What if the good guys win?
Written by Ernesto on February 21, 2006Copyright is the right to copy. You can share, reproduce and use everything as long as privacy is not violated. BitTorrent will be bigger than Microsoft, p2p networks will replace tv-broadcasting companies. You will be free.
And this is what the world would look like according to Tarmle:
No one has to pay for numbers anymore. No one is threatened for merely experiencing the development of their own culture. No one is sued for participating in its creation or propagation. The old media business models are gone, burned away by their total inability to adapt to the reality of new technology. In the end they simply failed to comprehend that any product which can be reproduced endlessly by anyone at virtually no cost has, in any reasonable estimation, a market value of zero. Trying to break the technology that threatened them was the final desperate tactic - it hadn’t stopped the Industrial Revolution and it didn’t stop this one.
Copyright is your right to copy… anything. You are permitted to duplicate, to alter, to republish any piece of information, any text, sound, image or source code, even any object, anything that does not impinge on the privacy of another individual. It even protects your right to make money out of such duplication, if you can. In non-profit situations it also supersedes the now very limited and expensive application of patents. About the only right retained by an artist after they have released a work is their moral right to attribution. So don’t get carried away, fraud, forgery and counterfeiting are still crimes.
Like all the technology in your home, your computer and everything on it is your own, down to the last resistor, the last byte. Ironically it still runs Windows. The old proprietary OS has been rebuilt into dozens of open source flavours - there was no point throwing out codes and standards with years of work behind them and such a vast catalogue of useful applications already developed. Even more unexpected is that Trusted Computing has become universal. The technology that would have allowed big business to monitor your activity, to reach into your home and control your computer and your data, is now used to stop just that kind of interference. Encrypted drives, curtained memory and protected media paths prevent malware snooping on your personal files or siphoning away your home movies. Ubiquitous VoIP, secured by privacy amplified encryption, means the national security agencies of the world have to actually investigate threats instead of sitting around waiting for potential suspects to blurt incriminating evidence over illegal wiretaps.
Your culture is faster and more fluid than it has ever been, or ever could have been had the rules not changed, you’ll only ever experience a tiny fraction of it in your lifetime. The new movie you glimpsed playing on the back of someone’s animated t-shirt at the bus stop last week has already spawned a handful of mash-ups and parodies, by next month the spreading ripples of its influence will be unrecognisable. Even then, if the feeds do not provide what you’re looking for, there are the vast peer-distributed media libraries from which you can retrieve almost anything that has ever been digitised, any talk show or radio play, video game or comic, newspaper article or published photograph.
Time and space shifting of media is the norm rather than the hard won exception. You rarely notice the exact source of the information and entertainment you receive, it may have come through the traditional broadcast television channels, via the manifold multimedia blogs piped through your fibre optic Internet connection or picked up virally from wireless peers by your personal server while walking down the street. You rely on your intelligent agent to filter this never-ending flow of information, an application that reduces and organises the mass of live data to a few dynamic feeds, constantly adjusted to match your profile, habits and even your mood. But still, there is so much material even this system has to co-operate with others on local networks to process it all.
With free and instant access to every book ever written there is little use for bookshops, the few that are left sell limited ranges of bound paper works as charming novelties. Often those buying them are just doing so to get their favourite author’s signature. For those who miss the feel of a real book but want access to more than the few pulp prints in the shops there are ‘magic books’ with simulated bindings, touch sensitive e-Ink pages and voice interaction to let them summon an approximation of any volume ever written. The primary functions of public libraries today are the maintenance of municipal servers in the back rooms, used to ensure that less frequented material is never lost from the peer networks, and public access to the Internet for those who might find themselves without a mobile device. The stacks are now roped-off museum exhibits.
You just don’t see physical media anymore. Awkward, low-end portable storage like CDs and DVDs are rarely useful, not with ever-increasing bandwidth availability, and not without the requirement to divide culture up into tradable units, the need to trick consumers with physical objects in exchange for their money and their rights. Blu-ray and HD-DVD, their technology moulded to constrict the hold on consumers, never had a chance, too rapidly overtaken by faster, more versatile and more open live storage devices.
