Net Neutrality and Democracy

I've been studying the concept of network neutrality since June. I do know one thing to be a relative certainty: net neutrality is inherently linked to free speech, not to mention the other things like commerce and politics. And I support net neutrality, not because it's what my political choice demands, or because someone else has somehow misinformed me, but because it simply and undeniably makes logical sense.

Common sense dictates that network neutrality is going to mean government regulation. That part is pretty much a given. And while I'm generally against regulations that are imprudent, this is a major case of consumer protection versus corporate interests. When given a choice like that, I'm forced to choose consumer protection almost every time (except in some cases, where it's clear that consumer protection would have minimal impact on consumers while inexorably damaging corporate ability to do business... and there are even exceptions to that, as well).

Regulations about network neutrality would limit corporate abilities to control traffic that didn't originate within their own networks. The Supreme Court in June of 2007 already ruled that companies may control their own network traffic, but specifically excluded traffic outside their network from being throttled or controlled. This was essentially what was already happening, but Comcast began throttling P2P traffic such as BitTorrent or Gnutella, and I actually know some of the people who first reported the story (and no, it wasn't the Associated Press reporters who blew the story wide open). And it's wrong, in spite of their aims.

This is non-neutrality, because it's preventing a type of legitimate traffic from being used. I've been trying to get the Ubuntu CD for over a month, and downloaded a few documentaries (one called "Route Irish," which was a good primer on what not to do during a protest), and because I believe in law, I don't like the idea of stealing the work of others, so I don't trade the RIAA's MP3s or Hollywood's movies (not that I would want to anyway... my tastes are much more refined than that). But I have a friend who told me he found and downloaded the entire "Transformers" movie in about two hours flat, only to find that it was mislabelled and home-produced gay porn. He and I are in the same neighborhood. If he can download his porn file which looked to be a copyrighted file from the outside, why can't I get my legal downloads to work? That's one drawback to net neutrality: trusting the gatekeepers.

So what's the big deal? Why is there so much hype about it? The answer is: corporate interest. The facts of the matter are that the corporations have generally been led to believe (quite incorrectly, I might add) that a neutral network means that so-called "smart" switches would not be permitted. However, the pro-neutrality people are in favor of "smart" switches, so long as they don't give favoritism to traffic based on financial considerations to or from the target site. If it was a radio station, it would already be considered illegal to do this, because this is the definition of payola in the radio system (which, admittedly, is a different medium).

However, the same logic should hold true: paying an ISP (as an example) to either throttle your competition or to not throttle your own connection with them, in addition to charging consumers to access the internet. This is precisely the kind of logic that many media industries employ in their rabid enforcement of copyright: when you take from both ends of the equation, you become rich. Except that we have a word for that. It's called exploitation.

Neutral networks mean that there is no censorship of the "slowing down traffic" kind on the net. Unlike print media, the internet requires neutrality in order to operate correctly. Simply slowing down traffic has the effect of discouraging the dissemination of information and can also be used by people such as your own political adversaries. Network neutrality requires that the flow of traffic be determined only by the limitations of the network, not the chosen limitation of commerce. However, companies do need to be able to "shape" traffic in order to manage a large network.

Oddly, this is not against network neutrality. A "smart" network is a happy network. Managed switches used ethically for the purposes of creating a network that flows smoothly and efficiently is within the interests of network neutrality, as well as corporate interests. It's when this shaping of networks becomes an excuse for limiting traffic to or from a site in the name of forcing profits that the shaping even becomes an issue. Net neutrality is about ethics reform, not about limiting the ability to ethically prioritize traffic in order to assist or increase network functionality. The concept is neutral, not anarchic.

The proponents of neutrality are sometimes criticized for not having a grip on the situation. I was trained at ITT Technical Institute (though I didn't graduate) and my last course of study was network administration. I can assure everyone: I have a very solid grip on the situation, the issue, and the consequences of both choices. And I choose neutrality because it simply makes better logical sense to protect against barriers to entry, and to promote a sound economic development of healthy competitive practices. Raising a required fee to every ISP in the world in order to ensure connectivity of one company's web site would only further the gap between the wealthy and poor companies of the world, rather than assisting in competitive practice.

