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He had me until the bit comparing illegal movie downloads to terrorism and drugs, and how MegaUpload and Google are 'enablers' by allowing users to upload/searc

He had me until the bit comparing illegal movie downloads to terrorism and drugs, and how MegaUpload and Google are 'enablers' by allowing users to upload/search for copyright-infringing content. It's quite clear that he doesn't understand the nature of computers. Cory Doctorow has a great rebuttal of that argument in his talk on the coming war on general computationhttp://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- "The important tests of whether or not a regulation is fit for a purpose are first whether it will work, and second whether or not it will, in the course of doing its work, have effects on everything else. If I wanted Congress, Parliament, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles, and asked, “Can't we do something about this?", the answer would be “No". This is because we don't know how to make a wheel that is still generally useful for legitimate wheel applications, but useless to bad guys. We can all see that the general benefits of wheels are so profound that we'd be foolish to risk changing them in a foolish errand to stop bank robberies. Even if there were an epidemic of bank robberies—even if society were on the verge of collapse thanks to bank robberies—no-one would think that wheels were the right place to start solving our problems." Computers have no notion of what is 'good' content and what is 'bad' content, and we aren't yet able to teach them accurately the difference (even humans aren't able to tell 100% of the time).

Kalium 11y ago
A point well made. This article has all the hallmarks of a person who understands that wheels are powerful and that the people who design and engineer wheels are clever. Yet, this person also fails to understand that wheels have limits. Only that clever people can do impressive things, therefore they should obviously be capable of doing a particular clever thing. The more I read, the more I approach the conclusion that the author should change his name to Rip van Winkle.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
hardwaresofton 11y ago
This (and beautifully stated I might add). If you'll forgive the simile - Blaming a search engine for making bad content accessible is ridiculous. I did enjoy the paypal mafia picture though.
oconnore 11y ago
But we do pass laws about wheels. You can't drive them too fast, you must have them inspected to see if they are safe. The engines that power them mustn't emit harmful emissions. You can only drive them in certain places, and following a certain pattern. Why is the notion that you shouldn't be able to drive your computer to support radical terrorism, violate copyright, or purchase illegal materials any more strange than the rule that you can't drive your car over 70 miles per hour on the highway?
- sounds 11y ago
  Because violating copyright is not the same as stealing (at all), or stealing a car (which the copyright industry loves to say it is), or detonating explosives in a mosque (which this article conflates it with). Radical terrorism is an enormous red herring simply because only a very small percentage of the total population will engage in it, they are easy to identify (Israel has been doing it successfully for years), and regulating their _computer_ use will not make or break their aims. Therefore, we must logically conclude that the article is really about copyright, and not terrorism.
  - oconnore 11y ago
    Huh? You seem to be stuck on something that is irrelevant to the current conversation (at least, the point that I was making). I have no interest in debating copyright with you. If you are stuck on that point, replace "copyright" in my original post with "operating a drone-mounted pistol". Better?
- eridius 11y ago
  No we don't have laws about wheels. We have laws about cars. Cars are not wheels. Wheels are merely a critical component of cars. And that distinction is absolutely vital to the wheel analogy.
  - oconnore 11y ago
    You're losing me here, but I'll try: we can't pass laws about components, but we can pass laws about complete systems? Why is that? If you can pass a law about wheels only when you've bolted four of them together and attached an engine, can you similarly pass laws about microprocessors once you've attached memory, screen, a wifi link, and a global packet network known as the internet?
im3w1l 11y ago
To play the devils advocate: Bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles. Therefore we need a law that all wheeled vehicles have a government backdoor that broadcasts the location of the car and allows remote control.
icanhackit 11y ago
If I wanted [...] to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles [...] His point overall is sound but I think a better analogy would be to compare the infrastructure of the internet to roads and Google to a GPS -- If there's an area of a city where crime is known to take place e.g. where drugs, prostitution or stolen goods can be found, law-makers, without thinking terribly hard about the problem, place an onus on the GPS maker to block out those roads from being found. The end result is that the places where illicit goods and services were available remain but are slightly more difficult to find without direct instructions or having foreknowledge of how to get there. No problem has actually been resolved, just swept aside and the GPS maker is the one who has to do the work for no gain - in fact it goes against their core function of navigating roads.
guelo 11y ago
I think he still provides a good warning to heed even with his "content creators" bias.
YokoZar 11y ago
The author can write well, but his main point is frankly dumb and reads like a plant from an industry pressure group. He cites two main facts: that record company and movie industry conglomerates have lost profits, and that tech companies have gained profits. He then asserts that this is due to some sort of implied theft. That's completely asinine. The posters below implying this is part of the Hollywood Smear campaign are quite possibly right.
- chucksmash 11y ago
  "reads like a plant from an industry pressure group" Maybe I'm a little biased because I read his first letter [1] and found it quite thoughtful, but do we really need to invoke anything so sinister? I agree with you that he is off base here, but can't we at least assume he is well-meaning and acting in good faith? [1]: https://medium.com/@jonathantaplin/letter-to-the-millennials-f90a5fb3b366 https://medium.com/@jonathantaplin/letter-to-the-millennials... is "his first letter"
- declan 11y ago
  > reads like a plant from an industry pressure group A useful alternate headline could be: Think tank funded by pro-SOPA MPAA board members Viacom, Time Warner, Disney Corp., and News Corp. attacks Google for doing the right thing and opposing SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act was an awful bit of Hollywood-backed anti-Internet legislation. USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab receives funding from BET Networks (Viacom), Disney, Paramount Pictures (Viacom), Viacom itself, Warner Bros. (Time Warner), Fox Broadcasting (News Corp), according to its web site: http://www.annenberglab.com/about http://www.annenberglab.com/about Those companies are board members of the MPAA. It's true that the think tank lists other donors as well; the question is whether the non-MPAA donors account for any significant part of its budget. It was a well-written article, but the talking points, as you say, could come from an MPAA blog post. It's a shame because there are important things to say about these topics, and the linked article could have done a good job of framing them. :(
tomjen3 11y ago
Yes, but google could trivially remove all searches which contains the words 'free', 'watch' and 'online', or at least not autocomplete on those words. Would it stop all bad guys? No, but it would make it a bit harder, which means the searcher is more likely to get a link to e.g netflix.

