From: vagans@eanna.net   
      
   On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Kevin Calder wrote:   
      
   >   
   >   
   > In message ,   
   > Sourcerer  writes   
   >   
   > >I do not think China intends to become a client of the US or the West.   
   > >Probably not India, either, and Asia, ex-Japan, will follow suit.   
   > >Western cultural (including computing) hegemony is over. I don't think   
   > >the intellectual property scam and its N gigs of ephemeral crap is of   
   > >much interest to the Chinese; if nobody accesses it, it is worth   
   > >nothing.   
   >   
   > Most people who I have talked to about TCPA think that it will backfire   
   > in this way.  I agree, I don't think that TCPA's backers have enough   
   > clout (or at least they have underestimated the logistical overhead they   
   > will have to manage) to achieve the level of dominance required to make   
   > the system work optimally.  What I wonder though is if this will create   
   > enough space in the market for alternatives, if not 'undergrounds', to   
   > flourish.  I'd like to see it happen!  On the other hand we might end up   
   > getting stuck with a choice between getting dominated by the TCPA big   
   > boys, and getting dominated by the biggest of the rest (potentially Asia   
   > et al).  Maybe the most powerful of the anti-TCPA completion would come   
   > with their own comparable standard.   
      
   Of interest is the entertainment industry suing its customer-base...a   
   kind of slow corporate suicide.   
      
   Back in the 1940s ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and   
   Publishers) performers went on strike for a larger share of royalties.   
   Back then, radio music was almost completely live, not recorded. There   
   were three "charts", Pop, Hillbilly, and Race. The ASCAP folks were Pop.   
   Radio suddenly had no music content. To counter this, they formed BMI   
   (Broadcast Music, Inc). Absent live performance and unable to use the   
   recorded catalogs of ASCAP music, they latched onto the other two charts   
   (many of the artists, being poor whites and blacks, had little or no   
   concept of intellectual property) and bye and bye created pop music as   
   we know it today, Rock, Country, R&B, Soul, 'sex, drugs, rock 'n roll',   
   youth culture, etc etc, while ASCAP pop got relegated eventually to the   
   career deathzone of Easy Listening radio.   
      
   That's an example of unintended consequences.   
      
   > >TC is a perfect example of what I mean by stagnant technological   
   > >development since it creates a technology monopoly with the state having   
   > >a vested interest in it, "Wintelmute", which like the notion of   
   > >intellectual property itself has the goal of stifling development whose   
   > >outcomes cannot be predicted. If it succeeds it will pretty much end the   
   > >expansion phase of capitalism.   
   >   
   > Yah.   
   >   
   > Also; I had always thought of the notion of 'intellectual property' as   
   > being a mechanism for inflating the profitability of products that don't   
   > have any obvious value to Joe Ordinary (and his small business Ordinary   
   > Productions).  I think this makes sense in terms of TCPA because it   
   > allows big business to extract more money out of small businesses and   
   > consumer in the form of variations on the 'administrative charge' theme.   
   > I can imagine "format handling charges", "critical update charges",   
   > "migration charges" and "component installation charges".  Im sure the   
   > marketing people at TCPA Inc. will be even more imaginative!   
      
   This is also a PKD kinda thing; everything, including the tea kettle and   
   the front door, needs a nickel slotted in order to work (if it works).   
   In a TCPA world we will not live our life; we will subscribe to it. I   
   expect this as the ultimate form of debt-management, where income, debt,   
   payments, credit etc spigots are controlled by the state w/ the corps.   
   People will receive their allowance from their salaries; purchases will   
   be monitored by AutoID tags and checkout line systems: "I'm sorry, sir,   
   but I cannot ring this up. You've exceeded your credit-allowance this   
   week" -- even if you have the cash to pay.   
      
   One subscribes and does not own things or even rent. It's a beautifully   
   insane system, a fantasy of cash flows. The unintended consequences can   
   be the foundation for a new genre of sf.   
      
   > >Having worked in banking,   
   >   
   > Some kind of uber-CP underground cyber-banking surely!?   
      
   Alas, no. I did research for a bank's lawyers. It's not as exciting as   
   it sounds 8-)   
      
      
      
   --   
     (__)    Sourcerer   
    /(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O When you're looking for something that doesn't exist,   
     \../  |OO|||O|||O|O it makes you crazier the closer you get to it.   
      ||   OO|||OO||O||O                                   -- R. Ebert   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)