To date, I have read some 400 documents about network neutrality, both for and against. Early on, I was against neutral networks because I understood that the argument was to be one of "smart" versus "unmanaged" networks. However, that argument is not, and has never been, the issue at all, in spite of the anti-neutrality folks' arguments to the contrary.

The issue of net neutrality is also not simply about consumer protection. It's about censorship. And censorship is contrary to our First Amendment. If we are to embrace democracy for our republic instead of allowing it to devolve into a despotic or fascist state, we must vigilantly protect the traditional rights our Founding Fathers laid out, with the intent in which these rights were specified.

The Necessity of Patents and Reform of Patent Laws

Patent law is something of a gigantic question for a lot of people. These people want to understand it. Most don't. But it's that kind of an attitude that really lends power to the people who want to take advantage of it. So let's begin by defining what I mean when I actually talk about a patent, and how it differs from copyright.

First of all, a patent is the idea that an invention was created by a specific individual or group. It differs from copyright in that patents are for things with practical applications. In fact, it wasn't until 1981 that the major problems of today with patent really started (though these are far from being the only problems), because of the software industry's insistence that a computer program is more than applied mathematics (which is, if you'll excuse the pun, patently untrue).

Computer software works by taking inputs (long strings of numbers), applying math to them (operations), and then creating outputs (more long strings of numbers). The electronic pulses that create a computer program are usually represented by ones and zeroes, representing "on" and "off" states of a computer's central processor. But in the end, all that switching and decision-tree-ing amounts to mathematical decision-making.

By allowing computer software to retain a patent, the Supreme Court has ultimately played a part in all of the abuse that consumers now enjoy because of the crossover between the three protections: copyright, patent, and trademark. The entire term "intellectual property" is actually a misnomer, because while it is created in the mind (by the intellect), there is no property until it has a practical application. In fact, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) used to require a working prototype in order to receive a patent. Since that is no longer the case (since you can't really have a prototype for mathematical equations), patent is ultimately weakened. Making tougher laws to enforce patents has the inverse effect to the desired intent: it weakens all of the so-called "intellectual property" laws by linking to them.

Also, software is not a "practical" application. The word practical has in it the same roots as the word practice. By granting patents on software, we essentially grant a patent on a thought. You see, the word practical implies a practice which is action. Software is a virtual application; that is, it provides theoretical data the way that any complex mathematical function can. A computer monitor is little more than a graphing of those complex mathematical functions. However, graphing is action. Computation is action. The calculations themselves, which require a computer to operate, are non-action, and so should not be protected by patent. Copyright should be enough.

The word application in the software world is also potentially misleading: the connotation is that it is a practical application. However, the reality is that software only streamlines work and provides instructions based on mathematical formulae, rather than accomplishing any work itself. Before software was patented, mathematical equations could only be protected by copyright, and only then if they were published. The result is that there is a lot of confusion about the differences between copyright and patent. And now trademarks are starting to get blended.

In fact, the proponents of intellectual property laws often want the protections of all three of the different sets of laws on one production, rather than a good, strong protection of just one. That's because it ensures that they can control who makes the money and who doesn't. The problem is, in the process it kills the golden goose: people suddenly don't like patents or copyrighting or trademarking because it represents corporate greed and bullying. So they try to simply work without it, and refuse to have anything to do with the enforcement. In the process, they break the law simply trying to be consumers.

And also, since 1981, the practice of "shelving" patents has increased immensely. This practice is probably one of the most damaging that I can imagine. The reason behind shelving patents is simple: it buries competing technologies. For example, an idea for an engine that was entirely powered on water was devised in the 1930's, only to be rendered unusable by the powers in the government making money by keeping oil in the engines of the vehicles on our nation's roads at that time. The water engine worked, as it was demonstrated time and again. But it did not pass muster because of a patent system too weak to protect the individual who came up with it, and too strong to be countered for the right to build it at a later date.

And now anything can be patented. Life forms, business plans, and even book designs can be patented, because of the landmark decision by those in the Supreme Court which failed to take all of the future possibilities into account. The can of worms has been opened and it now seems that nothing can close it again. It creates the problem of non-viability within the patent system. Copyright is also in danger of becoming non-viable because of the way it's enforced. Trademark will follow suit.

