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Shared Identity Surprises - How Not To Do Single Sign-On
 
Congratulations ODF, OSI Draft International Standard 26300
 
Weight Loss and the Cravings
 
Party on the 10 island! Aftermath
 
Party on the 10 island!
 
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Novels
 
Serious Camp Fu 2.0
 
Happy Birthday, Ted
 
We have a great future behind us
 
DRM as Destroyer of Markets

Shared Identity Surprises - How Not To Do Single Sign-On

Morale-O-Meter.  Boris Mann left an interesting comment at my post on Weight Loss and the Cravings.  Looking at the Morale-O-Meter, I thought it would be useful to track my own caffeine reduction, sleep patterns, and general well-being using that gadget.  It would be something more concrete than the even-more-subjective notes I share with my vitality buddy.  I’m willing to ignore the problem of putting apples, oranges, and morale metrics(?) on the same chart, since my interest is personal and normalized metrics don’t matter to me.  I can handle the need for interpretation — it’s my personal data.  It was something else that stopped me in my tracks.

{tags: Identity Stealthy Sign-On Sign-On Sharing SSO IIW2006 orcmid}

The Morale-O-Meter site (http://morale.erikbenson.com/) accepts my 43 Things (http://www.43things.com/) logon.  What’s with that, and who gave them permission to share my sign-on with a different site?

It is not difficult to determine that Erik Benson is affiliated with the 43 Things team.  But Morale-O-Meter is not offered as a 43 Things service.  I certainly was never aware that my chosen 43 Things sign-on would be shared with other sites.  

I choose unique passwords for different sign-ons, so there is not much that can be compromised here — I am an inactive 43 Things participant.  It’s also the case that if I had been using a 1.5–factor password generator (that uses the site’s domain name plus a secret that never leaves my possession to generate site-specific passwords), I would not know my 43 Things password nor could I reconstruct it for logging onto Erik Benson’s site.  Based on conversations at IIW2006, this technique of generating unique passwords based on a private secret is going to become very popular along with Microsoft InfoCards, Higgins, and other 2.0–fu digital-identity regimes.

It may be that my participation in the just-concluded Internet Identity Workshop 2006 (now IIW2006a) has sensitized me to these situations.  I’d like to think that my inappropriate-use-of-authenticators radar would have screeched either way.  In any case, I decided to dig in and see what I could do to resist this encroachment on an identification that I thought to be strongly localized. 

I pop over to 43 Things to see what I can do to cripple my account.  Surprise, surprise: My last five posts to Flickr are sitting in the sidebar of my profile page.  Holy smokes!  I’ve only used Flickr for less than two weeks and I last used 43 Things so long ago that my Media Center PC (purchased in September) has no cookie for it.  I remember when the 43 Things crew was excited to have created some kind of Flickr association, but I had no reason to pay attention back then.  Now I’m startled that they have matched my Flickr posts to my 43 Things account.

Fortunately, there is a “Close My Account” link on 43 Things, and I just went through the procedure.  I got an “Oops, That Didn’t Work …” page at the end, but my account is indeed closed (that is, I can’t log in any longer and I can’t find my previous user-profile page).  I had to be willing to blow away all of my posts and links on 43 Things.  I also missed the opportunity to see if a 43 Things cookie would have gotten onto Erik Benson’s site without having to re-authenticate.  Too late now.  So be it.

This is not the first time I have been derailed by sign-on sharing.  I use MSDN blogs and sites a great deal, and I am always a little startled when my particulars are remembered on comment forms where I don’t recall ever commenting before.   I figure this is about cookies (with a little Microsoft Passport seasoning) and I don’t mind it, since it is for a narrow usage.

On the other hand, I didn’t realize that different blogging systems also do this.  There, I thought I was creating a weak authenticated identification by registering to an individual blog.  I did not think of myself as creating a shared identification with neither the blog hosting company nor the blogging-software company.  These are cookie-based arrangements too, and I’m willing to accept that convenience since there is no secret involved and it provides consistent identity.  The risk of having my blog visitation and commenting patterns tracked is not of great concern to me in this particular context.

