“@Neurokafka you DMR invaded brain washed corporate elitist! about 5 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Neurokafka”

okay, w.t.f. are you talking about? What do you have against stand-up comedy? Larry Miller

and what the hell is DMR invasion, some sort of takeover of the Department of Mental [...]]]> And I get this email

“@Neurokafka you DMR invaded brain washed corporate elitist! about 5 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Neurokafka”

okay, w.t.f. are you talking about?
What do you have against stand-up comedy? Larry Miller

and what the hell is DMR invasion, some sort of takeover of the Department of Mental Retardation, or Dept Marine Resources? Is this some sort of offshore drilling reference?
My GOD Man! sometimes your tweets (not just your tweets) are like some sort of ironic-cynical koan designed to induce seizures.

This deserves a blog, not a tweet, and since today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, from now on referred to as TLPD in the rest of this document, let’s talk about pirates and DRM, Spore, and IP assumptions.

Spore: magic concept, ambitious yet achievable, and full of unexplained possibilities. It is alike to a caricature of the Metaverse, yet it is extremely poor in activities. It is a common theme that, whenever a social virtual space appears, people forget that activities and meeting points are the most important elements when designing a community infrastructure, be it a building, a city, an enterprise or a game. As Jane Jacobs would say, The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

The facebook people got it – they walk to school, they walk to work, they interact with others. Yet apparently the people at EA have a limited exposure to old buildings, and probably it is their crunch time strategy affecting the products from Maxis, I don’t know. But while evil facebook will allow people to create communities through activities and enjoy the addictive space that it creates, all that Spore allows you to do is click and click and click. It may have worked ten years ago for SimCity, but now we have RealCity. Times, they are a’changing.

And now to Spore DRM: you have to have an approved PC to run that? Are you oput of your mind, EA? Here are some links you might have encountered regarding that little debacle: Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM; EA Admits Spore Launch Botched by DRM; Still, Financial Damage Already Done; DRM: Buyers Beware, and, last but not least, Spore Most Copied game Thanks to DRM.

What’s that about TLPD then? Pirates are not interested in games qua games, they are interested in whatever brings them money.

• Users sharing their game with others? Cool! Monetize that!
• Users using your servers to exchange creatures? Good! Monetize that!
• Users asking you to allow them to give you money so they can get extra servers and faster interaction or premium access? Monetize that.
• Users talking about how cool your company is? That is something that you can actually transform into money!

So, you see, my tuíterin friend, Spore is bad business, old model, worse interaction.

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It makes a beautiful poster, though.

- Buy 5 -11 floor cleaning “Roomba” robots. Any type and variety designed for use on floors can do. - Plug [...]]]> You know all those GPS trackers you can get at spy stores? What about the smaller ones, the ones that indicate position in a room?
Abe has a proposal for a 21st century installation:

- Buy 5 -11 floor cleaning “Roomba” robots. Any type and variety designed for use on floors can do.
- Plug chargers into gallery outlets
- Fully charge robots
- Open gallery
- Turn all of them on at once and let them clean
- Performance ends when all the robots have stopped

I add:
- have a real time map of all the position fo the robots
- make them interact with the public at the exhibition
- sell that graph.

It won’t be a proper exhibition unless you sell the final result, won’t it!

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However [...]]]> Ben Hammersley points to the recent Supreme Court decision declaring grokster liable for the file swapping, torture in Abu Ghraib and all ills in the world.
Ben notes that US law may not apply elsewhere in the world, leaving other countries free to apply this technology in whichever way they conceive it is best.

However it is applicable to note that, in the past, countries such as the UK (and perhaps the USA, I don’t know) have arrogated upon themselves the right to police and enact laws that might seem unjust in other parts of the world. One example that comes to mind is the old UK Admiralty law that allows the UK to render judgment al over the world on matters maritime (or something to that effect).

So, this is possible, and it has been applied before.

What Ben writes, though, is intrinsically correct: there are a whole lot of other countries out there that might understand that the benefit of having a new technology far outpaces the costly and draconian provisions designed to maintain an obsolete business model and an extremely inefficient industry afloat.

Case in point: we are paying US$20 per CD so Britney can choke herself on cocaine (not that Britney, the other one) and to sustain Dylan’s rehab clinic costs. Really, what kind of industry thrives on the self-destructing habits of their stars? What is more, why should I, consumer, pay for that?

Up until very recently the entertainment industry has banked in precious few things: the oligopolic nature of the market, in which a very few companies control the content, the distribution channels.
But this happens because the state of communication on times past allowed only a very few select acts to make it to the fore, and the prohibitive costs of recording, pressing and then pushing through the radio and TV those selected acts meant that, in effect, the barriers to entry were, for all practical purposes, insurmountable: only a company willing to spend millions on a new singer will actually see money coming back to them.

What breaks that model? Well, we have more stars now, ie, less celebrities, and more quacks that display less talent than a band of monkeys. The recording houses have a dizzying array of low quality acts, and keep on publishing even more. Low standards for all, and therefore, discontent disillusioned consumers.

And we got broadband and an amazing way to share, look for, and publish the information that we like. Suddenly, the music industry model became a conversation, an old school market with participating agents and haggling and bargaining.

See, there is no point in trying to push Britney at $20 per CD, while allowing Liz Wright to languish unheard in a corner of the store. We, the audience, will inevitably gravitate towards quality.

Other thing, to which Cory Doctorow was pointing regarding his book and sources of income, is that if distribution of the work is not paid, the artist has to go out there and contact with the public, making the concert the point of confluence of spectators and artist, money coming from the experience of sharing that show with a bunch of other people. We regain the amphitheater, the pack of humans cheering at the artist. It is who we are.

In conclusion, to pretend that a single ruling may obliterate the technological and social pressures that have shaped sharing of content is naïve, harmful and dangerous.
It is naïve, because that is going to proceed no matter what, from corners of the world where simply it is to expensive to send Special Forces or “contractors” and mercenaries.
It is harmful, because it places American technology under the shackles of a few entertainment houses, the same ones that were unable to take advantage of the internet phenomenon, the same ones that eschew technology and place easy profits instead of their consumer. If the Supreme Court limits technological innovation in the USA, rest assured, somebody in Africa, Asia or Latin America is going to come up with the answer for a demand that will only grow.
It is dangerous because, in their zeal to protect the rights to Mickey Mouse, the Court is allowing companies to intrude, invade and trounce upon the rights of citizens – the Court effectively renouncing their role, and becoming facilitators for more invasions of privacy.

And in ten years, we will be seeing the grokster of the time in the stock exchange making a killing. Only that it won’t be and American company.

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