The Human Factory

Ira Glass has the most absorbing tales. This one is no different, and it is about a topic that I am familiar with. The whole show is embedded below, and if that does not work - the link to the original story on This American Life is here.

Favorite quote from the show: Shenzen looks like Bladerunner threw up on itself.

Over a period of 35 minutes, the narrative evolves slowly, from a funny self-effacing confession to a pondering, visceral narrative designed, not as much to shock, as to prod new life into a story that has almost nothing new to give. To round it all up, Act II of the show is typical NPR - the other side of the story - including this opinion arguing the benefits of sweatshops.

Finally, it is easy to see this as something specific to Apple, while it is not. Having Apple on the headline does bring in the eye-balls, but the story is no different for Samsung, or any of the other makers of electronics. Once again, it is the Apple side of the camp, that put it together in an easy to use package.

The whole story is an hour long - but well worth it.

Nokia 5800: the phone never quits

All said and done, Nokia has impressed me with their steadfast loyalty to their first ever touchscreen phone, my Nokia 5800. It has been close to three years since it's release, and over 2.5 years that I have owned it, and the company continues to roll out significant upgrades to the phone.

The latest upgrade puts the firmware version at v60.0.003.

A couple of differences with the present upgrade - this did not happen over the air (OTA) as most of the other upgrades, signifying that this is a pretty important change. Secondly, the notification of the upgrade went through the new Updates module, signifying another milestone for Nokia in having a deployment method that actually works.

The biggest change seems to be the browser. Called Anna - the latest browser has a much better UI compared to the previous one and seems more stable upon initial use. Memory management seems to have gotten better, as there is more free space available. And playing catch-up the current upgrade includes a “Slide to Unlock” option to unlock the screen.

Maybe the Nokia 5800 is the perfect test-bed to check new features on - extra large installed base that are conveniently segregated by Product Codes; a phone with a strong hardware spec that does not seem seriously dated three years in; and a group of customers that Nokia desperately wants to keep in the family and not lose to the iOS or Android camps. Whatever be the reason, the upgrades are rolling out and for that, we are thankful.

+1 and the persistent Like

+1 is Google's latest attempt at cracking social. After the famously obscure Orkut, and the disaster that was Buzz, it was about time Google got it right.

With +1 Google seems to have gone about social differently. +1 is a highly scaled down version of a social network - the opposite of Facebook. Facebook built the interaction feature-set first, then used the Like button to spread it. Google's approach seems to be focused on building out the +1 button and eventually coalesce the rest of its sharing services around it.

+1 has two things going for it - it is persistent and contextual. Persistent because unlike the Like button, the core idea for +1 is not to broadcast the action to everyone. When you "like" something, that act itself is shared by Facebook. Which works for Facebook, because communication is what Facebook is all about. But +1 is more persistent; it hides in the sandwich layer between web-content and you - the search engine.

Persistence is important, because this shifts the playing field away from conversations - which Facebook and Twitter are good at, to algorithmically mining history - something Google is great at. This is where context comes in. Google owns your landing page on the web: the search results. It is a powerful page, and is also contextual. Unlike the static Facebook, Google's use of +1 can morph itself to add context to what you are in the mood for at that time. Unlike a cacophony of likes, you instead get the few +1's that are highly relevant to what you are doing at that time.

This is the strategy that worked for Google in ads, and the bet is that it will work for social as well.

The problem for Google's social has not been building out social feature sets. The biggest impediment has been changing the nature of social to fit with Google's strengths. +1 could well be the game changing strategy that Google so desperately needs.

FCC - Open Internet Rules

It was just a matter of time after the last cave-in by Google, that the FCC was going to make it all official. Today in a rather curiously timed vote, the Federal Communications Commission passed a set of rules that ostensibly seek to establish a framework for net-neutrality but in effect sets the idea of network neutrality down the path of exceptions which can only end in one day becoming as mind-boggling as the tax code. The illustrations are screen captures from the live hearing the FCC held for this event.

