Symbsys 209

9 responses so far ↓

• 1    jarobb3 // Nov 5, 2007 at 12:49 pm

  I am really glad that Benkler discussed, however brief, the security issues that face commons-based information production (457-459). I am content with his responses, mostly because there really are no good answers to how an open society protects itself from the worst of humanity. Freedom’s costs are in the form of risk, therefore an underlying constraint of the networked community is our society’s tolerance for risk.

  He makes a great point that too much regulation of the network, to which I will add the monopolies of cable companies over Internet service, creates a vulnerability in the most powerful form of communication America has. One can think of the bottlenecks that allow companies to charge customers for network access as critical physical structures that are typically the targets of terrorists and foreign forces such as bridges. At the very least, the government should encourage the production of ad-hoc wireless networks that could be used in case of an emergency, especially now that cell phones are becoming networked. This capability for first-responders and military troops during critical situations is immensely valuable; as is the ability to instantly communicate with a loved one in the case of a disaster with an email from an iPhone instead of hoping one’s call gets through a cell tower. I remember my friends on September 11, 2001 being unable to contact family members who were in New York even though they were unharmed. If we’re talking about feeling safe and secure, I believe this ability should not be overlooked. (458)

  It’s interesting to think about the competing ideals of America through the lens of the battles over the Internet. The fight is not new, it just now has the fashion of contemporary Silicon Valley. On one side, the founding fathers of the country no doubt imagined a new society of extreme freedom and liberty. On the other side, America’s recent focus has been the suppression of liberty in favor of security (or at least the illusion of security). Greater freedoms, as Benkler has pointed out many times, leads to more innovation and technology, traits in which American has taken pride beginning during the industrialization of the 19th century. However, more restrictions lead to more profit, which comes from another American tradition: “The business of America is business” (Taft, Hoover, Harding…one of those guys).

  What I find interesting is that neither side is “more American.” No American is immune from the pull of either side. It is obvious where Benkler falls on the spectrum, but we have seen in our classrooom how we are divided on many issues. Therefore, I do not believe that this argument can be settled by invoking American ideals, eg more freedom is better because Americans believe in freedom. The political and social climate of the times will decide the winner of the “battles over bits,” so the deciding factor, in any war over hearts and minds, will be the effectiveness of propaganda. Hand it Benkler: he’s done his part.

• 2    johnmagdaleno // Nov 6, 2007 at 2:29 pm

  With the last two chapters, it is probably not surprising that I now have a much greater appreciation for this work. But in some ways, I “cheated” to arrive here. Skeptical of Benkler’s arguments, I viewed much of his points as academic utopianism.Larry Lessig’s, Free Culture, helped me bridge my intuitive perceptions with Benkler. However, even without Lessig, Benkler makes many cogent points, some of which I wish to discuss here.

  The Government Doesn’t Get It

  It’s not just that the government doesn’t get it, but it conveniently doesn’t get it. Benkler notes that “…in a 1995 white paper…by the Clinton administration…[the Internet’s] great promise was that it could deliver the equivalent of thousands of channels of entertainment.” (413) Furthermore, Benkler notes that the paper argued that in order for it take off, it had to be “safe for delivery of digital content without making it easily copied and distributed without authorization and without payment.” (413) While this seems reasonable if one views all of us as simple-minded media consumers and potential criminals, this seems to fly in the face of American idealism, such as freedom, individualism, and anti-interventionism by our government. Lastly, that our highest elected office could view the Internet as purely for entertainment either demeans the technological change or inconspicuously enables them to position the Internet as a commercial enterprise with which we (non-corporate entities) act purely in a consumptive manner.

  2. Monopoly of Networks Monopoly of Information

  Benkler does not necessarily make this point, but he does say that “…increasing pressures from copyright industries to require that providers exercise greater control over the information flows in their networks in order to enforce copyrights.” (384) This made me think that while the networks may not be the root of rent-seeking practices of copyright holders, it is an instrument of it. One can easily imagine in a world where there are many networks, the copyright holders may not be able to effectively leverage the networks as a means of control (too many lawyers to threaten too many networks). Therefore, they might be forced to use other means: laws/regulation (favorable by means of lobbying) or, hopefully, by changing their rent-seeking behavior altogether. In short, the few networks that we have to access the networked information economy enables the inefficient and morally questionable opportunism practiced by those that have the money (i.e., the lawyers) to threaten others. It is clear that, not only from the perspective of wanting a more efficient economy for network access, we need to break the monopoly of network access to take away a convenient choke-point and create the disincentive for litigious behavior on the part of copyright holders which only prevent us from exercising our rights, such as fair use.

