Re: maximize best case, worst case, or average case? (TCPA
Robert Hettinga writes:
All they have to do is auction the first copy off for a lot of money, cash, and let the market take care of the rest. That, by the way, is what people do now, of course, with advances, record contracts, and so on.
Brilliant. Let the market solve the problem. Why bother with the auction part, then? If the market's going to solve the problem for the 2nd guy to hold the copy, why not let it solve the problem for the 1st? The fact is, quoting this mantra is simply a way of avoiding the hard issues. You've got to show *how* the market is going to solve the problem. Why would content creators get "a lot of money, cash"? Obviously, only if your #2 guy knows that he is also going to get a lot of money for it. So you haven't taken a step towards solving the problem; you have simply handed the problem off from #1 to #2. The fact is that the market can't solve this kind of problem. That's right, markets are not perfect. They do fine for ordinary, private goods. But information objects, absent successful DRM restrictions, are effectively public goods. That is, you can't restrict their dissemination. If you try to provide such goods only to a small group of people, you've effectively given them to everyone. This idea of digital content as a public good is developed in detail at http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-602.html#lnk5. Markets do not handle public goods well. It is a standard theorem of economics that they underprovide public goods. There is no way to charge for goods that everyone can get for free, and ideas like Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer protocol don't work because of free riders. The traditional way to provide for public goods is by government. If we don't get DRM, that's probably what we will end up with: government subsidies of the arts. Most musicians and other artists won't be able to make enough money to live on even if their works are relatively popular. The government will have to tax consumers and distribute the proceeds to artists (and the RIAA, etc) in order to protect the content industry. This is the true alternative to DRM. Anyone who respects the power of markets should understand that DRM is the key to allowing markets to function with information goods. If you oppose DRM, you are working to insure that creative content will become a public good. And if you understand econmics, you will see that this is an outcome to be avoided if at all possible.
-- On 1 Jul 2002 at 22:10, Anonymous wrote:
The fact is that the market can't solve this kind of problem. That's right, markets are not perfect. [....] But information objects, absent successful DRM restrictions, are effectively public goods. Markets do not handle public goods well. It is a standard theorem of economics that they underprovide public goods.
Unfortunately, good government is also a public good, and so tends to be underprovided -- observe the current patent disaster, which obviously is retarding, rather than advancing, the development of technology. Our current patent and copyright laws show that government is in the pocket of content owners, rather than fostering content creators. Voluntary, genuinely free market DRM, is like voluntary, free market, gas chambers. If free market gas chambers remain free market, they will probably only be used for killing lice, but chances are they are not going to remain free market, since their nature makes them more appropriate to a governmental purpose than a private purpose. In fact, if created, DRM will already be subject to our infamous anti circumvention laws, which means that the necessary legislation to make them involuntary and non free market is already in place in advance.
This is the true alternative to DRM. Anyone who respects the power of markets should understand that DRM is the key to allowing markets to function with information goods.
Palladium is a module on your computer with its own private key and certified public key. Its capacity is to say "I certify that the output with this hash was produced by the code with this hash from inputs with that hash". Nothing wrong with that. But we are already hearing Microsoft say "well naturally governments have security concerns ...." If Palladium is a gun for me, fine. If it is a gun for my government, and not me, not fine. Trouble is the people backing palladium are the people who brought us anti circumvention laws, the people who want guns for themselves, and no guns for me. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG uQgMm/3E4nYxuwkWrA2I281ui9Z8pFN4zJ9pQPX1 2uxQytiBkOD9AWSbzzbDk8Yl0l46vUsa3ySfrb8A9
On Mon, Jul 01, at 10:10PM, Anonymous wrote: | Brilliant. Let the market solve the problem. Why bother with the auction | part, then? If the market's going to solve the problem for the 2nd guy | to hold the copy, why not let it solve the problem for the 1st? The fact | is, quoting this mantra is simply a way of avoiding the hard issues. | You've got to show *how* the market is going to solve the problem. | Why would content creators get "a lot of money, cash"? Obviously, only | if your #2 guy knows that he is also going to get a lot of money for it. | So you haven't taken a step towards solving the problem; you have simply | handed the problem off from #1 to #2. Actually, this is not a question for the individual person, rather a rhetorical question. Did anyone know how much television would change the radio industry? In fact, for the first several years after its inception, TV was a money losing business. The question of *how* doesn't need to be answered now (this is a proverbial "now" which actually means ever or "for a long time to come.") In fact, we have these problems now and they don't seem to retard the economy in any way, rare anythings pose this problem everyday. In fact, relative values pose this "problem" everyday. Ever hear "One man's trash is another man's treasure"? | The fact is that the market can't solve this kind of problem. That's | right, markets are not perfect. They do fine for ordinary, private | goods. But information objects, absent successful DRM restrictions, | are effectively public goods. That is, you can't restrict their | dissemination. If you try to provide such goods only to a small group | of people, you've effectively given them to everyone. Well, since markets are made up of individual people going about their business to create the market as a whole, I don't see any problems with this whatsoever. Joe Musician knows that this is the way music works. In the olden days, people copied music from one another by word of mouth over and over, songs were "stolen" by musicians and played for other audiences. The musical business wasn't the joke that it is today. Back then, it was accepted that music is sound and sound, well, can be repeated, if not by a recording on a cassette or cd, then by voice. It isn't a market problem that some people don't get their way. Nor is it a good idea to have the government dictate who gets what in a free and willing exchange scenario. Joe Musician does not have to play his music or "give it" to anyone (imagine the hoopla when someone records a live show) he does so willingly and of his own free will. Are we to accept that because he doesn't feel he gets enough for his music that we should bank the cost of having it mandated that we pay Joe? If he doesn't get enough for his music, he is free to NOT release it, DON'T publish the damn thing and stop bitching. I mock those who present reports showing that the market didn't correspond to previously created models. Markets aren't wrong folks, the models are. | This idea of digital content as a public good is developed in detail at | http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-602.html#lnk5. | Markets do not handle public goods well. Markets are people, people don't handle public goods well. Perhaps because people as a whole see the inpracticality of restricting access to goods that are, well, public. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned there somewhere. | Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer protocol don't work because of | free riders. This is interesting. Just about every system in the world has free riders. This country has "free riders" that are tax-evaders, car thieves, you name it the standard, society has someone who doesn't abide by it. That does not in any way make a system "broken." That the system has flaws is to be expected, unless he who designed the system doesn't recognize basic human mistakes. Systems with free riders are not necessarily broken systems, nor are systems without free riders necessarily working ones. | The traditional way to provide for public goods is by government. | If we don't get DRM, that's probably what we will end up with: government | subsidies of the arts. Most musicians and other artists won't be able to | make enough money to live on even if their works are relatively popular. | The government will have to tax consumers and distribute the proceeds | to artists (and the RIAA, etc) in order to protect the content industry. There is no "content industry" in the tradional market sense. Such an industry is a fiction created by government exerting control far and beyond the original intent of government itself. It is proposterous that because a small group of people cannot get what they want by free association, they manage to get what they want by manipulating the law to their benefit. Don't get me wrong, there is a market for content and music, as long as someone puts a subjective value to a song, there will be a content market, likewise for weapons and anything the government deems itself fit to regulate and control, but by and far, that isn't the "real market" for it does not constitute free association. | This is the true alternative to DRM. Anyone who respects the power of | markets should understand that DRM is the key to allowing markets to | function with information goods. If you oppose DRM, you are working | to insure that creative content will become a public good. And if you | understand econmics, you will see that this is an outcome to be avoided | if at all possible. The alternative to DRM for whom? The folks who don't like the way things are now (read: don't make as much money as they feel they should?) Musicians out there don't have to "release" (the term itself should give a clue to those who wish to perform the act on what its implications are) their music. The true alternative to DRM is for people to "wake up and smell the coffee." I will gladly make a bet on the fact that government control on any market is not a good thing for the whole of society. DRM, in a government mandated form will do nothing but remove freedoms, however basic they may be. If you understand economics, you will see that the loss of choice is in fact THE outcome that must be avoided at all costs, not just if at all possible.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Traffic Analysis is A Bitch, boys and girls. At 10:10 PM +0200 on 7/1/02, The Single-Remailer-Hop Anonymous Austrian Innumerate returns, writing:
They do fine for ordinary, private goods.
