This weeks readings all focused on the ideals of the founding fathers of computer culture as they relate to the idea of property in the computing world. I think that in my lifetime the concept of intellectual property will vanish. After reading this article I can see that a lot of terms coined as Intellectual property are completely unjustified, particularly trademarks. It seems absurd that a person or company can trademark a slogan or a phrase and claim it as their own. I remember reading about drug companies decoding the DNA of a virus and then patenting it so that no other company could use the DNA of that virus without the permission of the patent holder. I can understand how patents encouraged innovation in the past but in the present I can't imagine they do anything but stifle that innovation.
I don't think someone can truly understand the concept of free software unless they write code. I've done a decent amount of programming, and the majority of the work is simply cutting and pasting code from other people who have tried to do something similar. I couldn't imagine programming without using someone else's work. It's a very secure feeling because I know that I'm not the only one who has used the code and the users have been able to modifiy it so reusable public code is almost always error free and if it isn't the errors are clearly documented. Right now I run linux and while I don't fool around with the source code it is easy to see how the four freedoms have contributed to its success, especially when you look at an operating system such as Vista which has built in DRM protection to prevent people from using hacked software and makes it difficult to listen to non-copyrighted music. The question arises as to how to turn a profit from open source material. I've read a lot about this issue and there seems to be a consensus in the open source community that the pricing model of software is moving away from the software as a commodity model where consumers buy licenses and pay to use the code and gravitating towards the software as a service model where consumers pay nothing for software and instead pay for the services associated with it such as customization, maintainence, etc.
Net neutrality is a paradoxical issue. The principles behind internet neutrality are that the internet is a near sacred place where information should be freely accessible to the user and that bandwidth shouldn't be regulated by the price the host of that content pays. The proponents of Net neutrality argue that information on the internet shouldn't be regulated, however to ensure that it isn't requires legislation by the federal government. I am a libertarian so for me this is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. On the one hand I can see where the ISPs are coming from, BitTorrent traffic does clog networks and the problem is only increasing. Videos on the web are nowhere near the quality of standard definition television. With a tiered internet payment model I could imagine browsing for movies and television the same way I surf the web. This would make finding a good show a lot easier and would offer lower production costs than television does. On the other hand sites that don't turn a profit such as wikipedia would need to raise more money to offer their content free of charge to the consumer. Also the idea of a corporation being in control over the information people are able to access is a scary thought. I am leaning towards the side of government regulation to keep the bandwidth neutral and the information open, as opposed to ISP regulation to keep the internet fast. I prefer freedom over speed and I view all ISPs as cartels who inflate prices for no reason at all. In Hong Kong 100mbps costs the consumer 48 dollars a month while in the united states 5 mbps runs 40 dollars.
The Fred Turner article made me sad almost. Back in 1984 cyberculture seemed so much more idealistic and positive. Reading this I got the impression that everyone was expecting computers to liberate the modern worker and create a Utopian society. Instead the computer has simply become another television, an entertainment appliance. Granted, computers are incredibly empowering but they can be so much more powerful by hacking them, the first hackers understood this. I remember working in an office about a year ago where we had a writing editor who had an MBA from Harvard spend 2 days straight changing fonts in a database for a few thousand entries, something a computer program could do in a fraction of a second. The reason for this was simply that they were too afraid of screwing something up to write the necessary SQL. In my mind, everyone should know how to do some coding to avoid that scenario. Until there is a way for the general population to create and modify computer programs computers will never aspire to what the founding fathers of the computer movement thought they could be.