  3. Couch potato politics

  Our ability to affect change is probably going to be based on those “who [may] continue to sit on the couch and passively receive the finished goods of industrial information producers.” (385) The challenge is that unless Congress foregoes its current modus operandi of being pliant to the lobbyists, i.e., to those who have money, and unless the courts suddenly decide to reverse course in their legal interpretations, some of which seem completely nonsensical (444), we must rely on our political system through citizen action to effect change. But as Benkler points out, we have been trained to be couch potatoes, i.e., to be willing participants in the current information regime. In fact, as Larry Lessig points out in Free Culture, this should not be an issue that is primarily Left or Right, but an issue that is Left and Right. For conservatives, this should be an issue of resistance of government intervention and regulation; for liberals, this should be an issue for social change and equality for all, especially the disenfranchised. As Americans, this should be simply a question of constitutionally granted freedom: the freedom of speech and the Progress Clause. The question is in the face of “expansive interpretations of what rights include, a niggardly interpretive attitude toward users’ privileges, especially fair use, and increased criminalization,” (439) why hasn’t this induced more public action?

  Perhaps our “couch potato” trained senses have not fully recognized the threats, but it may be that in a world where security is more important than freedom, the public (majority) just do not care. It is more important to have the next season of Survivor (and blissfully ignore the world around us) than it is to fight the attack on our rights. However, there is some relief in Benkler’s closing chapter, “[e]ven if laws that favor enclosure do pass…it is not entirely clear that law can unilaterally turn back a trend that combines powerful technological, social and economic drivers.” That is, maybe the networked information economy has already instigated the necessary changes that will enable us to resist the onslaught of laws and regulations and economic disincentives which erode our basic freedoms and rights.

• 3    lvmesa // Nov 6, 2007 at 3:00 pm

  I couldn’t help but think about the iPhone throughout this week’s reading. I feel like its’ introduction, at least from my vantage point at Apple, has definitely spurred a lot of talk about telecommunications, information and security regulations in both the American and International spheres.

  For example, Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T : Does Apple have the right to exclusively regulate the service provider?

  I think Benkler would have greatly disapproved of Apple and AT&T’s behavior within the mobile telecommunications sphere, especially their attempt to force users to have to sign on to an exclusive provider. Talk about an information usage/distribution bottle neck! I can see Benkler arguing the separation between device and service should be pivotal–the combination deal limits a users choices and limits their flexibility within the ideals of information usage. Anyone can see that a two year contract, particularly without the ability to choose a carrier, restricts the user’s role and gives the carrier too much control.

  I think Benkler would have also been very upset with Apple and their initial reluctance to share the iPhone with independent developers. Apple claimed that this choice was made to try and keep the device safe from hackers, but the fact that Apple reversed their decision not four months later shows that they finally saw the value of allowing developers and free source developers to tinker with their device. Opening up the iPhone to developers opens up Apple’s monopoly on the applications and potential future uses of the iPhone. But would this have been realistic?

  The iPhone is a commercial device, created to both forward technology and to make a profit, both of which Apple has undeniably been able to do. Should they be expected to give free reign of the development of their device to the public? I don’t think Benkler’s ideal would be realistic in this sense. I do agree that Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T is a huge infringement of the consumer’s rights because Apple doesn’t have the right to force a consumer into a contract or to limit choice. But there is something to say here about intellectual property. The iPhone is Apple’s product. They will, in the end, decide how it will evolve.

  At the end of this week, Apple will be releasing the iPhone in England and Germany with the help of their respective, exclusive partners in each country. In the following month, Apple will release an unlocked version in France–as far as I can tell, the sole reason that Apple is releasing an unlocked phone in France is because it is against the law to have an unlocked phone. It will be interesting to see how this divide between locked and unlocked countries will continue to develop. I think that more an more countries will be turning to their respective governing institutions to force phone makers to make their phones available to all, regardless of carrier. The iPhone’s release may be a catalyst for this movement in the near future.

  I think it would be interesting to see what Benkler would have to say in the current iPhone world and to see if any of his ideals would change or evolve with the times. Overall, Bennkler’s stance seems to be firm and unwavering in favor of free information and net/communication neutrality.