A signed, much less encrypted, copy of a piece of digital information, or even a digital service, for that matter, (teleoperated machine commands, or a live video feed answering a question, and, of course, computation and bandwidth) is, in fact, an "ordinary, private" good. Go find an economics dictionary, look up "perfect competition", and come back when you have a clue, please. You don't need governments to have a market. People have been trading things with each other since they could make things and carry them from place to place. Frankly, if you have enough financial cryptography, and bearer settled transactions using that cryptography, you don't even need governments to have an *economy*. All you have to do is apply the mathematical economics of cash-settled, fungible, graded commodity markets to information and digital services and you get the answer. Look ma, no lawyers: The first copy to hit the network is worth a lot. The last copy is worth so little that it should be deleted from a hard drive. In the middle of the cloud, between the two, who ever owns a copy can sell another one, and they will, if there's any profit at all in it. That leaves transaction cost, and, frankly, I can do transactions down to a tenth of a penny, in bearer form cash, with a couple hundred thou in development costs. Add Moore's Law, and stir, um, liberally. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSDjuMPxH8jf3ohaEQKWVQCgraOTGRf9o9zETFK6zMVhXym5eeEAnRQF XEr7Spid7BIM4TmJPoFyKIZ2 =Gjwr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 01:10 PM, Anonymous wrote:
Brilliant. Let the market solve the problem. Why bother with the auction part, then? If the market's going to solve the problem for the 2nd guy to hold the copy, why not let it solve the problem for the 1st? The fact is, quoting this mantra is simply a way of avoiding the hard issues. You've got to show *how* the market is going to solve the problem. Why would content creators get "a lot of money, cash"? Obviously, only if your #2 guy knows that he is also going to get a lot of money for it. So you haven't taken a step towards solving the problem; you have simply handed the problem off from #1 to #2.
The fact is that the market can't solve this kind of problem. That's right, markets are not perfect. They do fine for ordinary, private goods. But information objects, absent successful DRM restrictions, are effectively public goods. That is, you can't restrict their dissemination. If you try to provide such goods only to a small group of people, you've effectively given them to everyone.
Ideas are not generally protected in any major society. (Certain _expressions_ of ideas are protected in specialized ways through the copyright and patent systems, which vary from society to society. But not general ideas.) People generate ideas. Ideas are usually much more important than specific copyrighted items or even specific patented items are. When someone writes a book, with lines of reasoning, new ideas, summaries of old ideas, those ideas are not protected intellectual property. Likewise, fashion and architecture and styles in general are not protected. (Attempts have been made, especially with the "look and feel" nonsense, but generally anyone is free to copy the "idea" of a miniskirt, or red tennis shoes, or skyscrapers. Could ideas even plausibly be protected? The Galombosians, a fringe subset of libertarians, argue that ideas are protectable in this way. "You were influenced by my paper on crypto anarchy, so you owe me $25."
This idea of digital content as a public good is developed in detail at http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-602.html#lnk5.
Ideas are even better examples of public goods. A good idea benefits many people, few or none of whom ever pay for the idea. Good ideas are in fact more important than nearly anything else. This has nothing to do with whether they should (or can) be protected as intellectual property...or subsidized by government, as I'll get to later.
Markets do not handle public goods well. It is a standard theorem of economics that they underprovide public goods. There is no way to charge for goods that everyone can get for free, and ideas like Kelsey and Schneier's Street Performer protocol don't work because of free riders.
Apply this reasoning to the general world of ideas and arguments. Or, more prosaically, to mathematical proofs. Should we start charging for mathematical proofs? Should someone planning to use a chain of proofs pay a fee for the various lemmas and theorems he cites or uses?
The traditional way to provide for public goods is by government.
No it isn't. People paint paintings even when the vast bulk of them never sell anything. (Even well-known painters like Paul Gaugain never made more than a few francs from his paintings...his fame came after his death. Examples like this abound.) Most actors don't make enough money to qualify for their union. Most writers never sell _anything_. Some of these works are used by others, inspire others, even are later sold by others. Altruism? Have I written upwards of 20,000 articles on this list and others. At least some of them were and are useful for other people. And yet was I paid? Was I generating a public good? Should I have demanded that government finance my generation of these public goods?
If we don't get DRM, that's probably what we will end up with: government subsidies of the arts.
About 20 years ago the American program "60 Minutes" did a nice piece on how the Dutch government, using reasoning identical to yours, was paying artists a stipend for their artistic output. Warehouses and warehouses were being filled with the crud generated by these subsidized artists.
Most musicians and other artists won't be able to make enough money to live on even if their works are relatively popular.
