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When I first saw the news about Disney’s new EZ-D disposable DVDs, my reaction was similar to many of the people interviewed for this article at Wired: What a wasteful concept!

The main sales point, I gather, is that you can buy these DVDs at a check-out counter (an impulse purchase, of course), then throw them away after they expire. (Contact with oxygen causes a chemical reaction in the media that causes it to become unreadable within 48 hours after the package is opened.) Because they can be thrown away, the company argues, the customer is spared the burden of returning the discs, as they would need to do if the DVDs had been rented. That may be true, but the media itself—and the air-tight packaging it comes in—would end up in a landfill somewhere, right? Although the company spokesman claims the product is environmentally safe, there’s no way to claim that it is environmentally friendly.

But that doesn’t stop Flexplay (the Disney company behind EZ-D) from trying: Used discs can always be mailed to GreenDisk, they say. Excuse me for pointing out that this pretty much destroys the whole point of the product, which was supposed to be convenience. Not only that, but it’s really kind of lame to push people to buy this kind of product when the rental system already in place is so much less taxing on our resources—and our landfills.

Better technologies are available; this one we can do without. Personally, I see no need for it. Convenience isn’t that important! But if Disney’s pushing it, I imagine we will be seeing EZ-Ds everywhere before long.

This article at Wired provides a look at Howard Rheingold’s recent keynote speech at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, in which he emphasized that “vested interests, flexing their political and economic muscle, are stifling technological innovation.”

Rheingold certainly is not alone in his fears; the same theme dominates a great deal of Larry Lessig’s work as well. I see these concerns as a genuine threat to freedom.

Innovation is being stiffled to protect profits. This is bad for society. Change is good—and it is inevitable, so erecting artificial barriers to innovation is both wrong and immoral.

Excerpt:

After the talk, Rheingold said, “An era is coming to an end. Geeks and consumers are under assault. We really have to organize to protect our rights.”



Esther Dyson, former chair of ICANN and a noted technology impresario, said she agreed with Rheingold’s thesis “in spades.”



“Technologists always say they just code, they don’t make laws,” she said. “But they should be going to Congress. Our rights are in jeopardy.”

I hope other geeks will begin to look a politics as I do, as a vast Open Source project aimed at creating the best possible legal code. If we continue to let the Microsofts and RIAAs of the world craft our laws, we will soon be left with only the right to consume—and nothing else.

In a follow-up of my earlier post about Microsoft’s power to deny access to information, I thought it only fitting to point to this article at Wired about how Microsoft’s latest “trustworthy computing” efforts will probably have the effect of stamping out the practice of corporate whistleblowing.

On one hand, I find it hard to fault Microsoft for introducing this technology, which will be based on an industry standard (XrML) that any other company could use. In this sense, Microsoft’s behavior is simply consistent with its stated goals of making its operating system more secure—a move that is long overdue. It also makes good business sense for Microsoft to be among the early adopters of this important, new technology.

But, on the other hand, I find it very hypocritical of Microsoft (whose own wrongdoing would have never been made public had this technology been in place) to introduce this technology with little regard for the effect it will have on the ability of the public to uncover corporate wrongdoing. The very company that is asserting corporate rights over the computers of end users (in the form of DRM) is also providing a new right to corporations: The right to never get caught red-handed.

It is possible to see how this new technology, dubbed Windows Rights Management Services, can be both good and bad. On the whole, however, I think it will be bad for the public good.

See, I told you this would happen! (Hat tip to this entry at Slashdot for pointing me to the article.)

Now that academics are waking up to the problems that Microsoft’s Palladium project could create for researchers, I wonder if there will be a movement to draft a “digital bill of rights” (something like this one, but for real) with some real legal teeth to it. If the government doesn’t take some steps to ensure that users have some inviolable rights, Palladium (a term that Microsoft has apparently stopped using—perhaps because of all the bad press associated with that name?) could be used to enforce the shrink-wrapped licensing agreements de facto.

Why is that so bad? Well, because companies can write pretty much whatever they want into there licensing agreements. It’s not uncommon for companies to prohibit benchmarking their products against those of competitors, for example. It is not difficult to imagine how this could easily be carried to ludicrous extremes, but Palladium would enforce those conditions anyway—no matter how ridiculous or unfair they might be.

Oh, and forget about fair use, too. Palladium would make sure that you only get the rights the publisher/content owner grants, nothing more. The days when you actually owned what you own would quickly come to an end. Wouldn’t that be a great thing for all of the copyright holders of the world? They stand to gain the rights to sell things while still maintaining complete control over how it is to be used.

As I wrote before, giving a known monopolist the power to define your rights is a bad idea. Stop Palladium before it’s too late!

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

—Benjamin Franklin

Just a few years ago, when I was in my last year of college, I attended a large conference of Asian business and political leaders. Being the diligent journalism student that I was, I took along my trusty SLR camera, a tape recorder, and a notebook. My aim, of course, was to write an article or two after the conference.

