TidBITS#610/17-Dec-01
=====================

  Let's send 2001 out with a packed issue! Dan Kohn returns with an
  essay asking if his discussion of the future of digital content is
  just an elaborate justification for stealing. Then Mark Anbinder
  looks at the new features in Virtual PC 5.0, Matt Neuburg provides
  a sneak peek at Apple's forthcoming AppleScript Studio, and Adam
  highlights the events you won't want to miss at January's Macworld
  Expo. We also glance briefly at new releases of the PowerBook G4
  Titanium, IPNetRouter 1.6.3, and PowerMail 3.1. See you in 2002!

Topics:
    MailBITS/17-Dec-01
    Macworld Expo SF 2002 Events
    AppleScript's Studly Studio
    Virtual PC 5.0 Adds Features, Mac OS X Compatibility
    Steal This Essay 4: Are We Just Rationalizing Theft?

<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-610.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2001/TidBITS#610_17-Dec-01.etx>

Copyright 2001 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved.
   Information: <info@tidbits.com> Comments: <editors@tidbits.com>
   ---------------------------------------------------------------

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* Small Dog Electronics: NEW TiBook G4/400: $1699! <----------------- NEW!
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MailBITS/17-Dec-01
------------------

**So Long 2001, and Thanks for All the Fish** -- It's been a long
  and unsettling year, but it's coming to a close with a holiday
  season that we hope is calm and restful for everyone. As always,
  my sincere thanks to the people who make TidBITS possible: Tonya,
  Geoff, Jeff, Matt, and Mark, our corporate sponsors and Internet
  hosts, those people who have contributed money directly to
  TidBITS, the writers whose articles we've published this year, the
  selfless volunteers who translate TidBITS into five languages, the
  many participants in TidBITS Talk, and most important, all our
  readers out there, without whom none of the rest would ever
  happen. Our next issue will appear 07-Jan-02, and barring further
  schedule changes or unforeseen travel difficulties, should contain
  coverage of Steve Jobs's Macworld Expo keynote. Let me leave you,
  then, with the hope that your holidays live up to all that you
  wish them to be. [ACE]


**PowerBook G4 Titanium Gains Combo Drive** -- Tired of making
  trade-offs in its high-end laptop, Apple today refreshed the
  PowerBook G4 so all models now come standard with a slot-loading
  DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive that lets you watch DVD movies, burn
  CDs, and (of course) read standard audio and data CDs. The timing
  of the move is odd, but perhaps Apple is trying to take advantage
  of the remainder of the holiday shopping season (though it will
  probably be a week before the new configurations ship). Also,
  useful though the Combo drive is, it's not the kind of big news
  Steve Jobs can emphasize in a Macworld Expo keynote. Upgrades for
  those who purchased the PowerBook G4 models released in October
  (see "Apple Speed Bumps iBook and Titanium" in TidBITS-602_) will
  reportedly be possible, although details weren't yet available.
  [ACE]

<http://www.apple.com/powerbook/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06601>


**IPNetRouter 1.6.3 Gets Dynamic** -- Sustainable Software has
  released version 1.6.3 of IPNetRouter, their popular Internet
  sharing software, adding one significant feature. For those
  using IPNetRouter to share a connection that has a dynamically
  assigned IP number (many consumer level broadband connections
  have dynamic IP numbers), IPNetRouter 1.6.3 can now work with
  the free dynamic DNS service at DynDNS.org. Serving as a DynDNS
  client, IPNetRouter informs the DynDNS servers when your IP
  address changes so your fixed domain name can be updated to
  point to the new IP address. Other DynDNS clients for the Mac
  exist, including James Sentman's free Dynamic DNS Client, but
  if you're already using IPNetRouter to share your Internet
  connection, it's more elegant and potentially quicker to have
  it inform the DynDNS servers of your IP address changes.
  Upgrades to IPNetRouter 1.6.3 are free to registered users;
  the program is a 1.4 MB download. [ACE]