Network neutrality is a simple concept. Network providers, that is your ISP that links you to the Internet, should have no say in the way the network is being used. In other words, as a service provider, their job is to link customers up, not limit or influence what the customers do with the link. This is important because the current innovation on the web required a significantly low barrier to entry. The bandwidth hungry YouTube of today would not have existed if the network deemed it to be less desirable compared to the much lighter Twitter.

The business argument against network neutrality is that investment in network infrastructure depends on the amount and type of usage. And not having a seat at that table will result in a worse experience for everyone. Till date there was not explicit rule guaranteeing the protection of network neutrality. All that changed with the latest hearings by the FCC. We have rules now, but they are the strangest set of rules for the weirdest of reasons. And toothless to boot.

Starting with the images at the top, the current FCC proposal includes three rules - Transparency; No Blocking; and No Unreasonable Discrimination. First off the good - the principles themselves are robust enough. There is always going to be someone that seeks to circumvent the spirit for the letter, but in a broad sense these could well be the pillars of the definition of an open Internet. The fun is however lies in the details.

Firstly, creating a rule that includes the word "lawful", includes just enough leverage to establish a monitoring and inspection regime to prevent illegal activity. The two biggest excuses - security and copyright protection. This has got to be one of the myriad goals of these rules.

Second, apparently the Internet is different when you are walking on the street as opposed to sitting at home (see fourth slide). Google said so. This doesn't make much sense until you realize it is all about the apps. The apps have already created a form of stratified, non-interoperable web on the smartphone. And what is more, your telecom provider can unreasonably discriminate between the apps. Would you then be surprised if YouTube on your telecom's $1.99 app played better than on Google's app?

Thirdly there is no real enforcement. During the hearing, the counsel mumbled something about self-regulation. Though you do get to submit informal complaints to the FCC, for free!

So in effect net neutrality gets more reports, and a promise for no unreasonable discrimination in traffic as long as you are sitting down. All bets are off if you use apps on your phone. And if things go south, there isn't much redress beyond what we have today - start a twitter campaign and pray.

Artificial Neutral Networks

Net Neutrality means many things to many people. For some it means the network is indifferent to the packets that flow through. For others it represents the freedom for the little guy to take on the big corporate - and have a chance. Others view it as an unwelcome encroachment of the Government into yet another business. Still others see it as an archaic concept representing the early dawn of the Internet, ready for retirement as IPv4.

Net Neutrality is all that and more, depending on who you ask. Events over the last few weeks, in my mind, are watershed. Irrespective of the outcome, the arguments made now will define the nature of discussion going forward.

First the basics - Net Neutrality means that the networks are agnostic to their traffic. Drawing a rough parallel, it is like the highway system is agnostic to the type of vehicle. You could drive a Lamborghini or a commercial 18-wheeler, the rules of the road apply the same. Similarly, proponents of Net Neutrality want the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep their hands off all traffic, arguing that the democracy on the web was the key for innovation over the past few decades.

On the other hand, opponents characterize it as an impediment to the natural evolution of the Net, where unnecessary oversight (by the FCC) will reduce competition and eliminate choice.

The graphic is what advocates promise will happen without neutrality, and opponents ridicule as being far fetched.

Personally, I love the idea of Net Neutrality. Like Open Source, it represents an idea of single-minded meritocracy - the best idea wins. But realistically, I think the idea is always going to be little more than an aspirational goal. But as a law, there is little that network neutrality can deliver. Paradoxically, any legislation that enforces neutrality automatically puts someone else in charge of the network.

Why is this relevant now? Google and Verizon came up with a policy proposal a few days ago, outlining a set of seven framework ideas as a basis for a future for network neutrality. There was a swift response from news sites and blogosphere, mainly critical, including accusations of a Google sellout. ATT called it reasonable - and the battle lines are drawn. Google did come up with an explanation of sorts, but only helped paint a stark picture of how this debate is only going to get clearer than mud in the months ahead.

As I said, these are defining times. Ideas and decisions taken now will define the nature of the Internet and innovation in the future. All most of us can do, is wait and see.