[There are other uses of cookies that I am quite irritated about.  Same technology but different use cases, and I’ll rant about that another time.]

Congratulations ODF, OSI Draft International Standard 26300

Bob Sutor: An ODF Thanks.  As of May 3, 2006, The OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) has achieved stage 40.60 in the meticulous ISO procedure for establishment of international standards under the ISO imprimatur.  This is heralded as a major milestone in the establishment of formal standards for open interchange of office documents.  ODF joins the historical development of Open Document Architecture (ODA), Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and other initiatives designed to foster interchange and interoperability with data and text in electronic form.

{tags: ODF Open Document Format OASIS OSI orcmid}

History shows us that achieving a standard specification is not the same as achieving a standard.  Nevertheless, this is an important way-point on the journey toward the open-documents world that is the promise for ODF and related initiatives.  There are many further milestones yet to arrive.  Further steps can now launch off of the foundation established with this strong level of international recognition.

For all of that, congratulations ODF.

The current specification is registered as ISO/IEC Draft International Standard (DIS) 26300, Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0.   This stage is the result of the acceptance of the OASIS submission by ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 34 (Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 34: Document Description and Processing Languages), shepherded under WG1 (Working Group 1: Markup Languages).  This is one of ten specifications wending their way through WG1 and 22 through SC34, including work on topic maps, font information, and Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL). You can purchase and download the just-balloted 2005-10-19 document.  However, apart from some interesting cover materials on the fast-track Publicly Available Specification Procedure that applies to this submission, the content material is literally the May 1, 2005 OASIS specification which can be downloaded without purchase.  The OASIS submission to OSI is attached to the end, and the schemas are also included in the OSI package. 

There has been no technical work on the specification and, unless there have been comments that must be resolved, it seems that there could be no difference in substance whatsoever between the OASIS ODF 1.0 specification and its OSI-ratified form. So far this is not a technical-committee process, in contrast with the original OASIS work and the work of ECMA TC45 on Office Open XML Document Interchange.

Weight Loss and the Cravings

Creating Passionate Users: The strangest, easiest way to lose weight.  Kathy Sierra posted a remarkable experience on changing her physical-weight “set point” using Seth Robert’s Shangri-La Diet: The No Hunger Eat Anything Weight-Loss Plan.  Based on Kathy’s account and on observations made on the Freakonomics blog, I have ordered the book.  To achieve the no-shipping level, I had Amazon toss in Freakonomics, a book I’ve not yet read.

{tags: diet exercise health food craving Freakonomics Shangri-La Diet Kathy Sierra orcmid}

In Winter 2004–2005 I successfully brought my weight range from a high of 168 to a comfortable-for-me 155.  Along with the exercise and diet regimen, I also brought my cholesterol levels to the best they’ve ever been in the 20+ years that they’ve  been monitored and medicated.  I relaxed out of that, and lately my weight is stuck around 160 and is not budging. 

I have become careless about exercise, so I’m putting daily exercise practices back in.  I am working with an e-mail “vitality buddy” and reporting my weight, exercise, and other actions I’m taking every day.  This seems to have stabilized the creeping weight-gain, and it is extremely valuable in having me perform in this area.  But I have pretty constant cravings and I respond by wolfing down snack foods.  There are baby carrots in the refrigerator, and I must put that in.  That’s not where I look when I want a quick snack fix.  I will make snacking on carrots, fruits and other vegetables an addition to what I account for with my vitality buddy and I’ll put that into practice right now.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to the book.  I will also getting a cholesterol check-point in a month or two and it will be interesting to see if I have reclaimed any or all of my prior victory.  I know that exercise was a big factor, and it was the only way I’ve ever managed to raise my HDLs into the desired range.

