Digital Freedom

stream of consciousness draft

In his speech, Cory Doctorow casts the current battles of copyright law, like the continued escalation of digital rights management and the debates surrounding the DMCA and the SOPA, as the relatively low-stakes forerunners of a broader, emerging, and truly significant war on the general purpose computer. The challenge the general purpose computer poses to copyright is that a computer implicitly contain the power to circumvent any digital measure to guarantee copyright limitations. Similarly, the Internet, powered by general purpose computing, provides the ability to circumvent any measures to limit online access. The result, then, is that the only way to really enforce copyright through digital means requires limiting the capabilities of general purpose computers and the general purpose Internet. On the desktop, or laptop, or anywhere else a computer may be found, this means secret spyware, and malware on computers to monitor and control -- and rootkits that prevent the installation of alternate operating systems or running unauthorized software to circumvent them. Online, this means active surveillance and censorship.

The reason why this is a broader war is, of course, that computers -- and networks -- are not just found on the desktop, or laptop, or even a smartphone. As chips, storage, and wireless communicators have gotten smaller, faster, and cheaper, it makes more sense to just have a general purpose computer, with I/O access to the outside world, be the embedded device in applications that require computing power. Doctorow's examples include the computers we will embed in our body, like digital hearing aids, the computers that are embedded in vehicles and may soon provide even more control in self-driving cars, the computers that are used to power DNA sequencers and DNA synthesizers, the computers that drive 3-D printers. The question for governments and corporations no longer about just enforcing copyright, or restricting the flow of information. It becomes, how do we control the modification of a self-driving car's computer to maintain traffic control? How do we restrict the synthesis of viruses and microorganisms -- on one-level because of "bioterrorism fears," but more significantly, to protect GMO and biopharma patents? How do we prevent 3-D printers from being used to produce counterfeit goods -- or to make what is needed to make a semi-automatic handgun fully automatic?

The first thing to do is to recognize that there are really two questions here. One has to do with the extent of what should be regulated -- what should governments regulate? What should the manufacturer of a device that includes a general purpose computer To what extent can they enforce these limitations? Should it be limited to contract -- you lose your right to the warranty, or can they sue you for enhanced damages?

There are the intertwined questions of what can be regulated, and how can that regulation be enforced? And then there is the question of what the government can do -- regulation and enforcement -- and what can a private entity do, in terms of regulation of users and then how can they enforce their restriction?

We should recognize that these questions are separable. We can permit private entities to regulate user behavior, but limit the enforcement -- such as preventing the exercise of a warranty where there is user modification. Is this really useless? Well, it saves the private entity money. We can also allow a government to force private entities to not regulate users in certain ways -- such as preventing a social network from retaining user data, or forcing them to allow a user to withdraw their data. Or, by forcing a company to allow the operation of multiple OS's on a smartphone, as opposed to merely exempting it from the DMCA. Should it be illegal for a company to change its terms of service, such as do what Sony did and prevent the installation of other OS's on the Playstation if someone wanted to go on the PlayStation? network.

The core question then becomes Doctorow's question -- how can general purpose computers be limited, or can they be limited? And how open must that limitation be? If the limitation is so deeply embedded -- as in the rootkit that bricks the system on a violation, or the spyware that reports any violation, should that be allowed? And what does that mean about our control over systems that may be embedded within us?

The key point is to recognize that this is not just about freedom to do what we want with a device that we own. This goes to important freedoms of thought and privacy. We are not used to the idea that governments can control the things we possess without our knowing about them -- and corporations can do the same thing. Also, there is no reason for not all general purpose computers to be compromised, forcing people who don't want at least one device to be so compromised to build them and hope to keep them free. By extension, does this also mean that all computers will be restricted?

-- BahradSokhansanj - 11 Jan 2012