On 19/11/2007, Nick Reynolds-A&Mi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:> Also you can
comment here:>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/groklaw_interview.html
Good point :-)
Ashley said, "Well, they started from the principle of, "We just don'tknow the
way this market is going to develop. We don't want any of ourcontent to be made
available." A lot of the rights holders are not atall familiar with this world.
They are often writers, or directors, orproducers—and for them, **they can see
that this world hasopportunity, but they also see that it has great risk of
underminingtheir current business.** And so this is something that we've had
totake them on a journey with. And the initial point was, yes,convincing them
that **the content was well-protected, that once theyunderstood enough about
copyright and digital rights management towant to be assured that the content
would be available free within theUK but not freely copying available outside
the UK.** And we hadauditors in to demonstrate that that was the case."
This reminded me of something Eben Moglen said
athttp://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2420/stories/20071019507610000.htm :
"What's happening is that, at one and the same time, the digitalrevolution is
offering capitalists the undreamt of **possibility thatthey can continue to
charge large prices for goods that have no costof manufacture and
distribution.** That is the bonanza. That isperfection for capitalism. Profit
becomes the whole of the price. It'sa very great dream for them.
"At the same time, they are facing the **possibility of complete ruinif we move
to a voluntary distribution system in which they no longerown anything** but
perform services to creators. Because then, indistributing culture, they must
compete with children and lovers andpeople who distribute culture just because
they want to. So there is acompetitive crisis building.
"On the one hand, their pay-off matrix shows in the positive side somevery
large numbers. And on the negative side, their pay-off matrixshows equally
large negative numbers. **There is no saddle point inthis game,** the game
theoreticians would say. The game itself doesnot give you an optimum strategy.
"There are two possibilities: they have superior force, and so theycoerce the
game to the cells in which they win. Or we have superiorforce in which case
they must change their way of doing business.Unfortunately, there is really no
choice in the middle. The middlebecomes hard to hold because the ends are so
attractive.
"So, international capital at one and the same time sees that it
hasopportunities beyond its wildest dreams and it has challenges thatmight put
it out of business. This produces that same uneasiness thatbeset capital when
it first encountered the communist movement in themiddle of the 19th century.
And so I took the moment at which itencountered communism and I changed a few
words to show how it worksat the opening of the 20th century. And the spectre
of freeinformation that haunts capitalism now is like the spectre ofcommunism
that haunted it in the 19th century with just one exception;this one works. The
communists of 1867 were writing about somethingthat they hoped to do. We are
writing about the spreading out ofsomething we have already done. This one is
already showing that itcan happen."
Interesting times :-)
-- Regards,Dave
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