+1 Diva<br><br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/3/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Brian Wolfe</b> <<a href="mailto:brianw@terrabox.com">brianw@terrabox.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 12:41 -0500, The Burnman wrote:<br>><br>><br>> On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Brian Wolfe <<a href="mailto:brianw@terrabox.com">brianw@terrabox.com</a>><br>
> wrote:<br>> (warning, written 15 minutes after waking up and before first<br>> coffee was<br>> downed.)<br>><br>> Noted. ;)<br><br>Thanks. :)<br><br>><br>> Your arguments are spot on. :) I would add that having DRM or<br>
> attempting<br>> to curtail end users fredom of use is pushing society to being<br>> untrustable. There is an old saying. Say something often<br>> enough and it<br>> becomes true. Say people WILL steal content at times, be<br>
> paranoid about<br>> it and far more people WILL steal your content due to lack of<br>> respect ,<br>> which is earned by the creator's lack of trust in others.<br>><br>
> There is no paranoia in the valid concern that people will attempt to<br>> rip you off. It happens all the time. It will never cease to amaze<br>> me how entitled people feel to other people's Intellectual Property.<br>
> THAT is where the lack of respect and trust comes into play. An<br>> artist or author who wishes to protect their work from those who are<br>> low enough to steal from them should not be looked on as paranoid,<br>
> they are simply trying to enforce their rights under law. Theft is<br>> where the lack of respect and trust come from.<br><br>People feel entitled because there is a cultural shift being forced from<br>works of art belonging to society in the past to works of art belonging<br>
to a single person in modern society. I believe that this shift is<br>completely artificial in nature and is being forced upon us by the few.<br>If you look back to tribal times music and literature was never owned<br>by a single artist. It was the fabric of the tribe and belonged to<br>
everyone in the tribe. Granted that there was a preferred storyteller or<br>musician, but that was decided by skill of reenacting and presentation<br>than through ownership.<br><br>I also believe that an artists creativity is a direct result of their<br>
social environment, never somethign that was a pure invention. Anyone<br>that pretends that music, literature, art etc comes from 100% within is<br>blind to the fact that what is within was generated by the culture<br>around them. I personally do not see how can one claim ownership of such<br>
a circular flow.<br><br>Keep in mind that I do heartilly agree that artists must be supported<br>due to their gifts of interpretation. In the past the artists were paid<br>not for their music but for their performance. In tribes the artists<br>
were supported by their tribe so that they were free to pursue art.<br><br>><br>> However if you as a creator can bring yourself to see the good<br>> in<br>> others, most will respect you enough to not steal your work.<br>
> You will<br>> still have some minor theft happening, but not nearly enough<br>> to stop you<br>> from creating and profiting from your creations. This is just<br>> life and<br>
> society in general and unavoidable.<br>><br>> By your argument, we should do away with police and trust people to<br>> behave themselves. Simply because it is impossible to prevent all<br>> theft, does not mean we should just give up in our attempts to make it<br>
> difficult.<br><br>No, my argument is that we stop trying to add bodyguards, and big<br>brother 24x7 monitoring and instead return to enforcing consequences. I<br>think you misunderstood what I was saying. I could have worded this much<br>
better. ;-P<br><br>><br>> Here's another parallel to the whole DRM debate. We trust each<br>> other to<br>> not run around killing people. We don't walk around wearing<br>> 100%<br>
> protective body armour because, well, it's impossibly<br>> expensive, and no<br>> one will trust you due to your obvious paranoia. ;) Instead,<br>> we walk<br>> around with no armour at all, yet the threat of serious bodily<br>
> harm is<br>> still there, and we manage to survive just fine.<br>><br>> Tell that to the two teenagers who were shot to death across town here<br>> last week. They were in their driveway playing basketball. Or the<br>
> elderly man who was gunned down in his driveway a few towns away the<br>> week before that. The danger is there, and it would certainly be far<br>> worse if there were no police to keep it relatively in check. While<br>
> there is no such thing as 100% safe, we are more safe due to the<br>> protections in place. This analogy works just as well for asset<br>> protection in a metaverse environment.<br><br>I think you missed my point here. Were they paranoid about it enough to<br>
be wearing full battle armour just because they were exposed to the<br>outside world? No. They were not. Instead they trusted the outside world<br>and something bad happened to them. That is life. To believe that there<br>
is such a thing as perfect safety is willfull ignorance of reality.<br><br>Our protection exists NOT from a DRM like response to the dangers, but<br>through the enforcement of consequences of actions. Artists keep saying<br>
