This article appeared in the February 1997 issue of Communications of
the ACM (Volume 40, Number 2).
(from "The Road To Tycho", a collection of articles about the
antecedents of the Lunarian Revolution, published in Luna City in 2096)
For Dan Halbert, the road to Tycho began in college--when Lissa Lenz
asked to borrow his computer. Hers had broken down, and unless she could
borrow another, she would fail her midterm project. There was no one she
dared ask, except Dan.
This put Dan in a dilemma. He had to help her--but if he lent her his
computer, she might read his books. Aside from the fact that you could
go to prison for many years for letting someone else read your books,
the very idea shocked him at first. Like everyone, he had been taught
since elementary school that sharing books was nasty and
wrong--something that only pirates would do.
And there wasn't much chance that the SPA--the Software Protection
Authority--would fail to catch him. In his software class, Dan had
learned that each book had a copyright monitor that reported when and
where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing. (They used this
information to catch reading pirates, but also to sell personal interest
profiles to retailers.) The next time his computer was networked,
Central Licensing would find out. He, as computer owner, would receive
the harshest punishment--for not taking pains to prevent the crime.
Of course, Lissa did not necessarily intend to read his books. She might
want the computer only to write her midterm. But Dan knew she came from
a middle-class family and could hardly afford the tuition, let alone her
reading fees. Reading his books might be the only way she could
graduate. He understood this situation; he himself had had to borrow to
pay for all the research papers he read. (10% of those fees went to the
researchers who wrote the papers; since Dan aimed for an academic
career, he could hope that his own research papers, if frequently
referenced, would bring in enough to repay this loan.)
Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the
library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to
pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without
government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and
nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By
2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were
a dim memory.
There were ways, of course, to get around the SPA and Central Licensing.
They were themselves illegal. Dan had had a classmate in software, Frank
Martucci, who had obtained an illicit debugging tool, and used it to
skip over the copyright monitor code when reading books. But he had told
too many friends about it, and one of them turned him in to the SPA for
a reward (students deep in debt were easily tempted into betrayal). In
2047, Frank was in prison, not for pirate reading, but for possessing a
debugger.
Dan would later learn that there was a time when anyone could have
debugging tools. There were even free debugging tools available on CD or
downloadable over the net. But ordinary users started using them to
bypass copyright monitors, and eventually a judge ruled that this had
become their principal use in actual practice. This meant they were
illegal; the debuggers' developers were sent to prison.
Programmers still needed debugging tools, of course, but debugger
vendors in 2047 distributed numbered copies only, and only to officially
licensed and bonded programmers. The debugger Dan used in software class
was kept behind a special firewall so that it could be used only for
class exercises.
It was also possible to bypass the copyright monitors by installing a
modified system kernel. Dan would eventually find out about the free
kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the
turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers--you
could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's
root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you
that.
Dan concluded that he couldn't simply lend Lissa his computer. But he
couldn't refuse to help her, because he loved her. Every chance to speak
with her filled him with delight. And that she chose him to ask for
help, that could mean she loved him too.
Dan resolved the dilemma by doing something even more unthinkable--he
lent her the computer, and told her his password. This way, if Lissa
read his books, Central Licensing would think he was reading them. It
was still a crime, but the SPA would not automatically find out about
it. They would only find out if Lissa reported him.
Of course, if the school ever found out that he had given Lissa his own
password, it would be curtains for both of them as students, regardless
of what she had used it for. School policy was that any interference
with their means of monitoring students' computer use was grounds for
disciplinary action. It didn't matter whether you did anything
harmful--the offense was making it hard for the administrators to check
on you. They assumed this meant you were doing something else forbidden,
and they did not need to know what it was.
Students were not usually expelled for this--not directly. Instead they
were banned from the school computer systems, and would inevitably fail
all their classes.
Later, Dan would learn that this kind of university policy started only
in the 1980s, when university students in large numbers began using
computers. Previously, universities maintained a different approach to
student discipline; they punished activities that were harmful, not
those that merely raised suspicion.
Lissa did not report Dan to the SPA. His decision to help her led to
their marriage, and also led them to question what they had been taught
about piracy as children. The couple began reading about the history of
copyright, about the Soviet Union and its restrictions on copying, and
even the original United States Constitution. They moved to Luna, where
they found others who had likewise gravitated away from the long arm of
the SPA. When the Tycho Uprising began in 2062, the universal right to
read soon became one of its central aims.
Author's Note
This note was updated in 2002.
The right to read is a battle being fought today. Although it may take
50 years for our present way of life to fade into obscurity, most of the
specific laws and practices described above have already been proposed;
many have been enacted into law in the US and elsewhere. In the US, the
1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act established the legal basis to
restrict the reading and lending of computerized books (and other data
too). The European Union imposed similar restrictions in a 2001
copyright directive.
Until recently, there was one exception: the idea that the FBI and
Microsoft will keep the root passwords for personal computers, and not
let you have them, was not proposed until 2002. It is called "trusted
computing" or "palladium".
In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the SSSCA
that would require every new computer to have mandatory copy-restriction
facilities that the user cannot bypass. Following the Clipper chip and
similar US government key-escrow proposals, this shows a long-term
trend: computer systems are increasingly set up to give absentees with
clout control over the people actually using the computer system. The
SSSCA has since been renamed to the CBDTPA (think of it as the "Consume
But Don't Try Programming Act").
In 2001 the US began attempting to use the proposed Free Trade Area of
the Americas treaty to impose the same rules on all the countries in the
Western Hemisphere. The FTAA is one of the so-called "free trade"
treaties, actually designed to give business increased power over
democratic governments; imposing laws like the DMCA is typical of this
spirit. The Electronic Frontier Foundation asks people to explain to the
other governments why they should oppose this plan.
The SPA, which actually stands for Software Publisher's Association, has
been replaced in this police-like role by the BSA or Business Software
Alliance. It is not, today, an official police force; unofficially, it
acts like one. Using methods reminiscent of the erstwhile Soviet Union,
it invites people to inform on their coworkers and friends. A BSA terror
campaign in Argentina in 2001 made veiled threats that people sharing
software would be raped in prison.
When this story was written, the SPA was threatening small Internet
service providers, demanding they permit the SPA to monitor all users.
Most ISPs surrender when threatened, because they cannot afford to fight
back in court. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 1 Oct 96, D3.) At least
one ISP, Community ConneXion in Oakland CA, refused the demand and was
actually sued. The SPA later dropped the suit, but obtained the DMCA
which gave them the power they sought.
The university security policies described above are not imaginary. For
example, a computer at one Chicago-area university prints this message
when you log in (quotation marks are in the original):
"This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals
using this computer system without authority or in the excess of their
authority are subject to having all their activities on this system
monitored and recorded by system personnel. In the course of monitoring
individuals improperly using this system or in the course of system
maintenance, the activities of authorized user may also be monitored.
Anyone using this system expressly consents to such monitoring and is
advised that if such monitoring reveals possible evidence of illegal
activity or violation of University regulations system personnel may
provide the evidence of such monitoring to University authorities and/or
law enforcement officials."
This is an interesting approach to the Fourth Amendment: pressure most
everyone to agree, in advance, to waive their rights under it.
