I used to have a long diatribe here about the Dubya Bush administration, but I think at this point most people realize what a horrible mistake it was. Therefore there's not much point ranting about it any more.
America is a wonderful country and even though I think it is far from perfect I have no desire to leave. What really annoys me is when folks go on about how much of an example we are to the rest of the world. I almost laugh when I hear politicians say that the rest of the world has nothing to fear from us and that we can be trusted to not do anything hinky. Like detain several hundred people (including people from such evil countries like Canada, England, and Australia) for a years without charges under threat of execution, much less a trial or any communication with the outside world. Or cut off humanitarian aid to starving folks because in addition to food condoms are being distributed. Or invade a country without cause just because we feel like it. While there is reason to be proud of our armed forces, time has apparently shown that there was no reason to go to war with Iraq. With no WMD and no links to terrorism the only reason left is to depose a brutal dictator. We have been looking feverishly for almost a year now for WMD's with no success, and there IS evidence that Hussein himself warned his supporters not to join forces with foreign terrorist groups. So now America gets to be Santa Claus and decide who in the world has been naughty and nice? That is scary because to paraphrase the late, great, George Carlin it seems like America can't go five years without bombing brown people.
According to some America is the greatest democracy on Earth where the rule of law is ironclad. Except for rich people and corporations that can usually buy thier way out any irritating legal problems. Or even better buy a few polititions to make the kind of laws they want. Big corporations (see below) have succeeded in making it a felony to make a backup copy of a DVD you buy in case it gets scuffed. Now this is no comparison to folks getting disappeared for their politcal beliefs, but throwing somebody in prison for copying a movie is not a shining example of human rights in my book. Oh, and not to mention being able to tap your phone, confiscate your computer, and make your librarian and credit card company cough up your information without a warrant. You did know that's what the PATRIOT Act is all about, right? But not to worry, we are supposed to trust the same goverment that brought us Watergate and Iran-Contra not to abuse it's power. Uh huh.
Capitalism is a wonderful system that in my opinion has one real flaw: monopolies. In an ideal world there would be no monopolies because market forces would always ensure that there would be real competition. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world. It seems that most of the people that run larger companies feel that it is perfectly acceptable to screw anybody they can in the name of increasing shareholder value. They may go to church every Sunday and kiss their kids every morning, but then at work they bend every law they can, break laws when they can get away with it, and think charging customers more money for less value is a good thing. A normal company can't get away with that crap, but a monopoly can. A little greed is good, but too much is disgusting, immoral, and harmful. I feel that for executives the bigger a company gets the more tempting the dark side of capitalism gets. Therefore I also feel that Enron and Microsoft are the norms, not the exceptions for large corporations. If it exists, these kind of executives have a choice location reserved in hell, but as long as they have their exorbitant salaries and golden parachutes they don't seem to care.
Europeans in general understand a little better than Americans that we do not live in a perfect world, and they collectively do a much better job of whacking monopolies with big sticks until they see the light. That is because sadly that is the only proven, effective method to make monopolies play fair. Yes, it is not only acceptable, but good and right for a company to make money and prosper. But it is not acceptable to do so to the detriment of it's customers. To make matters worse buying political influence is at an all time high in America. Is there some pesky law that levels the playing field? Well, just a little magic "donation" pixie dust and POOF, it's gone! Are you going to face some real competition when your patent or copyright expires? A little more "donation" pixie dust and POOF, no more problem! Is some pesky new technology going to make a dent in your profit? Never fear, just sprinkle some more magic "donation" pixie dust and now it is a felony to use that technology. Most politicians think they can have their cake and eat it too, but they are missing the point entirely. It has taken a few decades, but the American people are starting to realize that the politicians won't solve the problem. Therefore I think that campaign finance reform is the key to a better government, which in turn would fix many other problems. This includes the near immunity from the government that American monopolies have come to enjoy. Even more amazing is the power that American monopoplies can wield is the power they have over the people, companies, and governments of other countries with they control they have over the American government.