Update: A follow-up article to the destructively accurate article over at Wired; a very pragmatic outlook.

T.E.A.L.

Funny story on NPR about a guy who, one day, decided to embark upon a cross-country quest to correct typos. Jeff Deck, the founder of Typo Eradication Advancement League, and his buddy Benjamin Douglas, set out to not just identify, or photograph, but actually fix typos in public signs. It went well, until the duo were busted for “fixing” a historic marker at the Grand Canyon. Vandalism - was the term the authorities preferred instead.

They are back, with a book now, that chronicles their journey. For two and a half months they were out and about, finding 437 typos and correcting more than half of them. While they found some support for their effort, there also was a lot of apathy. Culminating in the run-in with the law.

Now here's the rub - imagine finding typos in this publication. Ah the sweet-sweet irony.

5800 firmly upgrading

Yay - this makes me feel like a kid entering a candy store - giddy with anticipation. My phone's firmware is upgrading again - to v.51.0.006. The phone is downloading the firmware as I type, that is available as an OTA release. The official changelog includes:

• Improved Mail for Exchange
• Improved video calls
• Improved browser
• Performance improvements

Does not sound like a lot, but folks have reported other minor benefits as well.

This of course would not have happened, had I not changed my product code from 0575586 (which, despite being an early adopter of the phone, does not get any love from Nokia) to 0559961. But that is the topic for another post.

Wave waves Goodbye!

That was quick. Last year, I had written about a new technology from Google, which was - as usual - going to change the world. The Google Wave. The unified replacement for email, IM and social networking with an immersive collaborative environment.

Apparently Google recently pulled the plug on it.

There are a number of reasons outlined in the post by Google, still more by pundits all over the interwebs. But something else struck me - the time-line. For a company that was comfortable keeping the beta tag on a core services for years, it took just 14 months before pulling the plug on something that didn't work. And that after opening it up to general use hardly 2 months ago. This seems to suggest a growing business savvy to the company, with an increasing ability to take hard decisions fast.

Combined with the rumors of Google going back on Net Neutrality, this seems to reinforce their increasingly pragmatic business outlook. And when hard business sense conflicts with philosophy, guess what wins.

Iron Man Cometh

After living in the minds of kids, nerds and movie makers for decades, a true practical jet pack has finally emerged. The Martin Jetpack is the world's first usable personal flying vehicle.

This is definitely not the first successful jet pack. Earlier attempts like the Bell Rocket Belt, had been successful, but barely usable. The initial version had a flight time of about 20 seconds that increased to 30 seconds through later innovations.

The Martin Jetpack achieves almost 30 minutes of flight time. Built from carbon fiber composite, the device has a dry weight of about 250 lbs driven by a 2.0 L V4 2 stroke engine rated at 200 hp (150 kw). The best part - the fuel for the jet pack is premium gasoline.

The jetpacks are now available for commercial sale. Some reports have put the price at around $86,000. Not bad if it means you will fly to your next big evening.

Googlicious

Seems like a lot is happening with Google. Two noteworthy blog posts in the same day - at least noteworthy for me.

First, the Nexus One phone (which our household owns) will no longer be sold via their online website. I am sure it is a sound decision given their sales problems. But it takes away the one chance for the mobile phone market in the US to finally break free of the carrier choke hold. Funnily, this was timed just days after we picked up the new Car dock accessory for the phone.

Second, looks like Google Street view has been collecting a lot more information than the previously disclosed. Not only were the Google cars collecting the names of SSIDs and MAC addresses, but they had been collecting fragments of actual payload (data transmitted unencrypted through the network).

So that is one apology and one surrender. Not bad for day's work.

Updated: Link to google.com/phone no longer is live, updated to static Nexus One page.

Uncensored: google.cn

Seems like the beginning of a new phase in Google's life. For better or for worse, this is a big deal.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China: an update

NPR on the NRI

An interesting piece produced by NPR about the change in the portrayal of the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) over the ages in the Indian Cinema. An interview with WNYC Reporter Arun Venugopal.

