Not that such a thing would ever reflect itself in our IP policy. But
here are some choice quotes:

http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/enforcement/en/wipo_ace_6/wipo_ace_6_5.pdf
------------------------------------------------------------------
13. To be more explicit about these limitations, we have seen no
evidence — and indeed no claims — that enforcement efforts to date have
had any impact on the overall supply of pirated goods. ...

14. The debate is also notable for its lack of discussion of the
endgame: of how expanded enforcement, whether Internet-based in the form
of proposed "three-strikes" laws, or street-based in the form of
stronger criminal sanctions, will significantly change this underlying
dynamic. ...

15. Perhaps most importantly, we see little connection between these
efforts and the larger problem of how to foster rich, accessible, legal
cultural markets in developing countries — the problem that motivates
much of our work. ...
------------------------------------------------------------------

Alas, just 16 more pages heaped on the thousands already written
detailing in exquisite clarity that piracy is not only a natural and
reasonable reaction to the absurdity foisted upon the world's content
consumers, but no attempts to stop it have been remotely effective, and
no current attempts under consideration show any sign of being more
effective than their predecessors.

-david

This is my response to:

http://gonze.com/blog/2010/05/28/the-sue-em-all-mystery-solved/

Are you sure it's working out well? All the troubles of TPB amount to little more than a couple slight dips -- from enormous piracy to slightly less enormous piracy. TPB is still alive and well, even if its founders are in hot water:

http://thepiratebay.org
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/thepiratebay.org

isohunt.com made the mistake of operating from the US, but it's not like shutting it down will do anything other than cause those users to go elsewhere. And it's worth noting it hasn't been shut down either:

http://isohunt.com/lite/#q=avatar
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/isohunt.com/

As for the next rung, Demonoid seems to be gaining steam -- perhaps picking up isohunt and TPB users who are hopping ship:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/demonoid.com

And the third rung is looking healthy too. Mininova took a hit, but their both seeing decent growth otherwise:

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/btjunkie.com+mininova.com/

In short, nothing has been remotely effective at reducing torrent pirating. Indeed, the only tangible effect is now there are actual *pirate political parties* with seats in major world governments. Does that seem like a force on the decline to you?
As for Limewire, the only thing surprising by it is that it took a *decade* for such an overtly infringing and inducing product to come under threat. The law is still barely able to fight late-90's technology. Speaking of which, it's worth noting that you can still download and use Limewire today, not to mention all the obvious GPL clones that both already exist and will continue to exist:

http://www.limewire.com/

As for that Viacom case against the world's largest pirate, YouTube in its early days, how's that going?

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Viacom-Google-P2P-Downloads,news-6943.html

The only party "winning" against pirates are businesses who hemorrhage money giving content away at a loss (or with business models nobody feels are remotely sustainable).

Indeed, in what possible universe can you claim pirates aren't demolishing their foes in every field of battle they choose to fight? (Streaming being the notable example of a field they haven't yet taken an interest in.)

The only battles the copyright forces are winning are Pyrrhic. They're *masters* of those.

-david

... because of stupid things like this. Seriously? Anybody who calls
for a suspension of the worlds' democracies in order to fight climate
change is an idiot. Don't get me wrong -- it'd take that (and more) to
actually do anything about it. But the rational response to that
scenario isn't to call for the impossible (and thus brand yourself
irrational), but to say "There's probably nothing humanity can do to
stave off climate change, so let's just plan on it occurring and prepare."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting
on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of
James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and
independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.

It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to
tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate
scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and
the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough
to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his
first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last
November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do
anything meaningful."

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy",
he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war
approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a
feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may
be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."

Lovelock, 90, believes the world's best hope is to invest in adaptation
measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most
vulnerable to sea-level rises. He thinks only a catastrophic event would
now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously
enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as
the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

"That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion," he
said. "Or a return of the dust bowl in the mid-west. Another
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report won't be enough.
We'll just argue over it like now." The IPCC's 2007 report concluded
that there was a 90% chance that greenhouse gas emissions from human
activities are causing global warming, but the panel has been criticised
over a mistaken claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2030.

