The Wild, Wild Net...

Lessig's Code 2.0 provides a very insightful look into the difficulties of regulating the internet, and in particular, on the rule of law as it pertains to online copyright. Some would say that copyright cannot exist on the internet, while others would say that the very forces that are forcing copyright out of existence (pirates, hackers, amateur cultures, whatever) are creating the commercial motivation for the development of technologies that will cement it ever more firmly, but this time without any means to enforce the freedoms of 'fair use' that existed previously.

One of the more interesting concepts in all of this is that while the internet presents the possibility of a 'world' without government influence, any civil society, be it real or virtual, must agree to a set of protocols which defines how they interact with each other. Without some method of enforcing that protocol, however, all you're really doing is just shaking someone's hand and hoping that they're not crossing their fingers behind their back at the same time. You cannot have law without someone to enforce it and removing the enforcement removes the compulsion to follow the law. So you need some governing body in much the same way as small western towns needed a Sheriff to uphold the law.

In the example of IP, there is no penalty for stealing it on an unregulated net, but then again, there is also no penalty for so restricting its use that doing so won't have consequences. But it doesn't stop there, as any behavior that the producer finds offensive, from content you produce to criticisms you voice, may well see you banned from access to the software, anything else the producer wishes to restrict access to, and anything else produced by other producers who are aligned with that producer. It's kind of like dating, in that way: treat a woman wrong, and you can be certain that your eligible dating pool will be significantly reduced when she starts talking to her friends, who talk to their friends, etc.

While things haven't gotten quite that extreme (yet), there is a move by Microsoft towards shifting all their software online and restricting access to it to yearly license payers. While this might not have  been a brilliant move a few years ago as the delays caused by working from remote software would have been intolerable, real-time online applications have improved dramatically since then and the idea of even running something as complex as Photoshop or even Maya is not outside of the realm of possibility today. It would take an incredible amount of time and money to set up, but the advantage to Microsoft or Adobe would be immense. No more 'First Sale' legal battles. No more 'cracked software.' The question is, will they charge the consumer a reasonable yearly fee or will they, in their position as ultimate gatekeeper, keep the same exorbitant prices? And who would stop them if they chose the latter? I'm reminded of the Cattle Barons of the old west here.

In the end, Lessig's research assistant, Harold Reeves has a point beyond even that given in Code 2.0, in that it is not only Microsoft's responsibility to build a fence and lock its doors to protect its material, but also to ensure that in the process of securing their IP that they don't end up cutting themselves off from the vast majority of their consumers like the crazy old cat lady who lives in the large house down the road, but is so paranoid that she hasn't left the house or talked to anyone in 20 years. Real World Law may have little meaning in the non-geographically distributed boundaries of the internet, but social law and the ostracism of those who refuse to 'play nice' still does as does commercial law and the fact that competition will inevitably produce a cheaper and more friendly product to compete with. So in the end, the big companies will shy away from over-control if for no other reason than cyberspace is just too large to compete with, so you don't really need some legal authority telling everyone what to do.

On the other hand, the whole point of this book is that we cannot reliably predict what the future holds for us technologically or socially. Even though Reeves might be right today, tomorrow might require an entirely different way of viewing the same problem. A bunch of extremely smart man in the 1700's couldn't possibly foresee anything even as wondrous as a telegraph line and how this would affect their new government 200 years down the road, no-one could have forseen the changes brought about by the internet 20 years ago and who would have guessed even 10 years ago that we'd all be carrying that same internet around in handheld phones more powerful than the entire Apollo space program. No one knows what technology is coming down the pike, how it will empower corporations or individuals, and how it will change the network structures and protocols of the future.

So I think Lessig is right. Even if most of our reality becomes virtual, even if our societal structure centers more around our virtual selves than our physical address, there will still need to be some form of regulatory entity to reinforce protocols and protect the ability of culture to spread without undo restriction. The question is: whose going to be the Sheriff, what authority will he wield and how is he going to enforce it? It might take an entirely new form of government to find out...

If You Can't Beat Them, Use Them....

Amongst the dry, academic pages of Information Feudalism by Drahos and Braithwaite, there are a few very interesting factiods. For instance, I doubt that very many people know that the first illegal electronic download occurred in the late 1800's when the entire contents of a book written by then Queen Victoria were telegraphed across the Atlantic over 24 hours and then printed and published within 12 hours of the completion of that transmission. And all without so much as a 'please,' much less licensing fees (see Tom Standage's Book, The Victorian Internet for many more similarities between Victorian era  tech and the modern internet).