• 4    fwy08 // Nov 6, 2007 at 4:27 pm

  In Chapter 11, Benkler points out that “As the universe of people who can threaten the industry has grown to encompass more or less the entire universe of potential customers, the possibility of using civil actions to force individuals to buy rather than share information goods decreases. Suing all of one’s intended customers is not a sustainable business model.” This insight is absolutely true. It is just a reminder that, yes, there are big institutional systems, cultural machines, things with a lot of social inertia keeping them rolling, and that this is how things are, but it is NOT how things necessarily should be. If people are expected to enact any kind of meaningful change, this is a crucial point of inquiry.
  It is important to differentiate between what are our values versus what are our customs and which of those are based on temporal assumptions. This includes realizing that corporations, industries or individuals highly benefiting from current circumstances are not entitled to their role in our society, the economy or our culture. Their roles are structured around an exchange of goods. Their contributions are valuable to the people who buy them. And when the value of their goods changes, their contributions change, we have to appropriately adjust their place in society and culture. As Benkler has demonstrated, we have much opportunity to do this now.

• 5    dulcinea // Nov 6, 2007 at 5:40 pm

  Point one:

  In Benkler’s description of the physical, logical, and content layers and what forces promote openness or enclosure, he left off a very important example that I think will be enormously important in the future: the unilateral action of individual companies to create a standard in a different industry.

  Google is taking this approach in two major areas. The first is Google’s move to purchase broadcast spectrum. This might have the effect of opening up the entire market for all participants and moves toward openness at the physical and logical layers. Another Google example, the gPhone, which creates an open standard for using phones, serves the same function as an IEEE standard, but is supported by a particular company that is not within the same industry. There really isn’t an analogy to this action on Benkler’s list, since most standardization projects are pushed by a consortium of companies in the industry, to help all industry members. Google is coming from outside an industry with the express intent of both standardizing a platform and breaking up an oligopoly. This will undoubtedly have strong effects in favor of openness, but of course have the structural disadvantage of only aligning with one company’s objectives. It would be interesting to explore historical precedents for this kind of behavior and trace their impact on the resulting technologies.

  Point two: I definitely agree with Benkler’s analysis that the institutional ecology of legal, political, and economics structures is highly complex and has periods of equilibrium punctuated by great instability. If, as in his example of jaywalking, the social and institutional response to a legal or technological regime (i.e., the reduction of time for traffic signals), is highly complex, then some of his earlier models seem to be a bit simplistic. I would be interested in seeing economic models that attempt to take into account these more complex effects, even if a reductionistic style is still required. For example, perhaps the equation for amount of total music sold used to be this:

  Total music industry revenues:
  Labels: .8 (C + E)
  Artists: .2 (C + E)

  And now it is this:

  Labels: .8(C + E + I) * (amount of people that learn about a song from the internet – amount of people who listen to a song online and don’t buy it – people who hate the RIAA and won’t buy songs online because of it)
  Artists: .2 (C + E + I) * (amount of people that learn about a song from the internet – amount of people who listen to a song online and don’t buy it – people who hate the RIAA and won’t buy songs online because of it) + L + D + F

  and L, D, F are huge (not sure if this is true, but just as an example).

  C = conventional media such as CDs, audio tapes, etc.
  E = events
  I = downloaded music
  L = licensing deals
  D = direct downloads for musicians (like Radiohead)
  F = endorsements, etc.

  It would be interesting to read an example that traced these interactions in principle and in response to particular laws, such as copyright extensions, or other legal actions, such as RIAA lawsuits

• 6    gnewman // Nov 6, 2007 at 6:24 pm

  Benkler has finally reached the point in the book where he discusses directly the implications of a more open digital society, and the possible negative effects on the film and music industry. I am glad Benkler attempted to tackle these issues when it came to the peer-2-peer network, but ultimately I found his argument lacking, especially when it came the film industry.

  I have often argued in previous posts the recording industry needs to change its model, that for no other reason it cannot prevent the changes that are occurring around it. I also agree with Benkler that the tradition of music has certainly lasted longer than the current recording industry, so the need to hold onto it so tightly seems a little ridiculous. However, to think that recording labels nowadays do not bear some of the capital costs in making a record Paying for studio time can vary differently from contract to contract, but I assure you that bands are not often required to front the money out of their own pockets. Also to believe that recording high quality albums can be relatively cheap, obviously do not know my friends. There is a necessary capital is incorrect. To issue the blanket statement: “[The recording industry] does not bear the capital cost of the initial music creation; artists do” does not do the process justice. required in a lot of these artistic endeavors, hence the reason being signed to a record label can be so advantageous compared to those that are not. Now record labels are now beginning to believe that they need to cut into artist’s other revenues, such as concerts: http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/18/news/companies/pluggedin_arango_music.fortune/index.htm.
  Ultimately I don’t think that the recording industry is going to simply die, but if Benkler had the openness that he seems to be asking for in this book it certainly would certainly have to undergo some major transformations.

