Unique Identifier

February 13, 2007

Break out the trench coats and misogny

Egad! Maltese Falcon totally stolen! It is impossible to contemplate this set of events without absolutely glowing. This is a falcon in pursuit of which Bogart got punched in the neck by a cop and went right on talking. I hope they find it… in Istanbul. In the possession of the fat man, immediately following a mysterious harbor fire. Via BoingBoing.

Posted 09:03 AM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 11, 2007

The Potter Stewart copyright rule

C and I listened to the Open Source Radio podcast of their recent show on plagiarism and copyright, “The Ecstasy of Influence” this morning. It’s a wonderful piece rooted in discussion of what it is to “plagiarize,” and the ways in which our law and culture attack the issue. Check it out, I’ll wait.

About 3/4 of the way through, the host challenged Mike Doughty to draw the line between artistically-acceptable “ganking” of a progression or a hook from a song in order to expand on it in a work of your own, and unethical infringement/plagiarism. Mike elided the question, and Siva Vaidhyanathan backed him up by saying that we’re at the point in early 21st-century copyright questions where case-by-case determinations of when an “artist” goes to far are really the only credible way to determine whether sanctions are required. He didn’t say the words “I know it when I see it,” but he came pretty close.

For those who don’t make a hobby of reading up on obscenity law, “I know it when I see it” is Justice Potter Stewart’s infamous formulation of the legal test for how to separate obscene texts from non-obscene ones. In the legal community it’s become a semi-notorious example of a legal standard that’s so vague as to be useless to any person who isn’t Potter Stewart. It turned out to be extraordinarily difficult to apply,¹ and ended up being replaced by the not-much-better “community standards” test.

If the “I know it when I see it” test is the exemplar of judicial unworkability, then what do we make of Siva’s diagnosis that that’s exactly where we are in the copyright infringement space? After a short period of despair, I realized that the IKIWISI terminology is useful to the extent that it helps move the copyright conversation away from our traditional conception of copyright as property and towards a liability rule. After all, if copyright owners understood that what they had was not an absolute right to control the work, but a right to try to convince Potter Stewart that the use was unjustified, we might see fewer of the behaviors we view as abusive. Compare this to the situation in obscenity law, where we were concerned not with the payment of a royalty, but with the prior restraint of entire texts. The vagueness of the Potter Stewart test seems a lot less troubling in that light.

Oh, I’m back, by the way. And I am aware of each of the following:

1. I have not posted anything in almost six months.
2. There are around 10,000 comment spams cluttering the site.
3. Bill Haydon just died

¹ It also led to the bizarre scene of the Court watching allegedly-obscene films in a special screening room, and the even more bizarre (and possibly apocryphal) tale of a clerk having to narrate the on-screen action to his nearly-blind boss.

Posted 10:18 AM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 22, 2006

The move progresses; New photos on Flickr

C and I arrive in Alexandria on or around September 9, so keep an eye out for us. Tomorrow we leave for Minnesota and wedding bells. Part of my duties there will be take pictures on the Minolta X-700 I inherited from Dad. As preparation, I have started to take some interest in photography. Check it out over on our Flickr account. More later.

Posted 10:06 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Book Review: Dune’s vision of ecological futility

Dune’s fortieth anniversary was last year. For anyone who’s read it, the resonant central image of the series is the desert of Arrakis—planetwide and populated only by the Fremen, a ferocious tribe that survives by clinging to every drop of water, and by shai-hulud, the great sandworm. The story’s full of political intrigue and an astonishing cast of characters, cultures, and histories rivaled only by The Lord of the Rings. But Dune is also an environmental exploration, and that’s what I want to talk about.

By the way, this posting is full of spoilers, so stop now if you don’t want to see discussion of some major plot points in Dune. It also only covers the first three books of the Dune Chronicles. Frank Herbert wrote three more after this, and his son co-wrote three more after Herbert’s death.

Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), and Children of Dune (1976), by Frank Herbert.