Another factoid, and the one I'm focused on for this post, is that claim that early software companies, by pricing their products beyond the reach of the average consumer, had a large role in the formation of software piracy. That is a bit of an oversimplification of a larger problem with modern society, one in which life has become so easy that many feel entitled to own works of intellectual property at no cost and where internet distribution of said ideas has started to really make people question the true value of information and ideas (for a very funny, if highly profane discussion of this subject, see Cracked.com). It is not totally incorrect, however.

As a child of the late seventies and early eighties, I remember the controversy over BETA/VCR home recorders (which was, itself, predated by Cassette Tapes, the Napster of the sixties and seventies). The creators and producers of television and movie programming were very concerned that these devices would be used to record their programs off of TV and, thereby, reduce possible revenues from syndication and re-release ticket sales. I also remember the videotapes they sold back then. A single movie would cost around $75 dollars! And we're talking 1979 dollars, here! That's like asking someone today to pay $230 for Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows on a crappy videocassette tape.

I think it's safe to say that when creating the market for home movies, Hollywood also, by dint of their greed, created the pirate video industry almost simultaneously. I should know, because by the time I saw these movies advertised in TV Guide or in the Sears Catalog, my grandfather had already rigged up a method of copying them. And was trading them at the Saturday Flea Market sale with other like-minded individuals very shortly after that. He also built a satellite receiver out of some spare electronics and a coffee can and had free HBO for years, but I digress.

Is that justification for modern IP piracy, however?

Back! To the Future! And here I am, a self publisher of games, scripts, what-have-you, many of which are in PDF format. One recent release, Barbarians of the Aftermath, a 176 page PDF selling for $15, sold pretty steadily for about a year, but within 3 months of its publishing, my hard work, which I designed, wrote, layed out and did the graphic design for, was being flogged on Torrent sites without so much as a 'please,' much less licensing fees. I never thought I'd have so much in common with some English Queen from the 1800's. If I actually had the sales from those downloads (which far outweigh my actual sold copies), I might actually be able to make a living out of game publishing. As it is, people for whom $15 is really a tiny sum of money, the equivalent of a movie and trip to the concession stand, my work, which gives them years of gaming entertainment value for their $15, is not worth more than the effort it takes to locate and download it over the internet.

A side effect of this pirate economy is the devaluation of perceived worth of physical objects which actually hurts book sales as well. A 176 page full color hardback of Barbarians of the Aftermath costs $44.95. Again, this is not 'greed' pricing, but the realistic cost of publishing and distributing in the modern era. It is an actual tangible product, that you own, and which provides you with more entertainment value than simply reading it would normally provide. The average gaming consumer, however, finds it hard to pay that much for anything book related, when PDFs are so easy to come by.

So what can be done to combat piracy of electronic IP? One idea has been to make the prices so low, that the effort and risks of pirating are no longer worthwhile. Adamant, an RPG and game publisher, recently experimented with 'App Pricing' to stimulate sales and discourage piracy. Basically, every game and supplement was priced like a smartphone app, from 99 cents to $1.99. This experiment failed for various reasons, which the owner of Adamant explains in detail here. I am planning to follow a similar route by actually making the games themselves into apps. With App Pricing and the security offered by the tighter security environment of the smartphone/tablet environment and some sort of software verification scheme, I hope to further discourage piracy. But assuming that piracy is going to happen, and Bittorrents aren't going away how can I make it work for me?

By turning the game into a software product, one that provides something that you can't really recreate with a download and the home printer, the focus of shifts from the game and the rules and even the graphic design as the IP of import. I'm shifting my commercial focus so that the PDF is merely a vehicle for selling the software. The PDF, which is a fully fledged Pen and Paper RPG, can now be sold for 99 cents and if someone goes through the trouble of pirating it, all they are really doing is advertising my game, and in effect, my game software. The Torrents become my marketing tool for the $15 phone/tablet app.

This is all experimental, but I think that history has shown that piracy is here to stay, as long as there is someone who can benefit from it (in much the same way as Elizabeth I benefited from privateers, who were nothing more than 'legalized' pirates). Once you realize that, however, you can redirect your energies to being the one who benefits from it. If you can't beat them... use them.

The Good, The Bad and the Collectivists...