Much of this has been speculated about (and special thanks to rms for this speculation, which I believe is spot on, though I'm still trying to gather proof for it) to have originated with the current people who want to lump copyrights, patents, and trademarks together under the heading of intellectual property in order to blend the protections offered by these three widely variant law structures so that all three apply to all creations at once. Organizations such as the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) are puppets of the entertainment media industry, who bullies companies and even governments into acting on behalf of their own interests. Their corruptive influence needs to be at an end. It's time for reforms in the laws that allow this influence in order to reduce the power of patents and restore the balance, and it's time for a stronger separation of patents, trademarks, and copyright.

Though I support Senator Obama in his bid for the Presidency, I will say that I disagree on the idea that expanding our influence overseas is a wise idea. I further believe that patent reforms accomplished will not serve to strengthen patents, but to weaken them by making patenting an undesirable option. We are already witnessing this trend in the draconian world of copyrights.

Balance, in this and all cases of copyright and patent, is key to the survival and continued viability of the systems affected. The imbalance is in the manner in which these things are required by the laws in place today to be enforced. Many copyright and patent enforcers make the claim that their right is fundamental, and that stronger protection means increases in the law for the duration, protections, and requirements to enforce.

Another imbalance exists where there is a barrier to entry, and this is less of a major problem than shelving is, but it's still an enormous issue and one that essentially creates "haves" and "have nots" where patents are concerned. While there are plenty of US patents available at Google Patent Search, there are not patents yet available from other countries, and so enforcing international patents can become an issue, particularly where the WIPO agreements our government claims to adhere to. I say "claims to adhere to" because the language of these agreements is highly subjective in English, and seems to lack an understanding of how patents actually need to work.

Barriers to entry create a chasm between rich and poor. In a capitalist wealth distribution system, there are rich and poor, but there are also a great number of people between. This "middle class" is the foundation for the entire economic structure of capitalism, and while it feels great to be rich, not everyone can be. If there were no barriers to wealth, then everyone would have the same amount of everything, and there would be little incentive to improve: this is a communist economy with perfect wealth distribution. Likewise, if the barriers to wealth were at every turn, there would only be "rich" and "poor" and this would become an imperialist economy instead of a capitalist one.

Capitalism needs a balance between rich and poor. It needs there to be the ability for poor people to make it big, and the risk of the rich to lose everything. It needs the middle class in order to show that progress can be made between rags and riches. But with patents, there is no equivalent. There's the "rich" patent-owners, and the "poor" non-owners, with very little way to bridge the gap, because many kinds of patents required (until 1981 or soon after) a working prototype. And now the gap is one of researching patents and paying an attorney to do all of the legal legwork of filling out the papers. It shouldn't need an attorney; however, with the sheer amount of litigation and exploitative practices happening, not having a lawyer is a liability.

Today, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) requires very little in the way of proof that something works before a patent is issued. If the idea looks "viable enough" and is based on "provable principles" then a patent can be granted if it doesn't step on any other patents. And investors can fill the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" where patents are concerned. But they still won't patent things like sex toys or perpetual-motion machines.

But therein lies the problem: some of the patents that the world actually needs most do not themselves make any money whatsoever. And many that could make money and promote the progress of mankind are sitting on a shelf somewhere, unusable until the patent expires and is not renewed. But a lot of these ideas could enhance other money-making ideas, or in other ways benefit humanity.

Then there are medical patents. In order to build a life-saving apparatus in the spur of the moment, many times you must violate a patent by combining pieces. While this is not the best approach to medicine, it is occasionally necessary to innovate well outside the norms of practice.

Patents are an enormous problem. And like copyrights, balanced approach to patents are essential to the continuation of a free and open society. So what can we really do about all of this? It's a complex answer with several simple solutions.

One solution is to abolish patents altogether and amend the US Constitution. However, this essentially sidesteps the issue, which will remain in spite of the amendment to the contrary. Trying to enforce this will essentially lead us down a very dark path away from the ideals of democracy, so this is not really an acceptable solution.

Another solution is to let them have their way until the population is so sick of patents that they shy completely away from anything to do with patents whatsoever. Again, this solution leads us away from democracy, and is despotic in nature.

A third solution might be to simply ignore patents until the burden of litigation so completely overwhelms the courts that lawmakers are more or less forced to reduce patents. Again, this isn't a great solution, because lawmakers don't respond well to being forced into anything (nor do any of us, really). Lawmakers are human, too.