<http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipr_overview.html>
<http://www.dyndns.org/dyndns/>
<http://www.sentman.com/dyndns/>


**PowerMail 3.1 Beefs Up IMAP Support** -- CTM Development has
  released PowerMail 3.1, the latest version of their capable email
  client, with completely rewritten IMAP support. (See "Migrating to
  New Climes with PowerMail" in TidBITS-530_ for a review of
  PowerMail 3.0.) Other new features include manual activation of
  filters, improved support for other languages, faster filtering,
  automatic bracketing of pasted or dragged URLs to reduce the
  likelihood a recipient won't be able to successfully click long
  URLs that break across lines, enhanced AppleScript functionality,
  and support for mouse wheels under Mac OS X. PowerMail 3.1 also
  fixes a number of bugs in the previous version. It's a free update
  for registered users of PowerMail 3.0, and there's a 30-day demo
  available as a 4.1 MB download. [ACE]

<http://www.ctmdev.com/powermail3.shtml>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05930>


Macworld Expo SF 2002 Events
----------------------------
  by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>

  The main event of the Macintosh world looms large in our calendar
  - Macworld Expo San Francisco will be held from 07-Jan-02 through
  11-Jan-02. PC-oriented trade shows were hemorrhaging even before
  the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and it only got worse
  afterwards, with attendance at Fall Comdex in Las Vegas down 40
  percent and all exhibitors fitting into a single venue. But July's
  Macworld Expo in New York fared well in terms of attendance
  numbers, out-drawing the previous month's PC Expo, so there's hope
  that this upcoming show will prosper as well. That said, there are
  a few less exhibitors signed up for San Francisco versus New York,
  and I suspect that user-driven events like the Netter's Dinner may
  stand out in contrast to vendor parties, given tightened budgets
  for even those companies that are exhibiting.

<http://www.macworldexpo.com/>


**Jobs Keynote Moved Up** -- IDG World Expo announced late last
  week that the date for Steve Jobs's traditional Macworld Expo
  keynote has been moved a day earlier. The keynote will now be on
  Monday, 07-Jan-02 from 9 AM to 11:30 AM. The date change is
  unfortunate, because it means that many members of the press who
  had previously planned to arrive in San Francisco on Monday will
  now either miss the keynote entirely or have to change flight and
  hotel plans, although it appears that Apple may be reimbursing
  those impacted to some extent. The other primary attendees of the
  keynote - people with conference passes - are less affected, since
  the Macworld Expo conferences were already scheduled to start on
  Monday. Although Apple is undoubtedly aware that keynote
  attendance will be lower on Monday (and Steve Jobs prefers to play
  to a packed house), running the keynote on Monday could result in
  the loss of significant press coverage to CES, the International
  Consumer Electronics Show, that starts on Monday night in Las
  Vegas. Given Apple's recent foray into the consumer electronics
  market with the iPod and a likely redesign of the consumer-level
  iMac, Apple needs mainstream press attendance at the keynote.

<http://www.macworldexpo.com/expo/keynotes/>


**TidBITS Events** -- As in past years, a number of TidBITS staff
  members are speaking at Macworld, so if you're planning on being
  at the show, we never turn down a few shills. Wear a TidBITS
  t-shirt to one of my presentations and I'll sign it on the spot,
  and we'll all have some TidBITS t-shirts to hand out at our
  events.

* On Tuesday, January 8th at 2:00 PM, I'll be at the Aladdin booth
  (#1407), passing on tips and tricks about using Eudora and
  answering any and all questions about Eudora or Internet email in
  general.

* On Wednesday, January 9th, Contributing Editor Matt Neuburg will
  be delivering a Macworld Pro conference session entitled "Taking
  Control of Mac OS X" from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room C24. Matt
  always puts on a great show, so if you've been wondering about how
  to automate applications like FileMaker Pro, Eudora, and Microsoft
  Word in Mac OS X using tools like QuicKeys, BBEdit, Script
  Debugger, REALbasic, and Cocoa, this session is for you.

