ARTS & FARCES internet

Pretty soon all God’s creators gonna be pickin’ cotton for Bill. Or maybe Rupert or Walt.

Imagine that suddenly, all distributions of GNU/Linux were illegal in the United States. As well as Zope, Python, Perl, Apache, and all other open source software products. While that arguably may not be the goal of the Security Systems Standard & Certification Act (SSSCA), it would surely be a result. The SSSCA would outlaw any digital device—including personal computers—that did not include a copy protection mechanism. Right now the only thing keeping it from happening are the events surrounding 11 September.

The bill, written by Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC)—chair of the Senate Commerce Committee—with a lot of help from Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA). It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute “any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies” approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the “Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act” it’s really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the “certified security technologies” fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they can’t come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings’ bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings’ top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

But wait, it gets worse. In early September, before life in America changed forever, a federal court made clear its intention to remove the two remaining regulatory barriers that keep media conglomerates from owning local television stations in more than a handful of markets. At roughly the same time the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced it would begin to dismantle regulations that prevent a media conglomerate from owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market.

The consensus among many federal judges appears to be that most any regulation stifles corporate free speech. The megacorps like Disney, Fox, and AOL are arguing that they have a constitutional right to reach an unlimited audience. These media conglomerates insist that current regulations preventing any single television network from owning local stations that reach more than 35% of the population impede this right to an unlimited audience.

Diversity of views? Don’t make me laugh. Here’s a simple question that illustrates the problem precisely: When Congress voted to bail out the airlines, just who did they vote to bail out? Not one mainstream media outlet has explored who the majority stockholders are. And make no mistake, those majority stockholders are who got bailed out. Meanwhile the line workers were laid off.

Couple all of this with Microsoft’s reinvigorated interest in convergence, monopoly style. Make no mistake: Microsoft intends to control every aspect of digital media, from creation to consumption. It looks like this:

At first glance it looks like a wide open free market. But upon closer examination, it’s clear that Microsoft is acting to extend its monopoly on the desktop to digital media on the net and everywhere else. In all of these areas—each and every one of them—Microsoft is exerting its monopolistic influences. This entire market is on the verge of an unprecedented shakeout, and the money will stupidly follow the safe bet (Microsoft) instead of the best bet (open source and the small developers). There are lots of small and medium-sized companies that have staked out a niche within this market, but there is only one company—Microsoft—that has its corporate fingers in every one of these pies.

Microsoft is in the sole position of being able to make its products, data format extensions, and protocol enhancements de facto standards for an entire market without regard to the quality of those products or technologies or the needs and desires of anyone who actually uses them.

But wait, if you order right now, we’ll throw in the web. For free. But call now, our operators are standing by.

That’s right, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) seems to be intent on allowing—encouraging, even—web standards (and extensions to existing standards) to be patented. And I was all set to switch back to the Mac platform fulltime until I saw that Apple is taking a lead in this escapade.

If web standards are subject to patent law, the free and open web will die a terrible, but quick death. Period. If Microsoft (and the other BigCo’s, but mostly Microsoft) is allowed to patent web standards, application developers will likely be required to pay royalties in order to use the patented material in their products. Like him or not, Richard Stallman nails this one.

Is any of this good? Decidedly not. Once Microsoft controls all aspects of digital media from creation to consumption, it’s a short hop for it to actually control content. Microsoft alone will decide what we’re able to view. Think about that. Then think about Microsoft’s only competition being outfits like Disney, AOL Time Warner, and Rupert Murdoch. And then realize they probably don’t have even a ghost of a chance.

If you create content for a living and deliver it digitally, it’s time to bone up on your cotton pickin’ skills. Ahhh, I love the smell of convergence in the evening….