Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you hey there, Text Stuff listeners, This
Speaker 1: is Jonathan Strickland and I have got a request for
Speaker 1: all of you. Now, Chris and I have decided that
Speaker 1: we're going to try and experiment. We're doing our first
Speaker 1: crowd sourced episode of tech Stuff and we want to
Speaker 1: know what your pick is for the worst video game
Speaker 1: of all time. Now, nominations you can. You can make
Speaker 1: one nomination. You nominate one game, and you need to
Speaker 1: tell us the name of the game and the platform
Speaker 1: it was on. And it could be any platform. It
Speaker 1: could be an arcade game, it could be a PC, Mac, Xbox,
Speaker 1: PS three, Nintendo handheld console. It can be web based
Speaker 1: if you like. But just you let us know what
Speaker 1: the platform is so we can make sure we count
Speaker 1: that as the votes. So you can nominate your game
Speaker 1: either through email, which is tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can nominate through Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna put a cut off date on this.
Speaker 1: I want to have the episode go up by the
Speaker 1: end of September of eleven. So let's say you need
Speaker 1: to get your nominations in by September eleven, So if
Speaker 1: you get those nominations into us, we will make sure
Speaker 1: we include those in the process and we will have
Speaker 1: an episode where we give you the worst video games
Speaker 1: of all time based upon the votes of our listeners.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Can't wait to hear from you. Get
Speaker 1: in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, everyone, Welcome to tech Stuff. My
Speaker 1: name is Chris Poulette, and I am an editor at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as
Speaker 1: he frequently does, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I'm the
Speaker 1: dandy highwayman who you're too scared to mention. I spend
Speaker 1: my cash on looking flash and grabbing your attention. Okay,
Speaker 1: I told giggled when I when I thought of that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I come up with the quotes, uh that
Speaker 1: I use at the beginning of podcasts, it's immediately before
Speaker 1: we start recording, like today, and I started cackling as
Speaker 1: soon as I thought of which one I wanted to do. Anyway,
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk about digital theft, but we're really
Speaker 1: going to focus on a specific case here, and it's
Speaker 1: an interesting one. Christie. Want to set this up. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: where where does start? I guess we should just start
Speaker 1: specifically with the details. Um. There is a I guess
Speaker 1: it's probably best to call him an activist named Aaron
Speaker 1: Schwartz Um who was arrested in Boston a few days
Speaker 1: before we were recording this UM in early August of
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, and he's been accused of taking four
Speaker 1: million UH digital documents essentially from UH from the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Instituted Technology m i T and J Store, which is
Speaker 1: an online digital repository of scholarly journal art. Yes, journal
Speaker 1: storage is essentially what JAY Store stands for. Yeah. Um, yeah.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's listening, who is UH, who is either in
Speaker 1: college now or you know, recently, probably in the last
Speaker 1: ten or seven years, probably is familiar with jay Store,
Speaker 1: especially in the humanities and UM related related things. But um, yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's been basically charged with essentially sneaking into a
Speaker 1: closet on the m i T campus, hooking up a
Speaker 1: computer with removable drive uh to the network equipment, and
Speaker 1: downloading millions of documents, and the the federal government has
Speaker 1: charges out against him. The federal government, the United States
Speaker 1: federal government alleges that Swortz's intent was to distribute these
Speaker 1: files in a manner filed distribution distribution matterer usually peer
Speaker 1: to peer network like like the Pirate Bay something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: that that's the allegation, although um, everything I read up
Speaker 1: till the recording of this podcast suggests that there's not
Speaker 1: really any actual, uh publicly known evidence to support this.