* On Thursday, January 10th, from noon to 1:00 PM Managing Editor
  Jeff Carlson and Bob LeVitus will be talking at the Peachpit booth
  (#2011) about iMovie and iTunes. Then Jeff will continue on from
  1:00 PM to 2:00 PM at the same booth, speaking along with a panel
  of authors of Peachpit's digital video books. If you were lucky
  enough to get a DV camcorder this holiday season, make sure to
  stop by this talk. Meanwhile, Adam will be participating in a
  Macworld Pro conference session entitled "Backup, Archiving, and
  File Transfers for Mac OS X" from 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM with Craig
  Isaacs and Leonard Rosenthol in Room 133. Come and learn why
  backup under Mac OS X is such a painful topic. Then, from 4:00 PM
  to 5:00 PM, Adam (and possibly other TidBITS editors) will be in
  the User Group Lounge in Room 250/262 (West Mezzanine in the South
  Hall of Moscone, one level above the show floor) for an hour of
  discussion about what's happened at the show, Apple, the Macintosh
  industry, and the topics that we've been covering in TidBITS. It's
  bound to be an interesting chat, and will be an ideal way to get
  off your feet for a while toward the end of the day. Thursday
  night is also the Netter's Dinner - see below for details.

<http://www.mugcenter.com/macworld/mwsf2002/ugl.html>

* On Friday, January 11th, Jeff and Glenn Fleishman will be back
  at the Peachpit booth (#2011) from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM to talk
  about using Adobe GoLive.


**Netter's Dinner** -- There's no reason to mess with success, so
  for the 16th year in a row, the annual Netter's Dinner remains the
  longest-running event (and certainly one of the most congenial) at
  Macworld Expo. Unfortunately, in what is also becoming a tradition
  (though an unplanned one last year), the booming voice and
  Hawaiian shirt of our fearless organizer, Jon Pugh, will once
  again be absent, so I'll be moderating the traditionally
  boisterous raise-your-hands survey. Help me avoid ad-libbing the
  survey on stage by sending me suggestions for questions.

  As in previous years, meet at the top of the escalators on the
  south side of Moscone at 6:00 PM and be prepared for a brisk,
  sometimes damp walk that snarls traffic throughout downtown San
  Francisco. Our destination will of course be the Hunan at Sansome
  and Broadway, where dinner of hot and spicy Chinese food
  (vegetarian dishes are included too) costs $18 this year,. You
  must register in advance (by 08-Jan-02) via Kagi.

<http://www.seanet.com/~jonpugh/nettersdinner.html>


**Hess Macworld Events List** -- Ilene Hoffman has started
  collecting events during Macworld Expo for this show's Robert Hess
  Memorial Events List, and I'm hoping to see it fill up over the
  next few weeks, since it's pretty sparse at the moment (if it's
  any consolation, a party list I found for CES was almost equally
  as bare). Nonetheless, bookmark the Hess Events List and check
  back right before the show to find events you might not otherwise
  have known about during the days and nights of Macworld Expo.

<http://www.ilenesmachine.com/partylist.shtml>

  See you in San Francisco!


AppleScript's Studly Studio
---------------------------
  by Matt Neuburg <matt@tidbits.com>

  Users of Mac OS X, when Apple releases version 10.2, will find a
  little something extra in their holiday stocking - AppleScript
  Studio. Since its announcement in September, though it immediately
  won a Macworld award, AppleScript Studio has been mostly just a
  name; beta-testers weren't allowed to tell what it was. But last
  week AppleScript Studio's documentation was made public, and
  AppleScript Studio itself was released in the free December
  Developer Tools, so the cat's out of the bag. And what a cat!
  AppleScript Studio isn't a mere scripting tool; it isn't just
  AppleScript with some interface widgets wrapped around it.
  AppleScript Studio is Cocoa.

