We Are All Prometheus

stream of consciousness draft

In a recent speech, Cory Doctorow casts the current battles of copyright law, like the continued escalation of digital rights management and the debates surrounding the DMCA and the SOPA, as the relatively low-stakes forerunners of a broader, emerging, and truly significant war on the general purpose computer. The challenge the general purpose computer poses to copyright is that a computer implicitly contain the power to circumvent any digital measure to guarantee copyright limitations. Similarly, the Internet, powered by general purpose computing, provides the ability to circumvent any measures to limit online access. The result, then, is that the only way to really enforce copyright through digital means requires limiting the capabilities of general purpose computers and the general purpose Internet. On the desktop, or laptop, or anywhere else a computer may be found, this means secret spyware, and malware on computers to monitor and control -- and rootkits that prevent the installation of alternate operating systems or running unauthorized software to circumvent them. Online, this means active surveillance and censorship.

The reason why this is a broader war is, of course, that computers -- and networks -- are not just found on the desktop, or laptop, or even a smartphone. As chips, storage, and wireless communicators have gotten smaller, faster, and cheaper, it makes more sense to just have a general purpose computer, with I/O access to the outside world, be the embedded device in applications that require computing power. Doctorow's examples include the computers we will embed in our body, like digital hearing aids, the computers that are embedded in vehicles and may soon provide even more control in self-driving cars, the computers that are used to power DNA sequencers and DNA synthesizers, the computers that drive 3-D printers. The question for governments and corporations no longer about just enforcing copyright, or restricting the flow of information. It becomes, how do we control the modification of a self-driving car's computer to maintain traffic control? How do we restrict the synthesis of viruses and microorganisms -- on one-level because of "bioterrorism fears," but more significantly, to protect GMO and biopharma patents? How do we prevent 3-D printers from being used to produce counterfeit goods -- or to make what is needed to make a semi-automatic handgun fully automatic?

-- BahradSokhansanj - 12 Jan 2012