My vitality buddy has been cutting back on caffeine, and I know Jeff Sandquist stopped drinking caffeine when he managed the weight reduction that inspired my previous victory.  I started doing the same, and I’ve managed to reduce my intake to 1–2 cups of lip-smacking French Roast drip every two days.  I learned something that I should have known.  Caffeine works for me in managing my regular occurrences of sinus inflammation.  So, in addition to becoming more lethargic than I was willing to continue, I found that caffeine was the best treatment when low-level allergy/sinus symptoms kick-in.   That’s my story.  I don’t think it is caffeine withdrawal. 

Unfortunately, while in Mountain View on May 1–3 I became great buddies with the barista at the IIW2006 workshop and now must go into recovery.  That’s working, although I find that I have begun to crave coffee too.  I also see, in reviewing my previous experience, that I no longer measure calories and that I lost my original coach’s attention after that success.  

At the bottom of all of this, I must embrace this effort as a journey and not as an end-point.  I will never not be managing my weight, exercise, and overall health and vitality.  Now it is time to click post and get on the rowing machine.

Party on the 10 island! Aftermath

Second Life | Community: Events - Party on the 10 island!  On the night after Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver, BC, a group of us were standing outside of the restaurant for a final dinner while Eric and others raved about Second Life and the fun that Scoble could have there. 

{tags: Second Life on10 orcmid}

[update 2006–04–23: adjust for this being a new post made after the party.
update 2006-04-22: Added snaps from the event, with further commentary.]

Since then, Robert and son Patrick are decking out a place on Second Life.  The reformed Robert has closed down the evil Scobleizer Corporation headquarters and taken up philanthropy. 

Meanwhile the on10.net folk have featured Second Life and established their own little sparsely-visited world.  I have met only two people there since I started.  I’ve successfully made a little nook into my home base, living as a homeless student in the steam tunnels, so to speak.

On Thursday, April 20 at 7pm pdt (gmt-0700) the first 10 island block party was held.  Visit the event notice, download Second Life, and come play in a welcome area.  To visit the 10 island, look for it in “Find” and teleport on over.  Also, you can join GroupOn10 and see when others are around.  I’ll be around looking for people who want to practice their Italian with friendly native speakers found on Second Life.  You may find other interesting groups to your liking and that allow open registration.

Party Report

Here's Laura Foy's avatar, LauraThug Seattle.  The Heads-Up Display (HUD) in my field of view is from my avatar's JetPack and has nothing to do with LauraThug.  One of the first thing Laura wants to do is find some tattoos for her avatar.

I (that is, my avatar Orcmid Seattle) bumped into avatar Codi Ng (Erik) in the tree house and didn't chat long enough to figure out who the avatar's owner was.  The startling aspect in Erik's case is that he and I ended up with the same basic avatar body and were both wearing the on10 T-shirt.  Except for the shades and different pants, I thought I'd run into my avatar's twin.

I didn't see avatar JeffSand Dot (guess who).  We did notice later that avatar Scoble Seattle was online, but we failed to hail him or even find out where the avatar was hanging out.

One thing I noticed is that group chat is difficult for me to follow in Second Life, mainly because there is so much about visual attention and motion to handle at the same time.  I also see that it is important to learn how to hand objects to people, give them landmarks and notes that answer common questions.  I’ve just recently found a welcome area and a sandbox for building objects and experimenting with what they can be made to do.  I’d like to build a unique vehicle for Orcmid Seattle to scoot around in, be able to hover, and so on.  I have built the shape and am just learning that it is the ability of all objects to have a script that allows it to be a vehicle.  I found some sort of serious rocket vehicle in a Second Life junkyard, so I figured I’d see how it operated.   This may be a bit like putting a Corvette engine in a dune buggy, so we’ll see how it goes.  I also haven’t found any way to extract the script from an object yet.

