Quotulatiousness

January 13, 2012

Movie and music piracy: what’s the real economic cost?

Filed under: Economics, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

On the Freakonomics blog, Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman look at the actual costs of piracy compared to the ludicrous claimed costs:

Supporters of stronger intellectual property enforcement — such as those behind the proposed new Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills in Congress — argue that online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs.

These numbers seem truly dire: a $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs — that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010.

The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”

More recently, a smaller estimate — $58 billion — was produced by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). But that IPI estimate, as both Sanchez and tech journalist Tim Lee have pointed out, is replete with methodological problems, including double- and triple-counting, that swell the estimate of piracy losses considerably.

October 27, 2011

Up next: the Great Firewall of … America

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:18

The headline on this article says it all: E-PARASITES Bill: ‘The End Of The Internet As We Know It’.

We already wrote about the ridiculously bad E-PARASITES bill (the Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation Act), but having now had a chance go to through the full bill a few more times, there are even more bad things in there that I missed on the first read-through. Now I understand why Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s first reaction to this bill was to say that “this would mean the end of the Internet as we know it.”

She’s right. The more you look at the details, the more you realize how this bill is an astounding wishlist of everything that the legacy entertainment gatekeepers have wanted in the law for decades and were unable to get. It effectively dismantles the DMCA’s safe harbors, what’s left of the Sony Betamax decision, puts massive liability on tons of US-based websites, and will lead to widespread blocking of websites and services based solely on accusations of some infringement. It’s hard to overstate just how bad this bill is.

And, while its mechanisms are similar to the way China’s Great Firewall works (by putting liability on service providers if they fail to block sites), it’s even worse than that. At least the Chinese Great Firewall is determined by government talking points. The E-PARASITES bill allows for a massive private right of action that effectively lets any copyright holder take action against sites they don’t like. (Oh, and the bill is being called both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and E-PARASITES (which covers the PROTECT IP-like parts of the bill, SOPA refers to the larger bill that also includes the felony streaming part).

July 20, 2011

Another aspect of China’s amazing economic growth

Filed under: China, Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:28

Steve Jobs might want to look at the Chinese market a bit more carefully . . . something’s happening that he may need to pay closer attention to:

The Western news media is replete with pithy descriptions of the rapid changes taking place in China: China has the world’s fastest growing economy. China is undergoing remarkable and rapid change. This represents a unique moment for a society changing as quickly as China.

You probably read such things in the paper every day — but if you have never been to China, I’m not sure you know quite what this means on a mundane level. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, in the 2+ years that RP and I have been in our apartment, much of the area around us has been torn down, rebuilt, or gutted and renovated – in some cases, several times over. I had the thought, only half-jokingly, that when we returned from a couple months abroad, we might not be able to recognize our apartment building. Or that it might not be there at all.

As it turns out, my fears were baseless — our scrappy little home remains. The neighborhood, however, has definitely kicked it up a notch or seven. Starbucks has opened not one, but THREE branches (that I encountered) within a 10 minute walk of one another. An H&M has opened across from our apartment building. These are the kinds of major Western brands that were previously only represented in Kunming by fast food chains like McDonald’s and KFC. Our neighborhood has quickly become the swanky shopping center of the city.

Update, 21 July: Andrew Orlowski thinks I’ve been taken in by a non-story:

Some stories are so unusual, you immediately wonder if they’re too good to be true. On Tuesday, a Western NGO in China posted a remarkable tale, reporting that ingenious Chinese retailers in a medium-sized provincial city called Kunming had cloned an Apple Retail Store, faithfully reproducing the staff T-shirts, furniture, display material, and name tags.

[. . .]

But another 10 seconds with Google would reveal that in China, as in the UK and many other countries, Apple has a network of authorised resellers. Apple lays down very strict guidelines on how the resellers must present the gear. The sales material is Apple’s, and the specifications are extremely precise. And to be an Apple “Premium Reseller”, you have to look a lot like an Apple Apple Store, but naturally, you can’t call yourself one. There are hundreds of these, with Apple manufacturer Foxconn’s brother Gou Tai-chang planning 100.

[. . .]

Think of it like this: if you had a Jaguar showroom, anywhere in the world, would you operate from a dodgy lock-up and advertise it with a hand-painted sign? I thought not. You’d want it to look as slick and expensive as the real thing. I’m not sure why we expect Chinese Apple resellers not to do so, too.

February 16, 2011

Another, safer, table saw design

Filed under: Technology, Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:31

Table saw injuries can be quite gruesome — amputation of fingers, for example — so any new technology that might make woodworkers more safe is welcome. The first innovator in the field was the SawStop, a device that could stop the spinning blade of the saw whenever it detected human skin. Mighty impressive, but none of the major manufacturers wanted to buy the technology: it increased the cost of existing saws beyond what they thought their customers would be willing to pay. The inventor had to form a company to build his own table saws instead.