Kalium 11y ago

A point well made. This article has all the hallmarks of a person who understands that wheels are powerful and that the people who design and engineer wheels are clever. Yet, this person also fails to understand that wheels have limits. Only that clever people can do impressive things, therefore they should obviously be capable of doing a particular clever thing. The more I read, the more I approach the conclusion that the author should change his name to Rip van Winkle.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

hardwaresofton 11y ago

This (and beautifully stated I might add). If you'll forgive the simile - Blaming a search engine for making bad content accessible is ridiculous. I did enjoy the paypal mafia picture though.

oconnore 11y ago

But we do pass laws about wheels. You can't drive them too fast, you must have them inspected to see if they are safe. The engines that power them mustn't emit harmful emissions. You can only drive them in certain places, and following a certain pattern. Why is the notion that you shouldn't be able to drive your computer to support radical terrorism, violate copyright, or purchase illegal materials any more strange than the rule that you can't drive your car over 70 miles per hour on the highway?

sounds 11y ago
Because violating copyright is not the same as stealing (at all), or stealing a car (which the copyright industry loves to say it is), or detonating explosives in a mosque (which this article conflates it with). Radical terrorism is an enormous red herring simply because only a very small percentage of the total population will engage in it, they are easy to identify (Israel has been doing it successfully for years), and regulating their _computer_ use will not make or break their aims. Therefore, we must logically conclude that the article is really about copyright, and not terrorism.
- oconnore 11y ago
  Huh? You seem to be stuck on something that is irrelevant to the current conversation (at least, the point that I was making). I have no interest in debating copyright with you. If you are stuck on that point, replace "copyright" in my original post with "operating a drone-mounted pistol". Better?
eridius 11y ago
No we don't have laws about wheels. We have laws about cars. Cars are not wheels. Wheels are merely a critical component of cars. And that distinction is absolutely vital to the wheel analogy.
- oconnore 11y ago
  You're losing me here, but I'll try: we can't pass laws about components, but we can pass laws about complete systems? Why is that? If you can pass a law about wheels only when you've bolted four of them together and attached an engine, can you similarly pass laws about microprocessors once you've attached memory, screen, a wifi link, and a global packet network known as the internet?

im3w1l 11y ago

To play the devils advocate: Bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles. Therefore we need a law that all wheeled vehicles have a government backdoor that broadcasts the location of the car and allows remote control.

icanhackit 11y ago

If I wanted [...] to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles [...] His point overall is sound but I think a better analogy would be to compare the infrastructure of the internet to roads and Google to a GPS -- If there's an area of a city where crime is known to take place e.g. where drugs, prostitution or stolen goods can be found, law-makers, without thinking terribly hard about the problem, place an onus on the GPS maker to block out those roads from being found. The end result is that the places where illicit goods and services were available remain but are slightly more difficult to find without direct instructions or having foreknowledge of how to get there. No problem has actually been resolved, just swept aside and the GPS maker is the one who has to do the work for no gain - in fact it goes against their core function of navigating roads.

guelo 11y ago

I think he still provides a good warning to heed even with his "content creators" bias.

YokoZar 11y ago

The author can write well, but his main point is frankly dumb and reads like a plant from an industry pressure group. He cites two main facts: that record company and movie industry conglomerates have lost profits, and that tech companies have gained profits. He then asserts that this is due to some sort of implied theft. That's completely asinine. The posters below implying this is part of the Hollywood Smear campaign are quite possibly right.

chucksmash 11y ago
"reads like a plant from an industry pressure group" Maybe I'm a little biased because I read his first letter [1] and found it quite thoughtful, but do we really need to invoke anything so sinister? I agree with you that he is off base here, but can't we at least assume he is well-meaning and acting in good faith? [1]: https://medium.com/@jonathantaplin/letter-to-the-millennials-f90a5fb3b366 https://medium.com/@jonathantaplin/letter-to-the-millennials... is "his first letter"
declan 11y ago
> reads like a plant from an industry pressure group A useful alternate headline could be: Think tank funded by pro-SOPA MPAA board members Viacom, Time Warner, Disney Corp., and News Corp. attacks Google for doing the right thing and opposing SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act was an awful bit of Hollywood-backed anti-Internet legislation. USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab receives funding from BET Networks (Viacom), Disney, Paramount Pictures (Viacom), Viacom itself, Warner Bros. (Time Warner), Fox Broadcasting (News Corp), according to its web site: http://www.annenberglab.com/about http://www.annenberglab.com/about Those companies are board members of the MPAA. It's true that the think tank lists other donors as well; the question is whether the non-MPAA donors account for any significant part of its budget. It was a well-written article, but the talking points, as you say, could come from an MPAA blog post. It's a shame because there are important things to say about these topics, and the linked article could have done a good job of framing them. :(

tomjen3 11y ago

Yes, but google could trivially remove all searches which contains the words 'free', 'watch' and 'online', or at least not autocomplete on those words. Would it stop all bad guys? No, but it would make it a bit harder, which means the searcher is more likely to get a link to e.g netflix.