Rethink: Inheritance, debt, and world views

At the end of June I joined a twitter thread started by George Soros where he referenced a short podcast essay he made about rethinking debt.

 

Inheritance is also a key part of systemic racism, allowing those whose wealth was gained off the (often whipped) backs of others to be perpetuated intergenerationally.

So much of failed economic policy is tied to counterproductive cultural entitlements.

— Russell McOrmond (@russellmcormond) June 30, 2020

 

While the thread was short, it touched upon some interesting ideas I wanted to expand upon.

Read outside your echo chamber

One person suggested that my comment came from within an echo chamber. In fact, what I wrote is what it sounds like when someone of European descent (ancestors primarily indigenous to Ireland) finally exits the Eurocentric echo chamber.

Persons of European descent often imply that economic discussions are linear thinking between the theories of two Europeans: Scottish Adam Smith (Capitalism, 1700's) and German Karl Marx (Communism, 1800's).  If you question anything about current implementations of Capitalism, the dominant European economic thinking in the 1900's and thus far in the 2000's, you are then "accused" of being communist. The idea that we might be expressing concepts from world views that originated from outside of Europe doesn't occur to them.

Due to events in Canada earlier in the year (pre-COVID) involving indigenous land protection groups, and events during COVID-19, I have embarked on my own antiracism training. While I have been questioning some small aspects of dominant European thought throughout my life, I now have a better understanding of where these ideas came from and where some of the alternatives came from.

Government Debt

George Soros ideas are simple, and involve different instruments for global or domestic government debt.

Built into the Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund and World Bank) is economic policies mirroring a European world view, and debt from these institutions pretty much always come with an imposition of European economic policy within the borrowing countries.

The idea that capital accumulation should be individual, but debt shared (through government, or otherwise externalised) is European thinking that I don't subscribe to.

Inheritance

I believe we have all heard the phrase "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children". Some indigenous North Americans such as members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy subscribe to the Seventh Generation Principle where decisions we make today should taken into consideration and result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.

For as long as I can remember I have thought the same thing about capital itself: that we don't inherit it from our parents, but borrow it from the future. Understood this way, inheritance is yet another form of shared (via the future) debt that exists only to benefit historical individuals. The future is claimed to "owe" the beneficiaries of this inheritance even if they make no contribution to society themselves.

There are levels of capital accumulation that are near a subsistence level that don't qualify as debt, where there is no issue with passing on to the same people you would normally be a caregiver for in life. This is the type of wealth transfer to descendants that most individuals will be personally familiar with, and is not what I'm referring to.

Individuals manipulating public policy to generate public debt

When we have individuals accumulating capital that could allow families or whole communities or countries to subsist for many generations without further contribution then this is public debt for personal gain.

I have never believed that those currently in the top 1% of capital extraction actually "earned" that wealth based on the value of their contributions to society. I believe they extracted that capital and created that public debt through flawed public policy (said in another way, corruption).

Rather than applauding these individuals, such as George Soros, Bill Gates, or Warran Buffet, I consider their building and abusing public debt to be immoral. While some of these individuals wish to direct some of this wealth and influence towards policy goals of their choosing, this doesn't change the fact that these individuals are manipulating public policy based on the public debt they have created.

If you take a close look at those declared the "richest" people in the world, you might notice something in common.  They were all able to accumulate this personal monetary wealth based on government granted and/or protected monopolies.

Cory Doctorow wrote a book-sized essay he titled "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" where he discussed one aspect of government protected monopolies.  Rather than understanding that the mere existence of a monopoly is economic and political harm, western governments have transformed into believing that the only possible type of harm is "consumer pricing".

From this Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Page (Google), Elon Musk (Tesla), Sergey Brin (Google) were able to build upon the decades of monopolist public policies actively promoted by Bill Gates (Microsoft, pharmaceuticals), Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison (Oracle), and others in more traditional media and communications.  These are individuals who helped expand government granted monopolies (right-of-way wired communication monopolies, wireless spectrum monopolies, author monopolies, inventor monopolies, etc) into something that enables a small number of individuals to accumulate personal benefit at the expense of society as a whole.

Much of the current attempts by western governments to regulate "Big Tech" are doomed to fail as they narrowly focus on the harm made blatantly visible by specific individual monopolists, rather than recognizing that flawed government policies entirely created the problem if the first place. They insist on rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic rather than bothering to steer clear of the iceberg.

North American indigenous world views

Whether we call it Turtle Island or North America, there were people here for thousands of years before Europeans visited this land in the 1400's. While early interactions were civil, this relatively quickly changed to colonization and in the southern part conquest (what the settlers declared themselves to be the United States). While the European settlers in the North (what Europeans declared to be Canada) weren't as overt in their conquest, the ongoing violation of treaties suggests us northerners weren't that much better.  The official policy of the government of Canada has essentially been genocide of indigenous treaty partners.