<http://www.apple.com/applescript/macosx/ascript_studio/>
<http://www.macworld.com/2001/09/27/show.html>
<http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/CoreTechnologies/
AppleScriptStudio/>

  Cocoa is an application framework - a set of interface widgets,
  and the knowledge of how to manipulate them, along with windows
  and documents and everything else, to form a standard working
  application. This framework is built right into Mac OS X, which is
  why Cocoa applications are relatively compact, with a fairly
  uniform look and feel: the system itself contains much of their
  code, and they draw upon the same set of built-in interface
  widgets and behaviors. For writing Cocoa applications, Apple
  provides free tools called Interface Builder and Project Builder,
  in which you respectively draw the interface and write the code.
  Up to now, users have had a choice of two code languages,
  Objective-C and Java; AppleScript Studio means there is now a
  third choice - AppleScript.

  AppleScript is an English-like language originally designed for
  encoding Apple events to drive other applications. AppleScript
  Studio is a system-level addition to OS X that gives this language
  the hooks needed to talk to Cocoa's interface widgets and built-in
  functions. The learning curve isn't trivial - Project Builder and
  Interface Builder aren't simple to use - but the implication is
  that users who already know AppleScript, or who are willing to
  learn it instead of a more daunting full-fledged programming
  language, can leverage their knowledge to write Cocoa
  applications. I must stress that from the outside, an application
  written with AppleScript Studio is indistinguishable from any
  other Cocoa application. Just as on the Internet no one can tell
  you're a dog, with AppleScript Studio no one can tell that you
  didn't know Objective-C.

  It was evident in Mac OS X 10.1, from such evidence as the new
  Scripts menu, that after years of almost ignoring it, Apple had
  finally understood the importance of AppleScript, and was
  promoting it to first-class status. With AppleScript Studio, that
  promotion is complete. Look for it when Mac OS X 10.2 ships, and
  you too can unleash your inner Cocoa programmer urges.


Virtual PC 5.0 Adds Features, Mac OS X Compatibility
----------------------------------------------------
  by Mark H. Anbinder <mha@tidbits.com>

  Earlier this month, Connectix Corporation shipped the latest
  version of Virtual PC, their Pentium emulation software for
  running Windows (and other PC operating systems) on a Power
  Macintosh. Virtual PC 5.0, which is available right away as a
  Windows 98 bundle and PC-DOS bundle, runs in both Mac OS 9 and Mac
  OS X, and takes advantage of multiprocessor Macs under Mac OS X,
  using the second processor for screen updating. The software
  resolves the various shortcomings seen in the Test Drive version
  under Mac OS X, and adds several new touches. You can use the same
  installation of the software and the same virtual machines in both
  Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, but if you've installed it while booted
  into Mac OS X, you'll have to do some manual configuration.

<http://www.connectix.com/products/vpc5m.html>

  The most innovative new feature in Virtual PC 5.0 is undoubtedly
  the "undoable" drive image, which enables the user to back out of
  a Windows session to a specific previous point in time. Basically,
  Virtual PC stores just the changes to the entire hard disk image
  in a separate file, so reverting to the original just uses that
  version without the changes applied to it. You can also merge
  changes into the hard disk image, which lets you define the state
  to which you'll be able to revert. This feature, which reminds us
  a bit of Power On Software's Rewind utility, lacks Rewind's
  ability to return at any moment to any arbitrary earlier point,
  but does offer the advantage of easily erasing a given session. We
  see this feature being of enormous potential value to software
  developers or in shared-user lab environments. One note - this
  feature is not password protected, so beware that a user with
  access to your Mac could revert your emulated PC to a previous
  session.