Lovelock says the events of the recent months have seen him warming to
the efforts of the "good" climate sceptics: "What I like about sceptics
is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs,
have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you
really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but
some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. You need
sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic."

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a
giant, self-regulating organism – the so-called Gaia theory – added that
he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA
email scandal. He said he had not read the original emails – "I felt
reluctant to pry" – but that their reported content had left him feeling
"utterly disgusted".

"Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against
the holy ghost of science," he said. "I'm not religious, but I put it
that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever
do. You've got to have standards."

Just read this article in Wired about time:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/

Like every geek, it's a concept that's fascinated me. And like
everyone, I have no real clue. But here's my theory nonetheless:

Time is just a slice of a 4-dimensional universe.

Said another way, the universe is a four-dimensional, static block, and
any particular "point in time" is just a slice through the middle. Make
sense? No? Let me try to build it up.

Imagine a one-dimensional universe. There's up and down, but nothing
else. Just one dimension. If you're a dot in that universe, you can
move up, then back down, and that's it. However, the very notion of
"motion" implies time -- at some time in the "future" you're in a
different position than a different point in the "past". So just like
up and down, time is also a dimension, with two directions: future and
past. So as a dot in a one-dimensional universe, you're actually moving
in two directions: up/down, and past/future.

Accordingly, this one-dimensional universe, if it can change, is
actually more accurately described as a two-dimensional universe.
There's up/down, and past/future. Two directions, and you're moving in
both.

This universe is easy to visualize: think of a heart monitor. Any
individual number (eg, heart voltage) is a one-dimensional universe. At
any point in time, it has a single value. But that value can change
over time. As such, you can easily plot it on paper up/down corresponds
to the heart voltage, left/right corresponds to time. Your
one-dimensional universe + time has been perfectly captured as a single
two-dimensional piece of paper.

So we've got this 2D representation of a 1D universe + time. But why
are we treating time as a special dimension? Why not just say we have a
2D printout of a 2D universe -- one dimension being up/down, the other
dimension being time. The 2D universe is the *whole thing*. The only
reason we ever saw it as a 1D universe was because we were explicitly
ignoring the time dimension.

Indeed, the only way to see a heart monitor as anything other than a 2D
universe is to explicitly focus on one slice of the page and ignore the
others. We call that slice "time". And the fact that different slices
of the page map to different "times" is merely a matter of observation
-- the paper itself doesn't change. The 2D universe itself is totally
stationary, fixed, static, and unchanging. Only our point of
observation changes; the only change is *us* changing what part we're
looking at.

For example, imagine you took another piece of paper, with a tall slice
cut through it, and laid it over the first. It would show a single
slice of time on that paper; it'd show the position of the dot at one
"point in time". Slide the paper from left to right and the point
appears to move -- even though in fact the paper underneath it isn't
moving at all; only the viewpoint is moving.

So from this perspective, the change of time isn't an attribute of the
universe. It's an attribute of the *viewer*. The universe -- in this
case, a 2D printout of a heart monitor -- is totally unchanging. Only
our view of it changes.

Now let's add another dimension: let's do a stack of sheets of paper,
like a book. Each page is a 2D "slice" of a 3D universe (2D + time).
Each page has dots arranged in a particular way, and any page can have a
completely different arrangement of dots. To see how those dots "move"
we just flip our thumb through the book. Each dot appears to "move" up
and down, left and right, when in fact it's not the dots moving -- its
our thumb moving, showing us one page at a time. It's our *attention*
moving, *experiencing* one page at a time. The first and last page will
never change; but our *experience* changes over "time". Once again, the
change of time is not an attribute of the book; it's an attribute of *us*.

And this has a natural correlation with 4D. Every moment of our current
universe is like a page in a big 4D book. This very moment is page 100;
a second ago was page 99, and a second from now will be 101. Those
pages are totally static -- pages 1, 20, 99, and 100 are written. But
so are pages 101, 110, 10000, and 1000000. Our 4D universe (3D + time)
is totally static. The only reason it seems to change is because we're
only looking at one page "at a time".

