Twelve Black Code Monkeys

It occurred to me recently how we have this silly game between technology companies on the one hand and hackers on the other. The technology companies produce a gadget or software that is really useful, like the Treo, or the iPod, or TiVo, etc.

These companies often have to play a careful game with content giants because that’s what a lot of them are about – the iPod is about music, TiVo about TV and movies, etc. They want to provide something that consumers will find useful and that they will be able to use in as many ways as they can but the content companies are afraid that this will translate into mass copying of all their copyrighted materials causing people to stop buying these at the prices that keep these industries saturated with money. It is that money that offers both a stick and carrot to the technology companies. They see the stick of litigation and regulation, and the carrot of simply vast quantities of money that could potentially help with their bottom line in some way.

Then there are the hackers (and when I say “hackers” I mean anyone who is actively trying to disassemble technology in ways that they feel will benefit them and others, no matter the intended use of the technology or laws prohibiting what they want to use it for) who think it is everyone’s right to be able to use the technology in a completely free way. There should be no copy protection or other hindrances to viewing content that they feel should be free or almost free in the first place.

The battle, then is not really between hackers and technology companies. Tech companies are simply caught in the crossfire because it is in their products where the battle takes place.

I understand both points of view, but the extremism on either end can get a bit ridiculous. The movie, music, and publishing industries have consistently been against technologies that would give almost any power to consumers in deciding what they want to watch or listen to, how, and when. They tried killing the VCR, which ended up providing movie companies with untold billions. They tried killing MP3 player technology and file sharing, but Apple’s iTunes has shown that giving users the ability to buy and download individual songs for a low price is something that can generate revenue as well. In general, these industries have been fighting a very defensive battle against technology and even their own consumer in the ultimately doomed goal of maintaining all control over their content. Technology has also provided a cheap means for producing high quality audio and video recordings, and so there’s been an unleashing of independent product that sells for much less than the traditional stuff from bloated industries which need to support legions of lawyers (litigating for their copyright infringements), huge marketing campaigns (becoming less necessary as the Internet provides huge word-of-mouth networks, and the ability to reach vast numbers of people with little or no cost), and huge executive salaries (not to mention ridiculously large salaries for actors and other performers). Much of the independently produced content can also arguably be considered a lot better than the mass-market stuff because it is not tightly controlled by marketing departments employing focus groups. It more truly reflects the true vision and creativity of those who made it.

Hackers have arisen partially as a response to the arrogance and greed of the content companies – in addition to their naiveté in regards to technology. But the fact of the matter is that all too often they are simply creating a means for people to copy things illegally. Some times the laws are still in dispute and/or they don’t make sense. However, when you buy a piece of content with clearly defined restrictions against copying, and then make copies for all your friends, the charts only see the profit from one sale, when it was obviously good enough for many more than that. Thus the artist is deemed to be not as worthy as he really is in such a sales-centric industry, and he is less likely to be supported in a similar type of work in the future. Hackers have a kind of skewed “civil disobedience” mentality that argues that if the laws are stupid and can be circumvented easily without what they consider real harm to anyone except for the companies that they deem as evil, than they have every right, perhaps even a duty, to break these laws. In the same way, there has developed this outrage to anything a company does to try to hold on to its customers, really any hindrance that it puts on its customers to leave them. So contracts that hold people to a regular subscription payment (with a large cancellation payment tacked on) are condemned. However, this goes even further with the indignation even over the lack of a way to unsubscribe from a service (whether or not a fee is levied) via an online button. Apparently having to make a phone call which might take 20 minutes is too much of an imposition. When some functionality is removed or not allowed in the first place (while still being possible for people who understand the technology), the hackers are incensed. It’s not enough for them to be able to hack sometimes, but instead they feel it’s necessary for such questionable functionality to be made easily accessible by all.

There is also this kind of weird “don’t ask don’t tell” relationship between technology companies and the hackers. Technology companies are straddling a fence. They want to show publicly (and privately) that they are all for keeping the content companies’ materials free from being illegally distributed, so they simply don’t make this possible for the average user. However, hackers (and really anyone who does a little research by reading online forums or mailing lists) can and do easily find ways to circumvent these controls. Their seems to be a wink and a nod in many cases as the technology companies don’t go the extra step of filling holes in copy-protection security schemes and thus defeating the hacker’s abilities, or at least making them jump through more and more hurdles - at least in most cases. Perhaps they understand that it is ultimately a losing battle and one that does not justify lots of resources. Perhaps it is partly because they themselves are hackers in one way or another and they really don’t want to totally defeat this group even if they could, because they know that consumers crave flexibility and control, and that limiting these things will ultimately kill their products.

iTunes, Audible.com, CDBaby, and CinemaNow, among others, have shown that people are willing to spend money on content if they feel it is a reasonably priced. The technology that has made copying possible has also meant, as I mentioned before, that many more people can create music, video, and of course simple written words, such as you see here, for a mass audience at a very low production and distribution cost. This overabundance of content shows that people want to see a large variety of different types of content, not the very strict areas that media companies think will sell the best, but it also inherently decreases the individual value of a piece of content because there is so much of it to chose from. Because these other choices are growing in number and are available at a much lower price that doesn’t involve voiding one’s warranty or breaking the law, they become more and more attractive. The large media companies need to understand this and they need to do something radical or else they will fade into nothing. This may not happen tomorrow, but it will happen. Of course it will mean that they will have to get a lot leaner. Justifying huge salaries at the expense of incredibly inflated costs is becoming more obvious and less accepted by the average consumer, who would rather support the actual creator of the content and not minions of lawyers and marketers. Neither do many want to keep content creators swimming in money, no matter their adoration. People want to support the artists they admire so that they can continue to churn out the stuff they like, not to support lavish lifestyles or expensive drug habits, the latter of which often sadly seems to come hand in hand with sudden vast wealth, especially at younger ages.

I suppose both sides of the coin have a role to play, and maybe even hackers will become less of an issue if media companies become savvier about consumers. In the end, we are still a capitalist society that bows to market forces. If people get pissed off enough at media companies as more independently produced work is released at a much lower costs with word of mouth on the internet eclipsing the now skipped over commercials (thanks to TiVo) on TV, these large companies will eventually implode. Their desperate attempts to control their content completely do not need to be battled by illegal means, because eventually newer, cheaper, independent content will supersede it in popularity. Certainly, if the knowledge and desire is there to “hack” a technology without using that hack to create illegal copies, but rather simply to allow a purchaser to viewed/listen to/read a piece of content in a way that’s more convenient, I’m all for it. Otherwise, I think some of the less reasonable hackers need to have some self restraint and instead of using illegal means to obtain some content they want but just think should cost less, they should vote with their feet by simply supporting the companies, artists, and industries that they feel are “getting it right” by allowing for greater flexibility and lower prices, and not buy, and not watch, listen to, or read, content that is from companies that are clueless. Otherwise, it is just taking the law into ones own hands. Certainly we can all agree that it’s a positive thing to legally fight against laws we feel are unjust, and Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have done a tremendous job in this regard and have fought to keep many consumers’ rights intact. The same money that has kept these large industries afloat for so long also helps them keep their stranglehold on these laws to some extent, since laws are written and/or made into laws to begin with by politicians and politicians need money to fund their campaigns for reelection. So in some ways that works against the freedom that many of us would like to see, but this just means that individuals should speak out more (as opposed to expressing themselves by ignoring the law altogether), and financially support those entities, like the EFF, that are trying to legally fight these battles for us as consumers.