Speaker 1: That it's really just an allegation that's based upon Sports's
Speaker 1: history and the fact that he actually got these four
Speaker 1: million documents. Here. Here's some interesting things about this case
Speaker 1: that are a little odd to me, just on the
Speaker 1: surface level. So you've got Sports who has uh apparently
Speaker 1: broken into M I T in order to download these documents,
Speaker 1: leaving the computer there. Because of course we're talking about
Speaker 1: millions of files, so this is taking a while to
Speaker 1: to happen. Uh. He was working over at Harvard. Harvard
Speaker 1: also has access to j store documents. J Store documents
Speaker 1: if you don't know, uh, you know, colleges will pay
Speaker 1: some sort of subscription fee in order to access different
Speaker 1: parts of j stores database. Yeah, I can. I can
Speaker 1: get into that and lots more detail if you want, sure,
Speaker 1: because that's an important part of this discussion. Actually I
Speaker 1: mean to really understand this case, and I don't even
Speaker 1: say that I fully understand it, but you need to
Speaker 1: get all the details to to really kind of get
Speaker 1: a grip on on what this means. Yeah. That that's
Speaker 1: the funny thing to me about this particular case, because
Speaker 1: a lot of times people who are are breaking into
Speaker 1: and stealing electronic files from people, I think of them
Speaker 1: is going after the big targets, people who basically are
Speaker 1: UM specifically involved in copyright fights, people like the movie
Speaker 1: industry or the recording industry, where they're saying, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this because the industry is repressing, you know, as as
Speaker 1: making this this information unavailable to the public. J Store,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is a nonprofit J store, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, is it's short for a journal storage and
Speaker 1: it's um. It was actually founded as a way to
Speaker 1: uh to make journal articles available online, digitized and then
Speaker 1: uh and then made available to institutions. At one point
Speaker 1: there were only a handful of journals available and handful
Speaker 1: of colleges and universities that subscribe to them. But over
Speaker 1: time it's it's grown uh amazingly to be honest, Um,
Speaker 1: the thing is with j store, they do collect fees
Speaker 1: from all these institutions, partially for equipment, partially to help
Speaker 1: fund institutions that have a tougher time with the fees um,
Speaker 1: and they have to negotiate. A big part of that too,
Speaker 1: is the the licenses that they have to negotiate with
Speaker 1: publishers because um, you know these uh J store is
Speaker 1: not um you know, the publisher of a lot of
Speaker 1: these documents UM. And not everything of course is is
Speaker 1: UM is owned by someone. The copyright is is uh
Speaker 1: only valid for some of the stuff. Some of the
Speaker 1: other stuff is older and and not in the not
Speaker 1: under copyright anymore. So UM. The thing is, though, that
Speaker 1: the publishers may have different requirements for for being published
Speaker 1: in J Store, like some some publishers have absolutely no
Speaker 1: qualms about making a journal article or an issue of
Speaker 1: a journal available on J Store immediately after it's been published,
Speaker 1: so it goes to press and then it ends up
Speaker 1: on the shelf at the library and at the same
Speaker 1: time you can access it digitally. But others might require
Speaker 1: an embargo of six months to a year. UH, so
Speaker 1: you may you know, they may expect you to go
Speaker 1: to the uh the library and actually pick it up now. UM.
Speaker 1: Part of the benefit to UH these databases is that
Speaker 1: it makes it available more widely, especially for distance learning students. UM.
Speaker 1: But it also helps mitigate the cost somewhat of subscribing
Speaker 1: to some of these journals, which can be very very
Speaker 1: expensive and sometimes in the case of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: Because you know, these magazine are UH are not like
Speaker 1: you know, Time or UM, you know, Rolling Stone or
Speaker 1: something like that, where they're subsidized by advertising. It's that
Speaker 1: you know, these these are scholarly journals and they have
Speaker 1: a much smaller UM readership, so they have to charge
Speaker 1: a lot more to keep them in print. UM, and
Speaker 1: this using these databases can make it a little easier.
Speaker 1: It also frees up space on the library shelves, so
Speaker 1: that's UM, you know, another benefit to doing that. But
Speaker 1: UM but yeah, j store Is is essentially though a
Speaker 1: nonprofit but and makes it available through grant funding from
Speaker 1: the Melon Foundation and UH and other sources. So I
Speaker 1: still find it odd that that he would target a UM,
Speaker 1: that he would target a nonprofit organization that's that's dedicated
Speaker 1: to this specific purpose rather than somebody else. That seems
Speaker 1: like it would be more a more obvious target if
Speaker 1: you were going after people who were h enforcing copyright
Speaker 1: right and to to make this even more complicated, J Store.