And here's Adam Kinney's avatar, Adam Kivioq, relaxing at the end of the party (Adam claimed he was on the phone in real life).  You may safely conclude that wings of various form are popular in Second Life.  All avatars are able to fly, and it is an important form of travel, along with teleportation.

I had just learned to take snapshots in Second Life.  They are actually taken on my local machine, using the Snapshot tool of the Second Life client.  Not thinking about that, I would send them as postcards from Second Life to myself.  So they actually uploaded and were emailed from the Second Life system.  It works well enough, as you can see.  I forgot that I intended to take pictures, and finally remembered to take these, not taking more until I saw how well multiple postcards from Second Life to real (cyber-) life worked.  I now know to just go crazy and snap pictures as much as I want.

Although the first non-security software I ever install on a fresh computer is a screen-capture utility (for documentation and trouble-shooting reports), I haven’t tried screen captures of the Second Life interface.  Sometimes screen capture doesn’t work with animated interfaces.  That’s an experiment for me to try.  It would be cool, of course, to have my avatar be carrying a camera in Second Life, letting people know I’m capturing pictures.  These pictures are easier to share than the ones I take in real life, still using roll film, requiring more effort to put online the way I want.   (And even these have been cropped and edited onto my web site as a “proofing” mechanism used before I paste the image-linking HTML into my blog post.)

Reflections on Second Life

There are three things I’ve noticed about my experience in Second Life so far, and being at a party brought it home for me. 

First, I am reminded what a wall flower and voyeur I am.  It feels very awkward to introduce myself (that is, Orcmid Seattle), and find ways to become acquainted with others.  I have been to costume parties, in the past, as Simon Templar and as Indiana Jones, and either way, it was me at the party with all of my inhibitions and social traits.

Secondly, I am very uncomfortable adopting a persona that is very different from myself.  My Second Life profile provides an accurate portrayal of my “first life” identity and interests.  Even though orcmid himself is a long-standing fantasy character of mine, I don’t use it as a cover for my identity.  I also notice that Laura and Adam are recognizable in their avatars and their namings.  I don’t know how much that is a conscious effort on their part.  I’m not a thrill-seeker and I am not that keen on going completely into a different persona that allows some expression of a hidden or even avowed side of myself.  Some of the behaviors in Second Life would be violations of trust in my real life, and I will not engage in them in either place.  For some I think the lack of social restraints is part of the appeal.  I also think acceptance in these other aspects is important to people whose lifestyle is difficult for them in real life.  There is also the opportunity to find kindred spirits in Second Life. 

Third, I spend too much time wandering around Second Life and just looking and watching. This is a distraction from what I say I am interested in, so I must figure out how to avoid this becoming a great diversion from commitments I have set for myself.  At the same time, the technology is fascinating, as is the ability to construct structures that might be playful and valuable for exploration and communication.  Examples that come to mind, when I allow myself to be a little imaginative, is creating a simulation of the International Space Station and its orbital environs, where it could be visited, explored, and maybe tied into feeds from NASA and other sources.   I can go from there to thinking about setting up a Martian landscape and using it as a kind of science exploratorium.  (I would prefer that any Martians that show up be of the Heinlein ilk, since orcmid’s 12 appendages, and name, were partly inspired by the Red Planet’s Martian nymph, Willis.)  Then when I completely cut loose, I think of a transit jump station that allows and borrows from all manner of science fiction scenarios.  Coming back to to practicality, I’ll be happy if I can trick out my partly formed hover-disk, sort of a Silver Surfer concept, to operate under Orcmid Seattle’s control.  Then again, it would be cool if it behaved a little like Doris Dora, the Gay Deceiver (or is it Pretender).  After that, I could start on The Mother Ship.  heh.