<http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/rewind/>

  A new "Virtual Switch" feature offers networking among virtual
  machines under Mac OS X, allowing guest "virtual" computers two-
  way networking with one another, with the Mac they're running on,
  and even other computers on the network. The beauty of Virtual
  Switch networking is that it lets you simulate a small network
  inside your Mac. For instance, you could run Windows 2000 Server's
  Web server in one virtual machine and connect to it from Web
  browsers running on the Mac and in a Windows 98 virtual machine.

  The old Shared Networking approach is still present for both Mac
  OS 9 and Mac OS X and remains the default because it doesn't
  require users to know how to configure Windows networking. There
  is one downside of Shared Networking, though: by default both
  Windows and Mac OS X run NetBIOS conflicting file sharing clients,
  which causes the Windows client to be disabled and generates an
  error message suggesting Virtual Switch networking as a solution.

  I'm delighted by Virtual PC 5.0's handling of screen resolution.
  Unlike Virtual PC 4, which could occasionally mess up window or
  icon positions on the Mac side by unexpectedly changing the Mac's
  resolution without asking, the new version is much friendlier. Not
  only does it not change the Mac's resolution without your
  permission, for the first time it's capable of telling Windows to
  change _its_ resolution on the fly. In full screen mode, this
  means the Windows desktop can expand to the available space (even
  the unusual 1152 by 768 resolution of the PowerBook G4), and when
  the user resizes Virtual PC's window by dragging the window's
  resize handle, Virtual PC tells Windows to change its resolution
  to match. This saves the user from having to figure out the
  intricacies of changing resolutions within Windows using the
  Display control panel.

  Reports vary widely as to the performance of Virtual PC 5.0 under
  Mac OS X. Some folks have reported it's considerably slower - to
  the point of being unusable - than either Virtual PC 4.0 under Mac
  OS 9 or the Test Drive under Mac OS X. In my own testing, it's
  quite usable on my 500 MHz PowerBook G4 under Mac OS X (even more
  so now that I have 512 MB of RAM instead of 256), and not
  surprisingly, it flies on an 800 MHz dual-processor Power Mac G4 -
  Windows seems every bit as fluid as on a nearby 700 MHz Pentium
  III. Just as Apple did when it released early PowerPC versions of
  the Mac OS, Connectix has focused on performance of user interface
  items. Drawing of menus and windows, in particular, were a
  priority, making the interface seem, in general, snappier than in
  previous versions.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1544>

  For best performance, of course, throw as much CPU power and RAM
  at Virtual PC as you can. Virtual PC 5.0 requires a PowerPC G3- or
  G4-based Mac (running at least at 400 MHz for Mac OS X support)
  with Mac OS 9.1 or later or Mac OS X 10.1 or later. RAM minimums
  vary from 64 MB to 256 MB depending on whether you're running in
  Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X and with different PC operating systems; disk
  space requirements vary with the PC operating system from 260 MB
  to 2 GB.

  Other minor features in Virtual PC 5.0 include support for data
  DVDs and CD images, automatic sharing of removable media, access
  to more special Windows keys that may not exist on Macintosh
  keyboards, and a Get Info window that displays details about
  memory utilization and performance statistics. And although we
  couldn't confirm this easily, Virtual PC reportedly auto-localizes
  itself based on the selected language (English, French, German,
  Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) in Mac OS X.

  Virtual PC 5.0 is also compatible with Microsoft's Windows XP.
  Connectix will be offering bundles of Virtual PC with Windows XP
  Home Edition in the United States, and with Windows XP
  Professional Edition in Japan, based on where they feel each
  bundle will be popular. Both operating systems will be available
  everywhere in the form of add-on OS packs in January of 2002; only
  the bundles will be market-specific.

  An upgrade to Virtual PC 5.0 from an earlier version costs $80
  (free to users who purchased Virtual PC 4.0 since 01-Nov-01),
  Virtual PC with DOS costs $100, and Virtual PC with Windows 98
  costs $200. Bundled versions with Windows 2000 and Windows XP Home
  Edition will ship in a few weeks, as will Connectix OS Packs for
  users who wish to add Windows operating systems to an existing
  Virtual PC installation.


