Would be good if I didn't have my qualifying exams due in 2 days...

Update: Although this initially seems like total psychobabble, after watching the documentary, I find myself taking it a lot more seriously.

• An Inconvenient Truth
• Who killed the electric car?
• An American Tragedy

Not at Target, not at Sears, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Macy's, etc.

But yes at Staples...?

In the last 24 hours, I sent a note pointing this out to Deborah Howell, the Washington Post Ombudsman, and actually got a response from her. It appears that she forwarded my note to the reporter, got a response from him, and forwarded it back to me. Note to self, Ombudsmen actually respond to complaints... at least this one does.

So, given that the reporter's response seemed pretty argmentatively weak, I decided to write a followup with more evidence, and send it back. What follows is the complete record of my interaction with the Washington Post on this issue.

I appreciate the time that you and Mr. Ahrens have taken to respond to my previous message. If you would permit me a bit more of your time, I would like to bring a few more things to your attention before leaving this issue behind.

Mr. Ahrens' response is that it is appropriate to call the site illegal if the Swedish police conducted a raid on it. This kind of "where there is smoke, there must be fire" reasoning might be appropriate in the absence of evidence to the contrary. However, the situation on the ground in Sweden, as far as I have been able to surmise, suggests there are grounded reasons to use greater caution.

A popular Swedish news program, called "Rapport", has claimed that foreign pressure caused the raid without a clear standard in Swedish law on the legality of the Pirate Bay's operations. Here are a few references that I was able to locate on the Web that support this:

The Local, an english translation site of Swedish news, June 2nd 2006, "US government behind Pirate Bay raid":
"Swedish police and prosecutors were then given the go-ahead to act. According to one prosecutor the legal situation was still unclear, but the state secretary Dan Eliasson gave the order for the operation to begin, according to Rapport." (http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3969&date=20060602)

The International Tribune, June 4th, 2006, "Filesharing crackdown and backlash in Sweden" :
"A report by Rapport, the most popular news program on Swedish television, created a stir by alleging that the raid was a result of direct pressure from the U.S. government on the Swedish authorities and that it had happened even though Swedish prosecutors had already concluded that the case against The Pirate Bay was too weak to warrant a raid." (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/04/business/pirate.php)

Another example comes from Wired News, June 6th, 2006 "Pirate Bay, bloodied but unbowed":
"The site administrators believe that what they are doing is currently legal under Swedish law, because they don't host the pirated content themselves, only the pointers that let people get the files. "That argument would not work in the U.S., because they are promoting piracy," says David Hayes, chairman of the intellectual property group at the law firm Fenwick and West. That's secondary liability, where a provider is held responsible for the illegal actions of its users. But the site isn't directly subject to U.S. law, and "they seem to think there is no secondary liability under Swedish copyright law," Hayes says. "As far as I know that issue hasn't been tested in the Swedish courts." (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71089-0.html?tw=wn_index_2)

Essentially, the Swedish version of "60 Minutes", has claimed that the raids were politically motivated and were conducted without a clear legal standard, even from the new set of intellectual property laws. The quotations I have presented, in the articles they come from, are used as point-counterpoint to demonstrate that there is controversy within Sweden of the legality of the Pirate Bay's operations. I have come across many other articles that have deliberately avoided calling the Pirate Bay's operations uncategorically "illegal", as though it is a statement of fact, as Mr. Ahrens has done prejudiciously. While Mr. Ahrens may be satisfied to say that being raided by the police is proof enough of guilt, it would appear that the standard of presumed innocence before proven guilt ought to apply here. Until there is clear evidence in a court case in Sweden that rules that the Pirate Bay's activities fall afoul of the new law, the same respectful use of labels that the Washington Post extends to other alleged criminals to avoid a hasty character assasination should be adhered to.

I hope that you and Mr. Ahrens will confront these issues seriously and with an open mind. The real story here may be far more interesting than it appears on the surface.