 

As I'm learning in the Indigenous Canada course I'm taking, North American Indigenous world views and governance are very different from European. While there are differences throughout North America as there are in Europe, commonalities exist:

• Philosophy of interconnectedness and belonging
• Unity through collaboration
• Relationship with the land extending to environmental stewardship

 
Rather than the European focus on the individual, often to the exclusion of the group, indigenous North Americans believed each person should have accountability to the group for their own actions and words.

Rather than competition which is seen by Europeans as how to create growth opportunities, collaboration is the focus.  Each child, youth, adult and elder must have a role and each retain a responsibility to each other and to the community.
 

The European concept of "purchasing" and then "owning" land was inconceivable, and thus the perspectives of Europeans and North Americans on agreements and treaties were quite different.  Europeans believed in a concept of ownership (exclusivity without responsibility) of land, animals, people and ideas which was not shared by others. Indigenous North Americans believed in stewardship, a view I personally share.

The welfare of fellow citizens

With a pre-European North American world view, policies such as a Universal Basic Income would be obvious. As we all have responsibilities to each other, there would no longer be this push to have complex (expensive to administer) programs that seek to negatively stigmatize sharing as happens with most social welfare and other programs in North America today.

In a country where we recognized responsibility for each other, we would no longer be willing to sustain policies which enable so few individuals to extract so much wealth from the commons or the future.  Policies which create and sustain monopolies would no longer be supportable.

Land stewardship could replace land ownership, with the building up of public debt (as we see in the energy sector) being replaced with sustainable land and resource usage.

If we also replaced coercive justice with restorative justice, much of the problems with over-policing and the disconnect between policing and the communities would no longer exist.

 

I will never claim to have all the answers, but the most critical thing I have learned thus far this year is we all need to exit the Eurocentric echo chamber.

Decolonisation

I am a strong supporter of decolonisation. In this I'm not only referring to racist language used as part of colonizers treating the colonized as inferior, but to also visit whether precolonial world views, governance and laws should be readopted in countries such as Canada.

As I look at how Europeans and their colonies have addressed various crisis from the current pandemic to the global climate crisis, I have come to believe that European economic thought from the 1700's and 1800's has failed our species. We need to steer in a different direction if we are to have a sustainable future.

 

Sep 30 addition:

While transcribed in 1980 and posted online in 2011, the following speech by Russell Means is helpful to understand.

Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism”

Backward laws around technology ownership make self-driving cars more dangerous

Canadian born science fiction author Cory Doctorow writes many excellent articles which try to wake people up to the real technology debates we should be having, recently discussing self-driving cars.  He makes the appropriate link to what I call "dishonest relationship misinformation" (DRM), which some incorrectly call Digital Rights Management due to a confusion on how technology works (they believe it is the interests of copyright holders being protected, when it is the rights of technology owners being revoked).

I always like to extend the discussion beyond questions about whether owners should be treated as threats to asking why we can't move away from these unethical questions to making the obvious ethical choice.  We never need to treat owners in an unethical (even if temporarily legally protected) way if we clarified who owns what.

If a vehicle is owned by a taxi company or municipal transportation authority, it is obvious that its passengers should not be legally allowed to modify the vehicles software.  There is no moral issue here, and the passengers know they are passengers whether there is a human or computer driver.  If they don't trust the organization providing the transportation, they can change transportation methods and/or lobby government to provide adequate regulation of these industries. Governments can properly regulate these industries to ensure passenger and public safety, just as they always had in other transportation industries such as airlines that have had driving assist for a very long time. These devices can also be more easily secured from unauthorized remote control given there is no reason to try to hide unauthorized software from the devices owner. The law can provide owners incentives to secure this technology, rather than backward laws making it illegal for owners to secure their own technology.  Ownership is clear, security is clear, regulations are clear, and the passenger can clearly understand their relationship with the mode of transportation they have chosen.

If a car is sold to an individual, and yet a third party (whether government or the manufacturer) wants to retain control, then we get into the very dangerous territory that Cory is discussing.  Terrorists breaking into the security of (by law required to be insecure) vehicles and using those remotely controlled vehicles as part of an attack is an obvious scenario for self-driving vehicles.  While we won't be counting the costs in lives lost, this does not mean we should ignore other technology.   The devices we use to communicate must also be treated with respect, even when they are multi-purpose and can be used for banking transactions as well as watch movies.  The same clear ownership options exist with communications as well as transportation technology.

What the entertainment industry has been duped into asking for, the legal protection of device manufacturers retaining control over devices sold to individuals, has established costs to society that go well beyond the theoretical (and unproven, un-demonstrated) benefits that copyright holders believe it has.

I consider the moral question to be simple:  We must modernize laws to make it clearly illegal for someone other than the owner of a device to be in control of that device.

