L.Lessig (2001). “The future of ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world”. (New York: Random House)
Real constraints remain
Internet made available:
- HTML Books vs Books
- Links can be added
- Available for more (Even people who can’t afford the book)
http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net (does not work)
(Extra: http://www.gutenberg.net/ )
Special: code layer is open, constraint is content
- MP3 vs CD’s&Audiotapes
- Fast without hearable quality loss
- More tried without commitment to purchase
- digital Film vs Film
- Techniques became cheap
- Blurring line amateur and professional
· Lyrics sercers and Cultural Databases
- Internet provides places which solve the problem of partly rememberred songs...Popular locations where fans might find the words that were echoing around in their heads..... (right...)
- Building complete sites with the help of thousands. This commercialized
NEW MARKETS
- Delivering poems more cheapely. (not complete...)
- (why not mentioning more up to date)
- Content compressed and steamed across the Net
· My.MP3
- MP3.com as a service bureau. My.MP3 service. Beam-it service
· Napster
- Connecting computers with music to directly share their music
- Decentralization makes it hard to catch the lawcrossers.
- Range of music as never available before. Available for individuals to choose rather than available as disc jockeys choose.
- (though caught because of their database! So. Server)
NEW DEMAND
· meeting existing demand and new demand
(idea: demand makes new demand because demand becomes standard)
- Demand measured offerings by taste monetoring programs.
- Data changes everything
(but different sites don’t share data about you, so cannot know your specific needs. Will pop-ups stop when owners know you don’t do anything with them? What does it cost them to continou?)
- Data as social resource. (Do people want this? What does it mean for privacy?)
- A barrier to entrie is reduced (entrie info or finding info?)
· NEW PARTICIPATION: P2P
- all began with e2e, before servers. Now p2p exists again as Berners-Lee wanted it.
- SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). To scan Radio noise for foreign messages. Through P2P verry powerful.
- Increasing speed by linking peer power
- Cache= Copy of content kept close to the user
- Gnutella outreaching Napster by p2p querying algorithm
- Overloading bandwitdth
Prees:
- Open code layer. No cop on the block
- Access physical layer inexpensive and wide. Makes trash possible
- Exploit a resource that is prohibitively expensive in real space
The environment balances the free against the controlled
- increasing of contracts on the net
- Congress protections limiting
Architect innovation to be free rather than controlled
- Old against New
- As the architecture changed, the freedom of the space changed
- Changes in law and changes in code that will together undermine innovation
QUESTION: The writer argues that because of the Internet, books are available to those who can not afford them otherwise. But getting it on the Internet does cost money, doesn’t it?
ANSWER: When surfing on the Internet, one will fastly forget that being on the Internet costs money. First of all it costs a lot to buy a computer a connection to the Internet. People will have to buy ‘time’on the Internet by for example paying a steady amount of money every month. This is something the writer should have mentioned, when arguïng about the pre’s of online books or online poems.
What also bothers me is that the writer doesn’t mention the up-to-date possibility of the Internet. Information can be updated easily on the Internet, while updating books takes re-prints.
To make a small point about the growing public of poem readers, the writer should have mentioned what Scott McCloud mentiones in one of his briljant online comic books reviews. He mentions that his public is getting larger, because on the Internet it is easy to mix different media or other things. A comic book reader can get interested in playing chess because on his poemsite a chessgame is implemented. Within a normal comic book you will never find a chess game. (http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/ ) This could be the reason for a growing number of poem readers.
QUESTION: Do people want their data to be saved by computers or are they affraid that big brother is watching them ?
ANSWER: The writer quickly asumes that everybody wants their data to be restored, so sites can filter advertisement and only show the ones it thinks that you like. This is according to my lousy computer knowledge not possible, because information one site will get from you, it wont give to another site. Unless a big company rises which monitors your information and automaticly sends it to the sites you’re visiting. A problem here is the privacy. When a guy accidently visits a site with pornography, this will be monitored. When visiting other sites, they get the information that the man enjoys porn. This might be harmful for the man is this example and tresspasses his privacy.
Apart from that advertising companies will have to agree and I can imagine that many advertising companies know that people don’t really like their pop-ups. Will they stop their pop-ups when noticing that someone is not interested in their commodities? I think not.
QUESTION: The writer states it is a bad thing that laws undermine innovation on the Internet. It mostly does undermine innovation, but does that mean it is a bad thing?
ANSWER: No, this doesn’t mean it is a bad thing there are laws that protect people against certain uncertainties. For example musicians that loose their music because people are trading it thrue the Internet. Imagine that this trading, which happens a lot, was legal. No musician would probably ever gets his or her money. People that wrote books wouldn’t make a dime and creators of films never would get their money back, because programs would air that make it even more easy to just go out and burn the movie yourself. For fair use rights are given to consumers, but the intellectual rights are and have to be protected by laws.
An example of laws that do threaten the innovation in a bad way are laws like the USA PATRIOT ACT, which deeply brake through the freedom of speech and privacy rights in the name of safety. Because of their fear for terrorism they are trying to structure p2p technology. Later I will post an assignment I made for an other course on this topic.