Speaker 1: You know, when we're talking about these these fees that
Speaker 1: that mostly libraries and UH and and universities pay in
Speaker 1: order to get access to some of these libraries that
Speaker 1: J store has available, UH, that money is not really
Speaker 1: going toward J Store. That money is going to pay
Speaker 1: off the uh the licensing fees J store has to
Speaker 1: pay to these publishers in order to get access to
Speaker 1: these documents in the first place. UH. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really vilify J store too much. They're not
Speaker 1: it's not like it's a for profit uh corporation. It's
Speaker 1: it's a non for profit, So it's not you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to provide a service. So in a
Speaker 1: way they're caught in the middle in this. But another
Speaker 1: complicated issue is that more than half of the documents
Speaker 1: that that sports was grabbing were in the public domain
Speaker 1: in the sense that copyright had expired on these these
Speaker 1: are they were either old enough so that they were
Speaker 1: no longer under copyright or otherwise they were no longer
Speaker 1: they were not protected by copyright. They were public domain articles.
Speaker 1: So you've got the argument from some people who say,
Speaker 1: if it's in the public domain, it should be publicly accessible.
Speaker 1: There should not be a wall between the consumer and
Speaker 1: the content because it's it's public domain. It's no one
Speaker 1: owns the copyright to that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, and that's uh,
Speaker 1: that that too makes sense that he would use that
Speaker 1: as a target. Um the flip that. My My counter
Speaker 1: argument would be, uh that J store probably keeps that
Speaker 1: behind the wall because they need people to provide funding
Speaker 1: for hardware and for salaries the people who work with
Speaker 1: the product. Yes, I do banned costs and costs. There's
Speaker 1: there's operations. There are real operational costs to operating J store.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, we can easily forget that
Speaker 1: there are real costs associated with anything digital, right, I
Speaker 1: mean it's easy for us to forget. I mean you
Speaker 1: sit there and say, all right, sure, yeah, there's electricity
Speaker 1: cost because you gotta pay to power the servers. But
Speaker 1: then you think, well, then you've got to actually buy
Speaker 1: the servers. And you don't just buy the servers. You
Speaker 1: have to maintain the servers and buy backups so that
Speaker 1: if a server fails, another one immediately goes online and
Speaker 1: these these needs keep on going and the money there
Speaker 1: is real money that you have to spend to do that.
Speaker 1: So but there also maybe some agreements with the publishers
Speaker 1: that they're licensing things with. Why that that might be
Speaker 1: a reason why things are behind the paywall to is
Speaker 1: not because not because the content itself is under copyright,
Speaker 1: but because it's part of an overall agreement with an
Speaker 1: actual publisher saying oh, well, sure we will license this
Speaker 1: stuff to you, but part of that agreement is that
Speaker 1: you have to keep all this stuff behind uh walled
Speaker 1: garden as well. Now, um, when it comes to stuff
Speaker 1: in the public domain, we can also make the r
Speaker 1: even of just because it's in the public domain doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you can just waltz up and grab a
Speaker 1: copy with no consequences. For example, example I saw quoted
Speaker 1: in a great article was about, um, let's say Shakespeare's works.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Shakespeare's works are in the public domain.
Speaker 1: Yes you know he he did not renew that copyright.
Speaker 1: It was very shortsighted of him and so, um, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that you could walk into a bookstore.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say borders, but not anymore. So long
Speaker 1: uh parting is such sweet sorrow. But you could walk
Speaker 1: into a bookstore. You can't walk into a bookstore, lift
Speaker 1: up a copy of Shakespeare's works and say this is
Speaker 1: in public domain and then run out of the store
Speaker 1: with no fear of being brought up on on shoplifting charges.