Whenever someone asks for something different you should be asking about the morality of that individual or industry given they had a moral choice to make, and yet decided to be promoting the immoral option.  There are reasons why the entertainment industry was lobbying against anti-malware laws. Those industries want to run software in a way that is undetected by the owner of the device in order to verify that their content is not being "stolen".  But, this is precisely what malware does when it it steals passwords.  There is no moral difference between the entertainment industry malware from that written by credit card thieves.

I discussed these pro-infringement organizations in my submission to the parliamentary committee studying Bill C-11. 

Only once we modernize the law to properly handle basic technology ownership can we rationally approach dilemmas such as the Trolley Problem.

See also: An honest expansion of cinema into the home, Another meaning for DRM: Dishonest Relationship Misinformation,  "Digital Lock" language from the technology owners perspective

Protecting IT property rights not a short-term calling

I've been asked over the last decade how my activism will change once Canadian legislation that includes Paracopyright passes. Will my activism be finished, and will I admit "defeat" if a bill abrogates the government's responsibility to protect IT property rights?

At one level this could be a question about whether I will honour the law, which isn't really a fair question. Conservative MP Lee Richardson (Calgary Centre) suggests my honouring the law is optional, saying "If a digital lock is broken for personal use, it is not realistic that the creator would choose to file a law suit against the consumer, due to legal fees and time involved." I suspect the fact one of my early submissions to the government in 2001 involved documenting my circumvention of a TPM for an otherwise lawful purpose suggests that I will continue to do the same.


The more important answer is to state that our activism can not discontinue, and any passage of legislation is only one stage in an ongoing process. The United States provides examples where possible legislative wins can turn around in the courts, which suggests we will need to remain active to seek to turn any legislative losses into wins in the courts or later legislative wins.


A twitter/Google+ exchange with Jason J Kee, Director of Policy and Legal Affairs at the Entertainment Software Alliance of Canada, provides an example of this issue. Mr Kee's association includes game console manufacturers as members, with some game console manufacturers and mobile computer manufacturers being the least respective of IT property rights. Given some of his members want to legalise and legally protect activities which infringe upon the rights of technology owners, our biases in how to look at these policies will be quite different.

He challenged a suggestion I made in a Google+ posting that the USA's technological measures provisions have a tie to infringing purposes. I pointed to my reading of the DMCA which includes the following after defining access control technical measures in Title 17, § 1201, includes the following:

(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected. — (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

(2) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish vicarious or contributory liability for copyright infringement in connection with any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof.

(3) Nothing in this section shall require that the design of, or design and selection of parts and components for, a consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing product provide for a response to any particular technological measure, so long as such part or component, or the product in which such part or component is integrated, does not otherwise fall within the prohibitions of subsection (a)(2) or (b)(1).

(4) Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any rights of free speech or the press for activities using consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing products.

This is a pretty plain language suggestion that the legislators intended limits and exceptions to copyright to not be trumped by technological measures.

Mr. Kee suggested that I'm "ignoring 10+ years of jurisprudence under the DMCA which does not support your assertion #C11", "Most recent MDY v Blizzard, where 9th Cir confirmed no nexus b/t circumvention & infringement 1.usa.gov/dN3wbX #C11"

What he pointed to was "MDY INDUSTRIES v. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT" appeal decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.


In this case the court ruled that "for a licensee's violation of a contract to constitute copyright infringement, there must be a nexus between the condition and the licensor's exclusive rights of copyright." They then ignored the section of the DMCA I quoted above, and suggested that there should be no nexus between an access control and any rights or limitations in copyright. They went out of their way to ignore or reinterpret other court decisions and statements made by legislators to come to a specific decision.


We could discuss how courts are political entities, and how this Democrat dominated court is interpreting protectionist policies originating in the Clinton/Gore National Information Infrastructure Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights.

The take-away for Canadians should be that after Bill C-11 is passed, the law will continue to change. We should not resign ourselves into believing Canada will follow the USA in increasing the enabling of IT property rights infringement. It is just as likely that things will go the other way.


The MDY INDUSTRIES v. BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT case is in my mind a clear example of a TPM being abused to enforce contractual obligations, where one party to the contract is given excessive control over the other. In Canada there have been a number of law professors who have called attention to this issue, going as far as to suggest that this "poorly veiled attempt by the Government to strengthen the contractual rights available to copyright owners, in the guise of copyright reform" may be unconstitutional. Contract law is provincial jurisdiction, and any Paracopyright provisions that extend beyond activities that are the subject matter of copyright may be struck down by Canadian courts.