Thanks,
Stephen Larson

From: Deborah C Howell
To: lomak99@hotmail.com
Subject: Here is what the reporter says...
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:26:42 -0400

Deborah Howell
Washington Post Ombudsman
202-334-7521
----- Forwarded by Deborah C Howell/visitors/news/TWP on 06/16/2006 12:26
PM -----

Frank Ahrens
To: Deborah C Howell/visitors/news/TWP@WashPostMain
06/16/2006 12:20 cc:
PM Subject: Re: Frank, what do you think?(Document link: Deborah C Howell)

Yes, I got this. Pirate Bay was illegal enough for Swedish cops to bust the
site based on their new law. That's illegal enough for me.
Thanks. (emphasis added -Stephen)

Frank Ahrens
Media and entertainment industry reporter
The Washington Post
Phone: 202.334.5158
Fax: 202.496.3815

Deborah C Howell
To: Frank Ahrens/news/TWP@WashPostMain
06/16/2006 12:18 cc: Jill Dutt/news/TWP@WashPostMain
PM Subject: Frank, what do you think?

Deborah Howell
Washington Post Ombudsman
202-334-7521
----- Forwarded by Deborah C Howell/visitors/news/TWP on 06/16/2006 12:18
PM -----

Stephen Larson
com> cc:
Subject: Message via washingtonpost.com
06/16/2006 12:56
AM

Stephen Larson sent the following message:

Dear Ms Howell,

In Frank Ahrens recent article, "U.S. Joins Industry in Piracy War",
Thursday, June 15, 2006, Ahrens says the following:

"Last month, Swedish authorities briefly shut down an illegal file-sharing
Web site after receiving a briefing on the site's activities from U.S.
officials in April in Washington. The raid incited political and popular
backlash in the Scandinavian nation."

His reference to the Pirate Bay as "illegal" is factually incorrect.
In Sweden, the fact is that the Pirate Bay's legal status is unclear and
has been debated extensively. The law change in the previous line that
Ahrens references, "Sweden change its laws to make it a crime to swap
copyrighted movies and music for free over the Internet." does not directly
incriminate the Pirate Bay. This is because the Pirate Bay does not host
any copyrighted material whatsoever on its servers. It merely provides
pointers to other sites on the internet. In the United States, laws
against "contributory infringement" would be applicable, however Sweden
does not yet have these laws.

This inaccuracy has a very real effect on shaping the perceptions
of the issue. The fact is that there is a very real debate on the world
stage right now about the extent to which U.S. intellectual property laws
should be respected globally. By jumping the gun and calling the Pirate
Bay illegal when it is not stigmatizes one side of the debate unfairly and
introduces bias where there should be none.

Thanks,
Stephen Larson

I'm reposting it in my extended entry. Feel free to voice skepticism. Keep in mind the context of the philosophy of the blog where I posted this when you read it.

Where does the choice to intoxicate oneself fit into a model of the modern enlightened mind?

I ask with reference to the "stiff drinks" your bartender serves because there are several points about this action which, from my perspective, fall far outside of rational self-benefit.

And let me preface by saying, I am referring to behavior-altering consumption.

1) Alcohol is treated by your body as a poison which it labors to filter out. Drinking enough causes the body to vomit in a self-defense mechanism to save itself from poisoning. Self administering poison is generally considered bad for your health.
2) Alcohol inhibits growth of synapses in your brain which is why being drunk is frequently associated with memory loss. Other things which cause memory loss (concussions, fainting, excessive fever) are generally considered bad for your health.
3) People are more likely to make bad, life altering judgement calls when under the influence of alcohol (sleeping with the wrong person, damaging relationships, property, etc).
4) Alcohol is addictive. Some people have genetic dispositions to alcoholism. But beyond this, even for those whom it is not physically addictive, the role that the consumption of alcohol plays as a recreational activity encourages its use as a coping mechanism for rough patches in life. This means that the negative consequences of 1), 2) and 3) are more likely to happen.
5) The euphoria of alcohol amounts to "empty calories" of life enjoyment. In the same way that real empty calories give us energy without real nutrition, the fun that stems from getting drunk is rarely of the kind that adds value to the substance of our personalities. While fond memories may arise from activities conducted while under the influence, your non-drunk self cannot take full credit for the actions because the "lowering of inhibitions" effect of alcohol is frequently responsible for the good time. Since your drunk self has more fun than your non-drunk self, you are incentivised to get drunk more often, and disincentivised from actually lowering your inhibitions. This incentivises the preservation of a "double-life", the you who you wish you were (drunk you) versus the you who you really are (self-conscious you). In contrast, overcoming inhibitions without alcohol causes those accomplishments to factor into your conception of your non-drunk self, thus enabling you to carry that confidence into more facets of your life.

