You Gotta Licence For That PC, Pal?

[elfs]

In my last post, I discussed Microsoft's plans with respect to the post-Longhorn development cycle. I think it's important to look beyond that moment when Singularity bears fruit and look at the ten year plan.

Microsoft is putting a lot of money into the X-Box, and the X-Box has a hard drive, networking capability, and even high-definition multimedia capability. I think it should be obvious what life is going to be like in Microsoft's 2010.

Most families on the Internet will use MS's X-Box for all of their interneting. They won't need much more. They may rent their .net Office on a daily or hourly basis, putting it away when they don't need it. They'll play games, do IM, download music and movies, and do everything they want to that doesn't demand real creativity with their X-Box.

Those who still have "general purpose" boxes will come under more and more scrutiny. The most commonplace question will be "Why do you need a PC?" And the most common assumption will be, "Because you pirate content."

And then the U.S. will start to license PCs. I mean, it makes sense: given that all of the "legitimate" uses for a PC are covered under the X-Box Singularity 2010 utility, there will be only two reasons for having a PC: "illegitimate" purpose, and development. And it will finally be time for states to create a licensing program for developers and for the platforms on which they develop. France has already started down this road: it will soon be illegal to publish source code in France, because if you know how the software works, you can circumvent the market plan-preserving code of existing business.

More and more, Richard Stallman's "Freedom to Read" is looking prophetic. Enjoy your future, citizen.

Or else.

Comments

[ambrose-m.livejournal.com]

Scary... but at least reasonably plausible.

The kicker is that there already so many micro processors in the world that it's going to be like guns in this country - you can pass a law that says you have to license them, but finding them all is practically impossible.

Of course they can use it as another excuse to haul you away and beat the stuffing out of you...

"Hey you! Is that a computer in that box? Let me see that, and get out your papers!"

But they don't need that excuse now, so I don’t see that it'll make a lot of difference...

A.M.

[fallenpegasus]

It pisses me off, every time I've mentioned "Freedom To Read" in the rasfw newsgroups, it's sniffily dimissed as "bad SF" and "improbable". The only thing I found improbable about it is that, in F2R, the "good guys" do finally win, after a violent revolution.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

The places that censor content, which is what this really is, will be made obsolete by the many, many more places that don't.

I am amused to imagine the following discussion someday soon:

"Psst, Chinese hacker, want to trade some illicit American smut for some illicit Chinese hardware?"

"Sure . . . I'll throw in some illicit software for some illicit music . . ."

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You know, the harder they push for total control, the less control they get. Look at what happened to Sony. Total recall, embarassment, and, more than likely, a sharp drop in market share, just as the holiday madness is getting underway...

That, and the handwriting is on the wall for Microsoft. The open sourcing of Solaris was a huge bombshell, and final notice to the boys in Redmond that making operating systems is not where the money is. Windows cannot be a desktop-only OS; the margins are far too thin. The server room is where the deep pockets are, but those pockets have just had the drains opened on them. And as much as I gloat over Sony losing share this year, they will recover and make amends. And then the war will be on again, and Microsoft can't win this war either.

Gates, Ballmer, and Allchin are legally bound by US Code to go for World Domination. They have no choice but to try, and to make it look good. Otherwise they get their butts sued off by a bazillion angry shareholders. And that wouldn't be good for Medina's tax base. But they will fail. Slowly, surely, they will fail.

Why do I believe that? Not just because of what Sun and IBM and HP and yes even Dell in a very small way are doing... but because I have to. The alternative is digital slavery. And as the man from Virginia once said, give me liberty, or give me death.

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

As I commented in technoshaman's post, the French bill's wording does not forbid the publication of source code. It's more devious than that. They're not outlawing free software - they're outlawing any data transmission software that doesn't integrate a DRM control system. Of course, that includes all servers, instant messaging, etc.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

The most commonplace question will be "Why do you need a PC?" And the most common assumption will be, "Because you pirate content."

I don't know about this. Empirically, I know more people who pirate games for the X-Box than I do for the PC. I'm guessing this is because there are far more desirable software titles for the X-Box today than there are for the PC. (I know a lot of F/OSS geeks, so any PC software they can get legally free, they will, instead of using the commercial software.)

The X-Box platform won't be fully realized until someone ports a P2P filesharing app. to X-Box so folks can illegally swap X-Box games, MP3 music and WMV/M4V/etc. videos and Hollywood movies without knowing ANYTHING about how to operate a computer, just their X-Box.

Then, the fun will ensue. Microsoft vs. RIAA. Who would win?

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I'm an occasional small-scale content creator, on an even smaller scale than Elf is. Copyright law gives us an automatic copyright on everything we create. You don't need to be a corporation or anything else special. All of us own what we each create.

The rhetoric of the RIAA and Hollywood gives the false impression that they are the only people who own copyright material and, unless you download from their approved sources, you are a pirate. The way the DRM works, none of us are ever likely to be able to afford protection, and the way they want it to control the world, we will lose the ability to distribute our own property.

I don't mind them locking up their own property, but they're messing with my rights to distribute my property as I choose.

And here's something to remember: licencing computers is the same as licencing printing presses.

[funos.livejournal.com]

Argh. Way to make me lose sleep by reminding me. ;P

In a way, this has already happened on a small scale with VCR equipment.
See the first half of this entry: http://pet.dhs.org/~ecl/log/200406/2004_06_19-LoveAndLaw.html
(nevermind the second, although I'd like to hear what you think about it)

Potential scenarios like the one you mention are one reason why I'm scrambling to create open hardware and software systems.

There is also the possibiity that the DRM on the X-Box will get broken.
(eg: people will run non-MS software on Singularity or run another OS on ti altogether)
It's practically a certainty. And if it grants a single iota of convenience/free lunch to joe Average, it's going to be hard to stop.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

In 1996 I interviewed at a startup called "Artemis Research" which was building an interesting web client and service. They wanted me to design the network on the back end of it. I declined because the client was far too simple, and even the possibility of encryption between a remote web server and a client (thus hiding the content of the transaction from the service provider) was precluded. The service provider could see all. I regarded that as a situation ripe for abuse. When I raised my concerns to the CEO, he wanted me to work within the company to see that these concerns addressed in their privacy policy. Standard co-opting strategy.

Thus did I give up a piece of a half-billion dollars when (a year later) Microsoft bought WebTV Networks.

So far as I can see, that attempt to force "convergence" failed. Steve Perlman wanted WebTV to be like Teletext in Europe: included in every TV by the manufacturers as a matter of course, and he never got that. Microsoft does not, though webtv, control the web experience of the masses.

But they'll keep trying...