In my mind, any abuse of a technology that disables law abiding computer owners to control their computers for lawful purposes is an infringement of IT property rights. It is possible that provincial governments and courts will be called upon to clarify this aspect of tangible property rights, and weigh in favour of technology owners. They may not only strike down any legal protection of these abuses of technology in federal Copyright law, but may create legislation to legally prohibit it. This may allow owners to be able to go after infringers, providing the level of protection to technology owners that Bill C-11 alleges to provide for copyright owners.


Ensuring that these infringers won't get away with their dishonest activities when it comes to our governments, our courts, and our computers will require that we remain active in fighting to protect our rights. Setbacks at one time do not mean we should give up, and laws and interpretation of those laws change all the time.

Will you explain why DRM is bad?

I was asked on twitter to explain why DRM is bad.  Given I have spent more than a decade talking about this topic, you would think there is a simple twitter-length answer: but there isn't.


Whether you believe the acronym expands to Digital Rights Management, Digital Restrictions Management, or Dishonest Relationship Misinformation, it doesn't define a specific technology or technique.  The acronym is used to refer to non-controversial technologies such as databases describing content and eCommerce websites, to highly controversial things such as digital locks which lock out the owners of what is locked.


We can't entirely avoid using confusing terms, as people will immediately say "Aren't you talking about DRM" when you want to speak about specific harmful activities.  It is very useful to be clear whenever the time is available.


When some people are concerned about DRM they are concerned about the inability to loan electronic books, or to exercise their fair dealing rights.  While that is peripherally interesting to me, and I agree with some and disagree with other of these ideas, my main concern is impacts which are entirely outside of copyright.  I am happy to discuss (including in comments below, or on the Digital-copyright.ca site) copyright related topics, but for the purpose of this article I am going to talk about things which are unrelated to copyright.


The two techniques I have been fighting against are anti-interoperability locks on content, and non-owner locks on devices.


I believe it should be obvious why having a lock, digital or otherwise, which locks the owner out of what they own is wrong.  In our society most people have at least a minimum of respect for the concept of property rights, and believe that if locks exist it should be the owner that controls them.  Locks should certainly never be allowed to be abused to lock the owner out of what they own, and our laws should protect the owner against such scenarios.  I would be happy to discuss this more if people want, but I am honest in saying that I can't understand why people demonstrate such a lack of respect for or understanding why governments property rights in these discussions.


It shouldn't matter if what is locked is our homes, our cars, or our computers: we should never allow for digital exceptionalism where we ignore basic property rights if the property happens to be digital technology.


The anti-interoperability lock on content ties the ability to access the content to specific brands of devices.   This is harmful in a variety of ways, including being what I consider to be a textbook example of tied selling as described in section 77 of our competition act.   Governments have competition and anti-trust laws for a reason, and again we should not throw away this body of law simply because the tied selling includes something digital.


I don't believe that copyright holders should have the right to decide what brands of technology I use, or what features should exist in the technology that is created and sold.  That said, those who support this policy should recognize that in the vast majority of real-world scenarios it is not the copyright holder that controls the keys to these digital locks.  It is the vendor of the DRM system, a technology company, that controls the keys.  Any digital lock, analog or digital, protects the interests of the key-holder and not necessarily the owner.  I have observed many copyright holders switch their position from being in strong support of technological measures being added to copyright law to being strong opponents once they realized that they as copyright holders would not have the keys or any real-world control over these digital locks.


More important to me, these anti-interoperability locks tie people to non-owner locked devices, something I believe should be prohibited in law.  My primary issue in this debate is the protection of the tangible property rights of technology owners.  Even if it were copyright holders that held the keys to the digital locks on their content, and even if there was a shred of evidence that these locks reduced copyright infringement (most evidence suggests increases), I would still disagree that this justified the legalization of non-owner locks on our devices or anti-competitive behaviour that encouraged the use of non-owner locked devices.




While I believe that these two controversial locks should be prohibited in law,  Bill C-11 (and C-32 and C-61 before them) provide legal protection for them.   While these bills are called "An Act to amend the Copyright Act", the digital locks provisions are not related to the subject matter of copyright law.  In fact, these digital locks have been and will continue to be abused to circumvent the contours of existing laws including contract, e-commerce, property, competition, trade and even copyright.


We have a long way to go in this conversation.  In my mind anyone who respects contract, e-commerce, property, competition, trade, and/or copyright should be opposed to "technological measures" being added to the copyright act.  Legal protection for "technological measures" must be added to the correct law in order for them not to be abused to circumvent the law.


If a technical measure is protecting contracting terms, including a copyright license agreement, then the legal protection should be in provincial contract law.


If a technical measure is protecting electronic commerce, then the legal protection should be in provincial e-commerce law.


And so on...


Hope this helps, and sorry that there isn't a twitter-sized response to this question.  There is a lack of clarity in what the acronym means, which add to the confusion that most of the impacts of adding "technological measures" to copyright law have nothing to do with copyright.