If the telecoms want to use a model in which prices are based on content, and if cable companies want to continue their role as content license managers, we should help them out with it.
If the eyeball networks have the technical capacity to inspect the contents of their customers' packets and deciding how to bill based on what they find and are able to back that up for billing disputes, then they should have no problems using that same kit to make other business decisions based on their total knowledge as gleaned from inspecting their customers' packets.
Content creators should attach individual licenses to creative works with respect to distribution, as already occurs for television and film distribution rights. Such licenses should contain randomly generated variation in their terms (with respect to geography, time of day, caching, end user plans, etc.) that differ each time the content is accessed in machine and human-readable formats. Since the content industry is adamant that copyright infringement occurs even if the infringer access accessed or distributed content against license terms unknowingly or unintentionally, they should have no issues with following the same standards in their own actions.
If it happens that the machine-readable version requires a particularly computationally intensive and time-consuming algorithm to obtain "Verizon may distribute on the next two Sundays between 9:43 and 11:12 a.m. to customers within 100 miles of [legal land description] whose plans cost more than $16.48 including state but not federal surcharges", I wouldn't blame a judge who categorically threw out such capricious and overly complicated content and distribution licensing schemes on the grounds of being against the public interest.
(Reposted.)
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Détante
An early morning retail door-crasher in Calgary consists of 30 pick-up trucks and mini-vans idling in a strip-mall parking lot, even if it's not a frosty December weekend.
At the appointed hour of 7:15 a.m., the first snow-crushing carriages break suburbia's tranquility. It's important for both parents to doze off in the vehicle as it replaces the still suspension of ice with clouds of carbon monoxide and other fine products of incomplete combustion. The store does not open for almost two hours, so they wait. Minutes later, another. And another still, a comforting pace until someone eyeballs more headlights or taillights than the score of trickets advertised. The early arrives silently reassure themselves a place in some imaginary line, inferred by the unspoken rules of the community and insured by close proximity to the front door. As long as no one actively wants a leg up on each other, everyone can suffocate warmly in their vehicles.
As still more weary prospective consumers arrive, thinking changes in the community. "Maybe /they/ want that /other/ $40 disposable bauble for $40 off. They're certainly not as smart as we are. We're getting the better deal by paying $150 for the $200 disposable bauble! We've earned the right to that deal by sacrificing time with our families and our health to be here at this unholy pre-dawn hour."
Thirty vehicles.
"There are 40 disposable baubles in total, so /we/ can 'share' the bad $40 'deal' with /them/. We're still a communi--"
Someone has broken the line!
Every vehicle sends a sleepy-legged runner across the black ice and through an arriving flow of vehicles to the front door. The first from a vehicle to arrive asks the pedestrian checking his mobile under the canopy: "Do you work here?"
Not even a 'hello'? What happened to friendly Canada or Calgary or the small-town community values that we supposedly hold dear?
The queue of people instantly blooms to 40. Others still file in, noting that some in line are couples and the "deals" were offered "one per family". But the scurrying and the mixing had obliterated the class system of the parking lot, and none would be assured that their early morning wagers and sacrifices would grant a leg up on their fellow man.
The school across the street has taught that interpersonal competition is the goal of social organization, and that standardized tests of memorization and uncritical thinking prescribed by some authority should sort the haves (for social standing and scholarships) from the have nots. By day, hundreds of parents the athletic park hoping that their child outscores and defeats all the others to become Canada's next great sports hero, yet they count on coaches and referees to somehow impartially adjudicate merit based on glimpses of attention. In suburbua, cedar shakes and stucco set some home owners apart from those with asphalt shingles and siding, according to environmental or insurance experts whose competing sciences defy comprehension. Even within the parking lot of vehicles, those aboard riced-up GMCs literally and figuratively look down upon the few compact cars that dare to show up.
Only an authority figure could sort this perceived unfairness, and sorting out this retail scarcity must be the first priority of the community. The early community's assumptions about enjoying both comfort and discount access to baubles must not be preempted by someone not subscribing to the community's ungrounded rules and limits. Only the early arrivals should be entitled to take advantage of /the/ rules, and no one else.
The crowd greedily await the pedestrian's response, knowing that their communal assumptions and individual failures to act have screwed somebody, and that they have each yielded the capacity to effectively watch over themselves.
And they will all return for next week's sale.
Be the pedestrian.
--
Of vaguely related note, a big chain store (not offering the spectacle above) holds a team meeting of everyone except cashiers and greeters at 8:45 a.m. in the furniture section. They had daily sales of $310,000 yesterday, down 1.2 per cent from the same date last year. Their biggest sales were (in descending order): groceries ($35k), pharmacy, electronics, ladies wear, and infant consumables. All were up $1,000-3,000 from last year. Their daily shipment consists of three freight trucks totalling 1,000 food items; and 3 trucks totalling 3,000 non-food items.