Speaker 1: That's not the way it works, right. And likewise, you
Speaker 1: might say, well, there's a copy available at my local
Speaker 1: public library and I can go read it for free,
Speaker 1: and that's true. Ye, Well that maybe a copy of
Speaker 1: your public library may have been lost. Uh no, I'm kidding, um.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that that's not free either, because
Speaker 1: taxpayers are footing the bill for keeping the library open,
Speaker 1: for building the collection, um, for paying the librarians and
Speaker 1: the other people who work in the library to be
Speaker 1: there and make that that available, um, and and for
Speaker 1: buying a new copy when somebody wears it out or
Speaker 1: spells grape juice all over it. So I mean there,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying that that. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it's necessarily right to keep an item that is in
Speaker 1: the public domain behind a paywall, but there are reasons
Speaker 1: why you might charge to make it available because there
Speaker 1: are are costs associated with it. So I see I
Speaker 1: see an argument for either side, because I think public
Speaker 1: domain information should be you know, free and available. But
Speaker 1: you know they're there are logistical things too, you know.
Speaker 1: But now you could also make the argument that let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got a bunch of material that is
Speaker 1: no longer protected under copyright and it and you go
Speaker 1: ahead and you get hold of that, there's nothing that
Speaker 1: stops you from distributing that content. That you can distribute
Speaker 1: it as much as you want once you have it,
Speaker 1: like you may, it might get a little tricky. You
Speaker 1: might have to make a copy of it in such
Speaker 1: a way that if someone else has added something to that.
Speaker 1: Like let's say again you take a copy of the
Speaker 1: complete works of Shakespeare and their uh annotations and notes
Speaker 1: in there, that makes it more complicated. But let's say
Speaker 1: that you were to buy hand copy every single one
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's plays and then you decide to make as
Speaker 1: many copies of that distribute it to as many people
Speaker 1: as you want. That's perfectly fine. So there's some people
Speaker 1: who are asking, well, was Sworts trying to do the
Speaker 1: equivalent of that? Was he trying to get hold of
Speaker 1: material that is in the public domain and thus put
Speaker 1: it up for people to share as widely as they want, um,
Speaker 1: because it's in public domain. So therefore there's no there
Speaker 1: where's the law being broken like you can't if there's
Speaker 1: no copyright there. See, this is where it's getting complicated.
Speaker 1: And and to be honest, not all these questions are
Speaker 1: are even we're not we're not capable of answering them
Speaker 1: because we're not lawyers. But more importantly, there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of law around this kind of issue. A lot
Speaker 1: of the a lot of the laws that sports has
Speaker 1: been brought up on our charges that have been brought
Speaker 1: against him have to do with wire tapping and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, actually I was I was
Speaker 1: going to uh to go through those really quickly. Here. Um,
Speaker 1: the charges right now that I've read about UM from
Speaker 1: the U S attorneys include UM, computer fraud, wire fraud,
Speaker 1: obtaining information from a protected computer, and criminal forfeiture. And
Speaker 1: he does face up to thirty five years in prison
Speaker 1: and three years of supervised release if he is convicted. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, this is this is no laughing matter.
Speaker 1: But but these issues are why it's well, I think
Speaker 1: it's why the the copyright holders, the people like the
Speaker 1: R I a A and the m p A A
Speaker 1: are so afraid because it's not clear. I think, you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think they probably would enjoy being able to make
Speaker 1: their stuff available to people in different formats, but they're
Speaker 1: scared that people can just make one copy and run
Speaker 1: off with it and nobody gets paid. Uh, and that
Speaker 1: you know, it's a somewhat legitimate concern, but but in
Speaker 1: this case, you know, it's different. But I do think
Speaker 1: that's a lot of why. I mean, the laws are vague.
Speaker 1: They you know, these technologies haven't been around for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you know, governments are are not exactly
Speaker 1: known for their speedy uh reaction time on trying to
Speaker 1: resolve these issues, and especially now the new technologies are
Speaker 1: available uh and are changing the way we do business. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just muddying the water that that
Speaker 1: much further. And so this it's going to be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how this case comes out, because you know,
Speaker 1: it may set precedence for how we handle a lot
Speaker 1: of these copyright issues online. Sure, and really a lot
Speaker 1: of the problems that come up around this center around
Speaker 1: the fact that we're talking about digital products, which are
Speaker 1: are they lack something that real products quote unquote real
Speaker 1: or analog products have ye scarcity. Yeah, that's true, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no such thing as scarcity in a digital world.