I am afraid that corporations are slowly becoming more powerful than governments. By influencing the American government they are already forcing other countries to make huge changes in policy like passing laws that seriously degrade privacy rights or placing trade restrictions on Ukraine because they don't track their citizens well enough. An especially heinous example of corporate greed is the pharmaceutical industry, where the lives of millions of people may be sacrificed in the name of profit. Versions of legislation known as the DMCA is currently being shoved down the throats of countries all around the world. The DMCA, among other things, makes it a felony to make a backup copy of the software or electronic book you purchased. It really turns my stomach, and it's sad that the lives of a significant chunk of the world's population has to be threatened before the problem gets noticed on the world stage. Just imagine what other horrible and disgusting things big companies are doing in the name of profit that go unnoticed because little or no lives are at risk. For example, again, the pharmaceutical industry. Did you knonw that the average drug company spends approximately twice as much on advertising than it does on researching new drugs? And while we are on the subject, why are drug companies making billions of dollars a year patenting the same drugs over and over, even though over forty percent of all research and development for new drugs is funded by the federal government.?
I am not a socialist or a fascist: I believe in capitalism. But not unrestrained capitalism. I believe that when consumers are being harmed it is the right and duty of government to step in and at least try to fix the problem. In other words, I believe that it is the nature of capitalism for markets to get dominated from time to time, that that is a problem that consumers are powerless to correct, and the solution to that problem is for the goverment to whack the offending company with a big stick. It appears to me that this this right is not being exercised often enough, and even worse the trend is to use it even less often. We have already seen the end result of this: Robber barons. It is sad to see history repeating itself, especially since this time it is on a global scale. We should learn something from the past, and dethrone these new age robber barons. The source of their power, as before, is weak government which passes bad laws like the DMCA. Just as in the past, as soon as the robber barons and trusts of 19th century America were vanquished it ushered in the greatest economic prosperity the world has ever seen. I think that can happen again, except this time for the entire world.
DeCSS is a program to decrypt DVD's, but it can't be used to play, much less copy, a DVD. dd is a program that can make perfect copies of DVD's without decrypting them. Using DeCSS could land you in federal prison for several years because it is against the law in the United States, while using dd will not. No matter how you do it, though, it is against the law to copy a DVD, even to make a backup or cite as an example in a report. So not only does banning DeCSS make no sense, it is also redundant, ineffective, unjust, and unconstitutional.
DeCSS is basically a digital crowbar. Owning a crowbar isn't illegal because there are plenty of legal uses for one. I think DeCSS should be treated the same way since there are plenty of legal uses for it, like making a backup copy of a DVD, or creating your own DVD player. Is it illegal to buy a lock, take it home, and then pick it? Is it illegal to tell people how to pick locks? Making the use of DeCSS illegal is nothing but a prime example of how monopolies are using the American government to artificially restrict consumer's options to maintain monopolies.
Computers in general and the Internet in particular are relatively new on the world stage. As usual big business is trying to get something for nothing, and are acting in their customer's best interest only when forced to do so. In this brave new digital world they see the opportunity to skew the playing field in their favor, skillfully avoiding normal capitalistic market forces. They are using the law in completely new ways to screw their customers out of their money, and they have a good head start. If you don't think this is true, or that it doesn't affect you, then you are wrong.
All media is becoming digital. Music and movies now come almost exclusively on compact disks. You now probably need a converter box to watch cable television, and with the coming of HDTV broadcast television will become extinct. Paper newspaper sales continue to decline, and as soon as the major players stop fighting amongst themselves electronic books will come of age. My point is that you will soon have no direct contact with your information, and that sooner than you think all information will pass through a black box before it gets to you. In fact, most information already does but up until now it really hasn't mattered.