At the appointed hour of 7:15 a.m., the first snow-crushing carriages break suburbia's tranquility. It's important for both parents to doze off in the vehicle as it replaces the still suspension of ice with clouds of carbon monoxide and other fine products of incomplete combustion. The store does not open for almost two hours, so they wait. Minutes later, another. And another still, a comforting pace until someone eyeballs more headlights or taillights than the score of trickets advertised. The early arrives silently reassure themselves a place in some imaginary line, inferred by the unspoken rules of the community and insured by close proximity to the front door. As long as no one actively wants a leg up on each other, everyone can suffocate warmly in their vehicles.
As still more weary prospective consumers arrive, thinking changes in the community. "Maybe /they/ want that /other/ $40 disposable bauble for $40 off. They're certainly not as smart as we are. We're getting the better deal by paying $150 for the $200 disposable bauble! We've earned the right to that deal by sacrificing time with our families and our health to be here at this unholy pre-dawn hour."
Thirty vehicles.
"There are 40 disposable baubles in total, so /we/ can 'share' the bad $40 'deal' with /them/. We're still a communi--"
Someone has broken the line!
Every vehicle sends a sleepy-legged runner across the black ice and through an arriving flow of vehicles to the front door. The first from a vehicle to arrive asks the pedestrian checking his mobile under the canopy: "Do you work here?"
Not even a 'hello'? What happened to friendly Canada or Calgary or the small-town community values that we supposedly hold dear?
The queue of people instantly blooms to 40. Others still file in, noting that some in line are couples and the "deals" were offered "one per family". But the scurrying and the mixing had obliterated the class system of the parking lot, and none would be assured that their early morning wagers and sacrifices would grant a leg up on their fellow man.
The school across the street has taught that interpersonal competition is the goal of social organization, and that standardized tests of memorization and uncritical thinking prescribed by some authority should sort the haves (for social standing and scholarships) from the have nots. By day, hundreds of parents the athletic park hoping that their child outscores and defeats all the others to become Canada's next great sports hero, yet they count on coaches and referees to somehow impartially adjudicate merit based on glimpses of attention. In suburbua, cedar shakes and stucco set some home owners apart from those with asphalt shingles and siding, according to environmental or insurance experts whose competing sciences defy comprehension. Even within the parking lot of vehicles, those aboard riced-up GMCs literally and figuratively look down upon the few compact cars that dare to show up.
Only an authority figure could sort this perceived unfairness, and sorting out this retail scarcity must be the first priority of the community. The early community's assumptions about enjoying both comfort and discount access to baubles must not be preempted by someone not subscribing to the community's ungrounded rules and limits. Only the early arrivals should be entitled to take advantage of /the/ rules, and no one else.
The crowd greedily await the pedestrian's response, knowing that their communal assumptions and individual failures to act have screwed somebody, and that they have each yielded the capacity to effectively watch over themselves.
And they will all return for next week's sale.
Be the pedestrian.
--
Of vaguely related note, a big chain store (not offering the spectacle above) holds a team meeting of everyone except cashiers and greeters at 8:45 a.m. in the furniture section. They had daily sales of $310,000 yesterday, down 1.2 per cent from the same date last year. Their biggest sales were (in descending order): groceries ($35k), pharmacy, electronics, ladies wear, and infant consumables. All were up $1,000-3,000 from last year. Their daily shipment consists of three freight trucks totalling 1,000 food items; and 3 trucks totalling 3,000 non-food items.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Questions for people who know about the WikiLeaks thing
1) What's the annual population of diplomatic cables from which the current leaks sample?
2) How many interactions requiring reporting via cables occur each year?
3) How many nodes and links are represented in the total population of cables?
4) What measures have been suggested to rectify the issues highlighted?
On all of the above, are the examples in the media representative of regular activity or are they exceptions? This is required information before the individual examples reported can be used as the basis to make judgements about the system.
If the system works within parameters most of the time for most individuals for most uses, it would be inefficient to seek to scrap it entirely.
2) How many interactions requiring reporting via cables occur each year?
3) How many nodes and links are represented in the total population of cables?
4) What measures have been suggested to rectify the issues highlighted?
On all of the above, are the examples in the media representative of regular activity or are they exceptions? This is required information before the individual examples reported can be used as the basis to make judgements about the system.
If the system works within parameters most of the time for most individuals for most uses, it would be inefficient to seek to scrap it entirely.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Copyright, continued
Unlike prior eras when distribution of information implied and was limited by diffusion of items or warm bodies, the present pressing social needs relating to locating and organizing relevant diffused information. Four centuries of policy about copying rights have yielded an uncountable number of works bearing information, but very few systems through which to find and use it. The problem of socializing* the information, enabling us to know and consider it, not only remains unsolved, but is structurally prevented from being solved by our current concepts of copyright as relating only to authors, publishers, and consumers. A new role is indicated for someone to index authors' works, publishers' products, and consumers' information needs.
