WorldCon, part 4 -- Saturday panels, etc.

[alexxkay]

Got up around 9, and figured out how to use the coffee maker for kestrell. Even with the coffee, we were somewhat bleary-eyed, so we made a last-minute schedule change, and, instead of going to one of the more intellectually-challenging panels, we went to...

10:00 Neil Gaiman Reading
For the first time in public, Neil read the first chapter (and a bit more) of Anansi Boys. Was *very* funny, and I'm greatly looking forward to the finished book. Which is probably more than a year away, sigh. You could tell it was a first draft, though, as the scenes set in Florida still had lots of Britishisms in them.

11:00 What's Entertainment? -- A Look at the Future
First panel we saw with Henry Jenkins (the Director of Kes' graduate program at MIT). Unfortunately, he was way outnumbered by clueless people. The same tired old arguments about "kids don't read", "literacy is dying", et cetera ad nauseam. Connie Willis had at least half a clue, as she realized that people had been having this argument for several decades, but she still couldn't seem to move beyond it. Henry Jenkins was the only one on the panel who understood that the societal definition of "literacy" is undergoing tectonic shifts, and that "kids these days" are *more* literate than most of their elders in the New Media. Kes scored brownie points with him by bringing up the way that email and blogging are really just letter-writing and diary-keeping, dressed up in new technological clothes, and that (in these forms) more writing is happening by people in general than has for at least several decades.

12:00 The End of Copyright: Can the Arts Survive the Digital Age?
Another Cory panel. Also featured Charles Petit (Harlan Ellison's IP lawyer), who I recommend as a smart guy and incisive panelist. One panelist, Steve Miller, was very strongly anti-piracy, as he is not only a writer, but a small-press publisher, and sees internet piracy as directly costing him money. Cory Doctorow, at the end of the panel, as an almost offhand remark, gave what I thought was a devastating reply: "What's the alternative? Sue your fans?"

1:00 Tradeoffs between Freedom, Security and Privacy
Yet another Cory panel. Yes, Kes was basically stalking him :-) Also featured one of Kes' *anti*-heroes, Joe Lazzaro, who is some sort of tech director for the Mass Commission for the Blind. At one point he was responding to something Cory said, but forgot his name; Kes buried her face in her hands and whispered "I am *so* not with him." Another interesting panelist was James MacDonald, who apparently used to do real-world intelligence work for the military. He had an interesting list of decryption methods, including "rubber hose", "checkbook", and "dumbass", among others. The cogent upshot of which is that the weakest point in a crypto system is almost always the users. Near the end, unfortunately, the panel degenerated into "aren't terrorists evil", which, while true, is not very illuminating.

... and I have to go to a meeting, so I'll stop here for now. Gosh, there was a lot of WorldCon...

Comments

[herooftheage.livejournal.com]

The cogent upshot of which is that the weakest point in a crypto system is almost always the users. Near the end, unfortunately, the panel degenerated into "aren't terrorists evil", which, while true, is not very illuminating.

What makes it true? Saying we think terrorists are evil is basically saying we'd prefer to fight people who can afford standing armies. Terrorists blow up school buses and the World Trade Center, we blow up Dresden and Baghdad. I'm not sure I see the difference other than financing.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

The difference may be the rather thin one that terrorists don't give any warning, while standing armies do give some warning, formal declarations of war, etc. Usually.

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I think the only real ethical difference is when a standing army is used as a fallback when the diplomacy fails. If the attack comes only when there's a genuine need, and the diplomats have been genuinely unable to resolve the problem, then that is ethically different from terrorism. (It may not be ethically defensible, but it is different.)

If, on the other hand, the political leaders pull the diplomats out before they have a chance to finish their work, and say, "See, we have to send in the army now", then that's ethically the same as a terrorist.

