An e-book Thanksgiving
Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and the real lowdown comes from a newspaper columnist named Art Buchwald.
But as a member of the Mainstream Mafia, er, Media, he is blind to the e-book angle, and so I’ll step in.
Soon after landing at Plymouth Rock—yes, that’s the monument in the photo—the Pilgrims were greeted by a North American Indian bearing a small, glowing object with a silvery case.
“It is what we call a personal digital assistant,” explained Squanto. “We use it to read books.” And with that, he bought up on the screen a hunting guide.
“No, thank you, we’ll stick to paper books,” the Pilgrims said.
“But e-books are perfect for people in out-of-the-way locations without libraries,” Squanto persisted. “Besides, we don’t want immigrants on Cape Cod unless they’re self-supporting. Read this and learn to hunt the native birds and animals.”
Early Colonial DRM
Only with much effort could Squanto persuade the Pilgrims to try out e-books. In the end, at the insistence of a well-connected printer—a hunting pal of William Bradford—they passed the DMCA and agreed not to bypass Digital Rights Management.
Squanto begged and pleaded to no avail. “The ways of the white man are unnatural.”
For a while, the Pilgrims prospered. With the Indians’ help, they could find machines using a variety of technologies. Most Pilgrims favored PDAs with backlit screens. But some, preferring to read in bright daylight in between their labors in the fields, used E Ink machines. Life was good. Pilgrims gung-ho on LCDs were even able to get Word Gears shipped in from Japan.
Then the printer grew homesick—so he said—and announced he was moving back to England. Other Pilgrims protested in vain. Meanwhile the Pilgrims found themselves at odds with the Indians. At least the newcomers could consult the e-books in accustoming themselves to hunting and farming in the New World.
The gotcha
A few weeks later, however, the Digital Rights Management stopped working. Instead a message came up: “So long, suckers. I knew you’d miss me. This is my DRM. I control the technology.”
The rest of the message contained pricing information and instructions for sending the requisite gold back to England, where the Pilgrims learned the printer was setting up a software conglomerate. The cost of the DRM was beyond even the imaginations of the Pilgrims, not just budgets (eighty percent of the profits went to a venture capital fund set up by the King).
Bereft of the facts they needed for their daily existence, the Pilgrims could not hunt, fish and farm as successfully as before. More than a few starved to death.
Hunting guide wikis
The survivors grew wise. They compiled farming and hunting guide wikis and took out Creative Commons licenses, while at the same time inventing new business models to help the creative people among them.
Another printer from England sailed to Massachusetts with his own DRM system. But this time the pilgrims were far more wary. They preferred that DRM not be used, period, but if it were to be part of the e-book scene, then it had damn well better meet standards of an OASIS technical committee and include guaranteed ways for the Pilgrims to access their hunting guides forever. As added insurance, the Pilgrims kept up their hunting-book wikis and repealed the DMCA’s prohibitions against making backups and format translations for even personal use.
This isn’t to say life was perfect. With a truly free flow of information, the Pilgrims were far more successful as hunters, and the local turkeys dwindled in number. But what technology taketh away it can bring back.
Hymns and public readings of the GPL
Using Open Source technology, the Pilgrims were able to build an incredibly efficient turkey inseminator and additional devices for other birds and animals. A flourishing market developed to accommodate all the different species. The Pilgrims’ days were happy again, and the palefaces and their descendants prospered and multiplied.
And so today millions of Americans will feast on turkeys—the tofu variety included—and also celebrate with booze, hymns and public readings of the GPL.
Rights info: The above may be reproduced on the Net and in print without permission—even for commercial use—as long as credit is give to me and TeleRead Web log and the essay’s Web address is mentioned. I am not associated with Kaptain Krispy Kreme, who took the Plymouth Rock photo, licensed under Creative Commons. So commercial users should check with him.
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