Jaron Lanier is an interesting man. In many ways we couldn't be more different (humanist views, faith in newspaper reporting,  belief in man-made global warming, taste in hair, etc.),  but in his article on online collectivism, Digital Maoism, I find that he and I are very much aligned in our experiences and concerns with the push towards online collectivism. The article sums up the main problems of the collective fairly succinctly and with little of the blather that you might expect from the same subject written within the halls of academia. A practical man with decades of experience in technology as an instigator and creator as opposed to one who theorizes or debates endlessly to no real conclusion, Jared not only identifies the main problems with Collectivism as a goal, but also points out the usefulness of it in limited spheres of influence.

The problem and solution of collectivist output, or group-think, can be summed up in the following ideas: A Collective is best when...

... answering questions, not asking them, and outputs simple answers.

As Lanier points out, a collective is very good at guessing the number of jelly-beans in a jar or serving as the basis of Google's search engine algorithm. What it is not so good at is coming up with lasting ideas or products.

This is, at its base, due to the way the collective averages information to come to simple conclusion. This requires a simple question, like 'do you like X' or 'how much do you think X is worth.' Asking 'what is beauty' will get many, varied and often conflicting answers whose sum total is nonsensical at best. In effect, it is better to ask practical, easily definable questions of a collective, like 'on a scale of 1-10' and leave the vagaries of complex philosophical or creative thought to individuals.

A good example of this can be seen in the episode O' Brother, Where Art Thou. Homer's long-lost brother Herb steps down on the design of a new car to allow the 'average man,' Homer, design it instead. The result makes the Tucker Torpedo look like a 2011 Car & Driver Award Winner and destroys Herb's business (ironically, because the collectivist car industry hated it).

... it is tempered by procedure.

Many people in the United States bemoan the 'gridlock' that plagues congress. 'Congress is the opposite of Progress' some proclaim, and to an extent, that is not only true, but intended.

When they set up our system of government, our founding fathers knew that true democracy would lead to mob rule and that this was not a desirable thing. Even back in the 18th century, they understood the destructive properties of group-think, and (although they didn't have a name for it) the vulnerability of social networks to incitement and exploitation. Instead, they chose a representative form of government to establish a multi-layered process to slow down decision making and established rules to make sure that true majorities, not simple ones based on a fraction of a percentage point over 50, would steer the ship of state.

In this way, state autonomy was virtually guaranteed, as any decision made by the Federal government that affected the states as a whole was sure to be bogged down in debate and unlikely to pass. Only those ideas with true worth, those that could be agreed upon by a large majority of the union, would be allowed to change the entire fabric of the United States. The strength of this system was shown in the passing of the 13th amendment, which was legally above board, leaving the South no other recourse than to secede from the Union to avoid it's effects.

In the end, the United States is a very large collective, but by the use of procedure, we slow down the impulsive nature of collectivist thought, the 'Jitters' as Lanier referred to them, to keep the system from devolving into a constantly changing set of priorities based on whatever ideas are in vogue at the moment, allowing for maximum freedom and a clearly defined culture and set of standards.

... it is overseen and corrected by individuals.

The main complaint that Jared has about collectivist thought is that is terrible for creating, or using active discrimination in the selection of, ideas or products of lasting value. He uses the old and well worn cliché of a 'design by committee' as the perfect example of something a collective should never be allowed to do. I have first-hand experience of this.

In my first job out of college (donkey's years ago), I worked as the graphic designer for a small corporate entity named HBS Systems (the HBS stood for High Class Business Systems, leaving out the C and making the systems in HBS Systems redundant, a fine example of committee design all on its own). We had a hall of middle managers (I called it the Gauntlet) that had to have their say on everything that came out of my office. Products would go up on side of the hall and come down the other. Each manager would add notes on what they thought it needed to have changed (and they all commented), I would make the changes and then it would go back and the managers would then go about undoing the changes of other managers after they appeared. A single 8 page brochure was in the works before I started working there and, two years later, it still wasn't done.

The problem with this job was that as the graphic professional, I should have had some say over which ideas to implement or discard. Instead, my professional skills took a backseat to every mid-level executive in the building, including HR and accounting, and none of them could agree on anything. The individuals who should have had final say, the graphic professional and the head of the company, took second place to the collective of 'everymen' whose input could only make the final product 'average' at best.

The Uber-Human Computer...