The funny thing about this outpouring of imagination is that I had my last cup of coffee on Friday morning, a re-nuked cup from my daily pot of French Roast on Thursday.  Today, Saturday, I have been miserable and spent most of the day in bed.  It is difficult to distinguish the sinus headache from a mild flu and the prospective caffeine-withdrawal headache.  However, I just had a cup of Vicki’s finest brew, prepared for our visiting brother-in-law.  All I can say is that I don’t notice my headache any longer and I am completely unblocked about what to write.  Now I get to cure myself of the idea that I need a caffeine boost to be creative.  That would be a very bad idea and I will now work to get over it.  After I drink the last of this fresh coffee.

Party on the 10 island!

Second Life | Community: Events - Party on the 10 island!  On the night after Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver, BC, a group of us were standing outside of the restaurant for a final dinner while Eric and others raved about Second Life and the fun that Scoble could have there. 

{tags: Second Life on10 orcmid}

Since then, Robert and son Patrick are decking out a place on Second Life.  The reformed Robert has closed down the evil Scobleizer Corporation headquarters and taken up philanthropy. 

Meanwhile the on10.net folk have featured Second Life and established their own little sparsely-visited world.  I have met only two people there since I started.  I’ve successfully made a little nook into my home base, living as a homeless student in the steam tunnels, so to speak.

This may all change Thursday, April 20 at 7pm pdt (gmt-0700) when the first 10 island block party will be held.  Visit the event notice, download Second Life, and come play.  I’ll be looking for people who want to practice their Italian with the friendly native speakers found on Second Life.

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Novels

A while back during a household reading binge, we worked our way through all of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels.  I keep the list on scraps of paper and I need it somewhere that I can find it.

{tags: Tom Clancy Jack Ryan orcmid}

[update 2006-04-18: Added tagging and tidied-up a little.  Then gave up on Red October being first.]

I am not sure this is an accurate time sequence, but the progression seems to be as follows, with some doubts about the ones with * being possibly interchanged:

1. Patriot Games
   [The numbers and ages of children are convincing for the early sequences]
2. * Hunt for Red October
3. * Red Rabbit
4. * Cardinal in the Kremlin
5. Clear and Present Danger
6. Sum of All Fears
7. Debt of Honor
8. Executive Orders
9. * The Bear and the Dragon
10. * Rainbow Six
11. Teeth of the Tiger

I suppose I should check Wikipedia or some other authority and then update this material.  One concern that I have with Teeth of the Tiger is that it refers to events that happened earlier around the end of the Jack Ryan presidency, but we are not given anything more than Jack Junior’s skimpy reflections about it.  It’s also clear that Teeth of the Tiger is an incomplete story and we must wait for the rest of it.

Although the novel, Without Remorse, does not feature Jack Ryan, it does take place in the Jack Ryan world and provides an important back story to some of the characters.

Our interest stems from finding these characters as people we care about and we care about what happens to them.  So we await more about that.

Serious Camp Fu 2.0

I haven’t caught the Open Spaces fu.  When I’m told there’s to be a blog walk, I can never figure out exactly what is supposed to happen and even what the ordinary behavior is.  If this is an organized activity, why is the organization a mystery?  If it’s kind of a random event with some bloggers strolling around outdoors, why not say so?  Then I can say, oh, it’s like a geek dinner, a mental potluck.

Likewise, when MindCamp [1.0] was held, it was easy to stay away when the hours and duration were not clear and I couldn’t figure out what it was all about.  “Show up to find out” struck me as a great way to lose a day better spent at something else.  It is therefore with some trepidation (a.k.a excitement) that I’ve thrown my hat into the Mindcamp 2.0 ring.

{tags: OpenSpaces seattlemindcamp OPML pajamahideen orcmid}

I’m still happy to go to Northern Voice on little information.  I have some idea what will be happening before I get there (though I book as soon as I know the next date, well before the program is announced).  I pretty much know what to expect and I’m confident that there will be plenty to participate in.  And at the off moments, I can check in on the folks like Ponzi and Maryam who will be planning dinner.  I always want to make sure I know what the dinner plans are.  That’s my degree of open-spacedness (and dealing with fears of being lost/left-out). 