Public policy should therefore reassert its role to solve the social problem of knowledge distribution and use, by encouraging entrepreneurs to index and/or combine it in useful ways with other knowledge or people. As with copyright in its earlier incarnations, policy should not decide which method of socialization should become popular or succeed, but that anyone who wants to take a risk by investing in an socializing method should be able to try. Instead of attempting to shoe-horn 21st century problems into a 17th century paradigm, policy should recognise that the social value of knowledge production is not in exclusivity over the production or distribution of that information, but in its use.
To that end, socializers of information should be entitled to some protection to take earnings from the value they have added to knowledge and information (not "socialized information should be protected..." as with the current degraded model). A new (non-copyright) paradigm to gain social value from mobilizing big information would have the following characteristics.
1) Instead of barriers, there should be incentives to open or inter-link indexes of information. This is analogous to enabling lending libraries to assemble collections of items that provide additional value in aggregate.
2) Authors, publishers, and socializers of information should be incentivized to add context to published information, treating such meta-information not as works derivative of the works indexed, but as first-class original creative contributions.
3) The present monetary reward system for authoring and distributing information is based on traffic and referral, not on exclusive control over publication and derivative use. Protections for indexes should reward the most "open" socializing or indexing systems that would attract the largest number of hits, citations, referrals, or uses.
4) An index-right should recognize that information is not static. That is, the value added to knowledge by socializing it rests significantly in the socialized knowledge, and also in the methods and knowledge required to socialize it, and to supplement it with new knowledge and information as inevitably arises.
5) Elements of the current copyright system that generate social value through production of original knowledge information should be retained and enhanced, elements that inhibit generating social value should be phased out.
* in the sense interacting with others, not in the sense of collective ownership
Specific responses to prior offline comments:
- I agree that not all 'Free' software licensing schemes are equal. I provide no sympathy if your favourite scheme: protects the interests of the knowledge or its expression at the expense of broader social interests; relies on an artificial scarcity model; or claims to break the core of copyright but only tinkers at the edges. Reconsider why we have public policy in the first place.
- Copyright and index-right schemes would not be mutually exclusive. In fact, they add value to each other. The problem arises when one scheme is used with respect to activities of the other.
- I do not generally agree with tactics to constipate information flows "for the public good". Explicitly enabling anyone to flood the market with copyright-protected works has not co-occured with the publication and distribution of even a small fractino of copyright-protected works. Likewise, explicitly protecting the right of anyone to produce an index would not obviously flood the market with indexes or socializations.
Public policy should therefore reassert its role to solve the social problem of knowledge distribution and use, by encouraging entrepreneurs to index and/or combine it in useful ways with other knowledge or people. As with copyright in its earlier incarnations, policy should not decide which method of socialization should become popular or succeed, but that anyone who wants to take a risk by investing in an socializing method should be able to try. Instead of attempting to shoe-horn 21st century problems into a 17th century paradigm, policy should recognise that the social value of knowledge production is not in exclusivity over the production or distribution of that information, but in its use.
To that end, socializers of information should be entitled to some protection to take earnings from the value they have added to knowledge and information (not "socialized information should be protected..." as with the current degraded model). A new (non-copyright) paradigm to gain social value from mobilizing big information would have the following characteristics.
1) Instead of barriers, there should be incentives to open or inter-link indexes of information. This is analogous to enabling lending libraries to assemble collections of items that provide additional value in aggregate.
2) Authors, publishers, and socializers of information should be incentivized to add context to published information, treating such meta-information not as works derivative of the works indexed, but as first-class original creative contributions.
3) The present monetary reward system for authoring and distributing information is based on traffic and referral, not on exclusive control over publication and derivative use. Protections for indexes should reward the most "open" socializing or indexing systems that would attract the largest number of hits, citations, referrals, or uses.
4) An index-right should recognize that information is not static. That is, the value added to knowledge by socializing it rests significantly in the socialized knowledge, and also in the methods and knowledge required to socialize it, and to supplement it with new knowledge and information as inevitably arises.
5) Elements of the current copyright system that generate social value through production of original knowledge information should be retained and enhanced, elements that inhibit generating social value should be phased out.
* in the sense interacting with others, not in the sense of collective ownership
Specific responses to prior offline comments:
- I agree that not all 'Free' software licensing schemes are equal. I provide no sympathy if your favourite scheme: protects the interests of the knowledge or its expression at the expense of broader social interests; relies on an artificial scarcity model; or claims to break the core of copyright but only tinkers at the edges. Reconsider why we have public policy in the first place.
- Copyright and index-right schemes would not be mutually exclusive. In fact, they add value to each other. The problem arises when one scheme is used with respect to activities of the other.
- I do not generally agree with tactics to constipate information flows "for the public good". Explicitly enabling anyone to flood the market with copyright-protected works has not co-occured with the publication and distribution of even a small fractino of copyright-protected works. Likewise, explicitly protecting the right of anyone to produce an index would not obviously flood the market with indexes or socializations.
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