Re: DRM, Intel, Sony, virtualization and backdoors

From: Del Cecchi (dcecchi.nospam_at_att.net)
Date: 06/13/05 

Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 19:20:47 -0500

"Peter Grandi" <pg_nh@0502.exp.sabi.UK> wrote in message
news:yf3hdg3wqla.fsf@base.gp.example.com...
On the social architecture implications of CPU/chipset
architectures that can be used to enforce the control of third
parties (the ''good guys'' of course) over systems which are the
property of others, for DRM or ''security'' purposes:

[ ... much omitted ... ]

>> ...The media moguls have never been able to successfully
>> demonstrate that the people who purchase/download "pirated"
>> works would have paid to purchase the same works from a
>> legitimate source. [ ... ]

As far as I know (and I have been somewhat attentive as to this)
the media moguls (and the patent moguls) have not been able (or
even willing, strangely :->) to prove or corroborate the idea
that the current IP regime does provide the (net) benefit to the
public, without which (net) benefit it is illegal in the USA.

I do reckon that there is _some_ limited evidence that in some
narrow circumstances there is probably narrow public benefits in
some countries from some small degree of IP protection, but the
wilder claims by those who derive large vested private benefits
from much more advantageous (to them) regimes are another thing.

Some academic and government studies in the USA and other
countries have strongly suggested that except in very narrow
cases it does not, even if *limited* copyrights seem to provide
smallish but more easily demonstrable benefits than patents.

Also, I guess that record company executives are in part within
their rights to try and seduce computer companies into providing
them with monitoring and enforcing architectural backdoors.

If the customers of the computer companies care, they will buy
something else. But then Congress is ready to help, many there
are ready to grant another monopoly to ensure that the
''something else'' is not legal.

> Consider Mexico, where the record industry has been demolished
> by piracy.

This statement implies the number one fallacy used by the vested
interests of the current IP regime: that Congress owes them an
easy, comfortable living, and if it is hard for them to come by
that living, Congress owes them more protection.

A number of industries have been demolished in the past, and
while they did try to get Congress to give them legal monopolies
(against ''piracy'' of steel, cars, timber, ...) they have never
been as successful as the media vested interests.

If the record industry were to disappear because say either in
law or in fact they lost the vested advantage of the legally
enforced monopolies that underpin they salaries and perquisites,
well, why worry? Those advantages are an almost entirely an
artificial creation of those monopolies.

  Note: there is an interesting 18th century satiric tract by
    a French author about an imaginary petition by the candle
    makers to the King, who was keen to issue Letters Patent
    granting private monopolies to his good friends. The issue
    was that the Sun was illegally competing with them because
    by being un unlicensed provider of light it depressed their
    licensed business, leading to lower living standards in, or
    even the demolition of the candle industry.

> It has, at least, resulted in many acts moving to the US where
> they can make a living selling records.

This statement contains another fallacy: that some people are
owed the right to an easy comfortable living by «selling records»
instead of having to debase themselves earning a regular living
by performing their music, as (evidently stupider) musicians
from time immemorial have done.

Living off the fruits of rent and monopoly is so much easier
than having to work every day that I am not surprised that some
Mexicans have moved to where Congress has generously (for very
modest industry contributions) made it possible. Most Mexicans
however move to the USA to do backbreaking daily work, not to
cash royalty checks while living large. Suckers! :-)

Also, consider this analogy: imagine that Congress decided to
make farming peanuts a federally protected monopoly, and that
it were illegal (criminally so in the end) to farm or import
peanuts in the USA without one of a fixed number of peanut
farming licenses/patents/copyrights granted by Congress.

If it were so, then the peanut farmers with a licence might
vigorously complain that the criminals farming peanuts in their
own yards even for their own consumption would be ''pirating''
peanuts (and recent legal trends imply they would have an
enforceable case), and that abolition or weakening of their
monopoly system would demolish their industry. What a terrible
thought! :-)

  Note that the analogy here is about the legally mandated
  monopoly, not the specific mechanisms of ''pirating''.

I can even imagine that an abolition or weakining of the
monopoly would be argued to be a government taking without
compensation of their ''property'', just as mere reductions in
the duration of copyrights and patents would apparently be
according to some sources.

Now to me many of these things look absurd... Perhaps not to
record company executives whose huge salaries and bonuses,
options and expense accounts depend crucially on the (cheaply
purchased!) generosity of Congress.

  Note: the interested reader might want to check about those
    peanut farming licences, what might have been the (quite vile)
    campaign finance buying reasons for them being generously
    granted by Congress, if they ever were (surely not :->).

Record company executives, peanut farmers, candlemakers of the
world unite, defend your sacrosanct right to earn an easy living
thanks to a grateful Congress! :-)

And thanks for inflicting gigantic virtualization and backdoor
risks (not to mention high peanut butter prices) on everybody in
the pursuit of that noble goal! :-)

Not only peanuts, but sugar, cotton, and tobacco. And then the holders
of the tobacco permits demand large payments when the permit system is
done away with....

It is always easier to make money when the folks with the guns are on
your side, like the government or the mafia...

del cecchi