Hey Corporations: We Loath DRM

Even as we see another victory scored against the kitten-killing DRM monster, Adobe takes a giant leap backward and proposes putting DRM into Flash. I don't understand why big companies refuse to see the light when it comes to DRM. If companies would open their eyes to the headache consumers experience when they try to use DRM-encumbered devices, they would see that it's hurting their businesses by alienating consumers. Someday, the madness will stop, and companies will realize that people don't want to be thieves; people just want things delivered and consumed in the most convenient way possible. (Hint: DRM doesn't fit the bill.)

Government needs help governing technology

The government clearly has issues handling technology. There are questions regarding jurisdiction and application of laws written before certain technologies existed. The problems, as I see it, are two-fold. First, lawmakers misunderstand technology and its ramifications. Second, the process for creating laws and policies is too cumbersome to rapidly respond to situations created by new technology.

For proof regarding the ignorance of policy makers, one needs only recall Senator Ted Stevens’ explanation of the Internet. His speech is indeed concerning when we consider that he was arguing against net neutrality, an issue central to the technology sector. The same misunderstanding displayed by Ted Steven’s is rife throughout the upper echelons of our government, and we see examples of it in recent laws such as the one tying federal funding for universities to a prevention plan for illegal downloading. My personal belief is that age, more than anything, contributes to the inability of our lawmakers to understand technology. Examine today’s successful technology companies; most were started by younger individuals who had grown up with new technologies and had a more intuitive understanding of its true applications. While age isn’t necessarily an indicator of technical understanding, there is a correlation. Therefore, it is concerning that most politicians are in their late 50’s to early 70’s. We need lawmakers to understand technology so they understand its ramifications and change laws accordingly. As long as our lawmakers don’t understand technology, laws governing things like identity theft and intellectual property will remain out of sync with the general public.

Another concern hindering our government is that the method for creating laws and policies is flawed and unusable when it comes to technology. Let’s take, for example, the recent outbreak of data leaks in government organizations. The most frequent kind of leak is a laptop or external hard drive that goes missing. Because of this, some organizations have begun to require hard drives to be encrypted in order to mitigate the damage when a hard drive does get lost or stolen. Unfortunately, that won’t help the situations, as just a few weeks ago hard drive encryption was cracked by a team of researchers. From the rise of data leaks to the breaking of the encryption only took about a year, rendering all the budding policy around encrypting hard drives essentially useless. The organizations created to implement policies are so cumbersome that they simply can not keep up with the rapid changes in the technology world.

RIAA at it again

The RIAA has made it obvious time and time again that suing their loyal fans is a better business strategy than actually finding new and innovative business models. Of course, they don't want to go at it alone, and would love to get DAs to prosecute more pirating cases. Their latest tactic is a doozy: a training video created for the National District Attorneys Association.

Apparently, the RIAA is claiming that prosecuting piracy can be used to convict known criminals who the DAs can't convict on more serious charges. Think Al Capone, who was convicted on tax evasion charges. One gem from the video: Frank Walters is asked if people who have committed serious crimes are "gravitating to this type of piracy." Walters replies "More often than not, we find that most of the defendants we deal with...have spent time incarcerated on much more serious crimes." If that's the case, I wonder that the RIAA repeatedly claims that college campuses are the biggest source of piracy? Most college students hardly fit the picture of a typical music pirate painted by Frank Walters and Deborah Robinson.

Family History is not just Genealogy

Regarding family history, the council from church leaders frequently centers around genealogy, which is identifying your direct ancestor. My father has traced almost all of our family lines at least 10 generations back; the work that needs to be done to find names requires, at least, knowledge of languages I don't know. Continuing my family's genealogy has proven to be extremely difficult. Fortunately, the church emphasizes not only genealogy, but family history work, which calls people to "turn their hearts" to their ancestors. I believe we will soon see an increased emphasis from the church on that aspect of family history as more and more individuals trace their families so far back that traditional genealogy becomes too daunting to the average member.