Terminally Incoherent

Dear Entertainment Industry,

If you belong to organization whose name ends in AA, this post is for you. I’m writing this, because I would like to introduce you to this relatively new concept of Internet. You see, this globe spanning computer network was designed for one thing - and one thing only: to move bits of data from one machine to another. Despite of what misconceptions you have nested in your underdeveloped brain, all that Internet does is move small electric charges between computers. These charges encode various types of information.

Now, you may think that you own some of that information - some songs or movies protected by copyright law. There are even laws that let you exercise control over that information. Unfortunately the very nature of information is that it flows freely, and expands like a viral infection. Given proper conduit channel, any piece of information, no matter how complex can travel the globe and be copied millions of times in a matter of seconds. Internet is precisely such a conduit. Once you make something publicly available on the internet you no longer have any control of how it is distributed.

Conversely any time you make something publicly available it will eventually end up on the internet. Why? Because information flows and expands - people have natural tendency to share knowledge. This natural urge to exchange data allowed us to build civilization, develop technology and create empires. The fact is, we can measure progress of mankind in the efficiency in which we transmit and share information. We continuously research ways to communicate faster, more efficiently and to share larger amounts of data. As sharing data becomes easier, protecting special kinds of content becomes more and more difficult. And there are no indications that this thread will ever stop.

The only way to stop the free flow of data is to fundamentally change the way internet works. As it is right now, any attempts to censor or control the way content is distributed online are bound to fail. Why?

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” John Gilmore (EFF)

For every instance of content you manage to take down using DMCA or a lawsuit, there are 15 new ones uploaded by people all over the globe - mainly out of spite. When you try to contain content locally, it simply moves off-shore to foreign lands. And it will continue to move around, until it’s too expensive, or virtually impossible for you to control it. The global community routes around silly things such as one countries information suppression laws.

You can target each file sharing protocol in turn, but there will always be new ones that we can use. The only way you can be a 100% sure no one is sharing your copyrighted data digitally is to kill the internet. But, that would only resurrect the bootleg market.

Lawsuits and threats against individual citizens? Don’t make me laugh! How many people have you sued so far? Few thousand give or take a few? How many of file sharing cases have you won? One? It’s a drop in the bucket my friends. A drop in a bucket. There are more file sharers than there are IP addresses currently in use. On average you will get 2 or 3 sharers per household. And this statistic will only continue to grow with every generation. Sure, today many senior citizens do not own, or know how to use a computer. But hey, one day the current largest file-sharing demographic (which is teenagers, and 20-30 crowd) will be senior citizens.

Ever day few people who do not know how to share data online die. And at the same time, few new people are born into a world where transmitting bits of data across the globe is as natural as breathing. Our numbers are growing, and so is our bandwidth. Your resources are limited, and you will never be able to sue everyone who owns a computer. Statistically, getting sued by RIAA or MPAA is akin to winning a lottery. It’s a really crappy lottery, but the odds are similar. So in most cases it’s a fair gamble that most people (not counting the overly paranoid) are more than willing to take.

Yes, protecting copyrighted content is a noble idea. But it becomes less and less practical every second. Anyone who bases their business model on outdated notions about intellectual property and copyright that were formed in the pre-intenret era is heading towards complete and total irrelevance at the speed of Moores Law. Every cent you spend towards the goal of stopping the flow of data, brings you closer to eventual bankruptcy.

The sooner you learn to embrace this new reality, the faster you can learn to monetize it. There is money to be made in a world where your distribution costs are exactly zero, and your market penetration is measured on a global scale. Your customers already know this and so do artists and content creators you claim to represent. One by one they come to a conclusion that they do not need you. You are the third wheel in the relationship between the content creator and the customer. Your services are outdated, your distribution models are flawed in the digital age, and your prices are obscene. Oh, and you treat all the customers as filthy thieves. Your customer base is already slipping - but it’s mostly your fault. You fail to adapt, you insult the customer at every step, and spend millions of dollars to make his life harder. When an illegally downloaded copy of a product is easier to use and provides a better customer experience than the original, you are doing something wrong. Your talent base will slip too - as soon as they realize what how horribly you treat their fans, and how little you really do for them.

You can call me naive, demented, idealistic or stupid. You can claim I’m wrong. This changes nothing. You can’t be that blind. Just look around. Copyright was a great idea, but we sadly moved past it. It still has application with regards to physical media. Owning a nice looking album or a DVD you can put on a shelf is still very nice. People will continue to buy physical things because we like to collect crap like that, regardless of online availability of the data they store. But stopping the flow of information is a fool’s errand.