The cinema chains have been decimated. Those that persist cater to customers who seek an authentic movie theatre experience. You’ll often find movie sponsors subsidising tickets, food and drink sales in return for screenings of ‘official’ versions of films, desperate to have their product placements seen by audiences in a controlled environment. You often find yourself return to really good movie again and again, drawn by dynamic content generation and commissioned extensions. There’s no point banning cameras and threatening legal action, the movie doesn’t need to be protected, quite the opposite, and almost everyone there has already seen it. When you walk into a cinema you probably have versions of all the latest films stored in your inside pocket, if you don’t you can download them from the cinema’s own server as you’re watching, or access countless other titles through the powerful ad-hoc networks that settle invisibly over any significant gathering of people.
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36 Responses
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TRUE
lol
Only if
Arguing that you are “paying for numbers” when you get something digital is the most retarded argument ever. “Its just a bunch of ones and zeros”. Yeah, well your computer is just a bunch of atoms and molecules.
The idea is that someone has worked hard to fashion them into a certain order or design that is useful or pleasing. They didn’t just create themselves.
@nobody you know on..
This is just an utopian impression…
What a wonderful view. As opposed to having ones savings extorted by capitalist corporate interests. Over exactly that, ones and zeroes. Unfortunately, until every interest on the planet is owned, and turned into a commodity, clean air and water included (just look at Bechtel in Bolivia, they actually BELIEVED that they OWNED the water that fell from the sky… rain.. owned..) the revolution will never happen. Right now we as the digital age are merely a chryssalis, growing and metamorphosing into this exact future of freedom from real charges for in-tangible material. This illusory ownership IS wrong. Just imagine, some-day you won’t even be able to walk down the street, whistling an adlib tune… because someone already owns the patent to your gait, and the exact frequency range of your whistle. Not to mention that the random tune you whistled is also costing someone MILLIONS of dollars in damages, because you’re performing it publicly.
I suggest everyone, close their eyes, curl into a ball, cover your ears, and wait for the bombs to fall, or the law-suits to come… and corporate USA wonders why people attack them. The terror levels have been raised to elevated… because people have started thinking for themselves! Run for your lives! Canada will accept us!
Guess what, no we won’t, I will be guarding MY provinces borders with the rest of the armed guards when the USA refugees try and illegally enter my country.
Well they can’t restrict things to that maximum the poster above me so freely speaks of it…
Maybe in USA, but thats not the whole world.
You already see an impact on what bittorrent does today…
Companies are popping up speaking about supporting it with delivering their series on the net.
It’s coming alright and we just have to embrace the future.
Matt,
You’re a troll.
Steve
Ha ha ha! Thanks buddy, obviously I’m not a fascist, but I *AM* frustrated specifically from the angle of the American Propaganda Machine. These interests are trying to run your lives.
Things like the Isralis slaughtering of Palestinians trying to defend an ILLEGAL WAR CRIME BASED 35 year occupation, are filtered out of coverage, and things like a blow-job raises a scandal.
Throw enough money at something and it goes away. People are either being bought out, payed off, or are having their savings extorted from them.
I suggest everyone read Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture.
My point is, corporate, capitalist, neo-fascist, neo-con, not to mention petro-chemical and pharmaceutical interests are hell-bent on taking every last penny you’ll ever earn, fair or un-fair and if they can’t force you to comply through small print and red-tape, they can sure make you wish you had.
Sometimes Steve (whom also is my brother), I am a troll, but trolls need food and love too, their views are often extreme, and most trolls oppose any kind of tyranny. We also eat children.
I want the people to the south, the Americans to live in freedom, not under tyrannical acts like the Patriot act, or New Freedom. Forced Druggings, if you love your children get them innoculated with this witches brew of monkey viruses and mercury laced vaccines. If you love your country, send your children to die, for oil that’s rightfully ours anyways… It’s sick, it makes my blood boil, and I know it doesn’t have much to do with P2P, yet.
It does have to do with every single person on this planet and their God-given rights to exist ouside of the arena of fear and murder and extortion.
Lets all be thankful that only indirectly all our computers consume petro-chemical hydro-carbons.
What Armed Guards Matt? The One’s The USA Have Put There To Guard Your Country?
my comment was deleted too…i’ll say it again
to the author: take an economics class and learn why no one will produce anything if they don’t receive something in return
to matt: nice attitude. must be nice living in fantasy land.