Love the ability to embed NPR content.

Google Wave

WOW. If you have an hour and 20 minutes at some point, this is a must see. The Wave is Google's ambitious replacement of the email, instant message, tweet, blog and pretty much every other means of communication and collaboration currently available. But Google's approach to do this is not by providing yet another replacement, but by linking to these means of communication and extending them transparently.

At its heart, the Google Wave is email done right. Updating the current paradigm of point to point communication bursts offered by email, Google Wave offers a centralized client-server real-time collaborative alternative. What this means is that email is no longer delivered to your Inbox. Instead, your Inbox is a sort of a window into a central location, that essentially hosts a dynamic, ever changing web page which is your email. As people contribute to this web page - called the Wave, the client (in this case a HTML 5 compliant browser) automatically updates itself to reflect a common shared view.

If that is all that Google Wave was, then it would potentially have ended up as an optional Google Labs widget for Gmail. Instead, the Wave team took this further. They added real time - character by character refreshes; provided drag and drop functionality for rich media like photos and videos; enabled collaborative edit features for all content; and provided a means for existing communication mechanisms to interact with the content and updates. Suddenly the Wave seems much more than just a handy email gadget. Instead, it is a new way to think about communicating, sharing and collaborating.

The best part about Wave is that it forces you to think differently about communicating, by providing fundamentally different tools and mechanisms. A particularly enlightening moment in the presentation is when an old Wave was dug up where participants initially began communicating serially like an email, and realized mid-way through the process, that there was a potentially more productive way of continuing the same conversation through the editing features provided in the tool. It is this ability to simultaneously apply two diametrically different paradigms, that is the real potential for Wave. Users will no longer have to choose to learn a new paradigm - instead they can choose to stay the same, and wean off at their own pace.

The second major feature has to be its extensibility. The opening remarks encapsulated Google's approach to Wave - as a Product, Platform and Protocol. True to looking at it as a protocol, Wave developers seemed to have incorporated several real-world requirements into it. One example that sticks out is the ability for multiple Wave implementation to keep each other abreast only of updates that they really 'need to know'. Such an approach reflects today's Legal discovery requirements really well, and demonstrates Google's commitment to making this a broadly acceptable protocol.

The potential issues that Google will face in trying to establish a Wave based communication platform will probably not be technical to Wave at all. Google Wave assumes that ubiquitous connectivity, which seems to be the direction they have been driving with all their offerings. Of course, the Wave is going to use HTML 5's cache functionality to provide offline usage, but connectivity is still going to be critical in Wave's acceptance. HTML 5 brings another item of resistance for Wave's acceptance. It was only recently that Firefox finally overtook IE6 in terms of usage. Browser adoption has and will never be as cutting edge as Google will want it to be. Not having a HTML 5 compliant browser will effect Wave's adoption.

The second issue will be user acceptance. People have gotten used to email in the traditional sense. For the vast majority, thinking in terms of email is as far of a change as they can fathom. Forcing a truly dynamic paradigm upon them, may not be very successful.

The third issue is corporate acceptance. Large scale user and technical acceptance of new technology has always been tied to acceptance in the corporate world. Your company pays for you to learn something new, like say email, and you then take it up on your own. Wave offers collaboration aimed at smaller, widely dispersed teams. Unless companies are convinced about the benefits of Wave-ifying their email or IM, it may end up remaining just a geek's toy.

Frustration

Hola,

Well, the first news is this. I have the domain name anarchius.org with me. You can do a whois on it by clicking here. That will probably give you a lot more information to you than you probably will need :).

The second thing and the thing I am frustrated with is what Verisign has been doing. This is so frustrating to see. I mean, this is the reason why enterprise should be kept away from the Net.

The Internet is probably the biggest collaborative effort by mankind since the development of the language. And even at that this is a bigger effort. When things like a language was developed it needed that the entire community accept and adopt a common standard for communication. This was independent of the use to which the language would be put to use to. We could use languages to communicate history, physics or math. The underlying feature to communication was the language.

