This has been a pretty good week.
First, the information gathering project seems like it's starting to take shape. I've been reading Lawrence Lessig's Code & Other Laws of Cyberspace, and it's given me new focus. I'll summarize some of what I'm thinking about here, with a general credit to the book for many of the ideas:
So, until the internet, copyright operated through a combination of constraints: legal (or, artificial) and natural. Legal constraints are, obviously, copyright law: the fact that the government simply made it illegal to distribute works freely without consulting the author once they had been copyrighted.
Natural constraints are imposed by time and space: they're logistical concerns. It has historically been difficult to copy an entire book, to give to someone else. The best method so far is a photocopier; copiers produce an inferior work, and mass distribution is basically impossible. Similar circumstances for music and movies: it's possible to record music off the radio, or by copying tapes or CDs, but this creates substandard copies. Movies can be recorded by VCRs, either through direct copying or television, but the process is considerably time-consuming, and the same barriers to distribution exist.
These two factors combine to effectively enforce copyright law. Logistical and qualitiative problems preclude massive, for-profit infringement, and even if such a thing is attempted, it's relatively easy for authorities to discover and stop it.
What the internet has done is almost wholly remove the natural constraints from the picture. We can bypass the specifics, and declare that there are no longer any barriers to the massive anonymous distribution of nearly-identical copies of creative works. This has ruined the copyright-enforcement dynamic, and legislators and the industry are scrambling to find something new that will work.
So far, the solutions have been limited: merely attempts to apply old law to new circumstances. Against Napster and Audiogalaxy, the RIAA proved that old laws could still, to some extent, be enforced. They are now suing individual P2P users, but increasing focus on anonymity seems likely to doom these efforts. The DMCA was a step toward new solutions (for example, by restricting the ability to break encryption), but even it did little to address the fundamental problem: the old combination of natural and artificial constraints simply no longer works.
The other fundamental problem, from the perspective of those with the "information wants to be free" and "the internet cannot be regulated" attitudes, is that this is not the end of the story. This is addressed in the title of Code.
Simply put, the natural constraints (or lack thereof) in cyberspace are not fixed. In real life, the basic rules of time and space apply; technology can help distribution (and also help to maintain quality), but the difficulties do not really change.
In cyberspace, they can be changed by altering the code. In short, Lessig suggests that the industry is in the process of altering the rules of the game: music files that can be copied only a limited number of times, books that can only be read in certain formats, movies that self-delete after being watched a set number of times. Picture this: you buy an ebook; it's just like a regular book, except that you pay every time you read it. We're getting there.
This ain't good for fair use, and if we want to preserve the rights we have, it's not enough to just keep knocking down the old rules. We've got to push legislators to make some new ones, and they have to help the consumer this time.
Have started working out with the UO tae kwon do club team; jargon follows.
They're WTF (world tae kwon do federation) based; since the WTF rules govern basically all serious national and collegiate level competition (up to the Olympics), this makes sense. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, though.
I've been an ITF (international TKD federation) for seven some years; ITF sparring is non-contact point based, rather than contact based. I haven't had a chance to do any sparring yet, since the club is avoiding contact training in preparation for a tournament. So I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, probably next week.
Still, I feel good. I mean, a lot better than I should be feeling having been out for more than a year. In terms of pure technique, I'm probably up there with most of the club guys. They train much more for simple speed than for technique; without doing any actual sparring, it's tough to guage where I'm at in that regard, but I feel like I'm at a competitive level. The serious tournaments start happening in the spring, and if I'm not at a very high level by then I'll be surprised.
Reply to a comment: I no longer use blogrolling; the options it gave me as a free service weren't enough to outweigh the restrictions it put on me. I haven't used it in some time. In fact, the only place it still appears is on a copy of an old layout that I still have hanging around. If that's how you've arrived here, great; I'm flattered if you want to add my to your own blogroll. But, as I'm in the middle of a full-scale rebuild at the moment (and redoing the way my links are structured), I wouldn't expect an addition to my own little list. Sorry about that, but I'll try to get people in as the rebuild comes together.
Posted by slade at October 31, 2003 12:38 AM