[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Andy Robinson]

TBH I think the original post is spot on.

This isn't just about whether intellectual property is abstractly a good or
bad thing or whether the overall outcome of DRM is beneficial or not.  It's
about dangers of control built into the relationship between users and
technology.  The argument, "it saved the music industry" could as well be
applied to mass executions of file-sharers or their deportation to
Guantanamo Bay.  People in favour of some generic prohibition often become
absolutely fanatical about keeping it in place - look for instance at what
has happened with the drugs war.  Since limits to power will often make it
impossible to enforce whatever prohibitions one happens to think justified,
limits have to be drawn on how far one is prepared to go to enforce them -
otherwise every case of a difficult or impossible to enforce rule will be an
occasion for slippage into totalitarianism.  The result is a need to
distinguish a general frame of restrictions within which social goals can be
pursued from the desirability of the goals themselves, and to prioritise the
former over the latter.  There are limits in the price which can be conceded
for any particular enforcement advantage.  Maintaining basic rights and a
proper balance of power, preventing the powerful from becoming too strong,
is a higher-order issue over the production of desirable aggregative social
effects.

The ground zero of this is that the technology in question is wrong.  And
it's creepy, and it's creepy because it's wrong.

Technology which can be remotely told what to do without permission from its
user is scary.

The fact that people using DRM-enabled systems have had files deleted
without their consent is scary.

The reason it is scary is twofold.  Firstly, it has ceased to be a tool in
the hands of the user, and has become an agent of a foreign will.  And
secondly, it gives far too much power to the people who control the
updates.  In short, it violates the right of the user to be in control of
the tool they use.  (I'm drawing here on Illich's use of the term 'tool').
This affects the balance of power in the social field in general.  It's FAR
bigger than the question of whether people should download music for free.
It's about whether people are to be free or enslaved.

This is because the principle which justifies control in this case, would
also justify control in a million other cases - like the hammer (isn't it
worth it if a few murders are prevented, or X amount of criminal damage?)

Of course, once in place the tehcnologies of control will be used for
purposes other than those originally intended.  Some song causes political
controversy (such as the outcry over 'Cop Killer', or the Marilyn
Manson/Rammstein hysteria after Columbine) and the company could be
pressured to delete entirely legal copies for political reasons.  They could
be ordered to turn over records of who was listening to a song later deemed
to correlate with some kind of criminality (like the Patriot Act library
dragnets).  An artist or company could decide to withdraw their work (as
with Lucas's stance on the Holiday Special, and Kubrick's withdrawal of A
Clockwork Orange) and they could pull every copy.  This might happen if a
studio was in dispute with an artist - suddenly the artist would disappear.
And what if Apple ended up in a dispute with a studio?  Again - the entire
catalogue of the studio could disappear (either because Apple withdrew it as
an act in the dispute, or the studio demanded such a measure in court).
This is before we even get onto what the likes of China and Iran could do
with this technology.  It would be far better that the technological
capacity to do such things were to be prevented from being actualised or
normalised.

A good tool is something for use, like a hammer - not something which has
particular uses built into it.  Pretty much all tools can be put to legal
and illegal uses, or to harmful and harmless uses.  This can't justify the
project of working controls on how tools are used into the tools
themselves.  Would you really want a hammer that would decide what you want
to hit, distinguish corporate-sanctioned uses from non-corporate-sanctioned
uses, and amend its rules on what it could hit without your being able to
veto it, in response to its maker's commands?  Wouldn't a hammer which did
that be rather creepy?  Wouldn't you rather have a regular hammer?

Basically, we don't need technologies making our decisions for us,
distinguishing what uses they want to allow.  It gives far too much power to
the tools, and therefore, to whoever is sending the long-range responses.
Things have already gone too far in this direction with mobile phones.
There's no good reason why calls aren't encrypted, why phones phone in their
location from afar, or why they can be turned on from a distance, or why sim
cards can be disabled from afar.  It all makes political abuse so much
easier, and usefulness so much less.  The only reason it's been allowed is
that it was sneaked in along with the technology when it was introduced, and
then normalised (and in some cases legislated) once it was already
established.  Eventually no doubt, somebody will design mobile phones based
on a distributed model which do just function as tools rather than
surveillance devices, which don't generate records of where you are or who
you're talking to.  And then all hell will break loose because of their
greater functionality.

It's the same problem with iPods and these new things - the convenience of
the technology, and its monopolisation for a short period by a few
companies, and the relative invisibility of its inbuilt constraints,
outweigh the negative impact on functionality.  They aren't playing on
widespread support for DRM, they aren't playing on greater competitiveness
of less-functional technologies.  They're relying on market dominance to
generate enough convenience to outweigh the obvious disadvantages to the
end-user.

Unless a vast control-regime is established to keep in place this order of
affairs, it will end up being a temporary advantage.  If all of this goes
too far, if reduced functionality becomes a serious inconvenience or if
abuse becomes too visible and creeps people out, we will see people
deserting the new technologies for older ones where they at least know where
they stand.  A radio may have less functionality than an ipod but it won't
tell anyone what you're listening to.  But people wouldn't have to go that
far.  They'd just have to opt for older systems with greater functionality.
Notice how Microsoft have basically been forced to revive Windows, because
people preferred XP to Vista in spite of the latter's add-ons.
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