Broken Technology
Good morning, everyone. My post today is intended to wake you up to some pretty serious technology issues. The language might get a little technical, but I've tried to keep it as simplified as I possibly can. The story starts after the jump.
First, some very basic definitions:
An open standard is one where the developers of that standard have made its workings available for other developers to use and implement in their own designs. Open standards allow software developers to write software that will work with multiple kinds of files, such as music and video players. Some examples of open standards are the JPEG file format, the PDF document format, and the MP3 file format.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a term for software and/or hardware that limits what end-users can do with media such as downloaded files, CDs, and DVDs. It generally is encrypted in a way that prevents the end user from using it on unauthorized machines or players, and it often limits the number of copies that can be made of that media. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, it is illegal to circumvent DRM protections, even though DRM may infringe on fair use permissions under copyright law.
Now, allow me to propose a hypothetical situation.
You just upgraded to Windows Vista, and with it you purchased Office 2007. The prices were kinda high, so you got the Home Basic Version of Vista, and the Office Home and Student Edition. You set up your new software and move all of your files (mostly Word documents, iTunes purchases, ripped CDs, and some pictures) over to the new system, and decided to run Windows Update overnight.
When you wake up in the morning, you sit down to use your computer, and log on to the internet to write a blog post. You start composing the post in Word, and notice that the spell-check is replacing the word "anti-trust" with "standardization". You think that's pretty weird, so you decide to Google for this to see if it's a bug or something. When you open up Internet Explorer to go to Google, you keep getting redirected to MSN. After the third time you try it, you get an error message:
"Windows Vista Home Basic only supports search capabilities through MSN search. Further search capability is available in Windows Vista Home Premium edition and above."
Weird, you think. You remember your blog post, so you decide to post it before you figure this out further. You open your blog, go back to Word, highlight your post, right-click and copy it. When you try to paste it, you get another weird dialog box that says:
"Pasting text from Word into other applications is not available in this version of Microsoft Office."
You've gotten frustrated by all of this broken technology, so you decide you're going to fill up your iPod and go for a run. You open up iTunes and copy a few albums on to your iPod, but as you're copying you get another weird dialog box:"This album has not been authorized for play on iPod. Please select a different album."
You remember the weird logo on the back of the CD, and remember reading something about copy protection on the CD case, but didn't think anything of it at the time. Frustrating, to say the least.You grab a few other albums and go on your run. Before you leave, you email a paper to a professor (that still works, at least). When you get back, there's an email from her in your inbox saying that she can't open the file; something about this version of Word not being compatible with Mac OS X. The computer labs are all full, because everyone else with Vista is having the same problems, so you have to print out your paper and literally run it across campus to turn it in before the deadline.
Now, luckily, none of this has happened. It's all still purely hypothetical. The scary thing is that it is entirely possible, and could easily happen. Vista has DRM capabilities baked deep within it, and iTunes has had it for years. Word isn't an open standard, but everyone uses it, so Microsoft can lock you in to using Office in much the same way one would shoot fish in a barrel. If you think the PATRIOT Act is bad, you should take a look at an End User License Agreement.
What's an End User License Agreement? It's one of those things you click "I Agree" to in order to install software.
The moral of this story: Open standards are good. Proprietary standards are bad. DRM is worse. And if we're not careful, we can get trapped.
The reason I bring all of this up is because I know what's possible, but I'm not sure of how to fight it. That being said, I leave you with three questions:
1.) How does this hypothetical situation make you feel?
2.) Knowing what you know now, how likely are you to change?
3.) What do you think we should do about this stuff?
this creeps me out. you
this creeps me out. you seriously think that this might happen? talk about no-freedom - can you imagine that this is already happening in some countries? how likely am i to change? from what? to vista? i have a mac - no such change. and what should we do? hope for the best... i have no idea. my forte is definitely not in computers, but this is sick.
not so much might, as too easily could.
Microsoft's history lends itself to this sort of thing being possible. It seems like as long as it benefits them, they don't care what it does to the consumer or their competitors. For example, they killed the Netscape browser by including Internet Explorer free with Windows 95 and 98. They then almost killed the Java programming language by not natively supporting it in Internet Explorer. They then structured Internet Explorer such that it doesn't conform to web programming standards -- just because if web pages look better in Internet Explorer, people will keep using Internet Explorer (and by extension, Windows.)
Their record of security problems with Windows is atrocious. Between all of the holes in Internet Explorer and the lack of firewall and memory protection in Windows, I would consider them responsible for 75% of the spam problem on the Internet. They go through the motions to make people think they're trying to fix it, but hole after gaping hole still shows up. Then again, they don't have to change, because they have 90% of the personal computer operating system market. It's amazing what you can do when you strong-arm your competitors out of business, eh?
They have also been rather... receptive of DRM. Every CD that you rip with Windows Media Player has the ability to be encoded with DRM. Every song you buy through UrGE or MSN Music is encoded with DRM that only allows you to play it on Windows machines in Windows Media Player. The Zune (Microsoft's answer to the iPod) automatically locks everything you put on it with DRM. Essentially, if you use Windows Media to manage your music, Microsoft has you by the short hairs.
The iTunes Music store isn't much better. Every single file you purchase from the iTunes store is encoded with DRM. You can only play iTunes purchases in iTunes or on your iPod, you can only burn purchases to CD 3 times, and you can only listen to your purchases on a total of 5 different computers. And if you read the fine print in the EULA for iTunes, you'll notice that Apple reserves the right to reduce these numbers at any time without notice.
So, while I don't think this would happen as drastically as I described above, I could easily see big software companies slowly easing consumers into a very similar situation. Kinda like the Bush administration slowly eroding away at the Bill of Rights.
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"The difficulty of success does not relieve one of the responsibility to try."
- Bill Clinton
i dont like it
that hypothetical situation scares me. it makes me think of 1984. personally, i'd like to do what i want with my computer and use the programs i want to use. as for doing something about it, i don't know what could be done. i'm good with computers and all but all that super technical stuff i'm clueless about. all i know is that i don't want my rights infringed upon and i dont want some corporations forcing me into doing things their way. let's keep America away from having our use of technology monitored by Big Brother.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."
-Tricia **
what can be done
The easiest and most prudent thing to do is to exercise your rights as a consumer. Speaking with your dollar goes a long way.
First and foremost, stop using Internet Explorer. There are plenty of other choices available to you for web browsing. Personally, I recommend Firefox, because it's awesome.
Second, stop buying music that uses DRM. MSN Music, iTunes Music Store, Yahoo! Music Service and Napster all use DRM to control what you do with your music. eMusic and the others stores listed here have a great selection of catalog that is DRM-free.
Third, educate yourself on what your computer does by asking questions. There are plenty of people like me out there that will happily answer your computer questions as long as you are willing to listen. You don't have to know how the kernel level driver architecture works or how a TCP/IP stack functions, but knowing things about what programs use DRM and what alternatives to Microsoft Office are available can help you quite a bit in making educated and responsible choices.
At some point in the near future, I plan on talking about free and open-source software alternatives that you can use in place of things like Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, and iTunes. In the mean time, just ask away.
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"The difficulty of success does not relieve one of the responsibility to try."
- Bill Clinton
This is really worrisome,
This is really worrisome, I'm not sure if it's going to be bumped to the top of my concerns, but it's definitely on there. It's all pretty scary stuff.
Have you ever read Jennifer Government by Max Barry? It seems to have a similar message of business taking over the role of a fascist government that you're exploring here. Give it a look.
Peace and love,
Joe!
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