A post at the Popular Woodworking blog looks at a newer device to make table saws more safe:

Ten years ago, table saws were about to change. In 2001, you could buy a cabinet saw, such as a Delta Unisaw, a Powermatic 66 or a clone of the Unisaw made in Taiwan. Or you could get a contractor’s saw, a heavy but relatively portable table saw. Benchtop saws were not a significant part of the market, and things hadn’t changed much since the end of World War II. All the saws at the time had one thing in common: awful guards that were rarely used. Things were changing on two fronts. Underwriter’s Laboratories and the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) were looking into bringing American saw’s guard systems into the modern age, spurred in large part by a pesky woodworker from Berea, Ky., named Kelly Mehler.

Mehler was the author of “The Tablesaw Book,” and he questioned why European saws had more effective and user-friendly guards. At about the same time, Stephen Gass, an amateur woodworker and patent attorney with a doctorate in physics invented the SawStop, an imaginative and revolutionary device that could stop a spinning blade in less than a heartbeat if a flesh came in contact with it. These two ideas caught the attention of CPSC, and the long saga of what to do about the problem of table saw injuries began.

A couple weeks ago, this story was mentioned in the national media, in a brief story with scary-sounding headline in USA Today. As has happened many times in the last few years, this set off a round of emotional debate among woodworkers.

[. . .]

In the next few months the discussions and meetings between manufacturers and the CPSC will probably resume. One thing that will likely factor into this round will be alternatives to SawStop’s “flesh-detecting” technology. Last spring, the joint venture of member companies of the Power Tool Institute filed patent application 12769396. This describes an electronic detection system and a mechanism to fire an explosive trigger (similar to that used in automotive airbags) that would drop the blade below the table. An important difference to this approach is that it wouldn’t force anything into the blade, thus avoiding an expensive replacement due to an incidental firing. Also interesting is the mention of this system’s ability to tell the difference between wet wood and human flesh.

And there are several new patent applications from the SawStop inventors covering detection and deployment systems for table saws, and the possibility of using similar devices in miter saws. Will this mean new, less-expensive and less-destructive systems for table saws and other tools that will make woodworking safer, or will it mean years of waiting while the lawyers battle over intellectual property issues?

February 12, 2011

Deeper implications of the rise of “3D printing”

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

One of the most interesting things happening in the manufacturing world is the rise of a technology that may well make huge swathes of factories obsolete: practical 3D printing. What was originally just a neat way to develop small prototypes for mass production is quickly becoming a viable way to replace the entire mass production step. The technology is still limited to a small range of materials, but the price has been dropping steeply enough that small 3D printers are within the reach of hobbyists already.

The Economist points out that this will not be an unmixed blessing (as technological revolutions ever have been):

Others maintain that, by reducing the need for factory workers, 3D printing will undermine the advantage of low-cost, low-wage countries and thus repatriate manufacturing capacity to the rich world. It might; but Asian manufacturers are just as well placed as anyone else to adopt the technology. And even if 3D printing does bring manufacturing back to developed countries, it may not create many jobs, since it is less labour-intensive than standard manufacturing.

The technology will have implications not just for the distribution of capital and jobs, but also for intellectual-property (IP) rules. When objects can be described in a digital file, they become much easier to copy and distribute — and, of course, to pirate. Just ask the music industry. When the blueprints for a new toy, or a designer shoe, escape onto the internet, the chances that the owner of the IP will lose out are greater.

There are sure to be calls for restrictions on the use of 3D printers, and lawsuits about how existing IP laws should be applied. As with open-source software, new non-commercial models will emerge. It is unclear whether 3D printing requires existing rules to be tightened (which could hamper innovation) or loosened (which could encourage piracy). The lawyers are, no doubt, rubbing their hands.

Just as nobody could have predicted the impact of the steam engine in 1750 — or the printing press in 1450, or the transistor in 1950 — it is impossible to foresee the long-term impact of 3D printing. But the technology is coming, and it is likely to disrupt every field it touches. Companies, regulators and entrepreneurs should start thinking about it now. One thing, at least, seems clear: although 3D printing will create winners and losers in the short term, in the long run it will expand the realm of industry — and imagination.

So, even if you don’t have immediate plans to buy a 3D printer, you could do worse than to dust off your old drafting book and learn a bit of CAD. You may be using those skills sooner than you expect.

There’s more information (from 2009) on the 3D printing process here.

January 15, 2011

What do you do when you find something cool on the Internet?