While Tolkien resisted critics’ attempts to find political lessons in Lord of the Rings,¹ Frank Herbert hoped that Dune would help develop some planetary consciousness in a public that was (and is) unfamiliar with the idea that human agency has global effects. Actually, in the universe of Dune, the Atreides’ manipulation of Arrakis’s ecosystem affects the whole planet and politically realigns an entire galaxy.

A major plot point in Dune, and here I’m speaking of the first book particularly, was the revelation that the Fremen had a secret 500-year plan to shift Arrakis’s desert ecosystem into something a lot more hospitable to humans, with surface water, green plants, and the like.² In Dune Messiah, Paul Atriedes’ ascension to the Imperial throne made it possible to vastly accelerate that plan. And in Children of Dune, Leto II, Paul’s heir, came to realize that the unintended consequences of this terraforming would be the extinction of the sandworms and exhaustion of the galaxy’s only source of the vitally-important drug melange (which the sandworms produce).

It’s impossible to read Dune without being impressed that billions of fates turn on the ecological management of Arrakis. But Dune is not Silent Spring (published three years before). There’s no discussion in Dune of non-intentional effects on the planet, through pollution, construction, overharvesting of melange, etc. Herbert’s ideology is that of the steward, not the conservationist. In fact, at the end of Children of Dune, Leto II decided that to save human lives (long-term), it was necessary to radically accelerate the conversion of Arrakis’s environment, driving the sandworm straight into extinction and giving himself a political stranglehold on the only Imperial stockpiles of melange.³

For Frank Herbert, planetary ecology was something to understand, but it was also something to husband, use and, if necessary, destroy. This kind of stewardship ethic is popular in political discourse today, where it is both attractive and extraordinarily dangerous. Pretty much every character in Dune makes management decisions based on a desire to properly steward Arrakis’s primary natural resource, melange, but all except for Leto II make catastrophically wrong choices leading only to violence and destruction. In particular, Alia (sister of Paul and regent during Leto II’s infancy) attempted to irrigate Arrakis, not appreciating the threat to melange production. This ultimately led to political destabilization and contributed to her fall. Alia and others failed because they either couldn’t see or wouldn’t confront the Big Picture—the full environmental and political consequences—implicated in natural resource stewardship. Only Leto could see the Big Picture and properly husband Arrakis’s ecology. But Leto had superhuman prescient powers.

This is the source of Dune’s overall skepticism. The only person who could effectively husband Arrakis’s resources without destroying himself or, worse, the human race, was basically a superhero. Everyone else—even those with the very best intentions—failed.

The real world doesn’t have a kwisatz haderach—a superbeing like Leto II. Thus, Dune can be read as a polemic against interference with planetary systems. In the absence of complete understanding, unintended consequences are rife.

The characters most idolized in Dune are the Fremen, who typify human honor and dignity throughout the series. Fremen accepted the brutal realities of Arrakis and comported their lifestyle to the planet rather than vice versa. As Arrakis transformed, so did the Fremen, becoming soft, avaricious and cowardly. When we transform our environment, what is left of us?

¹ Tolkien’s foreword to Lord of the Rings famously denied that LOTR was allegory for World War II or the beginning of the atomic era.

² This plan was actually developed by an off-world “planetologist” who came to live on Arrakis and became a Fremen himself. I mention this because “planetologist” is a great word and deserves revival.

³ It’s a brutal political calculus; this is the kind of thing Herbert is famous for and to understand it, you’ll have to read the book.

Posted 10:05 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 18, 2006

Intermission—Everyday

This is just a quick reminder that the Internet can really be quite nice.

Posted 04:35 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 13, 2006

Getting to know you: Tech policy and the class action

It’s become fashionable in the tech policy community to self-identify with environmentalists. You see it most when people talk about cultural environmentalism. But as a very green friend of mine told me on his way to Lawrence Lessig’s class, the analogy doesn’t seem very productive in its current form. Terrestrial environmentalism, after all, gains its strength not only from aesthetic concerns, but also straight human health issues. Cultural environmentalism, on the other hand, seems untethered to meatspace concerns and so comes off as very ivory tower.