Speaker 1: That's true, and there there is. Uh. There's also a
Speaker 1: lack of substance to them as well, so they are
Speaker 1: like a substance and most of the things I buy.
Speaker 1: Uh no, um, there is no there's no physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of form factor there the document which adds to of
Speaker 1: course adds to the effect at the effect that you
Speaker 1: can make as many copies of this as you want
Speaker 1: to and distribute it as in a matter of seconds
Speaker 1: around the world. Um. So it just it makes it
Speaker 1: very difficult to create laws that that both protect the
Speaker 1: the person who created it and the consumer and and
Speaker 1: the consumer both and give them both rights, you know,
Speaker 1: the producer to get paid and the the other person
Speaker 1: to access that content on a fair basis. So for
Speaker 1: those of you listening who who don't have a grip
Speaker 1: on the scarcity issue, I'm sure most of you do.
Speaker 1: But just in case, Uh, if we're talking about physical products,
Speaker 1: let's say that that Chris, is, what do you want
Speaker 1: to have? Let's just pick a physical thing that you
Speaker 1: want to to have as a product that you are offering.
Speaker 1: I was gonna assign one to you, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you the option of choosing one. Well, are
Speaker 1: we talking about something that I would do now? No, No,
Speaker 1: anything like anything pine in the sky. If you want
Speaker 1: to say unicorns, you can say unicorns. No, I want
Speaker 1: to say unicorns. Okay, So Chris is offering he's got
Speaker 1: ten unicorns for sale, and I really want one of
Speaker 1: those unicorns, but I don't want to, you know, pay
Speaker 1: for one, because I'm a nefarious ne'er do well, as
Speaker 1: quoted at the beginning of the show and so pretty accurate,
Speaker 1: I decided that I am going to take one of
Speaker 1: those unicorns, and I take one of the unicorns. Now
Speaker 1: Chris has nine unicorns. So Chris has nine unicorns, and
Speaker 1: he's out one unicorn with no no amount of money
Speaker 1: that he was going to ask for said unicorn. So
Speaker 1: I have stolen it. Do you know how hard it
Speaker 1: is to breed unicorns these days? I imagine it's going
Speaker 1: to be very difficult because I hardly see them anywhere,
Speaker 1: but I see the meat on over at Think Geek.
Speaker 1: They sell the canned unicorn meat there. So um, anyway,
Speaker 1: so I've I've decided to take a tasty unicorn, and
Speaker 1: I did not pay for it, so I have stolen it.
Speaker 1: And that it's it's easy to see that, right, because
Speaker 1: there's evidence there. Chris had ten unicorns. Now he has
Speaker 1: nine unicorns. He has no extra money. This is this
Speaker 1: is something that is easy for us to make laws about.
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, not about unicorns, but you know, stealing
Speaker 1: in general. That's easy to make laws that cover this
Speaker 1: sort of thing because it's it's a concrete example that
Speaker 1: I have taken something from someone else without giving them
Speaker 1: what they were asking. And so easy to see, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you can actually see it. It's in his backyard. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and and we're talking like the these are this
Speaker 1: is an ancient concept. I mean, we have every single
Speaker 1: major civilization that ever exists and had some sort of
Speaker 1: law protecting people against theft. And and that goes back
Speaker 1: to the very founding of the United States. Of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're not the only people in the world
Speaker 1: to have copyright. Copy right actually predated the formation of
Speaker 1: the United States by I would guess I can't remember
Speaker 1: the last time I've read this, but I think about
Speaker 1: two or three centuries maybe somewhere in there. I mean,
Speaker 1: not not along, not thousands of years, um. But in
Speaker 1: the Constitution, Article one, section eight, clause eight um, the
Speaker 1: Congress shall have power and it goes into all these
Speaker 1: different powers to promote the progress of science and useful
Speaker 1: arts by securing, for limited times to authors and inventors
Speaker 1: the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. That's
Speaker 1: really vague, but it assigned a basic copyright. It gave
Speaker 1: you the opportunity to make something and get something for it.