So, I figured that the Moose Camp portion of Northern Voice 2006 would teach me about Open Spaces and what has Nancy White be so enthusiastic about the idea. It didn’t exactly do that.  All I learned was that you won’t know the program until you start in the morning, it will be on note cards on a bulletin board someplace, I have to copy it down and I have to keep checking back to see what has been cancelled/rearranged/moved.  It all worked, but I don’t know that it was a smoothly-orchestrated OpenSpace experience.  I survived it, including the awesome restaurant-finding junket that night.

It’s also clear that Code Camp was not an Open Spaces creation.  There’s more to learn.

I have a friend who organizes movie and discussion nights and tells people “whatever you bring will be perfect.”  It is always great when everyone brings bread or dessert.  It just doesn’t matter.  It made organizing events effortless.  So in Austin’s honor, I shall lighten up.

Now, my initial interest in MindCamp 2.0 is not that it is a 24–hour overnight event.  I’m interested because cool people organized and attended the last one.  I figure that, since it is about 14 streets from my home, I can always return to the comfort of my own bed.  Or I can validate my pajamahideen credentials and do the sleep-over.  Well … having an exit seems like a good strategy, especially since I want to junket down to IIW (possibly another open-space event) shortly thereafter.

Also, now that I know Dave Winer is considering it and Scoble will be there, along with Alex Barnett, Nancy, Ted, and others, I am starting to thing of topics that interest me and that I want to put on the wiki.  That has me want to pitch the following topics:

• OPML 2.0 Luv (and I promise not to talk with Dave about when a specification fails the Einstein simplicity test, though my experience is identified here and I have some concerns about underspecified “standards” here).
• Making Computing Inviting and Satisfying.  Now that you know how to load your iPod and Flickr your cell phone, if you were curious about the software that makes all of this possible, how would you find the on-ramp?  There were once radio amateurs, what is there for computer science?  Are the wonder years of hobbyist computing behind us?  Is it all about games (and why not, that might be reason enough)?
• Major Ahahs on the road to understanding computers, software, and programming.  What are some of the thickest mental barriers you had and what was it like when you finally got a clue?  I have many of those, including ones not even recognized yet.  How did you gain a valuable lesson and learning experience?  Did you give up or are you still struggling?

Too geeky?  Well, what can I say.  I’m looking forward to what others have to offer.

I wanted to say “camp fu” for all of the different camps that abound these days.  Not being too sure that this was suitable for kiddies and the office, I checked out the term.  My first experience of -fu construction was with drive-in fu, courtesy of Joe Bob Briggs, starting after I moved to Silicon Valley in 1992.  I am startled to learn that it has devolved to “expert practice of a skill.”  It may fit the open-space camp model the same way that Ben Rady bridges to the Agile Manifesto from the Bruce Lee quote, “Be formless … shapeless like water. … Be water, my friend.”  Reassured that there is no grammatical connection with fubar and snafu (derived from “fudged up” according to one song lyric), I am heartened that the designation is probably apt.  Now if we can just cut back on the 2.0 fu.  Or is that fu 2.0?

Update 2006-04-15: I misspelled Ponzi’s name in the photo caption.

Happy Birthday, Ted

{tags: NorthernVoice Moose Camp photographer blogger Ted Leung orcmid}

One of the gifts of this year’s Northern Voice conference was seeing Ted Leung, Julie, and the kids again.  A bonus was listening to Ted express his passion for photography and his pleasure in searching out absorbing great photography books. 

Thanks Ted, and Happy Birthday. 

May the coming year find your passions undiminished and created new every day.

We have a great future behind us

Susan Crawford blog :: A gentle decline.  I just learned from David Weinberger that Susan Crawford is someone to pay attention to.  I’d so say.  Her blog is a delight to read.  Even in a bleak moment, there’s an intense power of words:

“ … We have a great future behind us. 

