Long time readers may remember that several years ago we had a debate here
with David Brin, award winning science fiction writer and author of The
Transparent Society. In that book he advanced the thesis that society
should move towards "transparency", a state of decentralized surveillance
where the question of "who watches the watchers" is answered by saying,
we are all the watchers, and we watch each other.
At the time I accused David of being motivated by his own desire to
protect the intellectual property on which his income as a novelist
and writer depended. Without transparency it would be easy for people
to pirate novels and other works of art. Attempts to crack down can
be thwarted by using cryptographic techniques to hide the data being
exchanged and even the identities of the participants. David focused
especially on the cryptographic challenge to transparency, and I felt
that this was his true concern, although he covered a wide range of
issues in the book. (I don't know if I was right in my accusation; it
doesn't really matter, as others have taken up the cause of transparency.)
Of course in those pre-Napster days the notion of intellectual property
being threatened by the Net was a rather abstract concern. Now it is
a much more concrete and visible threat. In an article about the recent
SF convention I read,
At the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,
www.sfwa.org) business meeting, discussions included reports
on the efforts to combat Internet piracy of authors works on
newsgroups, Napster, Gnutella, etc.
Whether or not this was truly a concern of David Brin several years ago,
it has apparently become an issue for the industry as a whole. Still it
seems that novelists have several years breathing room before they have
to worry. It is hardly practical today to unbind, scan and text-convert
books into electronic form. (Although my own employer actually did rely
on just this technique for several years to export its cryptographic
software, exploiting a First Amendment exemption.)
I'm not sure that David's transparency would necessarily fix the IP
problem, anyway. In a truly transparent world, shouldn't I be able to
look over David's shoulder as he types up his latest novel? Shouldn't I
have access to it in the files on his computer? And if I buy the book,
shouldn't my friends be able to read it at the same time that I do,
via my wearable webcam?
I suspect that David would say that the answer to all these questions is
no, because as I said I think his intention in proposing transparency was
to save IP, not destroy it. I wonder how others would see the relation
between a transparent society and intellectual property. Do they go
together, or are they incompatible and contradictory?
Hal
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