The Internet is similar. It by itself means nothing, but a means to communicate. And on top of this structure you have the entire edifice of the email and the WWW which is the content that is being transmitted using the Internet.

This parallel between the Internet and language brings about interesting analogies. Imagine a scenario when language was probably patented. Imagine when you would have to pay someone, or were somehow inhibited from using the letter "I", say. Imagine if suddenly people could not use the word "sorry" and would have to use "hic-hic" because someone decided to change the meaning of the word sorry?

That precisely is the problem with the Internet and the entire fiasco of IPs, and commercial changes to the structure of the Internet. Even when a small but fundamental change is made in a small part of a standalone application, the changes of which would cause a great deal of problems to apparently unconnected parts of the application. Now when a company, for business gain alone, decides to change the fundamental structure of the Internet, which can possibly affect thousands of applications then it is time to do something about it.

Well, I have decided to get frustrated about it, what about you?

~!nrk

And more does

I know I cannot make those long posts anymore.

That is because, I sit in this corporate outfit, and I have to be all corporat-ish. So God help me.

Well, I had to write this. So I remembered this. I am in corporate, but I still /. and google.news a lot. In the technology section, I found this article.

I dont know if you have been reading the news recently, but the Blaster worm has been doing the rounds. And then they "caught" this blaster worm writer. A script kiddie. An 18 year old who is just spending some spare times, grepping old scripts to change strings and replace then with his own names. And do you know what they called him?

Mr McKay would not elaborate beyond the allegations against Mr Parson, but said, "Is he dangerous? Yes, he's dangerous. ... There is serious harm to individuals, businesses, Microsoft Corp. being only one of them."

Oh my gawd. Gimme a break. I mean, they say the same thing against everyone. He is a dangerous deranged criminal. He is the reason I am going to miss my profit targets. Big valuations of possible problems, and then big flashes of photographers in the press conference.

I dont know if you know about another guy called Kevin Mitnick. I think i wrote about him earlier. The same with him too. I can understand the desperation of the media for these poor script kiddies. I so feel sorry for them. Most of the bigger fish are probably doing all they want to do, and making sure neither the media not the courts find anything against them. And then there are these kids, who know a little, have an attitude and in the end be those who have take the fall.

And to top it all, people act as if they were the persons to cause the trouble to begin with. The article acts as if 18 year old script |<1dd133 is the bad person and Microsoft is the victim!! How pathetic can journalism get.

I dont know if journalists will ever look beyond the obvious and reach out for the truth. And I hope that one day, people will understand the difference between hackers, crackers, virus authors and script kiddies. And one day, I hope, Microsoft is secure enough that script kiddies are mere kids and unable to cause 7.7 million dollar worth of trouble.

No, let me change that. And one day, I hope, there wont be enough of M$ left for script kiddies to do 7.7 million dollar worth of trouble.

Amen to that.

warm regards,

~!nrk

Consciousness

Okay, here I am back. This is the first time I am doing a second post in the same day. But I just cannot help it. For I have discovered an incredible piece on the net. The page talks about some exerpts from the book "The User Illusion" by Tor Norretranders (Translated by Jonathan Sydenham;Viking Penguin, 1998; ISBN 0-670-87579-1; 467 pages). And I think it is amazing. You ought to read that book. As the author of the page said, if it does not excite you, check your vital signs. In the exerpt, the author of the page talks about the term "user illusion" which is again very similar to the concept of the "Sphere of perception" that we had talked about earlier. Amazing really. Googling a lot now. Will add more to this post as and when.

Update: Check out the first link that google threw up. Some more reading the book without buying it. I _am_ going to buy it, but this it till then. Check this out...

Shorthand: conscious self = "I"; unconscious self = "me"

...

(Ref: The Inner Game of Tennis. "When you short-circuit the mind by giving it an ‘overload’ of things to deal with, it has so many things to attend to that it no longer has time to worry. The "I" checks out and lets the "me" check in.)

...

