Digital Copyright Protection

I've been reading a very fascinating debate at the New York Times site about the topic between--go figure--two lawyers. You can infer the joke about how the first commentators on an economic/business question are the ones with arguably the least direct training and experience therein.

First, let's start the debate over again. Why do people create content in any form? Two reasons. First, because they want to. Second, for some form of renumeration. In the case of corporations, this means monetary payment. In the case of open source coders (such as GNU contributors) I would say this is in the form of more usable software that does what they want it to do.

Then there's the US Constitution's granting of copyrights (I use this as an example only because I live in the States). Let's all remember they lived in an analog age where to infringe on a copyrighted work you had to either (a) hand copy it over and over again or (b) pay someone with a printing press to print copies. Either way you had to put in some serious time and money in hopes of making enough on sales to offset the costs. Let's face it, barriers to successful mass infringement were huge when those words were written and have been dropping steadily ever since. Computers and the Internet might be as low as barriers will go, but only time will tell.

What does this say about the debate of copyright protection on digital media? Very simply, it says that the only time such protection makes sense from an economic point of view is when it generates more revenue than it costs to implement. Does it? I don't know, but I know no protection system which allows the media to be played is going to ever stay unbroken forever. Moreover, it's likely that as time goes on it's going to get harder, not easier, to protect content.

I think any casual visit to doom9 or recalling the publication to the Internet of the key to hundreds of DVD titles a few months ago (not to mention the ongoing success of dvdlibcss2, which lets DVD's be played on Linux boxes or my history example above) will convince most reasonable people that in the arms race between "hackers" and "protectors", given time the hackers will win every time. It's not just software either. At some point the material has to be played, and a clever person with a Linux box could physically hack the monitor to record the imagery--unencrypted--as it gets displayed. This is not hyperbole, merely a more sophisticated version of sneaking a camcorder into a movie theater.

So what does this make copy protection schemes? I'd say "futile" sums it up nicely. Any system, not matter how strong, which enables playback will eventually get cracked. Period.

Then there's the argument that if we can't protect media we can keep it from being transfered. I refer back to my previous point about any system being able to be worked around. Maybe with enough draconian restrictions such a system could stop more transfers than it misses, but are we really willing to (a) pay the money or (b) the cost in civil liberties?

There's one last point that seems to get missed: some people pirate on principle, most because it's cheaper than getting an official copy (in terms of total expense of time, money, and effort). One key question is therefore this: of the people any copyright protection system prevents from pirating/having access to pirated materials, how many would buy a legal copy to have access?

I'll be honest, there are lots of songs and movies that if they were free to download I'd download and keep but that I would never buy nor rent. My favorite example is the annual James Bond marathons on cable TV. Yes, I like James Bond, but I'd not rent them, much less buy them. So if someone suddenly said to me "Goldeneye will never again be played on cable TV" this isn't a big loss and I'm not going to turn around and buy a new copy at prevailing store prices (even the Amazon ones I link to), but I might buy one used for half as much or better yet, for $1 to download. Radiohead's experiment in name your own prices would make for an interesting case study. One question I have is how many downloaded the album because they had never heard much of Radiohead's music and thought they'd try it out. Even more interesting, how many of those people then paid for a second download of the album? How many of those then recommended the album to others who then did the same thing? How many sales have happened since the cited articles? There are many interesting questions here that would inform the debate with hard evidence which, as far as I have seen, no one has bothered talking about to the public.

Whether we (or anyone else) likes it or not, Internet file sharing and downloading are here to stay. Is it legal? Not in most places. Is it ethical? I don't happen to think so and I think everyone who paid for Radiohead's album agrees. On the other hand, business is about the bottom line: profits. Is it profitable to fight the copy protection arms race? With several of the biggest music labels dropping DRM, I'd say the answer is probably "no", but the question is still open.

Never forget: in any market it's not the law that matters, but the bottom line. The world's lawyers need to sit up and take notice.

Thoughts on the AMS/MAA Joint Meeting 2008 Part Two: How to get mistaken for a Professor at 22.

This is really a tongue-in-cheek guide to the dress code at the Joint Meeting. There are two basic axes: age and formality. From there most people can be accurately classified. However, there are some notable exception.

First is age. There are three broad bins: 24 and under, 24-32, and 32+. These roughly line up with undergrads/first year grad students, grad students/job seekers, and profs.

The second is formality (of dress). This is a much broader scale, but on the low end is jeans and a tee-shirt and on the other is a full suit or equivalent. I'll lump things into three categories nonetheless: casual, business casual (slacks, polo, sport coat; shirt and tie, no jacket), and business formal (shirt and tie with jacket, suit).

How to spot a:

• Prof: 32+ in either casual or business casual clothes. If it's business casual, it's probably not new or gently used unless they're presenting.
• Grad student/job seeker: Business casual most of the time as they're interviewing or speaking. Business formal means interviews or a presentation where they expect to be performing for future employers (not always true). Usually 24-32.
• Undergrad: Under 24, business formal will only be seen if presenting, but will present in business casual and up. Otherwise seen in jean and a tee shirt or slacks and a polo (but not much of the latter).

Wildcards:

• Exhibitors: If young and well dressed, probably a book representative/salesperson. Fortunately, they're labeled on their name badges.
• Undergrads who don't like to look like slobs. That would be me. Simply put, I walked around in business casual (polo and sport coat) or business formal (shirt, tie, sport coat) all week and was constantly mistaken for a prof or graduate student.
  

Thoughts on the AMS/MAA Joint Meeting Part One: Hostelling

First, my most sincere compliments to the AMS, MAA, the San Diego Convention Center Staff, and everyone else who made the 2008 AMS/MAA Joint Meeting happen. It was, in short, completely awesome. Most of the talks I saw were very well done, especially the AMS Special Sessions and the more focused AMS topics sessions.

