MSNBC The Day I Got Napsterized
"As a spectator, I found it easy to be sanguine about the raging Internet intellectual-property debates."

"BASICALLY, MY TAKE was that the Net had simply opened up a powerful mode of distribution, most fully realized in the Napsterlike peer-to-peer (P2P) model, where everybody could help spread the word (and the music). Artists and merchants alike would eventually figure out how to reap bucks from that bounty, and until then I’d sit back and enjoy the fun as Metallica and Courtney Love duked it out.

That was before I got P2P’d."

redux [04.27.01]
The New York Times Does an Anti-Piracy Plan Quash the First Amendment?
[requires 'free' registration]
"There's a long-accepted notion in the publishing world that between the right of an author to control the uses of his book and the right of a reader to engage in free speech is the safety valve known as "fair use." "

"But there's a related question that has never been settled by the courts: Does fair use, which has its roots in the First Amendment, entitle the scholar, reporter or others to gain access to the copyrighted work in the first place -- -- especially when the material is guarded by a technological device designed to prevent digital piracy?"

redux [08.29.00]
MSNBC Napster heralds new business model
"Napster’s place in history may extend far beyond the e-commerce world."

"AT THE heart of the controversy is a clash that goes far beyond the music industry. What we’re witnessing is the beginning of an epoch struggle between two great economic systems. On one side of the divide lies the old market-based economy made up of sellers and buyers. On the other side lies the new network-based economy made up of servers and clients. In markets, the parties exchange property. In networks, the parties share access to services and experiences."

"By the mid decades of the 21st century — markets — the hallmark of conventional capitalism, will have largely disappeared, replaced by a new kind of economic system based on network relationships, 24/7 contractual arrangements and access rights."

redux [01.23.01]
Cryptome What's Wrong With Content Protection
"Converting the whole world to operate without scarcity is a huge task. Such a large economic shift would take decades to spread through the entire world economy, making billions of new winners and new losers. We will be extremely lucky if by 2030 we are prepared to end scarcity without massive social turmoil, including riots, civil unrest, and world war. If we are to find a peaceful path to an era of plenty, we should be starting HERE AND NOW, transforming the industries we have already eliminated scarcity in -- text, audio, and video. Companies that can't adjust should disappear and be replaced by those who can. As these whole industries learn how to exist and thrive without creating artificial scarcity, they will provide models and expertise for other industries, which will need to change when their own inefficient production is replaced by efficient duplication ten or fifteen years from now. Relying on copy-protection now would send us in exactly the wrong direction! Copy protection pretends that the law and some fancy footwork with industrial cartels can maintain our current economic structures, in the face of a hurricane of positive technological change that is picking them up and sending them whirling like so many autumn leaves."

redux [12.17.00]
Bad Subjects Beyond Copyright Consciousness
"Today's received ideas about intellectual property can be distilled into two major threads: technology killed copyright, and copyright is anachronistic in networked culture. Both of these notions are simplistic and ahistorical, and I'll try to argue that they're shortsighted. What we really ought to be talking about is access to works. Access is related to copyright, but is really more fundamental to our freedom to think and experience. I'd like to propose an expanded access scheme and offer an example of small steps that are being taken in that direction."

"At the Internet Archive, a nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco, a small group of engineers backed by a philanthropist are trying to create a new paradigm for access to archival material, in this case historical film from my own archives. By doing this, we're making a concrete move toward building an IP preserve."