From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Fri Aug 04 2000 - 10:03:24 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Micah Redding" <fanninger@ureach.com>
> Sinfo and Dinfo?
Yeah... what, you've never heard of Sinfo and Dinfo? You really should
catch their show sometime, they're freakin' hilarious. Especially that
little Dinfo... always bumping into stuff... hehehe.... Dinfo....
I -know- all the major complaints are going to come from the technical
angle. As stated, I really wanted to just engage in the mind experiment: IF
it were possible, would it result in a desirable state of affairs?
But I'll hypothesize nonetheless:
> Ok, I gotta ask: if I "buy" a piece of music online, dowload it
> and play it on my computer; and, if it is "protected" so that i
> can not make extensive copies of it...
>
> What's to keep me from playing it (I'm still allowed to listen
> to it, right?), recording it on a cassette recorder, re-
> converting that to a digital format, and distributing thousands
> of copies free?
Yeah, well this is the issue-- you can't encrypt the last link in the chain.
Maybe music will always be 'Dinfo.'
Or maybe not.
I'm trying to consider the concept of a fundmentally different type of
information-- this is wildly speculative stuff here, so lets just think
outside the box for a minute:
The sort of information I'm talking about is likely to be extremely complex
and represent full blown human experiences and the like, but let's just deal
with a primitive little sensory experience like music or the movies.
Firstly, the future means of distribution of these experiences may not be
over 'material' substrates like the air of your living room. But secondly,
with only a little sprinkle of imagination, isn't it possible to envision a
type of experiential information that is protected against analog capture?
My digital video camera, for instance, doesn't like capturing footage off of
a television screen or computer monitor-- the refresh rates don't match. If
we start with a different set of assumptions and different starting
conditions I think we can imagine a scenario in which your music capturing
equipment knows whether or not its allowed to duplicate my music data.
Think of the empowerment of privacy in a world in which I can send you an
audio message that can't be surreptitiously recorded. Hell, maybe we'll
have such fine grained control over -reality- that I'll be able to play a
message in a crowded room and only you will hear it.
Okay, so, it's pure speculation. I'll grant that. I'm talking about
imaginary technology here folks.
So, I don't need to hear about how it can't be done-- but I would be
interested to hear some intelligent discussion on whether such a thing would
ever be possible.
Cheers.
--
::jason.joel.thompson::
::wild.ghost.studios::
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