The professional journalists at the conference were way ahead of me, though. I watched in sheer amazement as the reporter next to me banged out a report on his laptop, added some picutures that he had taken with his digital camera, and then sent the finished article to his editor as an e-mail attachment via a USB hookup to his cellular phone (this was before phones had e-mail functions built in). His article was done, and would probably be online before the conference had even finished. Standing next to him—clutching a few pages of notes, some yet untranscribed tapes, and a roll or two of undeveloped film—I caught my first real glimpse of how Internet-related technologies would change the way journalists reported news. Needless to say, I was considerably impressed.

More recently, however, I have seen what I believe is an even more interesting trend in the world of news: the yet untapped potential of weblogs as a news source. Granted, there are a lot of mediocre blogs out there, but there are also many good ones. For those who have the inclination to sift the wheat from the chaff, there is a lot of good information out there to be found.

You really think blogs will replace journalism?

No, I don’t. Not even close. As a former journalism student, I know that journalist are far better equipped to deal with news than your average Joe or Jane Blogger. (In a recent discussion about this topic on the SWET-L mailing list, Michael Turner offered this article from The Register as an example of the folly of thinking otherwise.) On the other hand, you don’t have to be a journalist to write about your work, the trends you see emerging in the fields you follow, your political views, or any number of other subjects. Although journalists have very specialized training that allows them to gather and report news in ways a blogger could never dream of, they do not hold a monopoly on information.

I also know that most blogs have nowhere near the resources of a conventional media outlet, which means that the average blogger has almost none of the ability to gather and report news that traditional media enjoy. (There is also a significant credibility gap between, say, a reporter at CNN and a lone blogger with no credentials.)

I should probably point out, however, that what I am interested in here is not the teeming multitude of personal diaries (although Paul Andrews makes a very good point when he asks, “What if Anne Frank had had a Weblog instead of a diary..."), but instead the personal or collective weblogs of professionals or groups that share a common interest. Good examples of this might be Steve Outing’s E-Media Tidbits or Librarian.net. I’ll touch on this a bit more later in this entry.

What I do think blogs have the potential to do, though, is extend the news cycle. Stories that might have otherwise faded from public view can be revived and discussed further in blogs. Similarly, news that is not given due attention for lack of space, time constraints, or other reasons can be picked up and highlighted by blogs. I think both of these things show that, rather than replacing traditional media, blogs have the potential to amplify its effectiveness. The latter, in particular, also suggests that blogs might have the effect of reshaping the traditional role of media gatekeepers.

This article from the Online Journalism Review seems to agree. In it, Paul Andrews writes:

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\t"It’s the role of institutional media to act as gatekeepers,” he says, “but what you have in print publishing today is a consolidation that’s inimical to the diversity that exists in everyday life. With the rise of the Internet, people don’t need to be bounded by those traditional filters anymore.”
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In part two of the same article, Doc Searls says:

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\t"It’s a matter of ‘and’ logic, not ‘or’ logic. Weblogs will inform old media. They will increasingly be a source of information that traditional media will rely on.”
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A little bit later in that same piece, Dan Gillmor adds:

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\t"Technology has been leading us toward new ways of looking at things, and the idea of talented amateurs becoming part of the conversation is just the next logical step.”
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Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about.

Technology and the inclusion of talented amateurs

Here in Japan, we are seeing advances in technology that lead the world. What I saw at that conference as a college student was an impressive combination of then-current technologies, but the technology has since evolved considerably. What that reporter did using three separate, expensive tools (the digital camera, the computer, and the cell phone) can increasingly be done with only one (just the phone) for far less.

If you couple the technological advances that make it easier to capture images and to produce and transmit messages with blogging tools that make it easy to dissmeninate such information, it seems natural to assume that amateurs will be able to prepare and share news in ways that were never possible before.

In some areas, like cutting-edge technology, the hard-core geeks of the world will be able to offer insightful counterpoint to the carefully vetted news presented by the media gatekeepers (which, rather alarmingly, are increasingly large conglomerates with vested interests to protect—see this Center for Digital Democracy report on Media Consolidation), simply because they thrive on such information and will surely be abreast of the latest information. If such groups would band together to share such information, it seems only natural that media outlets would begin to see them as potential sources.

Where are you going with all of this?

Well, I would be interested in helping groups of interested individuals put together collective weblogs about topics of mutual interest. In particular, I’m interested in professional angles on a wide variety of topics: emerging technologies, economic trends, political maneuverings, news coverage, and other topics of interest, both within Japan and abroad.

I think some local organizations might be interested in this sort of thing, but it’s still too early to say for sure. Last night, for example, I gave a presentation on PHP for the Tokyo PC Users Group that sparked a lively discussion afterward. Similarly, last week’s discussion with people from SWET indicated some interest as well. Other organizations, ranging from DigitalEve Japan to JAT have been considering starting SIGs with somewhat tangentially related aims.

Might blogging help these groups reach a larger audience? I think so.

Might the overall effect complement my regular news diet? I am sure it would.

Will I be blogging their progress? You bet!