A fourth solution is to try to accomplish something similar to what has occurred with the Creative Commons and GPL licenses for patents, but again this isn't really as viable for patents as it is for copyright. There are certain ideas that these could work for, and certain things they would not work for.

As a fifth solution, we might also completely scrap the patent system in favor of a new one. Right. Like Congress would ever even give this thought serious consideration.

The sixth solution, and the one I personally favor, is to simply reform patent law back to its original state, sweeping all so-called "progress" in patent law away. Sweeping changes like this, I'll have to admit, aren't a fun thought for me. Rapid changes can destabilize things. However, sweeping changes like this could be accomplished with a minimum impact on stability in as little as 7 years. That's less than two presidential terms.

As you can see, there are quite a number of sides to this debate, and it's likely to continue for a very long time before anything gets done. While not as core to civil liberties as copyright, patent is still a very major issue and a balanced system is still tied to civil liberties.

Democracy, Dissent, and Free Speech

Enter our contest!

I've been in court this week on a matter involving my son, so until that's done, the posts here are likely to be sporadic. Apologies to those who have elected to read.

Speaking with a dissenting voice is a sure sign that democracy is alive. Let's face it: nobody likes to be told they're doing a poor job, but there isn't a better test of democracy than the public expression of discontentment. Shame is a powerful motivator to create positive change, particularly where that shame is considered by the public at large.

Shame in my own life has been a powerful motivator for change, particularly where I've been concerned about the opinions of those around me. I've done some things I'm definitely not proud of, but with my set of experiences, the end result has been positive. The problem is that there needs to be accountability for wrongdoing, and in corporate America, there is little accountability because of the power of money to bring lobbies to bear on Congress, limiting their effectiveness by creating the impression of a large amount of support or opposition. However, the issue is that lobbies often misrepresent the issues at hand, because the lobbyists only know what they are told, and often they are not told a complete set of facts.

Two items of shame that I to point out include the secrecy with which our country's current administration operates, excluding people from the operation of government because (as some insiders have stated openly) they have "operations that wouldn't stand up to sunlight". This untenable practice cannot be tolerated in a democracy.

The other item of shame is the blind adherence of the top political contender for being our next president, Barack Obama, to the draconian system of copyright that pervades our country and which threatens to undermine not only the democratic processes that make us great, but also our economy. This system of copyright is not democratic, and expanding on it is absolutely counter to the Constitutional mandate of protecting the creative works and processes that make our nation great.

And where Obama is concerned, this is about the only spot I really disagree with at a basic level. I can understand his pro-consumer stance, but I also believe that his entire campaign is undermined by his stance of expanding on copyright.

Most Americans who care don't want copyright expanded. In fact, what we need is a complete reform of the current laws in order to return us to the traditional value of artist protection. You see, the large studios don't want artists to be protected; they want their own rights as producers to trump the rights of artists, who often are not even allowed to perform their own works because of transfer agreements, which the studios essentially force out of these artists in order to ensure that they have their bottom lines maintained.

Another point to consider: the WGA strike that continues. Writers are essential to the business of entertainment. Writers feel they should be taking a larger share. And studio execs continue to take the lion's share of the proceeds. Not the artists. Not the writers who create the works. It's their creativity that makes Hollywood. Actors, in spite of their vitality, can be trained and acting talent can be taught. Writing talent requires a "feel" for the written word. This fact alone means that most writers could be actors, if they merely looked nicer. But writers are concentrating on what they write, often sacrificing their own sanity in certain moments and under certain conditions in order to really get into the minds of the characters for which they write. Hollywood, and especially the MPAA, promotes their own well-being, and doesn't support the art.

The entire idea that the MPAA, RIAA, and their ilk is doing anything that protects artists' rights is against the idea of common sense, simply because those industries at the base of their practice are exploitative. They not only exploit artists, but also consumers.

I am not in favor of doing away with copyright; that would not only be unconstitutional, it would be disastrous. What we need is to rebalance the idea of copyright with the idea that creative derivatives are not infringement. I'm not talking about the idea of "piracy" where there is a huge gap between those who want to expand and those who want to abolish. There must be a balance to the approach; a necessary retention of some parts of copyright, while eliminating others. We need a "common sense" approach to copyright, where consumers are not the enemy of copyright holders and artists are permitted access to their own works.