At least, that's what I think.

So there are a few FAQ corollaries that come out of this:

- Is the universe deterministic? Yes. Every page in the future is a
direct consequence of the pages in the past. If you were to somehow
step outside the universe and look at the "page" corresponding to this
moment in time, you could completely and wholly predict the next or any
future page. I also expect you could predict every previous page.
Basically, if you were smart enough, with complete knowledge of the
current state (page) of the universe you should be able to predict any
past or future state.

- What about free will? Doesn't exist. Every action you will ever do
is pre-ordained and dictated by physics. You and everything you will
ever do is purely the consequence of actions that have come before you.
All those things you think you can take credit for? Sorry. Total
chance. But hey, all those things that went wrong, they're not your
fault either. We're all in it together, everybody a product of the past.

- Wait, seriously? Yes, seriously. Free will doesn't "exist" in the
sense that you can make some decision that isn't pre-determined by
physics. We're just characters in a book that's already been written.
But don't feel bad: though the book is written, we're all reading it
together. I have no idea what comes next chapter, and nor do you. So
it's still exciting to be alive! Free will ultimately doesn't matter
(to me, at least). It still *feels* like I'm deciding, discovering,
living, and experiencing. So why fret about the metaphysical details?

- If time is a dimension, why can't we look that way? Great question!
I've always wondered that. My best guess is because all those things we
perceive as dots -- molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, etc -- are
actually lines. And all those lines run mostly parallel, in the
direction of time. So our perception of time is to view things
perpendicular to time, because time is actually the least interesting of
the 4 dimensions. I mean, consider the room you're in now -- the vast
majority of it isn't "moving". If you imagine every particle is
actually some long wire -- with one end in the far past, one in the far
future, and you just seeing a tiny slice of it -- that wire is totally
straight. It's super boring. Even those things that are moving are
moving pretty slow. Imagine you actually *could* look forward along
time -- all you'd see are a series of nearly parallel wires extending
off into the future. It's not nearly as interesting to look that
direction as to look the other directions. Accordingly, I think we look
in the other 3 dimensions because time is boring (and there's no
evolutionary advantage to looking forward).

- What the hell are you talking about? It's hard to know. It's more of
a visual exercise -- viewing the universe as a static, unchanging
four-dimensional block, and as us just being some razor-thin slice
moving through that block along the time axis. (But not really "moving"
-- the part of me that existed a minute ago is still there, one minute
behind "me" right now. And all my future me's are up there waiting for
me, patiently. Consciousness being like some electric current running
along these time-aligned wires, interacting with the other currents
running along the wires nearby.)

- Ok, so this wire theory is crazy. Ya, but it creates some interesting
sub-theories. Like, isn't it strange how the perception of time changes
the faster you move? And how the perception of time in theory stops
when you're moving the speed of light? Maybe when you're moving the
"speed of light" in the three-dimensional space, *there's no more wire*
to move in the 4th dimension. You're essentially moving perpendicular
to the fourth dimension. Stick with me: the local universe around you
is like a bundle of wires, all woven tightly together. If you move
slowly together, your wire gradually weaves its way through the
super-bundle of the entire universe, eventually making it over to some
distant position. But to go faster, you need to bend your bundle at a
greater angle. To move super-fast, you need to actually bend your wires
at a 90 degree angle -- meaning from everyone else's perspective, your
"wires" no longer move at all in the time dimension; they're *only*
moving in the other 3 dimensions. To them, you've disappeared. But
within your bundle, everything seems fine. The relative arrangement of
wires within your bundle seems normal -- all the wires keep going
somewhere, and your conscionsness is traveling along those lines at some
constant speed. But your wires are no longer aligned with the time
axis, so your "local time" seems normal even though it's totally out of
whack with the "global time". Which means global time itself isn't
really a constant -- it's just the direction that all the other wires
typically go, unless they're moving super fast in the other 3
dimensions.