Speaker 1: And this is where it got gets a little more
Speaker 1: complicated because now we're talking about ideas, and ideas are
Speaker 1: not like unicorns. Now they're not. I wish I'd pick
Speaker 1: something different. Now. The ideas are not like physical product
Speaker 1: products that actually have a true like there there's a
Speaker 1: physical representation of them, and they are not you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just clone a physical product over and over
Speaker 1: and over again at no cost. Well, actually, you know
Speaker 1: what my original choice, until you said unicorns was a
Speaker 1: Guttenberg bible. They're very very few. Well now there are
Speaker 1: very very few of them, right, and we also yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. Okay, so so you would not be
Speaker 1: able to produce a new Gutenberg Bible, which not not
Speaker 1: an actual burg Bible would really freak me out. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing well with this. It's okay, okay, but
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, something, Well, a Bible in this case
Speaker 1: is older than Yeah. Say, he had a rare, rare
Speaker 1: book that was published and there maybe twenty of them
Speaker 1: left in the world, and it's the first edition of
Speaker 1: this book that was printed a hundred and fifty two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago or something like that. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: the theft of that is obvious. Now let's talk about
Speaker 1: a digital version of that. Now, a digital version of
Speaker 1: that same book. Uh, you don't steal the original, you
Speaker 1: make a copy. So the original is still exactly where
Speaker 1: it was. So Chris still has If you had the
Speaker 1: twenty unicorns, ten unicorns, that's what it was, right. Let's
Speaker 1: say now you've got ten virtual unicorns, ten files that
Speaker 1: are called Unicorn one, Unicorn two, Unicorn three, and I
Speaker 1: have gone and I'm like, I want one of those unicorns,
Speaker 1: those digital unicorns, and I go and I make a
Speaker 1: copy of Unicorn one. Well, from Chris's perspective, he hasn't
Speaker 1: lost anything physically. He still has those ten files. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: so so it's different from the the the tride additional
Speaker 1: route of of theft defining what theft is and being
Speaker 1: able to punish theft. Uh. Now it's still I have
Speaker 1: managed to take something from Chris without giving him anything
Speaker 1: in return. But it you know, you can't defining the punishment,
Speaker 1: defining the crime. You can't use the old model to
Speaker 1: really fit the new crime, right, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: it doesn't It doesn't encompass the same thing. So that's
Speaker 1: where we're at right now. We're at this this point
Speaker 1: in our history where we have not yet truly defined
Speaker 1: what these crimes are, what they encompass, how they should
Speaker 1: be punished. We keep trying to use these old models
Speaker 1: that don't really fit the new the new model of
Speaker 1: of the way things work. That's where we're starting to
Speaker 1: fall into a lot of these issues. And people like
Speaker 1: Sworts have been putting this out for years. Um and
Speaker 1: he's not the only one. Lawrence Lessig, of course, Uh,
Speaker 1: the professor at Harvard has been talking about issues with
Speaker 1: intellectual property and copyright laws and copyright law reform for years.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Lessig and and Sorts have a history
Speaker 1: of working together on different projects like the Creative Commons project,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, these are really smart people who
Speaker 1: are pointing out we can't continue to try and enforce
Speaker 1: new ways of thinking into old models because it's just
Speaker 1: not gonna work. We have to come up with a
Speaker 1: new way of of dealing with these these approaches. Um,
Speaker 1: because that's the way the world's going. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you like it or if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: if you think things should be if they if you
Speaker 1: think the information should be free, or if you think
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be free. And by free, we're talking about
Speaker 1: freely accessible, not necessarily uh you know, not that there's
Speaker 1: no cost associated with it. Like we say information wants
Speaker 1: to be free. Do you mean that information wants to
Speaker 1: be out there in the world or do you mean
Speaker 1: information wants to cost no money? I think most people
Speaker 1: would argue the first rather than the second. So in
Speaker 1: other words, as long as a company is able to
Speaker 1: make stuff available uh two consumers in an easy way,
Speaker 1: an easy, timely, inexpensive way, then consumers are pretty much
Speaker 1: happy to go and flock to it. If they are
Speaker 1: not willing to do that, then consumers will then turn
Speaker 1: to piracy. Yes, so, um, there was an interesting discussion
Speaker 1: I read about how this this balance between free and
Speaker 1: paid and and this balance between intellectual property and and
Speaker 1: uh public domain. And part of the argument was going
Speaker 1: that we have companies that will promote something, um, let's
Speaker 1: say it's a video game, So they'll pour a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of money into promotion in months and months and
Speaker 1: months of promotion, which ratchets up the anticipation of the
Speaker 1: people who are the customers, right they to play this game.