My reading for this week centered on The Exploit, by Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, which deals with the way human social structures have changed drastically in the modern era, replacing top-down hierarchies with dispersed social networks, changing the way that human interaction, mainly power/resistance relationships, functions.

Throughout the book, the vast 'super-organism' that Christakis and Fowler imagined (see my previous post) takes on a new paradigm, that of a large biological computer, and is viewed through a mathematical and system oriented lens. Individuals in this set-up are not individuals, per se, but 'dividuals,' semi-autonomous entities (Nodes) which make decisions, but whose decisions are in a large part influenced by the Informatic flow of the network as a whole, the very act of individuation creating a new flow which must, eventually, filter through the other 'dividuals,' undergo further dividuation and then return and influence further decisions.

This brings to mind the 'Memristor' or 'Memory Resistor.' In computer engineering, a two-terminal variable resistor, which not only controls the amount of charge flowing across it, but remembers the amount of charge that has passed between the terminals and changes its resistance based on that last memory. Humans function much the same way in Galloway and Thacker's model, the charge of information passing through them on its way through the network circuit and then the 'dividual' making a decision on how to process and pass that information on based on previous information gathered from its various connections. The practical upshot of this is that humans in a network are often driven by the information within it to make decisions which they think are self-actuated.

Galloway and Thacker explore this relationship to explain how these networks can be exploited with a minimum of force and maximum of effect that could never be matched by older distributed hierarchies. The focus here is different. It is impossible to 'bring down the system' in the traditional revolutionary sense, but much can be achieved by changing the system from the inside through manipulation of the flow of information. Much like the viruses in Black Death (again, see the previous post), or more appropriately, the modern computer virus, the collective nature of modern networks makes it very easy to corrupt  a single node to cause change in the topography of a network and shape it to other purposes.

Like our Memsistor, however, where there is current, there is also resistance. In fact, the more overt  power you exert against a network, the more likely it will be resisted. Attacking a node in our network directly, say by actively disparaging a member of a social network which you are only marginally tied to,  will often strengthen it against further attack due to the panoptic nature of the network to monitor its own nodes and reinforce set protocols. Attacks must be more subtle and are more likely to work if you can get the network to work for you instead.

The classic example is, of course, terrorism. By causing fear  to spread throughout a network, you can change its behavior and ultimately, its shape, as ties (known here as edges) are moved or cut out altogether to isolate the individual nodes from 'contamination.' And it isn't even necessary to attack any specific node: you just need to implant the idea of contamination to get the ball rolling and let the reverberating nature of the network take care of the rest. Terrorists cause fear, the fear causes people to shut themselves off or curtail their normal activities, which damages social and economic systems to which they are tied, which causes more fear which causes more damage, etc.

One of the more subtle ways of exploiting networks and taking them over from within is to gain access to information and modify it slightly, in much the same way as a computer virus does, finding a vulnerable node to spread the new 'meme' about until it is reinforced by the network itself. In biopolitics, this is achieved by taking control of media and education outlets, 'informing' or 'teaching' the corrupted information to vulnerable nodes (the uninformed, the young) and then relying on those nodes to affect change for you by creating new protocols or even restructuring the network.

Is there a defense against this sort of attack? The Exploit references the concept of homogeneity, lack of diversity, as the key vulnerability in networked systems. But without homogeneity, the internet and computer communication in general would be fail. So perhaps there is a biopolitical version of a virus scanner that 'identifies' infected nodes and reacts to them by creating resistance in much the same way as a direct attack? Some sort of documented and set protocol that the network could reference each time information passes from node to node to strengthen homogeneity to such a point that deviations from it are recognized and corrected (Let's call it a 'constitution.' That should do the trick. Well, until one of the nodes decides that it is 'living' and changes at the whim of individual nodes, at which point the whole network falls apart)?

Ok, so we've seen that the system falls apart even with a strong protocol is in play because corruption can come from within a network as well as without (one of the two problems Galloway and Thacker identify). Perhaps the problem in both cases is size. The more nodes in an individual network, and the more diversity in individuation, the more likely corruption can spread. Perhaps the strongest network is made up of several smaller sub-networks that are rigidly homogenized to prevent corruption, but are connected up in a larger and more diverse pattern that can be flexible enough to react to threats? What if, for example, the UN weren't made up of nations but of ideologies? Nations would still exist, in a fashion, as legal and cultural entities, but what if all the world-wide decisions were based on small, focused groups of a million or so like minded people? What would the world look like? I think that's worth looking into...