It is unreasonable to believe that by eliminating the access to one copyrighted work, artists are somehow motivated to produce another. Creativity doesn't work like that. Creativity is not motivated. Creativity is inspired. Creativity is an innate response to emotional stimuli. Creativity is not an emotional response to logical pressures. Creativity resides in the right, creative side to the brain. It is not rational. It doesn't operate by a strict set of rules. But on the flip side of things, neither is creativity entirely unpredictable. Only greatness in creativity is unpredictable. Creative genius does not know borders of culture, society, gender, sexuality, political status, income level, or religion. It is a part of the human soul.

But for creative genius to exist, creativity itself must not be stifled. In this sense, democracy is the ultimate crucible in which creativity can be produced. This fact of history is due in large part to the freedoms of speech and expression that we enjoy in this country, and the current regime of copyright holders want to exercise control over the very thing that proves that we are democratic and free. This is not an acceptable state of affairs.

I would invite Obama to send me his research which supports the idea that copyright should be expanded upon. I will submit only two papers, neither of which was produced here in the United States, but instead in England, where the copyright regime's controls are all but absolute at this point, and which essentially do nothing but create a rift between consumer and industry to the point that the industry itself is starting to be bypassed completely.

These two studies show their methodology, explain their reasoning completely, and leave very little to the imagination. They don't contain the leaps in logic that are required for reading the studies sponsored by the MPAA and RIAA. They really do not require the enormous profits they claim, nor is online piracy really the bugbear that these organizations claim. It's really not killing the industry. What's killing the industry is the insistence that consumers are the main enemy and must be controlled at all costs. I reject the notion on grounds of logic and reason.

We need someone like Obama, who is the most decent candidate we have right now, with regard to the front-running candidates, to really take a close look at copyright and how it really affects us, and to do the common-sense thing, since that's one of his primary position-toppers (the other candidates lack any semblance of common sense). And even though I like Obama, I'm not really ready to vote for him yet, simply because of the copyright issue and its importance to the smooth functioning of our democracy. Not to mention, I'm not a democrat.

I just hope Senator Obama can appreciate that. Because if he wants me to not write in a vote for "abstain" again this year, I'm going to have to hear him publicly say that the current system needs reform, and that he supports such reforms in order to prevent a complete meltdown of the entertainment industry and to sap the strength of the extremist views which are unnecessarily promoted and escalated by the often vindictive method which we now employ. I would support him entirely, had he not opted for openly stating that he wanted to strengthen our copyright overseas, and to increase the WTO. This is against my principles, and so I am hoping I won't have another write-in vote this year.

My biggest problem right now with the whole "intellectual property" debate is that it very much erodes the rights of creative individuals while preserving the rights of large companies. Individual rights of one should never outweigh another. Both rights must be upheld.

And so the right to dissent must also be upheld. The strength of a democracy is in the fact that we are not all one voice, nor one vision, but we all have the same goal: the well-being of our society. When we are fighting to preserve such a high aim, we must always listen to even the dissenting voices of the minority, because there is no idea that can be called worthless, excepting that is calls for violent action where violence is unnecessary. Dissent is not dissidence. Dissent is disagreeing with a policy or one idea. Dissidence is calling for the entire dismantling of an existing structure. Abolition of copyright is dissidence, in my opinion. But dismantling copyright can still occur by the rabid enforcement of such by the powers that be. Such rabid enforcement spawns the opposing extreme, and it's patently a mistake to promote it. It does not preserve the right of artists and inventors to profit from their works if the population at large doesn't support it.

Dissent is inherently linked to free speech, and as a foundation to democracy, it must be upheld to be inalienable. So when we criticize the government's operations, we're not doing anything against the government. Instead we are exercising the right which our Founding Fathers believed was God-Given: the right to freely express belief. If our beliefs are controlled, then what we have is not a democracy at all. Democracy means that the entire population rules. Democracy means that the government invests its power into the population. But those in power hate that idea. They don't like the idea that the public knows what's best for it. They don't enjoy the concept that popular control is asserted by the population itself. It's not a particularly comfortable idea to those who stand to benefit from positions of power.