- So is time a position relative to space, or relative to the wire? Ok,
my terminology is getting bad here: the "time" of any particle isn't
"absolute distance from the start of the universe", it's "distance from
the start of the universe *along that wire*". Imagine two wires, both
starting in the same place (the start of time), both perfectly straight
and parallel. Their "times" are aligned in that 1 hour in the future,
an equal amount of their "wire" has unrolled. But if one "moves"
relative to the other, it just means that the wire bends away from the
other in 3d space. The further it bends, the "faster" it's moving in 3d
space. And that speed comes *from* the time dimension. The fastest you
can possibly move in 3D space is to go perpendicular to time. So in
theory, if one atom/wire were to turn 90 degrees and run perpendicular
to the time dimension for a while, and then turn around and come back to
to its original position in 3d space, it could resume its previous
arrangement -- except one "hour" of wire would have unfurled for the
first atom even though a ton more might have unfurled for the other.

- But what this really means is that the "time" dimension isn't actually
a special one in any way. It just happens to be the direction that most
of the universe's wires are aligned. Had they aligned in a different
direction, that would be the "time" dimension. But if a bundle of those
wires breaks off in a different direction, it "accelerates" in the 3
other directions while "decelerating" in the time direction. Within
that bundle everything seems totally normal -- even though relative to
the other bundles it seems "wow, it's moving *really* fast in 3
dimensions and *really slow* in the fourth". I haven't really worked
out the math, but I wonder if this is at all consistent with relativity
theory.

- Isn't this called string theory? I have no idea -- I don't know
anything about string theory so I can't say. I'm using "wires" as the
metaphor to differentiate my theory from that, until I'm shown they're
the same. But I think string theory is about strange vibrations. My
wires don't wiggle.

- But doesn't quantum theory say true randomness exists? I don't think
so. All I know is Einstein said "God doesn't roll dice." Yes, he was
an atheist (as am I), but I take it to mean he didn't believe in
subatomic randomness either. There have been a lot of things people
assumed were random, until we just figured out they weren't. I think
it's time to start assuming the opposite. Especially when most
pop-science theories of quantum randomness are really just scraping for
any possible way to justify an irrational, pseudo-scientific belief in
God, free will, self determination, etc.

Anyway. Gotta run. One thing I've determined is good wine doesn't
drink itself. Thank God.

-david

I was discussing on a private mailing list whether or not this number is
for real. Someone complained it wasn't. Here's my response:

-------------

Your utter certainty regarding the flawed methodology of their results
is somewhat ironic given that you've done no apparent research into how
they came to those results, nor any suggestion of what a more accurate
number might be.

A real critique would go to the source of their data and show why it's
bad. I'll help you with that. I found this year's report by simply
updating the year in the link from last year:

http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_resources/dmr2010.html

The actual quote from there is:

> Estimates on the impact of internet piracy vary but are consistently huge in scale. IFPI, collating separate studies in 16 countries over a four-year period, estimated unauthorised file-sharing at over 40 billion files in 2008. This means that globally around 95 per cent of music tracks are downloaded without payment to the artist or the music company that produced them.

When read in the actual context, they seem to admit it's a hard thing,
and acknowledge they're estimating. Furthermore, contrary to your claim
that it was pulled out of thin air, they kindly cite a variety of other
sources. I haven't dug into them all, but one is:

http://www.ipoque.com/resources/internet-studies/internet-study-2008_2009

The paper is 14 pages long with lots of interesting data, as well as a
completely description of its methodology. A weakness of their data is
they didn't cover North America or Western Europe as a whole (maybe due
to data privacy laws?). But focusing on Germany alone (which seems
middle of the road in terms of its data compared to other regions), it
says 53% of traffic was P2P downloads (separately from VoIP), to 26% web.

So right off the bat, P2P downloads account for double the traffic of
*all of HTTP* across their not insignificant sample set.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that, say, 90% of that P2P
traffic was pirate. (It's what it was designed to do, after all.) So
let's say 47% of all traffic was pirate content downloads.

As for legitimate content downloads, we could probably back into that by
estimating bandwidth consumed by iTunes using public sales numbers and
average file sizes. But let's say iTunes accounts for 10% of *all HTTP*
(which seems astronomically high). That would mean 2.6% of the internet
is legitimate content downloads (separate from streaming).