“PhD candidates from other countries are finding it so difficult to be admitted to the country that they're staying home.  Public education is in crisis.  We don't have a replacement for Bell Labs, we don't know how basic research is going to be funded, and we label outsourcing to other countries as un-American, even though people in those other places speak English better than we do and work harder.”

…

“It's hard to see this crisis; it's made up of a million incremental steps.  But it's happening.  The terrible state of broadband penetration in this country is just a visible symptom.  The solution isn't going to be found in short-term market players who have every reason to act monopolistically (and uniformly bad track records).  The people who lead us need to recognize that this country is steadily declining, and that pride in our former accomplishments won't save us.  We need vision, and we need it now.”

I think this observation is about far more than the state of broad-band infrastructure.  It seems to be a question of national malaise, one that is not uniformly shared.  I also wonder whether John Cooper’s thoughtful comment isn’t the most challenging of all, reminding us that we get the leaders (and the government) we deserve.  So, as followers, what action is available for us to restore our sense of flourishing vitality and promise, one that joins us with the diverse aspirations of ordinary people everywhere? 

I am left to ask: What am I doing, today, to create the world I want to live in?

{tags: civil participation democracy social responsibility us-them governance public interest Susan Crawford orcmid}

DRM as Destroyer of Markets

Orcmid's Lair: Must DRM Go Away?  In digesting James Delong’s March 22 FOSS & the Content Industry post, I was taken aback by the idea that banning DRM (which I am not advocating) would abolish markets.  What struck me is that DRM is itself destructive of established and thriving markets, and that should be taken into account.  In addition, there are many ways that DRM is an inadequate substitute.

{tags: intellectual property economics markets fixed assets rented experiences DRM James DeLong orcmid}

 It seems to me that those who require DRM to preserve their business models are looking at a different and more-exclusive market economy than the one they are closing off.  I am thinking of the current market in recorded media, including printed works.

Banning Consumers from the Market

In today’s publishing market system, books are fixed assets and anyone can conduct trade in books. There is a market that extends beyond the first sale, and that is part of the economy around published works.  I think that, with eBay and amazon.com, and brokering of referrals to alternative sellers, this market is thriving in ways that we had not observed before.  And books are assets: you must depreciate them under certain conditions, loss and destruction of books can be a casualty loss, you can have insurance protection against loss of books as household and professional goods, you can bequeath them to your heirs, donate them to charities (including public-library donations), free them to Book Crossing, and so on.

Of course, first sellers don’t seem very fond of this arrangement.  I know there are writers (who tend to be voracious readers and I bet have library cards) who are unhappy about used sales of their books.  No one on the publishing end seems to be all that happy about lending libraries.  On the other hand, in what markets is the first seller able to tax future trading in their commodity?

It seems important to appreciate that current DRM models remove the consumer as a full market participant. I find that lack of freedom from participation to be seriously disruptive.

I don't mind going to the movies and paying for the one-time experience. There are not that many films I need to see more than once.  I certainly don’t object to live performances being one-only experiences.  And also find that when I own DVDs I don't watch them (the big exception for me being performance/concert films and videos). But I can trade those in, swap them with others, and not be violating any IP regime. Likewise with my CDs and LP records. Not with my licensed audio, although if you figure out the pricing, it isn't that much cheaper (although the short-term convenience is certainly a factor).

The Inevitable Destruction of DRM’d Works

Without stepping into the "this software is licensed not sold" quagmire (but it is not leased/rented like DRM’d works, it is licensed, and licenses may even be transferable), I can understand one fear of DRM that has nothing to do with free-riding. DRM is too temporary and fragile. It seems to be making a consumable out of what previously was a durable commodity (maybe not what an economist would call it, but that is what comes to mind).