But in the end, the power of democracy asserts itself in ways that can only be called beneficial to the long-term. Democracy requires a certain amount of honor be invested back to the people, who tend to be dishonorable and selfish in emulation of what they see at the head of our country. If we want a responsible people, then our leaders must also accept responsibility unshirkingly for errors in judgment. Such errors are magnified by public office, and so when the people in office don't know what their own principles are, these errors will proliferate.

And often, what's right is not what's popular. But in general, the population does know. We have the ability to offer instantaneous feedback for all options which are on the table, and yet we consistently remove this ability by failing to demand it. We don't dissent enough, because we fear rocking the boat and being viewed as unbalanced even as we call for a balance. Dissent is hard, but the preservation of the right to dissent is so utterly important to democracy that I can't imagine what our country would be like without it.

You Could Answer for Lawerence Lessig

Okay, I'm holding a contest of sorts: you, the reader, can answer questions for Lawrence Lessig, renowned copyright law expert and advocate for the continued creativity of people in spite of the severity of the copyright system.

Founder and chief advocate of the Creative Commons Public License, Professor Lessig has given numerous talks about the subject of copyright and why a private solution (such as the Creative Commons license) is necessary in today's harsh copyright climate. Though he doesn't advocate stealing of other peoples' works, he is nonetheless a strong advocate for the return of fair use and public domain works. The more I learn about the man, the more impressed I am that he's the one who has the answers.

The problem is, a man in his position is incredibly busy. I've managed to get a few words out of him here and there, but email is positively horrible when everyone wants to speak to you. He implied an agreement with me (one which I came up with), where I would get other people to answer the questions. These questions would then go through a filtering process and then the good Professor Lessig could then sign off on the answers that are closest to his position on each question. It's a creative solution to the problem of time.

The theory behind it is that if other people speak for Professor Lessig, then he can not only save time by merely having to read (I can't speak for Lessig, but my own typing speed is less than a quarter of my reading speed), and then indicate which ones are the most correct answers to the question.

The top winner of the contest will receive... a tee shirt. Completely free of charge. I'll even pay shipping. How's that for a prize? The tee shirt will say something like: "I answered Lawrence Lessig's questions and all I got was creative freedom... and this tee shirt.") And be aware that this prize comes out of my own pocket: Professor Lessig has nothing to do with this blog or its operations (other than continuing to inspire me to write, which he does without his consent).

The questions I'd like answered are below:

1) With copyright laws being enforced and changed to such a draconic level, is there any hope that they might be changed, or is the copyright system doomed to failure by abandon?

2) What differentiates fair use from infringing use under the law? Is there an actual determining factor, rather than simply the wording of the law itself?

3) It was implied at the TED speech that public domain no longer exists. What happened to public domain?

4) If the case is extremism on both sides, then what can determine prevalence? From a logical standpoint (as well as an historical one), if both extremes are wrong, then compromise is likely not going to be possible so long as the extremist voices continue. So how do we get the two sides of the equation talking to one another, if one side (or both) is offering its own olive branch?

5) This was after looking up your (CC) license, and because I'm interested in using the CC-GPL for a software package I'm working on. In the Creative Commons license, the site claims that there are no compatible licenses. However, I notice that the GPL is listed with what amounts to a Creative Commons rider. If this isn't compatibility, then by what standard is compatibility measured?

6) Using the perspective of history, we can see an equivalent to the "arms race" of the Cold War era brewing. From this same perspective, what was the most likely catalyst for change to lessen the escalation of arms?

6a) Could the same logic be applied to catalyzing a "leveling out" of the extremism in the copyright war?

Deadline: December 31, 2007 at 12 noon GMT. If you're a minute late, you won't get a prize, even if you nail the whole thing.

Entry: Drop a comment below. Each comment should answer as many of the questions as possible, and I do have moderation turned on to eliminate spam, but not stupidity. I am a firm believer in the right to speak, so even if you tell me "Your blog sux0rz, d00d!" it'll be published without changing a word.

Limitations: There is a limit of one answer per question. However, if you answer the same question multiple times, the last answer is the only on which will count.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Yes, I intentionally left the ladies out. But that doesn't mean that I'm limiting the field only to men. Please be aware that any comments seen to be sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive could be removed. And because I'm not really looking for them, these comments might slip past my amazing anti-spam technique. Speech which is offensive for a purpose related to explaining one of the questions might be okay, since I also believe in the right to offend (though I don't typically go out of my way to do so). But please limit your usage of the N-- word, the F-- word, and the rest of those to emotional outbursts and appeals to emotion.