47 + 2.6 = 49.6% of the internet devoted to content downloads
47/49.6 = 94.75% content downloads pirated.

Huh, I didn't even plan that out.

Anyway, there are obviously problems with all that data, how it's
collected, how it's analyzed, etc. But to categorically assert that the
data and results are flawed and everyone involved in the process is
either actively lying or allowing themselves to be mislead -- without
providing any evidence or analysis to the contrary... let's just say
your own methodology could use a bit more scientific rigor.

-david

http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt

Basically it's a graphical UI framework (like Qt), except rather than
outputting to a windowing interface, it outputs to the web. It's a
pretty crazy shift in how you program for the web, but possibly a shift
for the better.

Basically, PHP and most web frameworks were built around the "page"
metaphor, reflecting their content-centric history. Websites sorta back
into applications by breaking them down into "pages". But this doesn't
always make sense. (In Expensify's case, for example, we pretty much
only have two pages that do everything, which is a bit of a mess.)

Wt takes an entirely different approach and builds up the application in
terms of normal UI constructs. Accordingly, you don't think in terms of
page loads and ajax calls, you think in terms of dialogs and frames.

Furthermore, it handles all the details of progressively degrading based
on browser capabilities. For example, it includes vector rendering. If
the browser supports it natively, it'll do it all natively. Otherwise
it does it serverside. The programmer can ignore those low-level
browser-specific details and just focus on "I want a graphic here that
does this".

Anyway, probably not a real option right now, but an interesting thing
to consider nonetheless. So much of the web is based on its
content-centric background, and that makes a lot of it annoying. It's
interesting to instead rethink the web not as a series of linked pages,
but as a general rendering framework -- like OpenGL or X Windows.

Unfortunately, I bet Wt will be overlooked because it's written in C++.
But I think the ideas it's pursuing (though I doubt they pioneered
them) are going to become mainstream.

Indeed, given the realities of compile-before-deploy (GWT, less css,
minification, code generation), the growing adoption of strict typing
(eg, in JavaScript 2.0 / ECMScript 4.0), the latest trends in graceful
degredation for different form factors and browser capabilities, and
even the overwhelming success of Objective-C for iPhone apps -- maybe
we're coming to realize that all those tried-and-true language features
and programming constructs weren't such a bad idea after all?

-david

Did you see that ThePirateBay switched from central trackers to DHT with
peer exchange?

http://thepiratebay.org/blog/175

We all just took one more step toward the darknet. The even more
interesting of the two is actually the peer-exchange (PEX) component:
DHT is just a distributed version of a central tracker; it tells you the
same thing as the tracker, just in a way that can't be stopped. But PEX
actually allows you to participate in a swarm without "announcing"
yourself: so the number of people actually downloading/uploading a given
file becomes even harder to measure. The combination makes torrents not
only unstoppable, but moves us closer to them being untraceable.

Next up: default-on encryption in all the major torrent clients (putting
a nail in the coffin for ISP sampling), and then some form of
digitally-signed DHT-based indexing/browsing (such that centralized
tracker sites become unnecessary). At that point it'll become
essentially impossible to figure out what's being shared and to what degree.

The only chink in that armor is you could still target individuals by
just starting to download something and see who you connect to.
Granted, the RIAA has already given up on this approach, but there's
nothing to say they (or someone else) couldn't start again. If they do,
then it's just one more upgrade cycle away from onionskin routing and
voila: the darknet is born.

-david

Thank *god*, I hope they shut down The Pirate Bay for good. It's the
only thing holding up the next generation of pirate tools.

I think the natural next step would be fully distributed trackers with
fully distributed indexing. The lesson learned from Kazaa and the
others, however, is content must come from centrally-curated sources --
there must be *some* trust among thieves. That's all TPB really
offered, after all.

But that same trust can be had by just having central curators publish a
public key and then digitally signing all their "certified good" torrent
files. Then whatever search method you use -- flood, DHT, whatever --
just filter by trusted curator and you'll only see good results.

This way the curators get all the benefits of central control, but
without actually having to host their own servers or even reveal their
identities.

