Wayner declares “Open Source War”
from the hearts-and-minds dept.
In an essay for the New York Times ("Whose Intellectual Property Is It, Anyway? The Open Source War," 24 August 2000), author Peter Wayner (Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans (HarperBusiness, 2000) ) declares:
"There's a war going on. . . . It is between nimble people who want to think for themselves and big dinosaurs of corporations that want to keep the upstarts penned up and docile."
Wayner concludes: "The open-source war is not going to be easy for society. The intellectual property laws do help protect creators and their innovations, and corporations instinctively grab as much power as they can get. But if the strength of these laws grows and the teams of lawyers that enforce them become more powerful, society will become much poorer."
In a related article from 20 April 2000, Virginia Postrel, Editor-at-Large for Reason Magazine, comments on the incentives — both economic and noneconomic — that help drive the open source software movement.
August 27th, 2000 at 5:34 AM
On the front lines
For some of us, the war is already well underway. I keep fighting for the freedom of software and other intellectual property, but not against big corporations. The front line is with everyday people, and they are much harder to fight than corporations. I can't sue a person (or, for that matter, be sued by one) because I don't like the way they think/live their life, whereas a corporation can sue or be sued because someone else disagrees with their business practices. People must be converted to the open source side through careful explinations, well thought out arguments, and patients for them to think about what you have said and (hopefully) form a new opinion that is in open source's favor.
Napster might seem like a good tool: get songs for free, everybody's doing it, etc.. Well, despite the number of Napster users out there, most of them use it either to strike back against over priced CDs or to find/listen to songs so that they can know whether or not to go buy a CD. If Napster is shut down, these people would be upset, but not so much so as to do something about it. I no longer buy CDs, not because I can't afford to, but because so little of that money goes to artist and so much of it goes to helping the enemy. Convincing people about this is hard, but I am slowly but surely doing it. Once enough people have been converted to open source and are willing to give up some media for their freedom, corproations, government, and society are going to have a hard time keeping IP laws, as we know them today (or, if lucky, at all), in place.
August 27th, 2000 at 11:37 AM
Re:On the front lines
"[W]ell underway" is certainly more accurate. The interesting thing about articles like Wayner's and Postrel's appearing in the business pages of mainstream press venues like the NYT is that these issues are being brought to the attention of a much wider audience, and perhaps some significant fraction of those readers will actually think these concepts over and reexamine their assumptions about IP and economic incentives in an information-based economy.
August 27th, 2000 at 1:42 PM
My Letter to Congress
I thought this might be appropiate to post here. It's a letter I sent a few days ago to my Congress people. Anyone is welcom to take this letter as their own and use it.
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to do the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,
August 27th, 2000 at 2:50 PM
Don't give corporates anything to hold on to
This is why I support open standards. The way corporates will try to tie down the computer (and hence design, and then nanotech materials/devices) is to use proprietary, patented standards.
If there's an open standard, use it. Reject anything that doesn't use an open standard wherever possible. This does not necessarily mean Open Source, although it tends to.
Corporate power is increasing. It is based on our inability to supply goods and services, and corporate policies controlling these goods and services being enshrined in law. Once nanotechnology allows us to provide our own goods and services, corporates are going to change or go bust. They're better off commercially without the advances, so expect to see a sudden clamour for corporates to restrict nanotechnology once they realise that it is close to reality.
Vik :v)
August 27th, 2000 at 6:07 PM
Declaration of War?
Isn't more reporting an outbreak of war?
August 28th, 2000 at 7:54 AM
Re:On the front lines
What would an open source model look like as applied to the information an assembler would use to create a unique product. If it were my design how would I benefit from the work to design it? Will others expect to use it free? Maybe I'm old fashioned but I am troubled by the attitude of Napster users- that they deserve to get copyrighted music for free. Well, they don't. I am open to reasonable counter arguments however.
August 28th, 2000 at 1:56 PM
Benefiting from a unique design
If it was really a unique product, then no you might not want to open source it. However if what you really wanted was to sell was your skill for designing future products, then you might open it as a way of showing what you can do. Perhaps it was a unique product last year, and you made money on it, but now you want to sell enhancements and benefit from others who are willing to customize it, port it to other platforms, etc. Or, maybe you don't need money (you've got an assembler too right?) but want to give it away and enhance your reputation.
For more on this, see the section "When to be open, when to be closed" in Eric Raymond's The Magic Cauldron.
August 30th, 2000 at 6:11 PM
Re:My Letter to Congress
The DMCPA is just another law among a vast library that we all must ignore, whether willfully or though ignorance, if we are to call ourselves free. As a precedent, this ruling is bad but not particularly shocking. You say "In a murder trial we don't hold the knife on trial, only the user of the knife." In fact, there are precedents going back to the common law that allow just that, and they form the basis for the truly awful asset forfeiture laws. We cannot win every battle. This is not to say we should not fight, and I endorse your letter. Our most effective strategy, however, is to create and improve technologies of freedom faster than they can be banned and to make sure that the bans are unenforceable.
February 20th, 2006 at 4:18 PM
Plan for piracy, how I do it
Pirates are every MATEEEEE ARGH!
In today’s world of trying to make money online you HAVE to plan for piracy. If you ever do anything that smells a LITTLE bit like success people will steal and run with it. Whether its the idea or the concept it …