Copyrights and Music

Back in 1999, I downloaded Winamp, a digital media player that specialized in MP3 files, for the first time.  Though there was nothing illegal about Winamp itself, MP3 files were often directly associated with music piracy and illegal file-sharing.  I worried that if my parents saw that I had downloaded Winamp, they would immediately assume I was illegally downloading music files for free.

And let's be honest; I was.

There's no question that what I did was, at least on some small scale, illegal.  By every existing legal standard, I was making copies of copyrighted works to which I had not purchased the rights. But somehow, it didn't feel wrong to me.  At the time I was 15 years old.  I had never purchased a CD in my life, and my music consumption was minimal.  I couldn't tell you who my favorite bands were; I could barely list any bands.  The music I played on Winamp was my first real introduction into modern popular music, and if I hadn't heard it there, I didn't have the resources to get it anywhere else.  There was a hole in the market that wasn't being filled.

Today, music vendors are starting to address that market niche.  Children under the age of 15, who make up an increasing portion of comptuer and internet users, are finally able to purchase music for their own personal consumption.  It's still a pain, though; anone who has ever tried to use MusicMatch Jukebox to transfer music to a portable music player can attest that the industry as a whole has a long way to go.

And that's the point I'm trying to hit.  Computer usage is becoming increasingly common among non-technical users.  My 12-year-old sister and my 80-year-old grandfather both use computers on a regular basis, and the internet is empowering them to interact directly with music providers.  If the music industry wants to remain relevant in today's economy, it needs to figure out how to interact with these users.  My sister knows nothing about copyright law, and my grandfather doesn't know a thing about MP3 files, but if the music industry can make it easy to legally obtain music then these non-technical users will do it.  People generally take the path of least resistance; if we want people to obey out-of-date copyright laws, we need to make it easy for them to do so.

If that can't happen, then the law needs to change.

Two poems on Computers and Society

Computers talking

The world is getting smaller

Where do I fit in?

The world is filled with computers
That play games from puzzles to shooters,
They'll take over your life,
You won't find you a wife
And you'll end up an unmarried tutor.

Internet Safety

When I was in middle school, my parents decided it was important to put a limit on the amount of time I spent on the computer, as I often spent three or four hours a day.  At the time I thought they didn't understand—it wasn't three hours of one activity; I played games, did homework, talked with friends, and followed my favorite websites online.  These were all distinct activities that all happened to involve a computer.  Such was my argument, anyway.  But as the world becomes more and more interconnected, I see this argument cropping up in other places.  These days, it seems you can do everything from buying groceries to babysitting the children over the internet.  It's important, though, to recognize that we were not intended to live our lives around a computer; computers exist to serve us, not for us to serve them.

The Flat World

I've recently been reading Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, in which he describes the rising impact of globalization on our modern world and the forces which led to this rise. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to modern wireless communication technology, Friedman describes how the world is quickly becoming a place in which participation is based not on your location but rather your desire.

This flattening of the world means that more people are playing in the same field. If I want to get the top programming jobs, I don't just need to be the best at BYU or the best in Utah; I'm competing against Romanians, Indians, Russians, and Africans as well. As the world becomes flatter and smaller, location matters less and less. Telecommuting is becoming increasingly feasible in technical fields, so I can't just rely on my proximity to major companies any longer.

Competition isn't the only result of the flattening world, though.  International collaboration has the odd twist that there is no supreme governing body.  The United Nations, NAFTA, and other such organizations may have some say in the trade relations of various nations, but there is no Supreme Court Justice or universal code of laws to which all nations have agreed.  Many nations with which we collaborate may still have gross human rights violations.  Taxation issues aren't as clear-cut, labor compensation laws will vary—overall, these increase of globalization increases the complexity involved in doing business.

There are moral issues as well.  If Mexican or Chinese laborers will build your Go-Kart for 15% the cost of building it in the United States, should a businessman be required to take into account the working conditions of those laborers?  Regardless of the legality of such things, I feel that ethically, it's a concern.  The globalization of the economy forces us to confront issues we might never have faced before.