I resonate with many of the principles behind your blog; particularly the deconstruction of our modern activities with an awareness and skepticism of those behaviors and beliefs that our species are disproportionately inclined towards. I feel that the widespread societal encouragement of behavior-altering drinking logically falls into the category of an irrational behavior that we engage in due to features of our "caveman" minds. For one thing, the euphoria associated with drinking causes us to place a disproportionate amount of value on it (as we do with tasty things that are bad for us). For another thing, the social norms and rituals associated with drinking irrationally dispose us towards it as a means to greater social interaction (i.e. we view it disproportionately as a good/acceptable thing because it is so commonly associated with good company/socialization.) So right there you've got irrational deference to "what feels good" over "what is good for you" as well as irrational deference to the herd mentality.

It just seems ironic to me that our species has evolved from millions of generations of organisms which were incapable of valuing long-term benefit over short-term benefit, and one of our major recreation activities is to bring ourselves, mentally, right back to that condition for kicks. It reminds me more of the action of a lab rat fervently pressing a lever for another hit of cocaine than it does the activity of a rational, well-adjusted human mind.

Thoughts?

Here's the interview from the cspan.org site in realplayer format.

Update: Apparently Mozilla is not creating the link to the interview correctly. In case you need to cut and paste into your browser window, the URL is: rtsp://video.c-span.org/archive/qa/qa041005.rm

illustrations of people in transition

can there be a / sanity / in / desire? /

To pursue or to be pursued?

to truly be an individual

     idolatry    adulation

While reaching for the next thing,
    the footholds give way

The first critique that came from the ideas of my previous post was that it appeared that I was advocating the complete expropriation of intellectual property away from a content creator to the public. I was compared to Lenin.

Let me put the record straight. What I am in favor of is a more enlightened notion of fair use. I am not in favor of removing all rights of a content creator to have say over the use of his creation. What I am saying is that the rights of a content creator to decide the use of his creation has reasonable limits and that society has a right to set those limits. Given that society has a right to set those limits, when deciding what those limits should be, we ought to take into account the changing reality of the exchange of intellectual property.

What we have in the present is a system where the law is being used to enforce rights of a content creator that go too far beyond what society ought to consider as appropriate. The point of objection for me lies in what individuals are allowed to do with media once they legally purchase it. It ought to be considered fair use to redistribute media on the internet free of charge. If you are the recipient of a copy of media that was obtained free of charge, that you do not owe back to the artist a fee for that copy. That recipient ought to also legally be able to pass on those copies free of charge.

How can I possibly justify this and still maintain some right of a content creator to remuneration?

Furthermore, what if the content providers fostered peer-to-peer filesharing? What if they could observe the transfer of music between peers and/or gather statistics on individual's music collections? Imagine the degree to which content providers could hone their product placement. For the first time ever, content providers would have unprecedented insight into what media was popular, how it becomes popular, and perhaps even some idea of among what kind of people it is popular. I would be willing to trade a little demographic information about myself for free access to music/movies/what-have-you.

What we should not decide as a society is that content creators deserve no recompense for their creations. What we should decide as a society is what represents a reasonable amount of recompense to content creators. The internet has changed the standard for what is reasonable recompense and what is not, we just haven't yet caught up to it. We should not feel bad when standards change just because it makes some content creators uncomfortable and less efficient in the short term. Deciding that content creators can still reasonably extract wealth even with legal free file-sharing by utilizing brand-awareness and greater market transparency is a reasonable decision for society to make. It just requires some out-of-the-box thinking.

To whom it may concern,

I am appalled at the failure of the editorial board of the New York Times to appreciate the changed technological reality represented by the internet. I am further dismayed at its ham-handed description of the significance of the Grokster case. The creation and expansion of the internet into our daily lives is an event whose ultimate effects are still largely unknown. One thing is for sure: the cost of transferring information has been drastically reduced. Given this new reality we ought to take pause to re-examine our use of terminology in relation to intellectual property for fear that we may be misapplying it.