You are in a losing position. There is nothing you can do to change this. You can’t stop technological progress, you can’t change human nature and you cant censor all electronic communication. You must adapt or perish. And for one, I’m not going to miss you when you are gone. So for your own sake please get with the program and stop making such asses of yourselves.

Thanks,

It seems that voters casting early ballots using the Diebold machines in Florida already have reported persistent bugs and glitches preventing them from casting their votes correctly. Apparently most of the faulty machines would assign the votes cast for Democratic candidates to Republicans:

Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up. Raponi, 53, persevered until the machine worked. Then he alerted a poll worker.

Heh… How convenient. But you know what is really scary? This is apparently a very common issue, and the poll workers are actually expected recalibrate these machines on the spot to realign the screen and correct these issues:

Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary Cooney said it’s not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot — essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual.

So let me get this straight. The Diebold machines are so unreliable that their touch screens go out of sync all the time, registering the wrong votes. The poll workers are expected to frequently reboot and recalibrate them when the voters complain… But how many voters will notice these glitches? How many will bother to stick around and wait while the machine is calibrated? These machines are crap! Why the fuck do people insist on using them?

Besides, you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to notice that this flaw could be abused. After all, if you want to install a stealth vote stealing program on one of these machines you simply need to insert a specially prepared memory card into the slot on the side of the machine and reboot. Loading malicious patch takes 20-30 seconds tops, not counting the time to open the lock protecting the card interface. Of course we now know that the key used in Diebold machines is a standard office furniture key design used in mini-bars and desk drawers. You can buy Diebold compatibile keys on ebay or from your local office furniture store.

So, in order to rig a machine a poll worker simply needs to “notice” that the screen sync is out of whack, and then simply slip a card carrying a vote stealing code into the machine using a key purchased on ebay, and reboot while pretending to do the calibration steps.

Logistically speaking, rigging elections in Diebold districts is easier than ever. It is relatively hard to loose or destroy hundreds of paper ballots without anyone finding out about it. It is extremely easy to do the same with electronic votes, provided that you can prepare a vote stealing patch similar to the one Ed Felten and the Princeton crew developed during their testing projects.

In other words, if you live in a Diebold district, cast an absentee vote instead of using the machine, just to be on the safe side…

This is possibly the scariest thing that you will read this Halloween: Bush just signed a provision which will remove any limits over military involvement in domestic law enforcement effectively allowing him to declare martial law at any time and for any reason.

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which (…) will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law. It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.

Step by step we are getting closer and closer to becoming a totalitarian fascist state. We really need to get these idiots out of the government. Come on people - vote Democrat. Elect some people who can start fixing up this mess. Stop this descent into madness now.

Oh, and if your district is using diebold machines just do the absentee ballot instead - the machines in swing states are bound to be rigged. After all it only takes 20-30 seconds to flash the firmware of that thing.

If your search queries were among those recently made public by AOL, let them know that they suck! Get your banner from EFF and then post it all over the place. Spread the word!

click for EFF action page

Here is a lesson for the future - do not use AOL search! In fact, do not use any ISP based search engine. Use Google or Yahoo, and routinely delete their cookies.

When you ego-surf or look up stuff about friends use a proxy or a web based search anonymization service like blakboxsearch.

I assume you have seen the stupid anti-Gore, YouTube cartoon that has been popping up on various blogs and news sites last week. If not, don’t bother watching it. It is bad and annoying.

Furthermore, if you are a linux user, you will be even more annoyed at the completely inappropriate use of Tux the Penguin image. Including the beloved Open Source mascot in a anti-intellectual propaganda movie is in a very bad taste.

But it gets better. Apparently, this movie was not made by some half-retarded, inbred, Bush loving, brainwashed republican amateur. It was made by a professional PR firm called DCI. These guys have a really bad rep according to Sourcewatch. In the past they have worked for all kinds of evil corporations such as for cigarette companies and Microsoft. One of their current clients is (surprise, surprise…) Exxon!

Here is a CNN News coverage of this story.

Let’s summarize. Exxon uses a shady PR firm, to create an amateurish movie that is distributed on Youtube to subversively spread FUD about All Gore’s movie.

Here is an interesting tidbit. Youtube is full of politically charged videos attacking politicians on both sides of the isle. Some of these may also be made by PR firms - but then again, it doesn’t really matter. Amateurs churn these things out daily, so it’s not like one more clip could make a difference. So how come news agencies decided to investigate this one?

I think it is because YouTube generation is to smart and educated to believe in anti-Gore propaganda. They can easily push this sort of crap on backwards, ultra-conservative, elderly republicans who do not understand technology. But if you have the know-how to create a video and post it on YouTube you must have been exposed to reliable evidence which shows that global warming is real. Someone who creates a video like this one, is interesting because he really stands out among his peers.

via thoughtcrimes