Coyping and Sharing Files

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,
The Intellectual Property Rights issue has many aspects.  Copying files and
sharing them in a network is a threat to certain kinds of business models.
Michael Perelman has written in Monthly Review of the gross effects of what
for example the Movie industry will try to impose on Intellectual Property
in networks.  However, there is also the fact that sharing files is
essential to work.  So I am referring to some areas which I think indicate
the counter currents in business that may or may not prevail in defining
what sharing files comes to mean in doing work.

In an article on Network Centric Warfare last week in Business Week (JANUARY
7, 2003) I quote,

The Network Is the Battlefield
The Pentagon's aim is to meld weapons systems and people into a whole,
called network-centric warfare, that's greater than the sum of its parts
On Nov. 21, U.S. Air Force officials got their hands on the ultimate global
video game.

and then they write,

Among other things, the system should make it easier to track and attack
military targets, and provide a command structure that's more resilient and
damage-proof. "If you network a [military] force, it can do things at a
speed that is unimaginable," says John Garstka, director of the Pentagon's
Office of Force Transformation and a leading theorist in the area.

Doyle
So that they then describe more or less in general terms what is supposed to
be the advantages of the NCW (Network Centric Warfare),

Business Week continues,
Nonetheless, one way or another NCW is coming, for one simple reason: From
the dawn of organized conflict, military strategists have used
communications and information to beat the enemy. The ancient Greeks
dispatched runners over long distances to deliver military messages.
European infantries used drummers to communicate common battle orders to
solidiers fighting together who didn't speak the same language.

NCW sprang from a need, dramatized in World War II and Vietnam, to use
information technology to create a more lethal fighting force, as well as to
to avoid casualties from friendly fire. Initial efforts follow what has
become a familiar path for new technologies: Each branch of the service went
its own way, creating a system that was incompatible with that of the other
branches.

TRIED AND TRUE SYNTAX.  "If I have 14 systems, I have to build 14
interfaces," says Margaret Myers, deputy chief information officer for the
Defense Dept. "Then the next guy comes along and builds a new system, and
then he or she has to build 15 interfaces. That's expensive, and those
interfaces don't always work." The commander of a joint task force
comprising sea, air, and land power, and spanning multiple service branches
-- the unit used to fight most battles today -- must contend with 400 combat
systems, most of which are still incompatible, Myers says.

In the mid 1990s Defense found a solution in the form of the Internet -- a
slightly ironic development in that Pentagon research money helped fund the
original Internet, ARPANET, which was a small project designed to create
easy ways for researchers to communicate electronically that would be hard
to disrupt. What Defense wants NCW to use isn't so much the public Internet
itself, though a significant percentage of its traffic travels on the Web,
but rather the technology behind the Net, the universal syntax called TCP-IP
that allows Apple desktops to talk easily with Unix servers, Microsoft-based
PCs, and Linux-powered laptops.

Doyle
So if the analogy to video games is strong, what sort of sociological
observations about video games might be of interest to the left?  See the
focus in this article about a meeting place, and women in how they are
approaching video games.  These are selective quote from the whole article,

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/09/technology/circuits/09chat.html

In both The Sims and There, part of the appeal is escapism and engaging
people in situations with few real social risks or consequences

The Sims Online is strictly a game, one in which players have to be ever
mindful of their avatars' health, hygiene, comfort and energy. In There,
members' avatars can do practically anything or nothing: make friends, play
games, explore the virtual world or sit alone on a mountaintop for hours.

On New Year's Eve, Electronic Arts reported, some half-million kisses were
exchanged by Sims during 5,000 online parties. It is unlikely that any of
the virtual smooches led to heartache or break-ups in real life.

On the Internet, Ms. Dyson noted, the social interaction in chat rooms often
disintegrates into "trivial, useless, sex-oriented" babble. And game-based
virtual worlds are usually filled with people who want to play games or talk
about them.

For Lynn Johnson, a 44-year-old graphics artist in Huntsville, Ala., who has
been a tester, the universe of There is a virtual reality hangout, a safe,
friendly and familiar place where buddies, old and new, gather and chat.
"It's not a game," she said. "It's not a chat room. It's really kind of hard
to say what it is except maybe a virtual neighborhood."

A number of features are built into There to prevent the sort of harsh
treatment and harassment that women often receive in chat rooms and online
virtual worlds. One such control permits members to ignore an irritating
avatar while replacing their own avatar with a computer-controlled fake.

www.there.com

Doyle
The above web site of the company produces this video game says they have
been building this for four years.  Obviously the industry is not mature.
The central point though is how they are approaching making the commodity to
sell to women.  I believe this may be an important clue in building online
political resources that women can use to build a left movement with women
as the foundation of the movement.  There are many more things to say, but I
would like to point at some key components,

Avatars built to show emotion,

Social networks that minimize Testosterone (indicating hormonal shape to
communication structure ignored by previous social movement) based
harassment,

Rapid building of groups in simple fashion,

Resources and software support needed to build such communal resources,

File sharing necessities in communications,
thanks,
Doyle Saylor


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