Next, as for accommodations: I stayed in the listed hostel four blocks or so from the convention center. As a hint to those on a budget and considering doing the same, this is probably a big toss-up experience wise, but I had a blast.
Pluses:

1. Much more contact in informal/social settings with other conference goers (I was in a 10 bed room and all of us were attending).
2. Great networking and "insider's view" of graduate school as most of those staying there were grad students looking for jobs.
3. Very collegiate/dorm atmosphere.
4. Very budget conscious. I spent $100 for four nights. Best price at a convention hotel was around $150/night after taxes, etc.
5. Fully stocked kitchen.
6. In the heart of the Gaslamp district.
   

Downsides:

1. Little private/personal space. See 10-person room comment above. If you booked far enough in advance, however, private rooms were available.
2. Minimal storage space, but the space was lockable. Basically, there was plenty of room to lock up valuables like laptops, wallets, etc, but not enough to store things like suits. No real space to hang anything.
3. You are NOT the normal customer.

Overall, I'd say the hostel experience was great for me (as a fourth-year undergraduate), but is probably not something I'd recommend to everyone.

Why I Try to CrossFit

The reason is simple: I want to get much more fit, and to do that requires a pretty hardcore routine. The thing I've found about CrossFit is that once I get into it for a few weeks it gets much easier, and I usually at that point hit midterms or something that keeps me out of the gym.

Why do I say I only try? Because I'm a thin runner-type not a lifter.

Sushi in San Diego

So I was in San Diego for the 2008 AMS/MAA Joint Meeting. For those not familiar, it's a huge national math convention. But that's really not the point. The point is I tried sushi for the first time and loved it.

To those of you who ask how I could eat raw fish, I have only this reply: with delight.

Economics of Eternal Damnation

Eternal damnation. Just the sound is intimidating, much less the prospect of unending suffering at the hand of some set of eternal creatures with a penchant for sadism.

My question is this: why would a religion (I'm mostly picking on Christianity here as an ex-Roman Catholic) say "Follow the rules or be eternally damned"?

First, the area of discussion needs to be framed. So a few bound, hypotheses and axioms are in order.

1. The existence of God is not under discussion beyond, perhaps, its status as a rational belief. Regardless, it is stipulated that belief in God is possible a priori and that the set of believers is non-empty.
2. Likewise, the existence of an immortal soul is not up for discussion, but it is assumed a priori that there exists a practiced religion whose adherents accept its existence.
   
3. There exists a practiced religious system with both a defined ethical philosophy which makes a decent stab at being consistent and comprehensive.
4. Said religion must require its members to follow its moral teachings which are believed to be inspired/revealed by God or are derived from such inspiration/revelation.
5. The religion incorporates meaningful notions of reward and punishment for behavior. For simplicity, I'll label these heaven, hell, purgatory and the lukewarm (the last in the Dantean sense). Of these, only the first two are required.
6. A requirement is not meaningful unless it can and will be enforced with meaningful sanction for violation at some future time.
7. God is assumed to be believed to be rational and its behavior consistent with religious teachings of the religion in question.
   

Under these conditions, why would a religion promise damnation to the sinful and heaven to the (relatively) sinless?

By way of contradiction, suppose without loss of generality that heaven was promised to all after death. By (4), moral laws must be enforced and by (6) a sanction is required. However, by definition and (5) religious law is at the most laid down by God through some revelatory mechanism and at the least based on such revelation. But by (7) God would recognize the establishment of a non-binding standard which by (6) is no standard at all. This contradicts the revelation of a binding morality to the people (3, 4). Therefore there must exist a decision rule based on compliance with revealed ethics which assigns persons to either heaven or hell.

In short, where God doesn't care about compliance with ethics, no ethics have been imposed. Similar arguments are quite common, especially in the Thomistic ethical framework used in Catholicism.

Having dispensed with that question, we now turn to why is damnation must be eternal. To do so we must introduce the idea of discounting.

Put simply, discounting is where values are reduced through multiplication by a constant strictly between zero and one raised to a power which increases monotonically as a function of time.

Clearly, given enough time the reward or punishment is meaningless. Moreover, humanity being what it is, there are any number of crimes one could commit known only to God. Therefore, for a religious ethical edict to still have punitive force, God must (as noted) impose the punishment. So, let's assume a person is considering committing a crime that will be known only to God and is asking whether the gains outweigh the punishments. For simplicity, assume this crime would earn them (they believe) a guaranteed trip to hell. For them to not do it, the total sum of hellish torment must be perceived to be more significant than the benefits in this life.

But most people don't think they're going to die anytime soon. So the question now turns on discounting. If they don't die for a number of years, the future torment becomes less and less meaningful to them in their current decision-making. So the only response it to add as much as possible to the total pool of punishment to overcome the discounting.

Nothing is longer than eternity. Any finite amount of punishment could be under some set of benefits after discounting.

Therefore the case for eternal damnation is clear.

Off to Conference Land

I'll be at the AMS-MAA Joint Meeting in San Diego. I'm flying in tomorrow afternoon and out Wednesday afternoon. I have a 10 minute contributed paper, which is completely awesome even though it takes no work to get one.

Should be fun. While I have to front everything, my university is going to pay me back for basic living expenses. I completely expect to look at them and say "Look, I don't expect you to pay all of this, so pay what you consider reasonable". Dangerous, but I know who will be putting this thing together and they don't want to screw me any more than they want to get screwed. It should be okay.

Not sure if I'll go to the beach. Never have been a fan of that place.