Filed under: Humour, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

If you’re cool, you do something like this:

Original work by Caldy and Rosscott. H/T to Royce McDaniels for bringing it to my attention.

Remember, kids, everytime you re-use someone’s creative work on the Internet without giving credit, God (or your Deity of choice) kills a kitten. Don’t make God (or your Deity of choice) kill any more kittens!

September 19, 2010

The end of “ownership”?

Filed under: Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Cory Doctorow finds Intel adopting a Hollywood-style “crippleware”/license model in new hardware. As he correctly points out, this is an attempt to move us away from the ownership model, where you buy full control of the object you pay for, to a licensing model, where you only get certain rights of use:

This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls “If value, then right,” sounds reasonable on its face. But it’s a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.

Moreover, it’s an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the “If value, then right” theory, you don’t own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. “If value, then right,” is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It’s a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants.

June 2, 2010

New copyright bill introduced

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 16:21

It’s not yet online, so I haven’t read it myself (and, not being a lawyer, it might not be a good use of my time). Michael Geist has, however, and provides a useful summary of the good and the bad:

The bill contains some important extensions of fair dealing, including new exceptions for parody, satire, and (most notably) education. It also contains more sensible time shifting and format shifting provisions that still feature restrictions (they do not apply where there is a digital lock) but are more technology neutral than the C-61 model. There is also a “YouTube exception” that grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances. While still not as good as a flexible fair dealing provision, the compromise is a pretty good one. Throw in notice-and-notice for Internet providers, backup copying, and some important changes to the statutory damages regime for non-commercial infringement and there are some provisions worth fighting to keep.

Yet all the attempts at balance come with a giant caveat that has huge implications for millions of Canadians. The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used — whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices — the lock trumps virtually all other rights. In other words, in the battle between two sets of property rights — those of the intellectual property rights holder and those of the consumer who has purchased the tangible or intangible property — the IP rights holder always wins. This represents market intervention for a particular business model by a government supposedly committed to the free market and it means that the existing fair dealing rights (including research, private study, news reporting, criticism, and review) and the proposed new rights (parody, satire, education, time shifting, format shifting, backup copies) all cease to function effectively so long as the rights holder places a digital lock on their content or device.

It’s not quite the total surrender to the entertainment rights holders that many feared, but it’s certainly not the best deal for consumers. Bottom line:

For the glass half-full, the compromise positions on fair dealing, the new exceptions, and statutory damages are not bad — not perfect — but better than C-61. For the glass half-empty, the digital lock provisions are almost identical to C-61 and stand as among the most anti-consumer copyright provisions in Canadian history. Not only are they worse than the U.S. DMCA, but they undermine much of the positive change found in the rest of the bill. In the days and weeks ahead, Canadians must speak out to ensure that the compromise positions found in C-32 remain intact and that the digital lock provisions move from the no-compromise category to the compromise one.

April 13, 2010

Why you should be worried about ACTA

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

H/T to BoingBoing.

September 6, 2009

QotD: Politics in the 21st century will not be about . . .

Filed under: Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

. . . privacy and intellectual property. Or rather, it’s going to be about privacy and intellectual property the way that the 20th century was about steam locomotives and iron foundries. These were vital 19th century technologies that provided a platform for 20th century industries to evolve on top of, but triple-condensing steam engines tell us nothing about semiconductor fab lines: they lie too far down the stack of incremental technologies. By the time we reach 2050, the microprocessor and software industries will be about as innovative and interesting as steam locomotives were in 1950; and the big questions about privacy and IP will have been answered (hint: ubiquitous polycentric surveillance, some sort of abstraction layer to encapsulate and insulate the public against the crisis of copyright, and a generation for whom the concept of “blackmail” makes less sense than bleeding with leeches as a cure for a surfeit of billious humours).

Thirdly, it’s not going to be about biotechnology any more than the 20th century was about powered heavier-than-air flight. Yes, flight was and is important, but not in the way the Italian modernists of the first three decades imagined, with their manifestos about “air-mindedness” and Douhet’s insane, apocalyptic visions of air power — that led to such atrocities as the British Empire’s policing with bombers (dropping poison gas!) in the 1920s, and strategic bombing raids against civilian populations during subsequent wars. For the most part, military aviation falls into two categories (better artillery, and better logistics); it doesn’t really change warfare, it just makes the whole barbaric affair more efficient (which is to say, more destructive). Biotechnology is going to be an efficiency enabler for a whole lot of things, and have immense second-order effects (just like cheap air travel), but it’s not going to fundamentally change us (unless some lunatic repeats the mousepox/interleukin-4 experiment with weaponized smallpox, in which case we are probably all dead).

Charles Stross, “Chrome Plated Jackboots”, Charlie’s Diary, 2009-09-04

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