Re: Tagging copyrighted text
Another thought on "ld231782"'s idea about high-speed networks and copyrights:
But think about this: with the speed and ubiquity of networks, it now becomes possible for every author or creative artist to keep the only copies of his work. Then, he could post "links" to it anywhere in the world. When people pass around the work, they wouldn't pass around the work itself, they'd pass the "link". Whenever someone wants to view the work, the link points to the unchanging address for instantaneous downloading. A very small transaction charge is billed to the receiver by the sender.
With fast enough networks, we may see a big decline in sales of programs to end-users, as the software is made available as "on-line services." (Obviously this has always been going on, with service bureaus, circuit design services, etc.) To make this very concrete, I just installed a new release of the American Heritage Dictionary, a complete edition with definitions, thesaurus, anagrams, roots in Latin, Greek, German, Indo-European, etc. Look up a word and one gets an entire screenful of stuff, including detailed etymologies, usages, etc. Now what happens when a "dictionary server" offers to look up a word for, say, 10 cents? With fast enough networks, of the sort ld231782 proposes, this could replace the current system in which folks buy their own copies. (One would still need very high bandwidth programs like editors, word processors, drawing programs, etc., but some classes of software would be amenable to this kind of remote access use, especially with very fast networks.) There may be attempts to limit this, as with the laws which ban rental of CDs (but not videos, presumably because few people have two VCRS, while those renting CDs can presumably easily diub them onto cassettes). This could also reduce the costs of entry to the market, as new programs could be offered for sale or access in a low-cost way, such as through information markets like AMIX. I'm not taking a moral stand on either side, just noting one more consequence of extremely high-speed networks.
Timothy May writes:
To make this very concrete, I just installed a new release of the American Heritage Dictionary, a complete edition with definitions, thesaurus, anagrams, roots in Latin, Greek, German, Indo-European, etc. Look up a word and one gets an entire screenful of stuff, including detailed etymologies, usages, etc.
Now what happens when a "dictionary server" offers to look up a word for, say, 10 cents? With fast enough networks, of the sort ld231782 proposes, this could replace the current system in which folks buy their own copies. (One would still need very high bandwidth programs like editors, word processors, drawing programs, etc., but some classes of software would be amenable to this kind of remote access use, especially with very fast networks.) I'd point out that with unlimited Telnet access, I can already use dictionaries and quote books, thesauri and other references, at reates varying from free to hundreds of dollars an hour.... The only software I "need" to do this is an OS and a comm program.
This sounds like a great way to convince the holdouts of the value of encryption: if services are offered, over comm links, available easily from the home, with a minimum of fuss, to perform popular, resource intensive searches/services (quote books, dictionaries, come to mind, many of the things Gopher does), then the only software a user needs is (1) an OS (2) X server (or other screen manager/UI manager) (3) comm program (integrated into screen manager w/drag-and-drop probably necessary in this day and age, when using things like a baby is c considered "mature technology" (4) encryption package... If I cannot sign my requests (automagically, I suppose), then I can disavow billing, and if the service cannot encrypt the reply, any listener can receive "free" responses, perhaps over time duplicating much of the work and creativity that went into creating the service and selling it. I hate to support something like encryption with economics (the issues are deeper than that), but it sounds like an argument that would please many people. I just have to look at Prodigy (yech) sales with modems (or Windows (double-yech) with systems!) to see the infiltration of a useful and powerful thing like online service (or GUI/device independence) into a previously reluctant market to see what a little convincing can do. (Remember Nintendo? Before they started their ad campaign, noone was buying dedicated game machines, then they convinced everyone that everyone else was playing, soon they were as common as TV's, in a market still reeling from Atari!) I also hate to suggest charging for something already free! Hopehully I'm thinking of something (a) cheap, (b) convenient (which Gopher is not, I feel), and (c) better. It just jumped into my head how tied up with encryption ALL telecom issues are, even ones we've been doing for years now. Just look at how CI$ has had to change as more users jumped on, or the difference between CI$ and AOL or Prodigy. I'm new to this list, and probably repeating something axiomatic, but it seemed that with "extreme high speed networks" comes an assumption of extreme load (seems reasonable to me), and that means (1) commercial exploitation (possibly a good thing!), (2) need for security, and (3) the usual lag of technological penetration from the trailblazers to the huddled befuddled, with the trading of glitz for substance, name for talent, and pretty for powerful.
There may be attempts to limit this, as with the laws which ban rental of CDs (but not videos, presumably because few people have two VCRS, while those renting CDs can presumably easily diub them onto cassettes). If you assume that some of these systems (like the ones already online) will be legal and entreprneureal(sp?), this might still hold!
This could also reduce the costs of entry to the market, as new programs could be offered for sale or access in a low-cost way, such as through information markets like AMIX. Am I correct in deducing that encryption cannot be offered in this way? What other services are in this category?
I'm not taking a moral stand on either side, just noting one more consequence of extremely high-speed networks.
Oh, can someone drop me a line with more information on digital cash? I'm new here, like I said. I'm a math major on leave of absence, currently unemployed (interview monday... crossing fingers), lately working as a programmer or in support. I've been interested in public key cryptography since the '79(?) Scientific American article (I was 13 when I read it, in '83... may have been one of the things that pushed me towards math) and am glad to finally get to play. (20 digit keys in BASIC/6502 on a VIC-20 were fun, but that's all!) Seth Morris (seth.morris@launchpad.unc.edu)
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