  Benkler is at least more aware of the capital costs when it comes to film and television , but I am also uneasy about his belief that theatrical showings of films will save the industry. I am not so sure. I poised the question in another post about the possibility of home theater technology to cut into the film theater business, and I cannot argue with certainty that will be the case. However the question does rise: How do we base our decisions on intellectual property simply based on technology. If we had as open a digital society that Benkler wished for, in conjunction with seriously improved home theater systems, how would the film industry survive?

  The television industry is currently struggling with the problems of file sharing. Hollywood writers are currently on strike because they want a larger piece of the DVD and internet sales pie. However, if the DVD sales suddenly disappear than all that would be left is the internet. Now, I know that might just mean less mind-numbing Blockbuster movies, but won’t that affect some actual beneficial-to-society content. This is a serious issue, I mean they might have to put the show Heroes on hold, in which I would have to cry for days. On a serious note though, I have little faith in some amazing content that would be put on the web that some how outweigh that which is already in the mass media, not to mention that Benkler might want to approach this from an ethical standpoint as well. At what point can someone put limits on their own work?
  A closer examination of the show Heroes displays what they think is another hope in the days of easy file sharing: product placement. Every time I see product placement though a little piece inside of me dies, please don’t let that be the answer.

  Note: I could not find my paper copy, so I had to use the online version. Most of the quotes and context of the reading that I am commenting about is found near the end of the section: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

• 7    dreadpirateroberts // Nov 6, 2007 at 6:32 pm

  Please excuse the simplicity of my comment, but this thought recently came to my rather dense head in the last chapter, though it was probably in the subtext the whole time.

  In the penultimate chapter, the discussion of the retroactive extension of copyright via the Sonny Bono act (442-443), especially as it pertains to the archives of Disney (443) in as much as they are close to reaching almost infinite copyright. What would be the purpose of such a thing? The stated reason is to encourage creative production, because presumably dead people have great use for things 70 years after their death. Or even one year, or one hour for that matter.

  It makes sense that Walt Disney the company would suffer from Mickey appearing on merchandise that they are not receiving a cut of the profits from, but Walt Disney the man is not directly affected. His creation is a part of culture if Universal puts Mickey on a hat or if the company bearing his name does. As such, having copyright outlast the creator only does companies or the estates any good, as (per my world view) death curtails one’s need for money quite drastically. But even then, companies perish and their owned goods are purchased by other companies, rather than be allowed into the public domain (like Charlton Comics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlton_Comics).

  For all the talk of how copyright protects the creator and their zombie, the real and almost only ones who benefit from the extension of copyright are the Mickeys and RCAs in this world, not the Romantic Maximizers, as can be seen from the self-reported effect of internet downloading on their livelihoods from members of the music industry (426).

  If the only motivation to create is money, then it should stop there, or not even last the whole life, but only a few years to encourage more production.

  So while there is a bit of speculation as to whether or not the life of a Joe Einstein is better than a Romantic Maximizer or not, the extension of copyright is silly no matter how one slices it. And this is a very small portion of somewhat gray area in terms of fairly gotten gains, based on the rest of the chapter concerning slowing of bits and so forth.

• 8    clizzin // Nov 6, 2007 at 6:54 pm

  In chapter 11, Benkler highlights the three layers — physical, logical, and content — across which battles for regulatory control are being fought, and analyzes some historical events that have strongly influenced the direction of regulation of each layer. However, his separate treatment of each layer seems problematic, given his recognition early on in the chapter that the three layers are heavily interconnected. Specifically, I find this sentence to be most instructive: “In the Diebold case, the firm tried to use the Internet service provider liability regime of the DMCA to cut off the machine storage and mechanical communications capacity provided to the students by the university” (unfortunately, no page numbers, since I read this online, but it’s the 3rd paragraph within A Framework for Mapping the Institutional Ecology). Another place where Benkler mentions the connection between the layers comes when he mentions the entertainment industry’s attempt to require that hardware be manufactured to protect copyright: “At the same time, Hollywood and the recording industry are pressuring the U.S. Congress to impose regulatory requirements on the design of personal computers so that they can be relied on not to copy music and movies without permission” (1st paragraph under The Physical Layer).

  Diebold and the entertainment industry’s attempts to cut off access to their material at the point of hardware access is intructive because it demonstrates, in a direct sense, that hardware and the physical layer is at the root of all the other layers. However, the more useful realization to gain from these examples is just how interconnected the three layers are. Benkler explores the physical layer’s impact on other layers in his discussion of network neutrality and freedom of devices to treat media neutrally, but these make a limited argument in that they focus on ensuring a disconnect between hardware and software to create their neutrality. A more interesting approach is one that takes into account the openness of both hardware and software, as well as their point of connection, through the development of open standards.

