Here's an excerpt from an interesting article in The Atlantic Monthly (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98sep/copy2.htm) that they're talking about over on Raging Bull. It's not discussion the WaveMeter per se, but it's certainly a problem that the WaveMeter at least partly addresses. The article is about the problems of electronic copyright -- this section is about the need for hardware solutions:
<<...according to Mark Stefik, a researcher at Xerox PARC, the editor of Internet Dreams, and the author of the forthcoming The Internet Edge. A real solution to piracy will require what he delicately refers to as "a hardware component."
In the age of the Internet, Stefik argues, the only way to foil piracy -- indeed, the only way to charge for intellectual property -- will be to equip all televisions, telephones, computers, music players, and electronic books with chips that regulate the flow of copyrighted material. "Kind of like having V-chips for copyright," he says. When I download The Sound and the Fury into my electronic book, the c-chip will register the transaction, speeding my payment to the copyright owner and invisibly encoding the record in my copy of the text. If I lend the novel to my sister by E-mailing her a copy, my E-book will erase the original copy, so that only one is in circulation. The software won't permit my sister to dump the text into any E-book without a c-chip, so the copy will always remain within a closed circle. Similar rules will apply to videos, music, journalism, databases, photographs, and broadcast performances -- any configuration of zeroes and ones that can be sold and delivered by wire. Current, if primitive, examples of what Stefik calls "copyright boxes" include Nintendo machines, whose proprietary hardware is meant to ensure that only Nintendo-approved games work on them, and digital audio tape (DAT) recorders, which contain a chip that prevents the copying of previously copied tapes.
Copyright boxes could let copyright owners subdivide usage rights, creating new markets for information. If I want to download music by James Brown, for example, I could negotiate the terms at the Web site of his company, James Brown Enterprises. By paying a little extra, I could obtain the right to send a copy of "Say It Loud" to my sister without deleting it from my computer. By paying a little less, I could rent the music for a party next week, with the c-chip expunging the music the morning after. I might buy a site license, so that everyone in the family could listen to "Say It Loud." I might acquire only the right to listen myself, typing in a password to prove my identity every time I wanted to hear the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. Copyright boxes, Stefik says, "open up a lot of possibilities."
These possibilities, he concedes, will not be easy to achieve: "I don't see this as a debate about next week." People may find ways to circumvent c-chips; others may regard the chips as unworkably inconvenient. But perhaps the greatest obstacle, Stefik thinks, is attitude. A small but significant group of technophiles scoffs at the whole idea of copyright boxes, believing that the Internet changes the role of intellectual property so much that the chips will be useless. Some Web denizens believe that the change is profound enough that efforts to safeguard copyright in the digital world actually work against the interests of a democratic society.>> |
