...more recent posts
Up early this morning. I made MB breakfast because I feel bad about how hard she is working on the new restaurant. I worked hard yesterday too, but it's different. We had a great dinner at Bond St. last night where I talked maybe too loudly about the dangers of "property rights fundamentalism" (as Lessig recently turned the phrase.) Actually I kept trying to drop the whole thing, but nonetheless conversation continued to circle back. All I was saying was that no sort of content protection will ever work as long as people have access to general purpose computers. But apparently that led me into some sort of dystopian fantasyland. Still, I'm not sure I'm so far off. There is a lot of content, and a lot of powerful people who own that content and want it to be secured. And if it's true (trust me, it's true) that there is no way to secure it while people have access to general purpose computers, then it stands to reason that those same powerful forces will try to go the legislative route and outlaw general purpose computers. My guess is they probably won't win, but I think it's pretty clear they are going to give it a shot. Notice that Valenti recently called people sharing (pirated) video content "terrorists" (last week in the NY Times, but I don't have a link.) That seems pretty calculated to me.
Maybe this stuff is already in the Patriot Act, I don't think anybody has even read that whole thing yet. We'll see.
Hopefully I can get another long day in today. I have to make some important structural decisions. This is where having been through the problem a few times before really helps. It sharpens your intuition. Or let's hope...