Earthjustice has these great ads. I can’t find one now, but they have normal folks standing in t-shirts that say “plaintiff.” I love the ads because they encourage the viewer to consider how he himself is harmed when we drill in ANWR, or poison rivers, or drive Hummers. They take the issues out of the ivory tower and bring them to ground.

Last month I got a notice from AT&T that they had “clarified” their privacy policy to make it “clearer” that they own all my data and will use or release it as they see fit. Made me mad, but since my DSL was part of a six-month package, I can’t drop AT&T without incurring termination charges. Every one of AT&T’s customers is in the same boat, more or less. So I’m damaged by AT&T’s action, but lack the wherewithal to do much about it on my own. This is a great opportunity for a well-fought class action. I, and most of AT&T’s customers, would probably care less actually recovering our damages in this case than just sending a signal to AT&T that this kind of thing has very real costs.

The net policy arena is full of these small-damages, widely-spread kinds of claims. Vigorous class action prosecution could really defuse egregious corporate behaviors that don’t quite cross the threshold of unlawfulness. And it’s not just privacy policies—class actions are a potential mechanism to get companies to take security of customer information seriously, too. This year C and I have received three notifications that laptops with our personal information were stolen from various corporations entrusted with that infromation. Knock on wood, our actual damages from this are very slight—but each one of these breaches involved hundreds of thousands of people. Classic class action stuff. And increasing tiering of the net could give rise to class action type relief as well.

I imagine there is some private litigation going on in these areas. But there is an obvious space for one of the big ideology groups to step in and inject some high level coordination, as well as impressive resources and skill, into moving things to the next level. EFF? CDT? ACLU? Think about it.

Posted 02:03 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 25, 2006

Reflections from the Bar/Bri midpoint

There are thirty days until the California bar exam.

When I speak to California attorneys about their experience with this exam, almost all have used the word “stamina.” It reads on this exam in two ways.

First, the exam itself a three-day siege. A certain amount of physical and mental endurance is necessary in order to avoid gibbering on day three.

Second and more importantly, exam prep (administered, for about 95% of law school grads, by Bar/Bri) itself is a challenge. 8–10 hours a day, 6–7 days a week, for just under two months. For me, for now, this is the more difficult stamina challenge.

It’s very difficult to feel any sense of accomplishment from bar study. One day pretty much blends into another, and benchmarks of progress are few and far between due to the very large number of subjects under analysis. The process can really start to grind. Last night, I ended up walking the streets at midnight, listening to Sigur Rós, in order to recover perspective. “What is the point?”

“You can’t learn everything” is repeated endlessly to applicants. But the expectation that you will try to learn everything is equally well-communicated. Our most recent practice tested us on exceptions to exceptions to rules—issues that have never appeared on a bar exam, but that do reflect settled law. Could it be tested? No one knows. Maybe, I guess. Maybe it will be tested, and I’ll get it wrong, and I will fail. Better make a flash card right now.

At dinner the other night, David said that the bar exam’s gotten harder just because there’s so much more law now than in the past. I guess that could be true but of course it doesn’t change the price of Bar/Bri books in China.

I have concluded that the only thing to do is to draw lines around each subject area, denoting the depth to which I am willing to study, and hold myself to those depths. Any deeper, and the cost/benefit of the dive no longer balances. I have a marriage to consider, and a move to the East Coast. Some of my classmates have infant children. Others are working full time jobs. For me, and for them, we just have to draw a line and rely on ourselves.

That’s inconsistent with the Bar/Bri mindset. Their paced study program recommends up to twelve hours’ study every day. That might help me pick up some extra points, but would turn me into a shell. To that extent, the Bar/Bri program is bad and unhelpful. It’s guidance, of a sort, but it’s not realistic or consistent with maintaining the stamina actually required.

So that’s where I am right now.