Steal This Essay 4: Are We Just Rationalizing Theft?
----------------------------------------------------
  by Dan Kohn

   "Information is the currency of democracy."
     - Thomas Jefferson

  At least since the U.S. Constitution explicitly granted Congress
  the power to protect copyright, an intellectual foundation has
  been built up regarding intellectual property. My previous essays
  argued that foundation is now crumbling, and will be gone within
  10 years as broadband connections (to enable easy transfer of
  large files) become ubiquitous and people become more comfortable
  viewing material on computer screens (where it becomes impossible
  to stop copying) versus on paper (where content is still somewhat
  excludable). In other words, if you make money from selling
  content, the news is worse than you think.

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbser=1209>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1503>

  But whether or not this trend is inevitable, one could stop and
  ask whether it's a good thing, and whether the death of excludable
  content should be grieved or cheered. Property is generally
  defined by economists as goods that are rival (e.g., if I take
  your car, you don't have one) and excludable (e.g., you can lock
  your door to keep me out of your home). As information has become
  digitized (and therefore nonrival and nonexcludable), the
  intellectual underpinning of intellectual property has eroded, so
  that today the term intellectual property is little more than an
  oxymoron. Intellectual property may, in a few years, sound as
  strange to the ears as "reasonable attorney fees", "low tar
  cigarettes", and "Zero Administration Windows" do today.

  Note, however, that while this erosion applies to all forms of
  copyright, 99 percent of patents remain valid and enforceable.
  That's because the majority of patents entail securing property
  rights regarding the manipulation of atoms, not bits. If someone
  steals your patented concept of how to build a better mousetrap,
  you can still sue that company, shut down their mousetrap factory,
  and get a large cash settlement. Even patents regarding the way
  information is stored on physical media, such as the MPEG patents
  that apply to DVDs, remain enforceable because you can sue to shut
  down DVD factories that violate them. The patents that will become
  increasingly unenforceable are those regarding the transfer of
  digital information over networks, such as the patents that
  Fraunhofer holds over software that creates MP3 music. Yes,
  Fraunhofer can sue large companies that might infringe, such as
  Microsoft or Real, but they are unlikely to succeed in stopping
  individuals that create MP3 software as a hobby and release it for
  free. Bits are virtual; atoms are real. The rule of thumb is that
  if you can't kick it, you can't sue it.

  Won't people's conscience stop them from "stealing" other's
  "property?" Ask the millions of college students who popularized
  Napster. The reality is that new technology almost always changes
  the views of its users as to what is permissible and even what is
  moral. For example, the Pill radically changed society's view of
  the permissibility (and feasibility) of sex outside of marriage,
  and had even larger effects on the role of women in all walks of
  life. Going back further, it is hard to see how Martin Luther's
  Protestant Revolution could have taken hold without the broad
  availability and consequential wide literacy enabled by the
  Gutenberg Bible. In fact, the drastically reduced cost of
  information distribution that Gutenberg's printing press entailed
  can be seen to underpin the entire Enlightenment, as well as its
  intellectual offspring, liberal democracy and market capitalism.
  (Not to mention the similarity that the printing press was quickly
  applied to the production of erotic texts and imagery, just as
  VCRs caught on as a way to watch adult movies in the comfort of
  one's home, and the sons-of-Napster are exchanging an increasing
  quantity of adult materials in addition to MP3 music.)

  As the marginal cost of distributing information goes from a few
  pennies per megabyte (the approximate cost of most media today) to
  zero, it is likely that the impact on larger society will
  accelerate. Most people will probably come to see the terms
  property and stealing as simply unrelated to how information is
  distributed and how its creation is funded.