Speaker 1: And as that anticipation ratchets up and up and up
Speaker 1: and the game has yet to come out, those people
Speaker 1: are more likely to turn towards privacy because they have
Speaker 1: this anticipation. They want to satisfy, They want to have
Speaker 1: the experience of playing this game, but they have not
Speaker 1: They don't have a legitimate pathway to get there, so
Speaker 1: they take the illegitimate pathway. So in other words, it's
Speaker 1: not that it's the fault necessarily of the content creator,
Speaker 1: but they are somewhat enabling this culture of piracy. So
Speaker 1: in order to take that out, you need to think
Speaker 1: think of a new way of approaching your your products.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you don't promote your product months and months and
Speaker 1: months ahead of time and build up this anticipation. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you create ah an early build and you charge a
Speaker 1: very small amount for it, you make it easily available,
Speaker 1: and you at least are able to profit on that
Speaker 1: anticipation early on. The solutions have not all presented themselves.
Speaker 1: But the point is that taking the old way of
Speaker 1: doing things is just not gonna work because the world
Speaker 1: is changing. So whether you want information to be free
Speaker 1: or not is not the point. Information is going to
Speaker 1: be free. Well, UM, you know I should point out
Speaker 1: I feel compelled to point out that that sports is
Speaker 1: actually available or is also affiliated with a nonprofit himself.
Speaker 1: UM to achieve to achieve what he you know sees
Speaker 1: is uh some some attempts to make information more freely available. UM.
Speaker 1: And this organization is called Demand Progress. UM. They basically
Speaker 1: have said that they are interested in, uh finding ways
Speaker 1: to change public policy that they see is uh choking
Speaker 1: the internet, making the internet uh difficult to use, I guess,
Speaker 1: or difficult to get information that you need on the Internet.
Speaker 1: And let's say that and UH. One of those those issues,
Speaker 1: according to the Senate article I read, was the protect
Speaker 1: ip Act, which in the United States, UM, it is
Speaker 1: basically designed to help block access to UM websites that
Speaker 1: are suspected of piracy. Um, and so it international websites
Speaker 1: to yeah, not just the United States, but internationally actually,
Speaker 1: I think, I think almost exclusively internationally. But it's which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting because you're like, how do you
Speaker 1: how do you then, uh, enforce something that is on
Speaker 1: international websites, Although the argument could be made you do
Speaker 1: it by limiting what where sites from within the US
Speaker 1: can link out to that, including things like search engines. Now, um,
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, the the FBI has actually also
Speaker 1: investigated him previously to um for or at least according
Speaker 1: to Boing Boing Again this was quoted in that Senate
Speaker 1: article that I read, But they basically have been looking
Speaker 1: at him for trying to get US court records from
Speaker 1: the Public Access to Court Electronic Records Database. Um. This
Speaker 1: was back in two thousand and nine. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they probably had their eye on him, and it's
Speaker 1: it made play a mitigating factor in what's going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they believe that he has a threat,
Speaker 1: they will probably make sure that they they send him
Speaker 1: a message. Yeah. Yeah, there. I did read that that
Speaker 1: one potential motive for the federal government was that, you know,
Speaker 1: they were essentially trying to to um. They they were
Speaker 1: still angry over the two thousand and eight uh Pacer issue.
Speaker 1: UM that was the whole well Swards ended up participating
Speaker 1: in a call for downloading documents from from a government
Speaker 1: database of court records, which you were talking about their
Speaker 1: Chris and um and he did it really really well
Speaker 1: and uh it was because there was this brief moment
Speaker 1: where these documents were free, when normally they would cost
Speaker 1: about eight cents per page. And so Swartz ended up
Speaker 1: downloading I think like um, well, around twenty million of them,
Speaker 1: So twenty million documents that were free at that point
Speaker 1: that normally cost eight since per page. He got hold
Speaker 1: of the twenty million of those. The government got a
Speaker 1: little upset about that, but Swarts did not break any laws.