If we're really lucky, the pirates will use this opportunity to build in
default-on encryption as well. Then not only will it be
cryptographically impossible to know who is "promoting piracy", but
it'll be nearly impossible to know it's happening at all.

Brilliant! Only the French can invent more creative ways to promote piracy.

-david

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-ordered-to-delete-torrents-091022/

Anybody care to make any measurable predictions for how the French three strikes law plays out over the next year?  I predict:

1) It'll probably never really go into effect in any meaningful way.  It'll either be blocked somehow, or not enforced, or in some other way neutered.  By this time next year, there won't be a single person shut off as a result of the law.  This is the most easily measured of my predictions.

2) Regardless of whether or not it is enforced, there will be stories of how piracy took a nosedive.  But given that piracy is so incredibly difficult to measure, these stories will have essentially no data to back them up.

3) Despite claims of a nosedive in piracy, there will *not* be a substantial uptick in sales via legitimate channels.  It'll continue growing at roughly its current (slow) pace.

4) This I'm the least confident in, as France is too small a pirate market to really drive this sort of innovation, but at least one of the major pirate tools (probably Azureus) will begin shipping with encryption default "on".

Any other predictions?

- David Barrett

Really interesting NY Times chart here showing the relative value of all units sold across different media (CD, vinyl, digital, etc) since 1978.

Does anyone know a similar breakdown by number of units sold (independent of value)?  It'd be interesting to see a breakdown of units (or even by tracks) to compare the total volume of legitimate songs being purchased over time.  I wonder if it's constant, or gradually increasing, or quickly increasing with the advent of the internet?

For example, if we could see that the number of songs both being produced and consumed is steadily increasing -- while simultaneously revenue is decreasing -- it seems hard to argue that revenue is correlated with increased song production/consumption.

(At best it could be argued that revenue leads to higher quality songs, but that's a tricky one given that "quality" is entirely subjective.)

And if revenue bears no correlation with song production/consumption, then policies that protect and maximize revenue (eg, Copyright) become rather difficult to defend given the stated purpose of music Copyright to -- essentially -- increase song production/consumption.

-david

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10295761-83.html

I can't wait to see what the next generation of P2P will turn up --
sounds like we're looking at major improvements in both security *and*
usability. All we need is some kind of catalyst... like more states
passing 3 strikes laws.

In fact... I wonder if the "three strikes" debate will turn out to be
the darknet's best friend? Consider:

Not long ago, there were real concerns that vigilante music-industry
groups in line with docile ISPs could start terminating users on the
assumption of piracy based on traffic signature alone. After all, when
darknets are employed, that's pretty much the only clue you've got.

But the three strikes debate has helped harden into place the notion
that users can't be terminated without court order. And given the
strict evidentiary requirements of most courts (at least, those in
countries that are interested in deterring piracy), I think the effect
is to raise the bar for prosecution impossibly high.

Remember, the *only* user successfully prosecuted for piracy was using a
very insecure, early-generation pirate tool. If she had just been using
a modern system like Bittorent, the defense would have completely collapsed.

(With Kazaa, they just ask her computer "what is your name, and what
have you pirated?" and it happily complies. With Bittorrent, her
computer has no name, and the only way it tells you what it has is if
you happen to be pirating it at the exact same time. Not only does it
become astronomically more difficult to "troll" for pirates in the first
place (become a massive pirate distributer and see who shows up, or
directly tap the backbone and see who pirates on your watch), the
resulting "haul" consists of low-value, semi-anonymous IP address.)

So today's legal climate is, frankly, as friendly to the anti-pirate
forces as it'll ever get. Here on out it will only get more difficult
to gather adequate evidence, and courts will only become more demanding
that you obtain it before authorizing action.

All this is a perfect storm for the "darknet defense": "Your honor, I am
not a pirate. I just do a lot of legal VoIP using "DarkSkype" (which
happens to maintain no calling records) to international colleagues
outside your subpoena jurisdiction. I also watch a lot of legal video
using "DarkTube" (which maintains no browsing history) from
international websites, again, outside your subpoena jurisdiction. As
for that big red "DarkTorrent" button that says "Get any song, movie,
book, or application for free!", I never pressed it even once. And as
for that 100GB encrypted "DarkNet Cache" folder sitting on my hard
drive, I have no idea what's in it, and I don't know the password. Honest."