Technology is a good thing; it helps us be more efficient, more productive, more healthy, more focused, and more able.  There's no question about these things.  But we need to be aware of the consequences before we dash headlong in to the future.  We need to pay attention to our surroundings.  We need to be sure that technology doesn't turn us into slaves to the economy.  We need to be sure to keep our eyes up, carefully watching the coming changes.  We need to be sure that as the world goes flat, we don't get caught underneath.

The Silent Uprising

There has been a lot of talk lately about the recent Mark Zuckerberg (of Facebook fame) interview at the SXSW conference.  Audience members, who felt that Sarah Lacy handled the interview poorly, began to call out for an open Q&A session.  Tired of Lacy's interviewing style, the audience protested and ultimately got its way.  The interesting part of the story, though, isn't the audience reaction—it's the technology that led up to it.  At last year's SXSW conference, a social coordination tool called Twitter was introduced.

Traditional etiquette dictates that audience members remain relatively quiet while attending an event out of respect for the presenters.  In the pre-Web-2.0 world, this meant that apart from a quick note to your neighbor, nobody shared ideas until after the event had ended.  The new web has changed that, though; the Zuckerberg uprising was build of the collective feedback of the audience through Twitter.  A few discontented listeners in the back row began complaining online, other responded, and before long the crowd had coordinated a protest without speaking a word.

There's no question that user-generated content is changing our world.  Now we just wait to see how.

Voicemail for the homeless

Yesterday in San Francisco, Google announced a program to provide free voicemail for every homeless person in the city.  In recent years there has been a lot of talk about the "Digital Divide," that invisible chasm between those who have access to technology and those who do not.  In today's society, these digital "have-nots" struggle to find jobs and improve their situation.  It is difficult for employers to contact them, and even when they can be reached, they often don't have the skills necessary for many jobs.  Efforts such as the OLPC have attempted to bridge this divide, but these efforts are largely focused on third-world countries.   I applaud Google's push to help those at home, those hidden among our own.

The Cuckoo's Egg

A few months before beginning this semester, I read a news article about a hacker who had recently been sentenced to a prison term. I don't remember all the details of the story, but I specifically remember that the hacker said he first became interested in hacking after reading The Cuckoo's Egg. I decided then and there that The Cuckoo's Egg was a book I should never read.

Ever since we first got internet access at home, I've found myself intrigued by the idea of hacking. I've been fascinated with the idea that, with the right piece of knowledge, a person can gain access to increased stores of hidden information. The allure of “secret” information available only to those smart enough to find it was great. I've never been one to intentionally seek out illegal activities, but I can't deny a strong innate sense of curiosity. It didn't take me long to realize, though, that if I learned to hack, I'd quickly end up in more trouble than I wanted to face.

This semester, I was assigned to read The Cuckoo's Egg for a Computer Science class. I was actually excited to read it; I hadn't stayed away earlier because of dislike for the book, just fear of what it would do to me. In some sense, I was right to avoid the book—I finished reading with a slight desire to find out just what I could do.

More than a desire to break into a server, though, I came away from The Cuckoo's Egg fascinated with Cliff Stoll's notion of the network as a trusted resource. Stoll asserts that a network is only useful if the network (along with its stored information) can be trusted by its users. I've certainly been familiar with the idea of network security in the context of a wireless network, but it had never occurred to me that the network itself might be considered worthless if not properly secured.

The value of the network becomes even more apparent in light of the recent network outages which took place in the Middle East. Our modern society heavily depends on interconnectedness and information sharing. We've had no major September 11-esque attacks on our networks, and I fear that many are left with a false sense of security. The Cuckoo's Egg demonstrated just how apathetic many people are toward security, and I don't believe the situation has greatly improved in the intervening years. Most people are still security-ignorant, and I only hope that security education catches up before such a catastrophic attack takes place. Otherwise, it won't be pretty.

Interoperability and Data Viability

With the advent of the digital age, there has been increasing concern over the preservation of digitally-encoded information.  Documents created ten years ago cannot be read by today's programs, and emerging forms of entertainment—games, digital music, etc.—created ten years ago are often unreadable today.  The historically tight coupling between content and environment has led to a push for open standards which would enable digital information to outlast its original environment.  Readers may recall an e-mail campaign a few years ago encouraging anyone who received an e-mail with a closed-standard document attached to reject the e-mail.

