Call it collateral damage, indeed.
Technology has become an everyday re-invention of the new age. While computerization inserts itself as the norm, industries deliberate on better ways of protecting their products from illegal sharing and piracy.
This most notably comes into play for music and visual media. And though entertainment conglomerates put in all efforts to hold onto the autheticity of their products, consumers ultimately draw the short straw in the deal.
To reflect, Napster knocked over the music industry in the '90s--leading to an international coup d'état of the recording industry. Records yielded little value as obtaining them for free became a very real possibility.
This is to say, however, that recordings of any format should have been created in the first place. David Grubb's recent "Collateral Damage" editorial for The WIRE argues that a recording means there is a best seat in the house. Having marketed anything to begin with is thus an issue because it cheapens the value of the content--and in the end, that is what failed experimental musicians of the '60s and may fail musicians today.
But, along with the toppling of a major industry--the music industry, that is--comes a debate on software and implementing CPUs as a standard for our inventions. To wit, our devices and electronics become the subject of hacking and "jail-breaking." And it is to no surprise that this is now rampant, wherein everything we see and touch is a part of a system of computers--everything, in the end, is a computer.
And with the increase of computers comes the issue of licensing and copyright. What you buy never becomes yours--it is instead licensed to you. Your right to owning what you buy is disappearing as copyright laws reach to hold onto technology as it becomes more common.
"Because when you purchase a physical object, you don't actually buy the software in it--that code belongs to someone else," writes WIRED's Kyle Wiens.
"If you do something the manufacturer doesn't like--repair it, hack it, unlock it--you could lose the right to use 'their' software in 'your' thing. And as these lines between physical and digital blur, it pits copyright and physical ownership rights against each other," he continues.
Our phones, computers, thermostats, light bulbs and other household items ultimately become less "ours," as software becomes the both brain and organ to keep it working.
In a rapidly progressing world, the laws of copyright and licensing lack a moment to catch their breath. When the computability of our world becomes a reality, next comes the side-effects of what to do--if anything--to maintain complete ownership.
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