"there's no way to protect other than DRM" is akin to saying "there's no<br>way to protect against murder other than everyone wearing full body<br>armour and being watched 24x7". Instead, artists need to realize that<br>
the only way to protect themselves is through repairing the chain of<br>trust that used to exist. I believe that in order to repair that trust,<br>artists must abandon this "modern" idea of ownership and go back to the<br>
symbiotic relationship of the old ways.<br><br>We are already seeing the first results of some artists that are going<br>back to symbiosis of trust. So far I see good results that warrant an<br>even stronger push to go back to the old ways. I would love to go into a<br>
detailed analysis, but others have already done so many times over.<br><br><br>><br>> There are bad apples, just don't let one bad apple ruin your<br>> relationship with the rest of the apples.<br>
><br>> There are bad apples, that we agree on. The question is what to do<br>> about it. Do we attempt to curb the bulk of content theft, or do we<br>> simply force content creators to deal with a lack of protection for<br>
> their work? If you were to poll the vast majority of content creators<br>> in Second Life what they would prefer... no protection for their<br>> work, or some protection... what do you think their response would be?<br>
> And let's face it... as it stands... the majority of people who will<br>> be designing content for a metaverse based on OpenSim will come from<br>> Second Life.<br><br>There's an interesting phenomenon in society. The more physical and<br>
legal restriction you place on somethign the more people justify<br>breakign those restrictions. We can look back at the Prohibition era<br>for a good example of this in action. More people drank under<br>Prohibition than before or after. Prohibition spurred heavy increases of<br>
40% to 60% in crimes that were already criminal before prohibition (and<br>after). When prohibition was lifted, these related crimes dropped back<br>to their pre-prohibition levels.<br><br>As a side note, to me, law serves as a guide of the collective belief in<br>
what is right and wrong, not the other way around. You can't enact law<br>to change society. The creation and enforcement of DRM has had the exact<br>same result that Prohibition did. Both were enactments of law in order<br>
to change social beliefs. Neither has suceeded because of the natural<br>order of law vs societal belief.<br><br>><br>> I can understand that from a developers perspective, Intellectual<br>> Property Rights protection is a nasty bear to wrestle in the<br>
> development of the metaverse, but I do not see how the metaverse<br>> project benefits from alienating the people who will make the<br>> metaverse interesting. Think about it... what would you have without<br>
> content? Lots of empty space.<br><br>Content can't come into being without a society. A society can't grow<br>and evolve without content. It's a symbiotic relationship that will<br>never cease to exist no matter how much restriction you place on art.<br>
<br>DRM and rights management pre-enforcement through fences does nothing<br>but destroy that symbiotic circle in my mind. You might get a brief<br>(brief in relation to all of history) surge of income and reward,<br>however this surge quickly reverts into loss of the fedback and becomes<br>
self destructive. This is why I refer to DRM as the ultimate weapon of<br>mass destruction.<br><br>><br>> I believe that the first metaverse platform to successfully solve the<br>> IP Rights issue will end up on the top of the pile. And with the<br>
> concept that Charles and I were discussing here last night, I think<br>> OpenSim could well be that platform.<br><br>*nod* The flexibility does allow us to try the different tactics to get<br>a comparable situation result. :) I have no problem at all with people<br>
building DRM in so long as it is optional, and disabled by default. It's<br>up to each operator and content creator to choose how they interact with<br>the world. I just firmly believe that putting up electronic fences is a<br>
self destructive act. I believe enough in self will that I detest these<br>anti-darwinism laws that prevent us as a society from choosing for<br>ourselves the level of protection vs fredom.<br><br>I think that eventually DRM and this whole idea of "intellectual<br>
ownership" will fade away just as Prohibition has. Most places will go<br>for the open model because that is what society thrives on.<br><br>A few will retain the DRM model and will stay small isolated islands of<br>
like minded individuals. They are most welcome to have this mini<br>society. I however will not be amongst them because I value the<br>creativity that art sparks in everyone when it is allowed to flow<br>freely.<br><br>><br>
><br><br>Hopefully I have done much better this go around than with my first in<br>clairity of ideas. ;-P I really should learn to speak after my brain is<br>more awake rather than right away.<br><br>Aside from that, this has been a most enjoyable debate. :)<br>
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