Selling the Future

mrG — Wed, 05 Mar 2003 06:35:26 -0500

I know I've got a sensitive tooth on online privacy, transparency of technology and digital freedom, but somedays the whole thing is just so tiresome and, well, seems so pointless to fight it. There are days when I figure I will just abandon the box and go take up sheep farming or some other alternative occupation as far from the evolving world of DRM as I can possibly get. The young'uns will ask, "Gran'pa why don't you use computers?" I wonder if I'll be able to explain it to them?

I know I can't explain it to my friends and neighbours. Yesterday I found three of my local musician friends gleefully being used to flog Microsoft DRM; some local webdesign shop signed them on for a new streaming radio site where their CDs are featured in exchange for, you guessed it, "free" previews to anyone who will buy a $500 operating system and then allow the manufacturer to gain complete and irreversible control of it. You sample their CD, and Microsoft gets to install their DRM into your box, forever holding the pass-key to what gets copied and played through it.

I'm in a bit of a quandry. Do I tell them again that they are eroding their own freedoms and selling out the future in their rush to make a few pennies off their CDs? Can I tell them they sell out a future where new artists might get in the door via MP3s when they hand all decision making on what gets played and where to a large multinational corporation? Do they really believe these corporations will behave justly and philanthropically?

What gets me is, despite my rants, they are all, without exception, perfectly content with their decision, even proud of it. How can I hope to convince anyone if I can't even convince my own friends? They don't even tell me anymore, because they know I won't like it. They sign the deals and say nothing, then sit back and wait for the blood money to trickle in.

Ok, I needn't be harsh. It's not just them, and it's not because they are poor starving rural musicians. I first heard of this last fall with Elvis Costello's pre-release CD stealthfully handing your machine to Microsoft, then Neil Young, and then it just started to cascade to the point where even an underground "punk celtic rap band" knowingly leads fans to their slaughter:

"I do know from a perusal of the business side of the NY Times that Bill Gates and Microsoft are trying to dominate the computer industry. But they're hardly bombing Iraq. I suppose I never even stopped to think that to get into the black47radio site you do download Windows. But I'm using Windows to work this computer. So, I suppose I'm part of the great conspiracy also. Then again I look at it all Mac, Windows, etc as a tool. Perhaps, that's being a bit naieve." (larry kirwan - black47)

Larry is at least honest about it: "I'm not particularly computer literate" he writes. Yes, Larry, I expect Microsoft knows that. And it's not just Microsoft, it's just the way big business works, looking out for it's strategic partners, maximizing stockholder returns, protecting assets ... thus the new music downloading service for iPod carries implicit content locks. Is this who we want holding the exclusive keys to our culture? Do we resign ourselves to a future where the next Darlin' Cory must belong (in perpetuity) to a Disney Corporation? That's what the artists are telling me.

Artists everywhere are selling out future artists, and for what? For a few stream-plays a week to a handful of people? Kazaa would give them more exposure than a spot on the Letterman show. Makes you wonder. I thought artists were sensitive to the future, and not so eager to trade their bretheren for a few dollars in royalties. Then again, maybe artists are just canaries in the cultural coal mines.

To be a bit balanced, it's not all artists. There are a few bold enough to play the CC card and, yes, it's not just our artists. Dan Gillmor tells us Lexmark will be using DMCA provisions to prevent cheaper clones of their inkjet cartridges, digital voting machines will operate in total secrecy, answerable to no one, and the list of both critical and innocuous technologies where we're simply told we'll be handing over the keys to big business, this list grows almost daily and with hardly a stir. What's next? A car that only parks at Chrysler partner malls? Can openers that won't work on DelMonte peaches? (oops, scratch that last bit, I already have one -- I just never really thought about 'why' before ...)

Is it already too late? I blame our carefully orchestrated and professionally intentional mystification of the machine. Those of us on the inside know there is nothing intrinsically mystic about digital technology. It's a light switch, or rather, a million light switches in a jumble of wires, a mind-numbingly tedious and hair-pullingly impossible tangle of never-quite-right wires and switches, but no more mysterious than a simple toggle. Yet through disinformation, opaque jargon and horrendous design, we've buried our tracks and successfully reserved for ourselves the sacred mantles of the high priests, the sole and trusted Proprietors of the Digital Device, and left behind two whole generations of public who think of computers as something obtuse from the future, something with names like HAL9000, something they have no hope of understanding, something they cannot escape and something they have no right to question or to own and should leave to the 'experts'.

"Besides," they say with their pockets a-jingling, "what's the big deal? It let you play my CD!"

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Selling the Future