First about the impact on Perl, please re-read the various
drafts of
it floating around. Read section 109, paragraph 3:
(3) Interactive digital device -- The term "interactive
digital device" means "any machine, device, product,
software, or
technology, whether or not included with or as part
of some other machine, device, product, software, or
technology, that
is designed, marketed or used for the primary
purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving,
processing, performing,
transmitting, receiving, or copying information
in digital form." (all emphasis mine)
This definition manages to cover just about every
useful Perl program that I have seen or written. Given
that most of them have not incorporated any kind of copy
protection (let alone one authorized by a government
standard), they would all be illegal.
Seems pretty much like "immediate death" to me.
What it seems that our legislators do not understand is that
Content is
Not King. (See
Communication
Networks and Other Topics for more excellent articles from
the same author on that general topic.) In peer to peer
networks locally generated content dwarfs commercial content
in useful measures of value. This has been true in network
after network over the last 200 years. Basic
connectivity is one of the biggest engines we know of
behind economic growth and creative innovation. Removing
connectivity is one of the fastest ways to cripple that
growth.
I didn't explain this in my email, but I hoped that it would
be obvious to the reader on a personal level. As I pointed
out, basic email systems incorporate a
host of features which directly enable infringement on
copyrights. Yet as everyone knows from experience, those
exact features, in enhancing the ease
of communication, are what makes email useful for
communication, document workflow, etc. Conversely removing
those features from email would cripple the medium, and a
significant fraction of businesses along with it.
What is the value of email? It is hard to measure that.
However as Odlyzko's article points out, in polls people are
split on whether they would be more willing to give up email
or their phone. (I would give up my phone first.) So let
us say for the sake of argument that email is comparable in
value to the phone system. Well in 1997 (see Odlyzko for a
citation), we spent $256.1 billion on phones. We spent
(after some quick math), $188.6 billion on Hollywood, TV,
radio, newspapers, and magazines combined. Hmmm...it seems
likely to me that email is worth more! And that is
not even getting into the rest of the IT infrastructure,
most of which is impacted by this legislation. We spent
(per Intel's submission linked on your site) $600 billion
on IT products in 2000, communication services not
included. That is definitely worth more than all of
the stories from tinsel-town.
This is not even getting into the fact that, as has been
widely pointed out (and was pointed out by Intel as well),
every historical technology that content industries have
railed against because it was going to destroy the value of
their content has resulted in significant increases of
revenue for them. Again and again they have sought relief
from technology after technology that made them feel out of
control. And again and again it was to their benefit.
(You would think they would learn? Apparently not...)
Therefore, even if the content industries were going to be
levelled to the ground, protecting them at the cost of our
IT industry would be a bad idea. But that isn't our real
choice. Rather all evidence points to the
conclusion that the very technologies that Hollywood is
begging for protection from would prove to be yet
another significant windfall for them. So we are choosing
between crippling our economy to protect Hollywood, or
helping both grow. Doesn't seem like a hard decision to
me!
But, while true, this is not a point that I know how to
effectively make to non-technical people without their
eyes glazing over. However they understand email. So I
can skip the lessons on network economics and capitalism
at work, and just explain what it means for how they
use computers. They may not know the fancy theory, but
they hopefully can extrapolate for their own lives...
UPDATE
Oh shoot. Forgot to answer the licensing question. For
your convenience, feel free to sublicense your
copy of the original email under virtually any decent
license you want. This includes without restriction any of
the Open Content license you linked to, LGPL, GPL, BSD, and
the Artistic License. Contact me for any license you wish
to use that is not on that list (or derivable from one on
that list. Please do not consider it public domain.
Since a large part of the point of the email is that you are
working with copyrighted text, I have no wish to relinquish
my copyright.
UPDATE 2
For a more amusing, though basically accurate, summary of
what is wrong with the SSSCA, see the
following
letter by Rick Bradley. | [reply] |