Spirituality merely involves taking your own life seriously by getting to know yourself and your potential. This is no trivial matter, for there are quite a few unpleasant surprises in most of us. The dominant psychological problem of modern culture is that its members do not want to accept that there is a Me beyond the I. The Me is everything the I cannot accept: It is unpredictable, disorderly, willful, quick, and powerful.

From the Amazon.com editorial review of the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" (Paperback - 122 pages Revised edition (May 1997) Random House (Paper); ISBN: 0679778314)...

A phenomenon when first published in 1972, the Inner Game was a real revelation. Instead of serving up technique, it concentrated on the fact that, as Gallwey wrote, "Every game is composed of two parts, an outer game and an inner game." The former is played against opponents, and is filled with lots of contradictory advice; the latter is played not against, but within the mind of the player, and its principal obstacles are self-doubt and anxiety. Gallwey's revolutionary thinking, built on a foundation of Zen thinking and humanistic psychology, was really a primer on how to get out of your own way to let your best game emerge. It was sports psychology before the two words were pressed against each other and codified into an accepted discipline.

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

I remember. When I was a kid, there was this great desire in me to learn. I was one of those kids whose hands itched whenever they saw screws, bolts, clips and any other mechanism that allowed you to take a peek. Toys were amusing. They did their part of entertainment, but then they also provided great mechanisms to open and play with. I loved simple toys, not because I like simple things, but because they were ingenious and used simple hacks to come up with brilliant mechanisms.

Then I grew up, and this craze to know stuff got translated into reading technical stuff. Reading about obscure things became a passion, a fashion. Things mundane were out, exotic was in. Things that were worth reading were either the too big or the too small. Deep Space or the string theory. Anything else was mere time-pass. And anything remotely emotional / human was - bah.

Then I grew up a bit more. And I started reading Slashdot. This was a take on the words 'slash' and 'dot' used as part of any standard URL that is pronounced. Today I will introduce you to slashdot and will introduce you to some of the people who reside on this online space. And I will also talk about something slashdot is proliferating, in the sphere of self moderated expression.

Slashdot (henceforth known as /.) is a news link posting site. This site has a huge fan following, which it has built over the years. Now these users of this site submit stories, as and when they happen all over the world. There are a set of authors of the site, who go through all the submissions and choose the ones more suited to be published on the site. Typically something between 10 and 20 stories get posted in a day. The idea of the site is not to be an exhaustive collection of links, or to be a detailed discussion on various topics. The site couldn't care less about such objective. The site is driven by a need to make a good omlette of news links each day, which makes sense and generates interest in all sections of its diverse users.

So how does this work. Imagine. There are millions of eyeballs, who are reading a similar number of sites and stories all the time. Anything that happens is immediately sent as a story to /. And stories are accepted within hours. Thus each day, there are a host of stories, related to various categories of interest to the nerds, at one place. The efficacy of the system is such that, Slashdot starts becoming a starting place for people to check up on important happennings, rather than keep track of hundreds of news services for anything remotely interesting or spectacular or out of the ordinary.

The aim of posting such news links on the site is not just to provide work as a clearing house for links. Slashdot provides for discussions amongst the members on the various stories that are posted. Although this is commonplace now, slashdot was one of the pioneers of this method of discussion boards. And by-far it remains one of the most powerful mechanisms of self-regulated online discussions. We will talk about the method of moderation soon.

The moderation of Slashdot is a two step affair, carried out entirely by the user community. The first level of moderation is the moderation, done by the moderators. The second round of moderators is the meta-moderation, done by the community to the moderation of moderators. Now the best part of this two step moderation is that none of these moderators and meta-moderators are not fixed. They are dynamically selected and allocated tasks automatically. This happens like this.

Moderators are selected randomly from the entire set of serious users (seriousness is tracked and kept record of). Each such selected user is given 5 points which he can use to moderate user comments. A comment can be moderated positively or negatively. Positive moderations are more visible to other users (users can view messages according to the moderations) Thus better and more important messages are seen by a greater number of people.