Of course, this equality applies only when you're talking about total war. These days the US tries to pretend it's not engaging in total war, but we can't completely avoid killing civilians. Rumsfeld said the other day that the US killed 1500 (2500?) Iraqis in August; he said they were terrorists, but if even 20% of them were misidentified, and if that rate is typical of the war so far, then the US in Iraq has killed more civilians than died on 9/11.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I have to say again "true, but un-illuminating". The firebombing of Dresden and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki *were* terrorist acts, by any reasonable definition of the word. They were acts explicitly deisgned to kill large quatities of civilians and inspire terror. One could argue (as many did at the time) that these were lesser evils than the alternatives, but I don't think it's reasonable to claim that the acts themselves were 'good'.

[laurion]

Cory Doctorow, at the end of the panel, as an almost offhand remark, gave what I thought was a devastating reply: "What's the alternative? Sue your fans?"

I've rather enjoyed most everything I've read from Cory on the topic of piracy, copyright, and IP. If I'd gone to Worldcon I most likely would have tried to stalk him down too. Hmm. Good stuff.

Sue your fans

[metageek.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure suing the fans is always going to be counterproductive. Things may be different a small press than for a large one. The large press may decide they can afford to write off piracy as a marketing expense; a small press is living on such thin margins that a deterrent lawsuit, and the ill will engendered, may be cheaper than the piracy. (Things are made worse by the fact that small presses have to charge more for their books, which means more people will say "I can't afford it, so I'll steal it".)

The RIAA, of course, is effectively a very large press that has decided they can't afford to ignore piracy. Their situation is different, though: current tech makes pirating music easy and effective. As long as paper is the dominant technology for books, book piracy will be much less common than music piracy.

Re: Sue your fans

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Cory's response is especially telling given that he distributes the text of his books for free; I read Down and Out on my iPod because of this, and am now off to buy a book that, when presented with it in person, did not initially buy.

There's a push-pull battle between technological solutions causing paradigm shift, and bureaucratic/legal entities attempting to steer or counter that shift. Suing your fans can work to affect this battle, and can work if you intimidate enough people.

I think the point of the pure "the future lies ahead!" people (Cory) is that presses are no longer needed, except as a backup medium, and that their business model is outmoded by the free availability of perfect digital copying...so yes, piracy is deadly to small presses, but the point is that they should find another line of work. (Harsh, but that's the line I read from them.)

Re: Sue your fans

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

There's a push-pull battle between technological solutions causing paradigm shift, and bureaucratic/legal entities attempting to steer or counter that shift.

I'm currently re-reading Snow Crash (appropriately, on my PDA). Some ofit is rather dated, but one of the parts that seems positively prescient is L. Bob Rife's laughing at government regulation, "Y'know, watching government regulators trying to keep up with the world is my favorite sport. Remember when they busted up Ma Bell? ... Government busted them up -- at the same time when I was starting cable TV franchises in thirty states. Haw! Can you believe that? It's like if they figured out a way to regulate horses at the same time the model T and the airplane were being introduced."

presses are no longer needed

I don't think that's Cory's point, particularly. Information mediums do not, in fact, become extinct, as any SCAdian should be well aware. They *do* tend to move from the mainstream to smaller niche markets over time, but they never quite vanish.

they should find another line of work

Maybe not "find another line of work", but at least "update your business model". Small presses could offer their work for sale in digital format, at a small enough price point that the quality/convenience factor overcomes the freeness of 'pirated' editions.

Ethical people will generally pay what they feel to be a fair price for goods received. Unethical people weren't going to give you any money anyways.

[kestrell.livejournal.com]

Part of the argument needs to put in context however: the small press owner brought up a particular incident when he saw something he had published which was by the time he saw it out of print on a bb and used this as an example of how piracy lost his money. MMy belief is that, if the work was no longer in publication, there was no potential for profit and therefore he was not losing profit. There is even a possibility, which has occurred in my own experience many times, that by putting an out-of-print work back into some sort of circulation, some readers may be inspired to go look for used copies (this of course is usually pooh-poohed by writers and publishers since it doesn't make them money) or even create an interest in bringing a work back into publication. I just have trouble following the logic that someone who is not currently selling something is losing money by others circulating it. If the "it" was furniture instead of digital books, we would be using the word antiques here.