Good luck!

A Sense of Community

I finally just got sick to death of Windows. It's not that I don't think the world uses it, and it's certainly not that I don't like the bloated eye-candy interface. But it's slow, unstable as a bipolar high school cheerleader on crack, and the only programs that work really well are the ones made by Microsoft.

Except for OpenOffice.org, that is. I downloaded the free office suite from OpenOffice's web site, and I began using it. Except for not importing Microsoft's latest file formats (which my $400 copy of Office 2003 didn't do, either), it seems to work great, and can both pull in from and save to a variety of file formats. And it saves to PDF files, too. All for free. And available for both Windows and Linux. After using OpenOffice for the better part of a year (with few exceptions), I have had zero problems with data loss due to the switchover (but, dear reader, please remember to make backups before you decide to do anything that changes the way your system works).

Over the past 5 years, I've either paid for or received as payment for some of my freelance work about $12,000 in software for my Windows machine. Occasionally, I've received a duplicate license for software I've already had, but I didn't count any of that. The $12,000 (give or take a couple hundred) in software was software I actively used. And I just replaced all but one program of that by switching to Ubuntu.

The word Ubuntu is a Zulu word for 'Community', though there are lots of other meanings. The word implies that if you see a need, you fill it if you can. Likewise, you should be able to expect assistance when you need it. Community is important, and as a traditional value of all cultures, the word Ubuntu (though it comes from only one culture in South Africa) is truly a universal concept, and one that isn't difficult to grasp.

However, I began a little seriously worried because there are a lot of programs out there which are named in a similar utopian style, and they routinely fall short because not enough people actually want to make it work. However, Ubuntu has started and maintained a community which is friendly to beginners, and which offers that which is needed, if you merely look for it.

Community is the foundation to democracy. When everyone is working toward a goal, whether it's as broad as democracy or as versatile as an operating system, the only solution to any of this is to work toward the same goal. Being one community is called solidarity and this is one of the things that Ubuntu is about (both the concept and the operating system).

Accessibility is a big issue when making the switch to a GNU/Linux system such as Ubuntu. And without this accessibility, there wouldn't be an operating system I could use. But one thing that Ubuntu is lacking in is price. My $12,000 of software on my $1,000 computer is now $0 in software on my $1,000 computer, and I have the same functionality with only 4 days of downtime (well, except for Skype, which doesn't have an AMD-64 version for my version of Ubuntu yet, so aside from my not being able to talk to a couple of my clients, everything else is working great).

Which brings me to another democratic concept: government transparency. Like the software industry, the government jealously hoards the things that make it work, shrouded in layers of unnecessary secrecy and inaccessibility. Don't forget that Bush was nearly assassinated on 9/11 by a group of foriegn nationals, so I can understand where he's coming from, though I disagree with how he's going about protecting himself. But I also disagree with the way that software companies tend to rabidly protect their intellectual property, as well. The way the laws work right now creates a draconic system that encourages animosity and which is counterproductive to the aims of creativity, invention, and progress. If software companies released the source code for versions of programs they were no longer supporting, it would allow everyone to benefit: users and producers both would benefit from the increase in security that the open source community undoubtedly would bring to the program.

But there are drawbacks to open source. I'm sure of it. Uhm.... Never mind, I'll have to get back to everyone on that. Let's talk about the drawbacks to closed source.

The main drawback is Microsoft. I'm not saying their products are bad, but the big problem is that they don't publish a lot of their internal standards, and the fact that they don't release source code on anything (and encourage others to resist the open source movement as well) is a sticking point because other programmers can't learn what they're doing wrong, nor can they help Microsoft understand where their own shortcomings are.

The Open Source folks are right about a lot of things, and community is one of them. Solidarity is another. But where they routinely fall short is in action. Their ability to act cohesively is impressive, but it takes a monumental undertaking to get them interested in anything long-term or far-reaching. Basically, the bulk of the work needs to be done first, and then other programmers will weigh in with their code and review. At least, that's the general practice behind projects that I've seen.