That is because up until now things like broadcast television, audio cassette tapes, and paper newspapers are important in many people's lives. These non digital forms of communication have a long and vigorous history of protection, not only in America, but in a lot of countries. These information sources have been a viable alternative to digital information sources, and so efforts to place artificial limits on digital information sources have met with limited success. In other words, up until now hard to control, analog forms of information such as newspapers and video cassettes have been dominant, and the powers that be have been unable to effectively control information. Unfortunately for consumers, big business is once again in a position to control technology to gain an unfair advantage. Monopolies have made the same arguments in the past for groundbreaking technologies like sheet music, radio, and video cassettes. They have consistantly been proven wrong, including the present controversy since audio CD sales revenues actually increased with the coming of Napster and has decreased since the death of Napster. Casual piracy has been proven to increase revenues; it is professional piracy that decreases them. Yet by comparison little effort is expended to curb professional piracy.
Digital forms of communication like the Internet and DVD's are different. They have advantages and disadvantages, and come with some new possibilities for both good and evil. Applying the same rules to the new digital world is not a viable option. And that is the meat of the problem. In an effort to address the new problems with something they don't really understand, good governments around the world are passing bad laws. It is a tough nut to crack, but lawmakers are listening to less than impartial advisors: Big business. It is now a felony in the United States to open up the black boxes that information flows through. I have lost count of the number of times a big company's hand has been caught in the cookie jar because some paranoid individual has reversed engineered a product. Now that is against the law when it comes to software and information.
So right now the damage is just poor quality, less selection, less features, and abysmal security, all in the name of corporate greed. We already have lost the right to own the software we buy, and the media cartels are making great progress restricting when and how we play movies, listen to music, watch television, read books, and even get our news. I think that it is a small step from restricting when and how information flows to what information flows. As soon as the only way you can get your information is through a black box there will be no way to verify that what goes in comes out. So sooner than you think all your information will pass through a black box, and not only will a corporation control that box, but so will the government, and if you get caught tampering with the black box you can already go to jail. All in the name of intellectual property and fighting piracy. I hope I am just being paranoid, but so far events are proving me right. And if my hunch proves out we will just have to trust corporations and the government to play fair. If I were you I would pay attention when the rights you think are guaranteed to you are taken away, support the EFF, and do everything in your power to stop the SSCA from becoming law. Can you say police state boys and girls?
Locking information into proprietary formats means that information must constantly be converted to new formats as new proprietary systems arrive and old systems die. This is an inefficient, restrictive, cumbersome, lossy, but unfortunately a very profitable system. I wish I could patent the hammer. You know, the thing you drive nails with. That way I could license my intellectual property, and if companies that made hammers didn't pay me big bucks for hammer licenses then I could just put them out of business. But of course the idea of patenting a hammer would be absurd. So is the idea of patenting software.
We're not talking some complex algorithm or something, nope, we're talking clicking a button in your web browser and having it do something, or the ability to change your password from a computer down the hall. Of course anything related to computers is black magic to most folks, just like most technical things. But the surprising fact is that for software developers, most software patents that are granted are for things that are not only obvious, but critical to do something. So these patents on mundane and basic computer concepts are used to monopolize a niche. No need to worry about improving your product for 20 years when nobody can make a similar product because you own the patent on some essential aspect. The pharmaceutical industry is especially good at abusing patent law, and routinely prevents low cost generic drugs from coming to market by doing little more than changing the shape or color of a pill, thereby extending the patent.
When patents are used correctly they foster innovation. Patents are not being used correctly in the United States when it comes to software. Software is fundamentally different, and it needs to be treated differently. And don't get me started on copyrighted software, the situation there is almost as insane. I do think it is more appropriate to copyright software rather than patent it, however. The current patent and copyright system stifles computer science innovation, and only benefits big business. This trend is not only immoral, but so UN-American that the founding fathers would be ashamed. Richard Koman has an excellent interview with Lawrence Lessig that goes over some of the ways the current American copyright and patent system is crippling the computer software industry to maintain some monopolies.
