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A new generation of anti-file-swapping tools is being built and used by copyright holders and their allies, threatening to muddy the digital waters for devoted downloaders. A handful of entrepreneurial technology companies are advancing techniques once used haphazardly by record companies and Napster-haters, in ways that may be far more destructive to the credibility of file-swapping networks than were previous efforts.
A new generation of anti-file-swapping tools is being built and used by copyright holders and their allies, threatening to muddy the digital waters for devoted downloaders.
A handful of entrepreneurial technology companies are advancing techniques once used haphazardly by record companies and Napster-haters, in ways that may be far more destructive to the credibility of file-swapping networks than were previous efforts.
Details of the "bonus world" Tori Amos fans will have access to following the purchase of her forthcoming Epic album, "Scarlet's Walk," have begun to emerge. Utilizing Epic parent Sony's proprietary ConnecteD technology as a key, the disc -- due Tuesday (Oct. 29) -- will unlock an area on Amos' official Web site that will host everything from music to photos, contests, and commentary by the artist. Once linked to "Scarlet's Web" by using the disc in a computer's DVD-ROM drive, users will encounter a trio of maps to aid in navigation through a wide array of bonus features. Epic promises fans will find several songs that are not included on "Scarlet's Walk," lyrics, and a track-by-track commentary by Amos. Behind-the-scenes video and photos from the album's recording sessions, mini-movies, and stories will also reside on the site.
Details of the "bonus world" Tori Amos fans will have access to following the purchase of her forthcoming Epic album, "Scarlet's Walk," have begun to emerge. Utilizing Epic parent Sony's proprietary ConnecteD technology as a key, the disc -- due Tuesday (Oct. 29) -- will unlock an area on Amos' official Web site that will host everything from music to photos, contests, and commentary by the artist.
Once linked to "Scarlet's Web" by using the disc in a computer's DVD-ROM drive, users will encounter a trio of maps to aid in navigation through a wide array of bonus features. Epic promises fans will find several songs that are not included on "Scarlet's Walk," lyrics, and a track-by-track commentary by Amos. Behind-the-scenes video and photos from the album's recording sessions, mini-movies, and stories will also reside on the site.
AOL said it was moving its online service toward the Home Box Office model, asking cable companies for space on their networks and hoping customers would find the offering worth the money. A company executive told the New York Times that AOL had been asking the cable industry to sell ``wholesale access to your network and we will have the direct relationship with the customer,'' but that the cable industry had balked, and that was that. So there it was. AOL, once a passionate advocate for ``open access'' to high-speed cable and telephone data connections, was capitulating to the owners of the pipes. AOL was agreeing, in effect, that giant telecommunications companies may play favorites in deciding what rides on those lines -- and may charge what amounts to a tax for services that do use the connections. This deal was a victory for a narrow, corporate vision of communications. It was a defeat for diversity in entertainment and information, and in the long run a blow to the open architecture of the Internet.
AOL said it was moving its online service toward the Home Box Office model, asking cable companies for space on their networks and hoping customers would find the offering worth the money. A company executive told the New York Times that AOL had been asking the cable industry to sell ``wholesale access to your network and we will have the direct relationship with the customer,'' but that the cable industry had balked, and that was that.
So there it was. AOL, once a passionate advocate for ``open access'' to high-speed cable and telephone data connections, was capitulating to the owners of the pipes. AOL was agreeing, in effect, that giant telecommunications companies may play favorites in deciding what rides on those lines -- and may charge what amounts to a tax for services that do use the connections.
This deal was a victory for a narrow, corporate vision of communications. It was a defeat for diversity in entertainment and information, and in the long run a blow to the open architecture of the Internet.
Think of it this way. I just bought a "Lord of the Rings" DVD at Fry's Electronics for $16.95. That $16.95 has to support not only the movie production, but also an immense manufacturing, distribution, and marketing organization that at the end of the day probably yields two dollars or less in pure profit to the intellectual property owner. So why not cut out that manufacturing, distribution, and marketing operation -- and its associated administrative overhead -- and instead just hurl a copy of the movie onto the Net, let it propagate as demand dictates, with that same two dollars making its way back to the film makers from every subsequent owner? That's where we are headed, to a system where Microsoft doesn't control access to media as much as content controls its own use, and only the content creators get paid. And when it all comes together a decade from now, we'll see that for the very reasons I just described it was inevitable.
