Computers and Copyrights

This weeks readings are based on the idea of trying to figure out the boundaries that should be placed on computers and the governments' hand on providing/relinquishing/understanding this toll. Cory Doctorow and James Boyle both stand on different positions in describing the computers ability of giving out information through copyright.

James Boyle's reading I found to be more technical than Cory Doctorow's, who culminates a mixture of outside examples to illiterate his point. I did like in the beginning how he mentions that the government, though slow to other things, has responded to the Internet rather quickly (which can be seen from its infancy). Though this is true, I feel that he needs to point out that perhaps it was too hasty and the laws/rules established within copyright throughout the years are a testament to that. Boyle does say that, "It did not help that the legislators were largely both ignorant and distrustful of the technology of the Internet..." (Boyle 57). Though this is mention, he is still a strong proponent of the legislators enforcement of rules, and the need of having certain rules. The author talks about Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the White Paper and some of its downsides, but he does not mention as a whole that perhaps these downfalls keep happening due to a lack of true understanding of how the Internet should be treated/operated, as well as, perhaps more importantly for this week, regulated. The making of laws for the Internet s complicated and I believe that Doctorow does a good job in explaining why this is.

Out of the two, Cory Doctorow's "Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing" was my favorite. Perhaps, I agree more strongly with his argument that the placement of laws/rules on computers are a lot more complicated than, as he would say, 'taking off a wheel of a car'. Computers are complicated due to the amount of people it reches, the amount of information that can be disclosed, and the amount of areas in which computers are affiliated with. Computers are a global phenonmenon within this day and age and all of it's "problems" cannot be solved by one easy fix.

I especially loved Cory Doctorow's point of, "MPs and Congressmen and so on are elected to represent districts and people, not disciplies and issues...government relies on heuristics: rules of thumb...information technology confounds these heuristics". I believe this is one notion that everyone has to keep in mind when it comes to goverment regulations, especially in accordance with the Internet. I immediately thought back to, I beileve, an episode of the Daily Show which made fun of the legislatures who were sticking up for the SOPA bill but couldn't describe it. They would phrases such as: well our nerds handle all the technical stuff. Or, the nerds know more about that. I was so upset that this was the lingo being used, "nerds". The real thing that bothered me is that these people were pushing for a bill that even they can't summarize. Doctorow's article though helped remind me that politicians, lawmakers, and other governmental officials deal with the legistics of the people as a whole, and as he says, "We don't have a Member of Parliament for biochemistry, and we don't have a Senator from the great state of urban planning"; the lawmakers are not technical gurus.