These moderators are automatically checked by the meta-moderators. Every metamoderators is given 10 moderations each day and asked to rate it as fair and unfair. This not only corrects any errors, but also reflects on the fairness of the moderators and will decide when they will be given moderator status next time.

Hence the entire setup is a great experiment on the self moderation capability of online communities. So far, so good, (so what).

I will talk about the kind of people on slashdot, in another post.
~!nrk

Milestone

Today we unite in celebration of the fact that my first two blogs have rolled off the "5-blog" limit in the editor. This means that we have really taken off.

The ANN project report, I was talking about yesterday, is complete. See, I am being precise here. The project report is complete. Sadly not the project. Atleast not the part that we had promised mid-way through the evaluation. But it is done and now there are a lot more things on the mind that it is not possible to waste further thought on it.

I wanted to talk about an article I had read over at salon.com, led by slashdot. But I will not. However I want to talk about something that I have been thinking about for sometime now. It is basically because i eyed this article. Basically the article talks about a great number of developments on the CopyRight front. If you are any person who keeps in touch with the happennings on the net, you would have surely heard of the peer-to-peer programs. These programs, (remember the estwhile napster and the latest kazaa, bearshare, limewire and the host of other Gnutella clients?) allow people to share music, programs and other software. The MPAA and the RIAA have been up in arms, entreating the law-makers to do something to protect the "poor artists" from being ripped off their hard earned money.

This discussion will not focus on what the MPAA and the RIAA themselves are a sad representation of. Nor will we talk about the nature of the money in this business, or who actually makes the money, how profits have been increasing regularly, or how most of their claims are hypocritical in their own right.

Instead lets look if the entire concept of CopyRight actually makes sense, in this new world. CopyRights came into being in order to protect the interests of the people, who put in substantial investments to come up with something new. The idea was that the investment that the entity put in, so as to produce the new product/service, has a chance at being redeemed. Hence giving a initial start to the entity, as a monopoly offering the particular service, would allow it to do the same. The two aspects of the idea were that a) there was a quasi-monopoly created and b) the corresponding entity would have time to recover the costs it put in.

What is the difference today? Well, both concepts of monopoly, time and costs are being revised and rewritten. Digitization has ensured that the costs of production and reproduction, have hit the floor. It is possible to create copies of the same original quickly and painlessly. Similarly, it is possible to create new originals, with much greater ease, thanks to digitization. Hence what was seen as a major cost is no longer so great a quantity. The concept of time itself has also been changed. With industries rising in a matter of years, allowing monopolies itself is archaic.

Lets look at this from the point of view of a recording studio. In the past, a recording studio was a big deal. Yeah it is so today too. But computers have made it possible for a small desktop to do a great part of what required incredible hunks of sophisticated machinery. Those were the days when cassettes and CDs had to be mass produced. Thus making a song was not just and idea and a guitar. It involved a lot more people, capital and time. Thus it was reasonable to assume that there was a need to somehow protect the poor guy strumming the guitar, till he and his music studio made some money.

Now things are different. No longer is your setup cost the same. Nor is the cost of distribution so high. You do not always required CD stamping machines or cassettes production units. Also it does not really take years for a song to be really well known all around the world. What then is the CopyRight act protecting here? How exactly is originality defined? Is it just the ability to compile a song? What does a mammoth organization like the RIAA need that they are preventing easy access of songs for the fans? What is the justification for maintaining the MPAAs and the RIAAs of this world, when music no longer is what it used to be? Instead of trying to use the "second wave" tactics to prevent change, should the change itself not be studied? Instead of trying to change the rules of the game, should we not seek to change the game itself?

I think it is time, we stopped using the dated tools and structures of the older era to control the change of the new era. Music is not what is was. It is time we accepted the change and then advocated checks, not vice versa.

Look ahead and you are a dreamer,
look back and you are a laggard,
but if thou thinks you can get away,
by not looking, beware you are a hazard

I know it is sad. About what I could come up at this time of the morning. Methinks me needs to sleep.

Oh, and Jack says hi

~!nrk