  How is this important? Lack of open standards can have just as large an impact on the logical and content layers as lack of neutrality. For example, part of the problem in popularizing the Linux operating system has been the difficulty for the average consumer to procure the drivers necessary to run on particular hardware — while there are drivers available for lots of hardware on the market, installing them requires technical know-how and they cannot be relied upon to work consistently, since use of some hardware requires the use of proprietary firmware. Some companies like NVIDIA provide open-source libraries for interfacing with the proprietary aspects of their hardware, but this is not the case for most of the market. Another example of how the physical layer affects access to information in the logical layer is the limitation of some software to Apple hardware because of Apple’s proprietary approach to its hardware and software. Of course, reverse engineering by talented individuals can counteract these problems, but the institutional effect of such practice is to prevent free access to large groups of resources in the logical layer, which has the potential to affect access in the content layer. Focusing on institutional arrangements solely in the physical and logical layers does not cover this problem; rather, being cognizant of the two layers in tandem is what reveals this as a potent area for ensuring a free information environment.

  While it seems as if things have come too far for the personal computer industry, the announcement of The Open Handset Alliance yesterday seems promising for the mobile device industry. (Note that I’m not accusing Benkler of not mentioning possibilities like this in the book, since the smartphone industry hadn’t progressed to this level at the time of publication.) The creation of the Open Handset Alliance and its concurrent announcement of the Android mobile phone platform is an important move positioned at a still relatively early stage in the spread of mobile computing (smart phones have gained wide adoption among the more affluent and technologically inclined, but have yet to become as ubiquitous as the general cell phone). The Alliance is populated by companies from the mobile operator, semiconductor, handset manufacturing, and software industries in recognition of the fact that the overall mobile computing experience is affected by the production of goods and services in all these industries. As a result of this collaboration, the Android open source mobile phone platform promises to be available with a variety of carriers and handsets, ensuring that interfacing between hardware and software will not be a problem due to propretiary trade secrets. In addition, the efforts of developers using the open standards of Android to create useful software applications for mobile devices will not be limited to certain handsets or chipsets, allowing more people to interact within the same informational space. All in all, the OHA’s approach to mobile computing seems like the way forward for ensuring a free informational ecology in the industry.

• 9    benkr // Nov 6, 2007 at 6:55 pm

  This has been a common theme in comments on previous chapters, but I am going to address it again because Benkler brings it up again in chapter 11: free information’s impact on the movie industry.

  On page 427, Benkler submits his reasoning why, if piracy were legal, Hollywood filmmaking would remain a profitable industry. The industry began before TV and home video were introduced, and as each medium came onto the scene, Hollywood adapted to use it as a new income source and prevent it from hurting their box office revenues. Furthermore, because “the movie industry preexisted videocassettes and DVD’s,” it “is likely to outlive them even if p2p networks were to eliminate that market entirely, which is doubtful.”

  There are several flaws in his argument. First, the ways in which Hollywood was able to use TV and video as a revenue source are not relevant to the internet. Made-for-TV movies are profitable because the exclusive rights to air them can be sold to networks. Meanwhile, no website would pay money to host a movie if there were no exclusivity rights and anybody could see the same movie at any source. Also, home video did not cut revenue from box offices only because the firms did not create the videos until demand to see a movie in theaters had subsided. In p2p networks, because reproduction is not an expensive enterprise like mass production of tapes or DVDs, it would be impossible to delay the opening of this market without restrictive legislation.

  Which brings me to his final point, that, even assuming that file sharing would eliminate the entire 40 percent of revenue that comes from selling copies of the movie for home viewing, the industry would survive because digital distribution “does not replicate the social experience of going out to the movies.” I contend that this is not the case. The social experience comes not from the process of leaving your house, but from being with friends. No one goes to the movies because they enjoy the experience of being surrounded by strangers. Strangers block your view, whisper behind you, and squeeze past you to get through the row. Given the option of clearing everybody from the theater except the party of friends you came with, I think everybody would take the opportunity to have the entire place to themselves. I know I’m always excited when no one’s in the theater but me and my friends — we can make our obnoxious comments as loud as we want. Instead, the draw of the theater is mainly the increased visual and audio effects. Originally, no affordable home studio could come close to what a theatre could provide, but as large-screen televisions, surround sound systems, and even projectors become more affordable and proliferate through American homes, the advantages offered by a theater diminish. Right now, the theater ambience is worth $8.50, but as American living rooms start to resemble private theaters, if movie distribution is free, I think Hollywood will feel the effects.

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