Begin forwarded message:
From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>
Date: February 28, 2009 11:19:28 AM EST
To: <dave@farber.net>, "'ip'" <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?
The piano roll history is interesting.
Lurking behind this is a deep philosophical question of the distinction between direct and indirect action and how to map intent into an observed result. This distinction is often important in religion and it goes to a moralistic framing that pervades society.
We see this the difficulty in extending the concept of free speech to new technologies. We have trouble separating the speech itself from the means used.
No wonder it’s so difficult for people to grasp the concept of the Internet because much of the value derives from separating intent (application) from the means of communicating. This occurs not just once but in many ways along the path as in a web page using HTML exchanged via HTTP over IP over ... and then a third party seeing the page deems it offensive according to some local external context.
We also see this in today’s economic crisis in which we blame people for the failure to predict the unknowable future. The more culpable may be those who think they do know the future and thus trade on their naiveté, especially when wrapped in the soothing fog of complex derivatives. This is why I argue for an evolutionary framing rather than a Malthusian framing for policy. Evolutionary systems capture success while surviving failures at various scales.
The Kindle is just a reminder of how the old is new again in each context.
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 09:43
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 09:43
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?
Begin forwarded message:
Date: February 28, 2009 8:52:15 AM EST
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?
Couldn't resist one comment...
On Feb 27, 2009, at 7:36 PM, David Farber wrote:
Date: February 27, 2009 4:31:10 PM EST
Subject: RE: [IP] Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?
Remember that the record industry had to fight to establish the principle that playing a record was not the same as performing sheet music. Fortunately we didn’t confuse the issue by having an automatic sheet music player as we can today (like the book reader). Would such a machine owe a royalty each time it preformed?
Actually, we did have such a machine -- I think you've just described the player piano, which has had its own copyright battles:
Incidentally, in tracking down those links I was totally astonished to learn that the last piano roll factory was shut down just last month:
This gives me hope that my great, great, great, great, great grandchildren might live to see the retirement of the last COBOL programmer. -- Nathaniel