-kenny
try to think outside the box and let those utopian fantasies be inspirational. Of course it’s a bridge too far, but people need to reconsider the direction (drm) things are going at the moment
You may study economics at princeton, but try to keep an open mind ;)
You people, hahaha. Why I read your comments I dont know and maybe im being a hypocrite now. And of course I think its OK to discuss this matter,.. but why? On a fucking internet forum?! Whats the point?
point taken ernesto. i will keep my mind open.
;)
You only own something until someone else takes it !
point well taken ernesto.
I guess I’m a troll too! A huge one too! I guess all my friends are trolls too! Matt, they’ll get it!….one day….soon….
If this was a reality, why anyone continue to make movies or creat music? Movie creator wouldn’t have any money to make movies and they wouldnt make a profit so why would they bother? Othere then that, that would be a crazy paradise.
the thing about the movies and stuff is that if someone makes a digital copy, at this moment in time, it is usually a poor substitute to the official release. however it is more like the free screenings they often offer at the local multiplex. so if one views the free screeners and likes the product of the movie company then they will in turn buy the official release so they may clear up the space on their hard drives and cherish the movie in the future without having to constantly monitor the computer while watching the film. in fact thats how the movie industries should work. they should release lower quality versions of their product for free and then charge to buy the higher quality ones.
Artists don’t produce culture in order to make money, they make it in order to entertain and enlighten people, plus if people don’t produce anything without making money out of it hten how do you explain Linux and other Open-Source software?
in my country, 98% of the software is illegally copied. in our neighbour another country has 94% illegally copied material.HOW can you stop that? illegally copies will NEVER die!!
long live bittorrent!!
Here’s one for you. Bittorrent reigns supreme, the music industry and films industry stop making money. Instead you now have to pay Bittorrent for any downloads you happen to want. The harsh reality of living in a capatilist society is that it runs off money. If the people producing the goods dont make money, someone else will.
It’s been said before but it obviously needs to be said again. You can make money by giving something away for free.
Infact p2p services actually could allow you to make more money. How? Because you have little to no distribution costs. Where I live there is a free paper put out every week. Fee I hear the MPPA say? You must be stealing it, people must be starving on the streets because of you! But you know what? They arn’t starving, they are actually making money, even with all the printing costs and delivery costs. They arn’t just letting you get it for free they are paying for you to get it. You see there is one little thing that the small minded people like the MPPA seem to have forgotten all about. It’s called advertising.
Google lets people use their searches for free and it costs them to run the servers but they are raking in the cash because of advertising. But if you put advertising in with movies and such you could never make money could you? You couldn’t make millions even billions like every other company that thrives on on giving stuff away for freee because all of them have to pay to give their products away and you hardly have to output a cent in distribution costs.
Granted the first to try it from traditional industry bases will probably stuff it up by trying to put in traditional TV advertising only to have it removed by the first consumer to download it but as is the centre of one proposed plan simple unobtrusive advertising in the corner of films cannot easily be removed would be as, if not more effective. Imagine just the McDonalds M in the corner. You wouldn’t conciously think of it but it would allways be there. I would personally be thinking of McDonalds more often and if anything feel gratefull to them because the allowed me to get whatever show it was that I wanted without the MPPA breathing down my neck. Of course the MPPA might loose a fair bit of money as the actual artists wouldn’t need them anymore but that just makes you wonder who they are protecting. And while you are pondering that also try to find out which artists actually are recieving money from their suing campaign, I havn’t heard of any, have you?
my english is poor, but i will try…
In my country , there is no copyright control , i have “3ds max 8″ “MS Visual studio” and many other programs, plus their tutorials, all for free. so , people have the chance to be educated, who said that education is a privilege for the people who have money ?
you (capitalist)are nothing then fishes , the big fish eat the smaller fish.
bittorrent and socialism will never die!!
what do you think will happen in the software industry? Obviously the only producers are going to be giant corporations who can generate enough revenue in some other sector to be able to fund the production of new software…but still, what incentive will they have to compete or to make a quality product if they see loss rather than profit? is there such thing as an uncrackable consumer app?
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