Ranting and Raving

I was tempted to say, on George W. Bush's position on Stem Cell research, that he might be doing the right thing, if for the wrong reasons, in hampering it. After all, technology growth has outpaced the abilities of our ethicists, philosophers, and religious institutions to develop responses to it that will allow us to use the technology wisely and morally. The commodification of human material is definitely something we need to tread lightly around.

I was tempted, I say, because then I realized something. Bush has not proposed a ban or moratorium on the research, or, for that matter, even the creation of new stem cell lines. Rather, his actions merely amount to a refusal to provide money from the public sector. As I meditated on the implications of this for a moment I realized that what this means is that any meaningful stem cell research that gets done is going to be a strictly private sector endeavor, and that any discoveries, inventions, and methods resulting from this will be the exclusive intellectual property of the corporations that funded it.

Publicly funded research has given us an awful lot. The internet emerged from a DARPA funded project at MIT. Developments in radio and television also have their roots in publicly funded (mostly military) research, and it is because it was publicly funded that these things became as pervasive as they have.

It seems to me that what Bush is doing isn't so much about "the sanctity of life," as it is about excluding the public sector from a technology with significant business potential, and ensuring that the patents are privately held. Whether that is his intention, or merely the effects of him short-sightedly following his moral compass, I cannot tell.

As I consider the aggressiveness with which the RIAA has been attacking P2P networks and their users I am forced to conclude that they really are battling for survival. Sure, they were disturbed when tape recorders came out, but they compromised. Same with DAT (which never materialized into the threat they thought it would). But their policy on this whole computer thingy, and P2P networks in particular is nothing short of draconian. And that is because its not just about their Intellectual Property. It's CERTAINLY not about the artists. Its about a deep down threat to the very foundation of their existence. And anyone who has read Scott McCloud will surely have guessed at my meaning by now.

A P2P Network isn't much more troubling than cassettes when its just listeners exchanging music from listeners. These people will grow up and by legal albums of the pirated music they listened to in their youth. For thirty years that model has worked. But, when its artists exchanging music with listeners, things get truly dangerous. The RIAA becomes superfluous. And the issue of payment that plagues the web-comic world is of less import to musicians who get pittances from the RIAA but get their gravy at live shows. So, if an artist takes a P2P network by storm, and he puts on his web page "hey, I'm playing in Pullman tonight, come see me," he's getting his gravy, but the recording industry isn't getting theirs. Especially if the P2P networks make him popular enough that he can say "hey, I'm playing the Meadowlands tonight," and count on a packed house.

This has record execs quaking in their boots, I expect. And the best way to prevent this scenario is to completely demonize the P2P networks, to create an image of them that causes the listener to say "hey, if I download ANYTHING from here, I might get sued." Then, even if an artist releases a song under the GNU Public License, people will be afraid to download it.

This is also why the record execs don't worry about image. They're fighting to remain the only game in town, and when you're a monopoly, it doesn't matter what people think. But the REAL mark of fear is the recent price reduction on CD's. The RIAA gives enough credence to the threat that P2P networks can pose to their very reason for being that they are not only willing to scare users away with lawsuits, but to lure them away with lower prices. Now that's like publicly wetting your pants!