Microsoft is a confirmed monopoly that with one exception writes good software only by accident. And I do mean good, stable, and secure, not just easy to use or get locked in to. Some of Microsoft's products are good, but only because they once had to be to kill off competing products in market. And once Microsoft is successful in taking over a market, it is in no hurry to further improve the product. Oh they might throw in a few bells and whistles to try and justify the inevitable price increase, but that's it. Monopolizing a market is the one exception, whether it is to monopolize a new market or use one of their existing monopolies as leverage to monopolize another market. Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that they rarely change the product. They are constantly changing their products to make old versions incompatible with new versions. How else are they going to force folks to pay for an upgrade? Their latest "innovation" (AKA monopolization) attempt is called Passport.
And then there is Microsoft's idea of security. The best security Microsoft products have is their public relations department that has somehow convinced everybody to call "Microsoft Outlook viruses" "email viruses" and "Microsoft Server worms" "Internet worms". People, take this to heart: The single most effective thing you can do to increase the security of your computer is not to use Microsoft products! Believe it or not, usable, viable, feature rich, secure alternatives do exist, and I highly suggest you look into them. The sooner you do, the sooner you won't have to bend over for the latest MSTD (MicroSoft Transmitted Disease). The latest (and scariest) Microsoft security trend is for them to use everything from bribery to their monopoly power keep vulnerability information secret, which hampers folks who protect against viruses more than the virus creators because obscurity is a poor excuse for security. But of course the aim here isn't to improve security, it is to improve public relations.
An amazing feat of Microsoft's legendary marketing department is that it has managed to convince a lot of people that using Microsoft products is cheaper than the alternatives. They use cool buzzwords like TCO and other marketing black magic (like buying "independant" studies) which they have raised to an art form. Of course Microsoft's figures don't take into to account things like down time due to computer viruses, reboots, the constant patching of machines to try and plug security holes, reinstalling the software regularly whenever you have a problem or do get hacked, the cost of over priced and over rated Microsft approved training, or the fact that you finally get a stable system in place and then it's time to upgrade again. And those are just things that immediately come to mind. By the way, have you ever bothered to read your Microsoft Software License lately? You might be surprised if you did. Some companies are even surprised enough to think outside of the box and seriously consider alternatives.
There is a saying in the computer industry that no computer technology exists until Microsoft invents it. Microsoft has a long history of buying or killing off other company's ideas, and then either letting the idea die or trotting it out as a Microsoft innovation. The last time Microsoft really had an original idea was a product called Microsoft Bob. You remember Microsoft Bob, right? The truly amazing thing is the sheer number of people that believe Microsoft's version of reality. Well, I'm sure that Bill Gates innovates himself up a cup of coffee in the morning. Microsoft is a success because it is a monopoly, not because it makes a better product or provides the most value to the customer. Yes, easy to use software is nice, but I believe the price and other disadvantages more than outweigh the advantages of using Microsoft products, especially in mission critical instances.
Microsoft is a Supreme Court affirmed monoply that has lied in court, rigged polls for public relations reasons, and I say extorted money from helpless consumers which up until recently have had few options. It is a bad company that has stifled innovation and the creation of quality software while at the same time somehow saying with a straight face that it is doing the opposite. It survives by forcing customers to use it's products and doing all it can to make viable alternatives unappealing. Microsoft deserves to be punished severely for it's monopolistic tendencies. The world would not only survive, but be a much better place. IBM is much better company after being beaten with a large stick by the government, and I think Microsoft needs the same treatment. This proposed settlement is a joke that contains no punishment for past sins and provides little incentive to sin less in the future. Even a nontechnical former Supreme Court nominee and two Nobel Prize winning economists agree with me.
I leave you with the Microsoft Prayer, which I only wish I could take credit for writing:
This document was last updated July 7, 2008.
James Bearden
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