> Price per megabyte of different media today
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> book             $20/50 MB      $0.40 per MB per copy
> newspaper        $0.50/10 MB    $0.05 per MB per copy
> 30 second TV ad  $500,000/5 MB  $0.03 per MB per person
>                                 (assuming 3 million viewers)
> CD-ROM           $15/650 MB     $0.02 per MB per copy
> DVD              $50/7000 MB    $0.007 per MB per copy

  A.J. Liebling said that "Freedom of the press belongs to those who
  own one." The reality is that throughout history, the distribution
  of information has been monopolized by a tiny, yet extraordinarily
  powerful, elite. In ancient Egypt, priests would jealously guard
  their astronomical knowledge so as to ensure their place at the
  top of society by being able to predict the annual flooding of the
  Nile. The Roman Catholic Church used the literacy of its clergy
  and monks to develop a parallel government that was more powerful
  than the theoretically sovereign kings during the 1,000 years of
  the Middle Ages. Although freedom of the press is enshrined in the
  First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the reality today is
  that the majority of information distribution channels are still
  controlled by a small elite of publishers and broadcasters. An
  oligopoly of five powerful companies has nearly exclusive control
  in deciding what music will be heard. (This is certainly one of
  the fundamental reasons that Britney Spears is so popular.)

  The influential media theorist Ithiel de Sola Pool described the
  concept of a technology of freedom, which he said, "aims at
  pluralism of expression rather than a dissemination of preferred
  ideas." Pool analyzed the radical differences in how
  communications technologies were regulated by the government,
  based on the perceived scarcity of how many publishers could be
  supported. The press was the gold standard by which others were
  measured, which because of its wide availability, is given the
  broadest First Amendment protection. But radio and television
  broadcasters, by convincing the government that there is a
  scarcity of available radio spectrum, have successfully argued the
  need for heavy regulation. Thus, the government not only regulates
  the kinds of content that can be broadcast (allowing almost any
  level of violence as long as no nudity is shown) but also makes it
  far more difficult for new entrants to compete with the
  established players.

  If he were alive today, Pool would surely believe that the
  Internet is the ultimate technology of freedom. Or, as Judge
  Dalzell said in his historic ruling in ACLU v. Reno that
  pronounced the Communications Decency Act unconstitutional, "It is
  no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and
  continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass
  speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen."
  Intriguingly, he implied that the Internet may therefore deserve
  even greater free speech protection than what is currently
  available for print. That's because anyone with basic literacy
  skills can use the Internet to reach an enormous and growing
  audience for almost no cost. If Liebling was right and the
  limiting factor is the availability of the printing press, than
  that price has been reduced to the $1 an hour or so charged by
  Internet cafes, or the free Internet access made available in many
  U.S. libraries.

<http://www.aclu.org/court/cdadec.html>

  The world we seem to be entering, then, is one in which the
  distribution of content is essentially free, even while its
  creation must still be funded. However, the group most responsible
  for promoting the concept of intellectual property is the
  recording industry, which generally gets the ownership rights to
  artists' music in exchange for agreeing to distribute it. Is it
  any wonder then that the recording industry routinely makes absurd
  comparisons such as that there is no difference between stealing
  music and stealing a car? (The recording industry also routinely
  refers to copying music as piracy, trivializing a real crime in
  which hundreds of people are killed every year on the high seas.
  Piracy on the seas is violent as a direct result of the fact that
  physical goods are rival.)

  A world in which distribution is free is one where many more
  voices can be heard (and also hopefully in which the corresponding
  mouths can be fed). It is unlikely, though, that there will be
  enough money left over to support the recording industry. On the
  night when the RIAA's last lawyers are laid off - they will go out
  toasting, "Well, at least we brought Napster down with us" - few
  tears will be shed for the demise of the music oligopoly.

  Of course, the music industry as it currently exists is not giving
  up without a fight, and a future essay will examine how their
  announced digital offerings compare with the many services that
  have risen up in place of Napster.



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