So then we get back to how this relates to democracy. Not all communities are democracies, but all democracies have, as their basis, communities. The differences that we all have add to the diversity that's the strength of democracy everywhere. Even those who dissent add value by giving a counterpoint to the consenus, which spurs thought and gives us all something to think about. Well, at least, when it's real dissent and not just naysaying for the purpose of being a dissenting voice. This is another point I've noticed in the Open Source collection of communities: dissent for the sake of dissent. Dissent has a purpose, and that purpose is to point out a weakness so that it can be addressed. Ultimately, dissent will either logically reduce an idea to allow everyone to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks, or it will simply dissemble an idea by tearing it down with emotional arguments that have no real bearing on whether or not it will work. Of course, there is a time for that, but usually only when there is something in the way of an ethical issue. Tearing an idea down simply to tear it down is itself unethical in a democracy.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that most of my Linux experiences have brought me: a bunch of teasing and ribbing and unhelpful suggestions by people too busy to really help. I will say that there were two exceptions: the BSD community (which was my introduction to open source and free software, but which didn't work out because I'm not a programmer and production schedules didn't allow me time to read enough to make it work), and the Fedora community (which simply seemed to ignore me altogether). I made it a point to test the waters before I made the switch, and the help that I received from the Ubuntu community's forums was not only top-notch, it was support from other users, both beginners and experts alike. And now I can keep to my production deadlines while at the same time reading minimally about how my system works. And I can play with it, break it, fix it, and modify it. It's not Windows, in that there isn't a lot of hand-holding built into the system, but with an entire community active, there's not a lot of reason for it to be built in.

I actually got told that building community was akin to inviting communism one time. However, in communism there isn't a guaranteed individual ownership of property (and I don't just mean land). There is no means for someone to exceed their beginning station in life. There's no progress. People are not free to be creative and express new and (sometimes) spectacular ideas. People can't progress unless they're guaranteed both an equal footing in life and the chance to earn more, with the guarantee of creative license. People should be free to make even bad choices, because in these bad choices is the opportunity to learn. In a communist society, fascism tends to reign supreme, not because only fascists are communists, but because the entire system of communism invites stagnation .

In a democracy, people must be guaranteed the right to be creative. They have to have the right to speak against the government. They need the tools to be able to resist the government's interference in their own lives, because that's the only way that a balance between liberalism and conservatism can be maintained. An extreme conservative is a fascist (that's actually the definition: fascism is an extreme version of conservatism); and an extreme liberal is a libertarian. I've heard people tell me there are no moderates, but I'm about as moderate as they get. I believe in personal freedom, but I also believe in government. I am an extreme moderate, and the term for that is egalitarian.

The vote that people get in a communist society (one which is ideally run) counts only for declaring that a person agrees or disagrees with society. It holds no real power because in a perfectly communist state, there is no individuality: everything belongs to the community, including the individual. In a democracy, on the other hand, the community comes together because it needs and wants community. And this is why I love Ubuntu: not many people are there who don't really want to be.

The result is an open, free, and democratically-run operating system which is responsive to end user needs because the end users are the ones in charge of its development.

If only the RIAA, ASCAP and MPAA (and those who are like them) could learn that the power of popular opinion is the way to profit. They now understand that they don't have the same power that the public has. They don't control popular opinion, and any idea that they did was an illusion. For a brief moment in history, we're going to have physical media. From here on, it's digital. The community itself has spoken in cases like Jammie Thomas, Tanya Andersen, Granny Crain, and the other victims of exploitation by the system. The MAFIAA organizations are not in public favor, and it seems that their entire existence has hinged on the control over media that they've never had until recently. And now that they've got it, they're failing even faster.

And, strangely enough, the RIAA claims there was an increase in revenues at a time when there was a corresponding increase in what they've decided to label as media piracy. The shortcoming in this case is that there is no real community built by the RIAA, ASCAP, MPAA, or any of the others. Sure, there's a consumer base to draw from, but that's not the same thing. Their general draconism and fascist ideals seem to fly in the very face of democracy. And consumers know and understand this, particularly the newest generation of consumers who start buying their own music as early as age 12. Most people I know who download music do so because they don't have money to buy, but as soon as they do get money, they generally go out and get the real thing, because ownership in the new culture is a status symbol, and is thought of in a much better light than mere possession. It's a pity the RIAA doesn't allow ownership.

Because ownership would build communities of artists, rather than driving them away.

Silly fascists. Music's for playing!