Think of it this way. I just bought a "Lord of the Rings" DVD at Fry's Electronics for $16.95. That $16.95 has to support not only the movie production, but also an immense manufacturing, distribution, and marketing organization that at the end of the day probably yields two dollars or less in pure profit to the intellectual property owner. So why not cut out that manufacturing, distribution, and marketing operation -- and its associated administrative overhead -- and instead just hurl a copy of the movie onto the Net, let it propagate as demand dictates, with that same two dollars making its way back to the film makers from every subsequent owner?
That's where we are headed, to a system where Microsoft doesn't control access to media as much as content controls its own use, and only the content creators get paid. And when it all comes together a decade from now, we'll see that for the very reasons I just described it was inevitable.
This idea of radical simplification was captured in a paper I wrote with two MIT colleagues, Jerry Saltzer and Dave Clark, called The end-to-end argument in systems design. In that paper we argued that many functions can only be completely implemented at the end points of the network, so any attempt to build features in the network to support particular applications must be viewed as a tradeoff. Those applications that don't need a particular feature will have unnecessary costs imposed on them to support the other applications that benefit. We argued that building in such functions is rarely necessary, and that systems designers should avoid building any more than the essential and common functions into the network. This design approach has been the bedrock under the Internet's design. The e-mail and web (note they are now lower-case) infrastructure that permeates the world economy would not have been possible if they hadn't been built according to the end-to-end principle. Just remember: underlying a web page that comes up in a fraction of a second are tens or even hundreds of packet exchanges with many unrelated computers. If we had required that each exchange set up a virtual circuit registered with each router on the network, so that the network could track it, the overhead of registering circuits would dominate the cost of delivering the page. Similarly, the decentralized administration of email has allowed the development of list servers and newsgroups which have flourished with little cost or central planning. Yet just when the possibilities hoped for by those folks in Marina del Rey are proving true, and just when the impact of solid-state physics, integrated optics, and software radio are creating unprecedented exponential growth in network capacity, we are starting to hear the call for centralized management, for that same centralized management that we associate with the phone companies. It seems that "broadband" services "require" that new capabilities be built deep into the network. We "see" the need to have the network have knowledge of who is at the endpoints in order to personalize service to the users. "Experts" claim that packet voice requires specially defined "quality of service" to be built into the network.
This idea of radical simplification was captured in a paper I wrote with two MIT colleagues, Jerry Saltzer and Dave Clark, called The end-to-end argument in systems design. In that paper we argued that many functions can only be completely implemented at the end points of the network, so any attempt to build features in the network to support particular applications must be viewed as a tradeoff. Those applications that don't need a particular feature will have unnecessary costs imposed on them to support the other applications that benefit. We argued that building in such functions is rarely necessary, and that systems designers should avoid building any more than the essential and common functions into the network.
This design approach has been the bedrock under the Internet's design. The e-mail and web (note they are now lower-case) infrastructure that permeates the world economy would not have been possible if they hadn't been built according to the end-to-end principle. Just remember: underlying a web page that comes up in a fraction of a second are tens or even hundreds of packet exchanges with many unrelated computers. If we had required that each exchange set up a virtual circuit registered with each router on the network, so that the network could track it, the overhead of registering circuits would dominate the cost of delivering the page. Similarly, the decentralized administration of email has allowed the development of list servers and newsgroups which have flourished with little cost or central planning.
Yet just when the possibilities hoped for by those folks in Marina del Rey are proving true, and just when the impact of solid-state physics, integrated optics, and software radio are creating unprecedented exponential growth in network capacity, we are starting to hear the call for centralized management, for that same centralized management that we associate with the phone companies.
It seems that "broadband" services "require" that new capabilities be built deep into the network. We "see" the need to have the network have knowledge of who is at the endpoints in order to personalize service to the users. "Experts" claim that packet voice requires specially defined "quality of service" to be built into the network.
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