So? Not my problem. After all, most would-be writers and actors can't make enough money on their ideas and artistic expression to live on without also working as waiters and waitresses and driving trucks.
The government will have to tax consumers and distribute the proceeds to artists (and the RIAA, etc) in order to protect the content industry.
And to fill warehouses with CDs no one wants, with paintings no one wants, with stages where actors perform plays for each other because the public won't voluntarily pay, and with software programs which the market didn't want.
This is the true alternative to DRM. Anyone who respects the power of markets should understand that DRM is the key to allowing markets to function with information goods. If you oppose DRM, you are working to insure that creative content will become a public good. And if you understand econmics, you will see that this is an outcome to be avoided if at all possible.
I have no problem with Microsoft or Apple or Autodesk attempting to protect their IP by requiring that I buy a dongle from them to attach to my computer, or that I provide a palmprint or retinal scan before their programs run. If they can do it, and get customers to go along, hey, it's a free country! People who are willing to mess with the dongles, or attach a palm scanner, or jump through whatever hoops the vendor is asking for will be doing so voluntarily. Those who won't, won't. Sounds fair to me. (In fact, dongles have been tried. And may be tried again, as USB and FireWire make use of such dongles less awkward. It's a free country, so Digital Datawhack is free to do as they wish along these lines.) However, it is NOT a function of a legitimate minimal government to *require* that I buy a computer with certain features. To the extent the Hollywood-led push to adopt some form of DRM is very likely to also be a government _requirement_ for DRM, we should fight it. From what I have seen, the interests of Hollywood, Redmond, Washington, Beijing, and Moscow in DRM are coterminous. --Tim May, Citizen-unit of of the once free United States " The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. "--Thomas Jefferson, 1787
At 12:01 PM 07/04/2002 -0700, Tim May wrote:
On Monday, July 1, 2002, at 01:10 PM, Anonymous wrote:
If we don't get DRM, that's probably what we will end up with: government subsidies of the arts.
About 20 years ago the American program "60 Minutes" did a nice piece on how the Dutch government, using reasoning identical to yours, was paying artists a stipend for their artistic output. Warehouses and warehouses were being filled with the crud generated by these subsidized artists.
We also have that in the US, these daya particularly with artists whose preferred medium is television, and in the past lots of WPA stuff, often on gov't buildings. The National Endowment for the Arts subsidizes a range of works from deep, emotionally complex performance art by Karen Finlay to Jesse Helms's favorite black-velvet paintings of Elvis :-)
Most musicians and other artists won't be able to make enough money to live on even if their works are relatively popular.
That's the case today - see Courtney Love's rants. 90% of the artists in the record business don't make money today, or at least not for more than a couple years of obscurity with an occasional 15 minutes of fame. This is somewhat related to the problem that 90% of everything is crap, but unfortunately there's not always a close correlation between the two 90%s. :-)
So? Not my problem. After all, most would-be writers and actors can't make enough money on their ideas and artistic expression to live on without also working as waiters and waitresses and driving trucks.
A century ago, music was largely an individual, family, or social activity, with most paid performers receiving payments for live performances in front of audiences, though sound recordings and player pianos were starting to emerge and commercial sheet music had been around since about the 1840s. The transformation of their work from performing live into preparing packaged goods for mass distribution is a relatively recent thing, and much of it dates from about the 50s and the adoption of the transistor radio. Some of it's also the emergence of CDs as a durable product (since playing vinyl records is a fundamentally destructive process.)
The government will have to tax consumers and distribute the proceeds to artists (and the RIAA, etc) in order to protect the content industry.
Feh. They've already taxed us heavily for decades, not in money but in kind, by nationalizing the airwaves and parceling them out to the politically connected.
And to fill warehouses with CDs no one wants, with paintings no one wants, with stages where actors perform plays for each other because the public won't voluntarily pay, and with software programs which the market didn't want.
There used to be a lot of this - we called it community theater, and it's still thriving in the socialist community I grew up near. In the rest of the country, too many people stopped doing that when they got television.
...[dongles].... However, it is NOT a function of a legitimate minimal government to *require* that I buy a computer with certain features.
I agree, and I'd also say that using anti-trust arm-twisting to forbid Microsoft from bullying manufacturers into implement it is *also* not a legitimate function of a minimal government.
participants (6)
-
Anonymous -
Bill Stewart -
Gabriel Rocha -
jamesd＠echeque.com -
R. A. Hettinga -
Tim May