Microsoft held a press conference today in which they announced changes to their technology and business practices relating to interoperability and data viability.  The technical specifications for all Microsoft Office documents are now openly available, and many of the programming interfaces have been exposed to permit interoperability with other programs.  As the announcement was made over 30,000 pages of documentation were posted online, documentation previously available only to corporations with a trade secret agreement. This new openness obviously comes at some expense to Microsoft, as trade secrets are necessarily being exposed. However, it's the right thing to do.  Office users create documents with the intent of recording information, not with the intent of creating a Microsoft document.  Digital information is only valuable to the extent that it can be accessed, and inasmuch as Microsoft follows through on today's commitments, they've make a large step in reaching that goal.

The power of language

As a participant in today's CS 404 Judgment Day activity, I was struck by the power of a well-spoken phrase. I recently read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, so I've been paying greater attention to the use of language around me, trying to identify the common element in powerful communication. The attorneys and witnesses on each side had meaningful material to discuss and shared his ideas, but only those statements carefully constructed and powerfully spoken had an effect on my thoughts. The same principle applies to writing. Some writing is boring, taking too long to say what it wants to say. Some speech is wordy, obscuring the gem of meaning behind a cloud of dust. But again and again, I find that powerful communication is direct and concise, saying precisely what needs to be said and leaving behind that which does not.

Power and Responsibility

On January 21, 2008, a hacker group calling itself "Anonymous" declared war on the Church of Scientology in response to the church's demand that a video containing copyrighted material be removed from YouTube.  As reported on C|net's News.com, "local chapter sites for the Church of Scientology have been defaced, and in some cases denial of service attacks have also prevented access to the same sites. Real-world attacks have included fax-spamming those same offices."  The group's vigilante attitude proclaims that Anonymous makes the decisions, and anyone who stands in the way will be thrown aside; civil and legal rights are to be ignored when inconvenient.  The showdown has been reported on NBC, SlashDot, Wired, Digg, and thousands of blogs.  This is big news.

Anonymous's actions are disturbing, reminiscent of an anarchistic society governed not by law but by power. The group clearly believes that capability grants authority, and that its mere ability to attack Scientology gives it the inherent right to do so without regard to established authority.  Western society generally disagrees with that notion, so I'm surprised to see the amount of support the group has gained on the internet.  We're a law-abiding group of people, one generally inclined to leave enforcement up to the government.  Then again, it was only a few years ago that Spiderman's Peter Parker reminded millions worldwide that "With great power comes great responsibility."  Isn't that the same idea dressed in different words?  If our heroes get to ignore the law, why doesn't Anonymous?  Why is it right for Spiderman to use his power outside the law, but not for Anonymous to do so?  These aren't simple questions, and they have no easy answers.

Technological Vertigo

Apple Inc. recently announced their latest laptop offering, the MacBook Air.  While the technical features of the ultra-lightweight laptop are impressive, what really struck me was what's missing: an ethernet port.  The connectivity expected from any laptop in today's world is provided entirely through its wireless card.  And it will work.  Something that would have been inconceivable just five years ago is quickly going to become the standard, and before long we'll wonder at the notion of using a wired connection.  Wireless accessibility will be as ubiquitous a few years from now as electrical outlets are today.

World-changing innovations like this are happening at a constantly increasing pace.  Whereas someone born in the 1600s could generally predict the course of his life, I don't even dare to guess what my life will be like twenty years from now.  Innovations in communication, travel, artificial intelligence, human-machine interaction, and a host of other fields will each change our lives such that yesterday's impossible becomes tomorrow's trivial.  It's technological vertigo; we're losing our sense of what's coming.  There's a danger in such a world: a man who has no notion of tomorrow lives only for today, thinks only for today.  There's certainly a danger.  But the possibilities, though dangerous, are also limitless.  We've got an exciting tale ahead of us.