Speaker 1: He was following the law. The loss said that at
Speaker 1: that point they were free and that anyone could download
Speaker 1: as many as they wanted. It's sort of like if
Speaker 1: you open up a buffet restaurant and someone comes in
Speaker 1: and sits down and they start going to the buffet table,
Speaker 1: and they go to the buffet table like fifteen twenty times,
Speaker 1: and you think, well, you know, you should really go
Speaker 1: and think, well, I haven't had all I can eat
Speaker 1: yet it says all you can eat, and I have
Speaker 1: not eaten my film. You have been here four hours.
Speaker 1: Um well, I also feel compelled to to point out that, um,
Speaker 1: that my note program just crashed. Um. But but sports
Speaker 1: is not the only person to have to have acted, um,
Speaker 1: you know on these principles. Um. Sure. I had been
Speaker 1: reading too about Gregory Maxwell in an article on ours Technica,
Speaker 1: who posted thirty two gigabytes with eighteen thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: ninety two scientific articles to bit towarrent and basically said
Speaker 1: that uh, sports as arrest Uh was what UH decided
Speaker 1: or what he used it as inspiration for for posting this.
Speaker 1: And he said, um, there's a quote from him. All
Speaker 1: too often, journals, galleries and museums are becoming not disseminators
Speaker 1: of knowledge, as their lofty mission statements suggest, but censors
Speaker 1: of knowledge, because censoring is the one thing they do
Speaker 1: better than the Internet does. Um. So yeah, um, you
Speaker 1: know it is possible too that that other people will
Speaker 1: will act on uh on similar principles and decide to
Speaker 1: do that themselves. Um. So that they're they're this is
Speaker 1: definitely something that's that's not going to go away. No,
Speaker 1: And this is this is a very as we've said,
Speaker 1: this is a very complicated issue. You've got a lot
Speaker 1: of different parties involved here. You've got the actual people
Speaker 1: who are creating the content, You've got the people curating
Speaker 1: the content, you've got the consumers of the content. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got the government in there. I mean, the this
Speaker 1: is one of those things that's going to take some
Speaker 1: real legislation to kind of address. And even then, you know,
Speaker 1: you know that at least one of the parties is
Speaker 1: not going to be very happy about whatever the outcome is.
Speaker 1: And so it'll be interesting to see how this story
Speaker 1: develops as it moves on. The you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: again it ties into things like we've talked about the
Speaker 1: ethics of piracy before and whether piracy is ethical or not.
Speaker 1: You can argue that, well, if you want to be
Speaker 1: able to get uh, content that's in the public domain
Speaker 1: out so that people can actually see it, um, is
Speaker 1: there anything wrong with that? And you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: a tough question to answer, you know, I mean, you
Speaker 1: could argue that maybe for anything that's in public domain,
Speaker 1: there should be at least an easy way to access it,
Speaker 1: If not Um, you know, if not like just distributed
Speaker 1: everywhere wherever it does reside, it should be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to get to. But we just haven't created those systems
Speaker 1: yet and in the process it's it's pretty ugly. Well,
Speaker 1: that about wraps up this discussion on lots of interesting
Speaker 1: topics and an intellectual property digital theft. You know, where
Speaker 1: are we going from here? And honestly, we just don't
Speaker 1: know until more time has passed. Yeah, it's it's it's funny.
Speaker 1: We we often have a solution or something or an
Speaker 1: idea of how we would would proceed with this, but
Speaker 1: this is this is thorny. Yeah, that's a complicated issue
Speaker 1: and it's uh and you know what, it will probably
Speaker 1: be a really tumultuous uh issue you for a while
Speaker 1: and we won't really we'll get to a resolution, but
Speaker 1: I bet it's going to be a rocky road, so
Speaker 1: rocky road. On note, we're gonna wrap this up. If
Speaker 1: you guys have any suggestions you would like us to
Speaker 1: tackle in a future episode of tech Stuff, let us know.
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