumer will benefit.

It is my belief that if the invisible hand of economics is not impeded,
the new paradigms which the internet and high speed communications bring
us (in regards to intellectual property and the transfer of information)
will eventually empower the individual. However, historically, the
economy's hand has not generally been allowed to be invisible, and so
long as there are corrupt rulers, there will be corrupt rules. To that
end, then, the fear of a Oligarchic technocracy (as predicted in the
Unabomber's Manifesto) becomes a rather frightful reality - one which we
may be powerless to at some near porint in the future stop.

Then again, these are two extreme points - at least in the short run. In
the meanwhile, the battles which are constanly being waged by both sides
of the debate will continue to allow some sort of balance to be struck.

Finally, the internet is a doplegangher of a sort we have never seen
before. It is a communication system, it is a distribution system, it is
property, it is real estate and it's the ultimate form of abstraction -
that which persumes that abstract ideas are physical objects then acts
on those presumptions (I believe I'm derriving this from Descrates'
ideas on abstraction, but please correct me if I'm wrong. It might be
Aristotalean logic I'm pulling up). We can't, however, presume to treat
intellectually derived "objects" as physical objects unless we are
prepared to accept a new physical law of an object - that when I give
you an object and you give me an object, we don't both have one object,
but rather that we both now have two objects*

*to those who don't quite get this: If I have a dollar and you have a
dollar and I give you my dollar and you give me your dollar, then we
both just still have one dollar. However, if I have an idea and you have
an idea and I give you my idea and you give me your idea then we now
both have two ideas. If Ideas are objects then we should be prepared to
see that as a physical reality, in so far as music is an object.

P.S.
Sorry if I've rampbled. I'm tired but wished to speak my peace.

Gnorb



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