So, regardless of the parasitism issues, there is a genuine concern that the material will be lost and unusable (along with a fear that this can arise as a malicious act of the producer).   In contrast, I still have my dad's 78 rpm low-fidelity platters. There are not in good shape, but I can preserve them for private purposes as well as I'm able.  I can even do that digitally and no longer need to hold onto a proper turntable for playing them.

I have eBooks that I purchased that I lost when the computer that carried them cratered. Now it is easy to say that is simply an ordinary loss, except it happens too predictably.  When did your stereo crapping out ever destroy your record or CD collection along with it?  (I understand there are ways to recover eBooks, depending on their source, but I have no idea how to do that and I thought that eBooks were dead, making it a big surprise to find a Microsoft Reader among the pre-installed junk on Quadro, my new Toshiba Satellite Tablet PC.)

It seems that loss of DRM’d digital material is enevitable. With the Microsoft Media Player DRM for my MSN Music/Radio-Plus song purchases, I know I can move the material to other media and I can arranged to play it on a different computer. But I'm already up to 3 installs of some older materials that have been moved from dying computers to healthy ones. When I hit the magical 5-times limit I don't know what recourse there will be to losing the material completely. This condition is a lot shakier than collections of CDs and my discarding a CD because I have lost interest and I want the shelf space back.

The Deep Preservation Requirements of Scholarship and Civil Culture

Of greater concern to me is the impact of DRM’d works on scholarship.  It is a big deal that sources be cited in scholarly work, and those sources must be accessible for others to review, confirm, reject, and dispute.  Sources may provide new inspiration to a later arrival.  Sources may be seen as misinterpreted in later work.  In serious scholarship, sources matter.  This is so important that, when I was working on an M.Sc dissertation project, I was reminded along with all other students that it is expected that we retain copies of those portions of sources that were relied upon in my own work.  Nothing is to be done with them, but they must be available as evidence of the work that was done and how portions of the original source were relied upon.  These records may well survive the future inaccessibility of a primary source.

This particular case struck me as I visited one of the research libraries on the University of Washington main Seattle campus this past week. I had the good fortune of finding a book, published in 1959, that I no longer own (Handbook of Automation, Computation, and Control, volume 2) and that I had always meant to review in light of recent explanations for how computing works and for perspective on how much that concerns us now were anticipated at the beginning of the digital-computer era.  There was an intact copy in the library storage and it was quickly brought to me.  I was able to review the chapter of importance to me and return the book to be replaced until someone else wanders across it.  I will consult my pages of notes and refer to that book in articles I am working on.  On my next visit I will see if I can check on a portion of the first computer book I ever owned, Dan MacCracken’s 1957 Digital Computer Programming.)

A Call for Creative Tension

So, more creative thinking is needed. I can't trade or protect my DRM'd material without the cooperation of a third party and yet the DRM is important to prevent me from pirating the DRM'd work, or at least to assure the publisher that piracy is not a significant source of loss.  I don’t see the producers of DRM’d works as reliable preservers of my rights and titles (were I offered any at all).  I agree with James DeLong that the government is probably not a good choice, although some government chartering of some efficient mechanisms would be interesting.

In my musings, I wonder if there is a way to allow transfer of fixations of digital works that preserves DRM and that empowers scholarship, our great libraries and collections, and safeguards the work for those uses that are intended to always be fairly available for all people, now and into the future, long after exclusive property rights have extinguished.

What I see is that we are so quick to predict unexperienced extreme consequences and make such cynical attributions to the other parties that we see neither common ground nor our mutual interdependence.  Somehow, we must recognize the legitimate concerns of all parties.  Whether we can overcome our snap-judged fear of being exploited or taken advantage of in some other way will be a major factor in our ability to find an efficient and promising solution.

As far as markets go, we have ample evidence that markets ultimately work around artificial barriers and disequilibria.  Just as nature finds a way, so do economic actors.  What all of the current actors need to remember is that a transaction only works when both parties gain more than they give up.  When that fails, substitutions are found, no matter how long it might take.