IP: Taming the Consumer's Computer (NYT)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Tim Finin <finin () cs umbc edu>
Organization: http://umbc.edu/
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 08:06:02 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Taming the Consumer's Computer (NYT)

This is a good, short, non-technical presentation of some
of the basic issues surrounding the control of digital
content by Jonathan Zittrain (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/zittrain.html).

--


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/opinion/11ZITT.html
Taming the Consumer's Computer
March 11, 2002 
By JONATHAN L. ZITTRAIN
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 

Last month the top executives of two of the most powerful
media companies in the world traveled to Washington to
testify before Congress about the most dangerous threat
they face: the American consumer.

Of course they didn't quite phrase it that way. Michael
Eisner, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company,
complained that the technology industry made it too easy
for "people wanting to get anything for free on their
television or computer or hand-held device." Peter Chernin,
president of the News Corporation, worried that the
Internet's "ability to empower the general public" would
lead to the online theft of some of the contents of media
companies' digital treasuries.

... 

The debate on Capitol Hill between content providers like
Disney and those who make the products to deliver that
content, like Intel, was really a proxy for a much larger
debate: What do we want our technology to do? How do we
want it to work? And do we have any say in the matter?

...

Apart from manufacturers' desire not to define the uses of
a PC too narrowly, the public interest in flexible computer
platforms and open data exchange remains almost entirely
absent from this debate. Disney and its cohort are free to
view PC's as delivery systems for Mickey Mouse and friends
- and to make their content available through broadband.
But it's an entirely different matter to re-engineer the PC
so it becomes simply another appliance.

The PC platform and the Internet to which it connects is
the engine of the information revolution - as important to
our economy and culture as all the movies in Hollywood. A
shift from open platforms to closed appliances may be
inevitable, as our consumerist desire for trustworthy PC's
dovetails with information providers' obsession with
control. But we should beware the haste with which some
would sacrifice flexibility for control. If we can't at
least temper this taming of the chaotic PC, the victims
will be competition, innovation and consumer freedom.


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