I take objection to your unqualified use of the term "theft" to the action of copying copyrighted music. For sure, in the present legal framework, copying copyrighted music outside of the protections of fair use is a crime. But to throw around terminology like "theft" and "stealing" is to confuse more than it is to clarify. I would have hoped that the editorial board would be more apt to capture the nuance of the issue. If I steal an apple from a store, that store loses the ability to sell that apple to another person, meaning that the store loses something. That's theft. But if I were able to walk into the store and clone the apple, taking the clone with me, would we be so quick to call my action stealing? The store can still sell the apple. They have not lost anything from their inventory.

The term of theft can only logically be applied to an economy of products whose consumption can only occur for one person at one time. This is no longer the case for digital materials. Rather than continue to apply an outmoded paradigm of property as scarce, we should look rather to expand our understanding of an economy where scarcity of property is no longer a constraint.

Now, it is true that if everyone is able to copy apples, that the grocer will not make a profit, and perhaps be forced to discontinue the selling of apples. But this circumstance would be more of a reflection of the changing nature of an economy rather than the malicious criminal actions of individuals. Just as the existence of an apple copier would signal fundamental alternations to our notions of commerce, so should the existence of the internet. When certain kinds of property are no longer scarce we have two options, misapply outmoded rules, or get new rules. I am in favor of the latter.

I would even venture to go one step further. I was taught in kindergarten that it is a virtue to share one's property with other people. "Sharing is caring" went the phrase. Apparently in the modern world of technology this virtue only goes along so far as I don't share enough to impact an established business' bottom line. Apparently, if apple copiers really did exist, and I was able to feed all of Africa with a single apple, I would be thrown in jail as an "apple-pirate", rather than regarded as a humanitarian. And let's not even mention what the fish-lobby would have to say about Jesus' actions to multiply the fish in biblical times. What a thief, that guy.

The fact is that the restriction of copyright was originally intended only to apply to the major institutions that had access to printing presses. Application of copyright restrictions to individuals is as far from the original intent of these kinds of laws as they are difficult to enforce. An excellent account of this history is available in "Digital Copyright" by Jessica Litman.

I also take objection to the notion that artists and publishing houses somehow "deserve" a particular level of sales of the current medium for transferring their work. In the changing information economy, it may simply be the case that the market values the physical manifestations of music and movies less than it did before the internet. Is this so unimaginable? If this is the case, it seems that what ought to happen is to allow the market to adjust. Alternatives to selling music or movies in a physical form may be to switch to a service model, or to generate more revenue from touring, or doing more product endorsements. We already see signs of the times with iTunes, and the expanded practice of musicians utilizing the internet for promotion. For sure, art may need to be financed in a different way.. but when have we ever felt comfortable about enshrining a particular mode of the marketplace in law? Maintaining the status quo on this issue can only be justified as protectionism of a dinosaur industry. The sooner that the intellectual property industries are thrust out into the new reality of information sharing, the sooner that they will innovate and adapt to make revenue out of this model. It will be better for individuals and better for the economy in the long term.

The music and movie publishers have been known to say "it's hard to compete with free". Well, a thriving bottling industry exists to sell water, a resource available for free in most every civilized location on the planet. Something tells me that where there are bright people, there will be money to be made from selling intellectual property, even if the rules governing its transfer and acquisition are not so restrictive.

I think though, that there is a way to explain why math is important. Math is the study of patterns: patterns occur everywhere in the world. The skills we are given at birth to understand patterns are more limited than the skills we can gain when we can use the tools that mathematics gives us. Questions like how does a bird move through the air, how many people can you cram into a subway car, and how do you design an engine to run faster all can be explained with the language that math gives us. We are limited from approaching these questions without a greater understanding of patterns in the world.

If more teachers were able to philosophically connect curiousity about how the world works with mathematics, they would be far more successful in turning people on to the study of it. Today, we seem so focused on the mechanics and the tools of math, that we have gotten away from the enterprise of using those tools to solve real problems. Perhaps all math should be taught in conjunction with open-ended engineering problems.