Outreach Volunteers Needed - Content Control is a Dead End

[Dan Geer]

[ Pardon the delay; my e-mail home
  base of record is disintegrating
  plus I travel for a living. ]



Thanks to all who remarked on-list or off.

Yes, I am being simple but I think not simplistic, and I will
be as brief as I can.

Information can and must be owned as property.  If we depart on
that point, we should be debating philosophy rather than
mechanism and you should stop reading here.

My information about me is mine, i.e., I own it modulo fine
distinctions at the fringe like whether I own my name.  If we
depart on that point, we should be debating philosophy rather
than mechanism and you should stop reading here.

Physical goods have non-zero marginal cost of manufacture
whilst electronic goods have zero marginal cost of
manufacture.  It is this duality that matters.

*  In the physical world, if I make a commodity then my ability
   to sustain myself derives from my ability to over time
   maintain my profit, i.e., to decrease my cost of equivalent
   production more effectively than my competitors can
   counter.  The value of my goods to me is proportional to my
   margin while the value of my goods to my customer is
   proportional to my price.

*  In the electronic world, if I make a commodity then my
   ability to sustain myself derives from my ability to over
   time maintain my profit, i.e., to increase my competitors'
   cost of equivalent production more effectively than my
   competitors can counter.  The value of my goods to me is
   proportional to my margin while the value of my goods to my
   customer is proportional to my price.

In short, the value of a physical good is made more favorable
to its maker largely through depressing its cost of
reproduction to the maker whereas the value of an electronic
good is made more favorable to its maker largely through
increasing its cost of reproduction to others.

Some would argue that X cannot be property if an "exclusion
principle" does not obtain, i.e., if I have your car then you
do not have your car and hence your car is a property whereas
if I make a copy of your correspondence then you still have
your correspondence and hence, there being no exclusion, your
correspondence cannot be a property.  This I reject.

As a person who wishes to exercise strong control over my
personal information for no other reason than that it is none
of your damned business, I can either rely on privacy as a
social contract, i.e., on your extension to me of "the right
most valued by civilized men," or I can rely on secrecy, i.e.,
on a condition of active defense I seize on my own.

The world being what it is, secrecy will have to do.  My task
is to raise the cost of reproduction of my data to a level
which is to you diseconomic when compared to your cost of
obtaining my data from me by mutual consent, affection, or
contract.  I can only control my data when I can control its
cost of reproduction.

In like manner, other owners of other electronic information
must raise the cost of reproduction thereof to a level which is
to you diseconomic when compared to your cost of obtaining that
information by mutual consent, affection, or contract.  They
can only control their data when they can control its cost of
reproduction.

When presented with a container of bits, its proper handling
can be left to the recipient obeying what amounts to its label,
or the container can attempt to protect itself where, again, an
effective protection is achieved when the costs then favor
keeping honest people honest.  That the law may be an ass, or
that you may nothing to hide, or that life is unfair, or that
social traditions have yet to embrace and extend Moore's Law,
so forth and so on is, well, irrelevant.  Without containers
that encapsulate content, your faith can only then be in
bureaucracy which is likely to exempt itself and in your name.

--dan




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