Posted 12:52 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 21, 2006

Procrastinatr and the Power of Social Hacks

If you follow Mac news/reviews at all, you’ve probably heard or will hear about the Procrastinatr fiasco. The brief recap is that Brian Sutorious, a college kid, posted a hot new “app” called Procrastinatr, that promised to help Mac users organize their lives better. Somehow it got picked up at TUAW, that’s the above link (Procrastinatr.com is dead now), and a whole bunch of well-meaning Mac users, probably productivity geeks, downloaded it. The only problem was, Procrastinatr was a trojan. When you ran it, it used AppleScript to move all your iCal events back a week. And Procrastinatr didn’t prompt for an Admin password because iCal files, like most user-created files, are in ~/.

Good joke? Bad joke. But a wonderful cautionary tale; a whole bunch of Mac users willingly installed and ran Procrastinatr (I confess, I visited the site and considered downloading it); now everyone is reminded that the net is basically Deadwood.

Is the Mac a secure computing platform? I guess it is resistant to true viruses. But security means being an active, thinking net user. “Files Are Not For Sharing” is a joke, but “Look both ways before you double-click” is not.

Posted 05:39 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 20, 2006

How do you grow a “neutral” net?

I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop on the net neutrality issue for some time. The whole thing seemed too easy. On the one side, plucky proponents of neutrality (the Good). On the other, greedy advocates of traffic discrimination (the Bad).

Over at the Weekly Standard, Andy Kessler has has identified the Ugly—and it is our stagnant market in information carriage.

Net society’s no longer satisfied with a high-penetration network; we want it to also get faster and faster, forever. Kessler points out that the only ones in a position to make that happen—the telcos and cablecos—lack incentive. It’s way more profitable for AT&T to just keep charging out the wazoo for international calls than to build out. And it’s more profitable for Comcast to charge you $100 every month for the same TV. Companies like these might (maybe) make infrastructure investments if there were a really big carrot before them, like the opportunity to extract rents from the big companies doing business online; if they’re prohibited from doing so by net neutrality rules, then there’s no carrot and the likelihood of real infrastructure investment goes to zero.

Talk about a Hobson’s choice. Either you give up on neutrality, and hope that in their graces, the telcos/cablecos decide to become aggressively pro-consumer (*cough*), or you embrace neutrality and resign yourself to a lifetime of watching “Lost” in 320×200 on your giant plasma.

Unfortunately, having done a great job identifying the problem, Kessler doesn’t do a great job identifying any solution. Carrots aren’t working, he says, so let’s try a stick. His proposal is to maybe threaten a government takeover of the entire infrastructure—that’ll put the fear into ’em, he thinks. Personally, I doubt that that would work. But Kessler’s thinking about the problem in the right way.

A better stick? I’ll take a shot: Aggressive public—federal, state, municipal, whatever—subsidy of mesh networking. Get these things out there using whatever moneys you can find, get them fast, and get them working. If they need access to the backbone, give it to them at public universities and other government-owned facilities. Whatever you do, give the telcos/cablecos no influence over the project—no connections to the backbone, no IP assignments, nothing. If you need space to put the repeaters, use eminent domain to get them up on the telephone poles for added “in your face”-ness. Encourage startups to come up with new (and, initially, low-bandwidth) uses for these things, probably with an initial emphasis on locally-oriented content. Then start looking for ways to get the bandwidth higher.

Once the telcos and cablecos start seeing a potential lunch-eater right in their own back yard, spurred forward with public money but not quite publicly-operated, they might get a reality check and really innovating on their networks even in an atmosphere of neutrality rules.

Remember those stories about how much AT&T hated packet-switching in the early days, and it was only because of DARPA and the public universities and a few key startups that anything happened to get AT&T off its butt and innovating? That’s where we are now. We’re not trying to move to publicly-owned information carriage, just private operation that’s got the right kind of incentives. It just takes a little bit of guts, in the right places. Where have you gone, J.C.R. Licklider?

Posted 02:00 PM by Rob Courtney | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

More on OmniOutliner + Law School

Erik Schmidt is a 2L at Santa Clara Law School; like me he loves OmniOutliner for law school. Erik has taken it all the way, though, and is rocking a full-on kGTD system. Check it out for another view of the cathedral.

Posted 08:47 AM by Rob Courtney | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)