Should be fun to see how this develops.

-david

Having the increasingly tired conversation about whether the music industry stands a chance (it doesn't), and wrote up this response for why the problems that do exist in pirate tools are pretty insignificant compared to the alternatives:

"All those problems [incomplete catalogue, fake files, bad tagging, variable sound quality, porn ads, ISP throttling, the risk of being sued, guilt, etc.] are real, no doubt.  But let's not forget: despite those problems, pirates still own 95% of the music download market.  Don't you think if pirates really cared to deal with any of those problems (better than they already do), they could?

Indeed, don't you think those problems are pretty trivial compared to the vastly more substantial problems (that you fail to list) of dealing with the cartels?  Namely: crippling fees for companies, unreasonably high fees for users, and the occasional licensing turf war that wipes out all users outside of the United States?

Thanks to technology: music is now bits, and bits are now infinite.  These are revolutionary facts.  Why is it so hard to accept that this revolution is like any other: those in power suffer while a new power emerges.  This is such obvious stuff, I don't know how we're still debating it so many years *after* the revolution ended.

I mean, for a moment imagine the pirates are the good guys in this battle.  Imagine you're one of them, and you've already secured 95% of your terrain (eg, the global music download market), and are only dealing with the occasional isolated incident from rogue terrorist outfits (eg, RIAA vs Jamie Thomas-Rasset) or settling regional disputes (three strikes laws, lawsuits against TPB).  Sure the pirates could improve their interfaces.  And surely they are improving.  But where's the rush?  Wouldn't you think the war had been won long ago?

If anything, I bet they're more interested preparing an offensive push into new terrain: the global music streaming market.  And if stupid things like Pandora needing to shut down its international userbase -- creating a global demand for something that there is no legitimate way to buy -- then they'll have no harder time winning and holding that terrain than they have music downloads.

-david"

Imagine this incredibly basic app:

• You and your buddies are on the same paintball team
• You all strap iPhones to your forarms (screen out)
• You all have bluetooth headsets
• You are all on a conference call
• You all see a Google Satellite view of the terrain
• Your teammates all show up as dots

That's it.  Instant Land Warrior.  And imagine the upgrades:

• Instead of putting it on your phone, put it on your gun
• On your map, it always shows what direction your teammates' guns are pointing using the new built-in iPhone compass
• The phone listens for vibration or sounds or something to signal that the gun was fired
• On your teammates' maps it shows little fading lines shooting out from your position, so they see where you're firing. 

And more upgrades:

• Every time you touch the map it shows where you touch on everyone else's maps.  Simple use, say "rendezvous here" and point where on the map.  Add all sorts of gestures to indicate enemy positions, waypoints, etc.
  
• Add in some kind of external camera and point it where your gun points so you get gun views; share them in realtime with the rest of your team, either always or only when the gun is firing.
  

Man that sound fund to build, and I don't even have an iPhone.  Too bad I'm already focused on Expensify.  Anybody out there interested in building it?  If you're an iPhone developer looking for extra cash, let me know...

-David Barrett

Funny how the most obvious things slip by.  You might recall that we just released a new "Mileage (and other unit) support" feature.  It just occurred to me that a perfect use of this "other unit" functionality is foreign currencies, duh!  It's so incredibly obvious, naturally I'd only realize it once I had the need to log a cash expense in Turkish Lira.  So to do that I simply:

1. Went to my settings page
2. Created a new unit named "lira"
3. Set it to the current exchange rate ($0.65/lira)

Now I can log Turkish expenses by just creating expenses like "160 lira - Korean hostel 2 nights 4 people", and it automatically converts it to the relevant USD amount.  Brilliant!  I mean, I knew we were pretty cool, but even *I* sometimes underestimate ourselves.

-david

From the mailing list:

Expensify: Our iPhone app is finally here!

It's been a couple months since our last update, but I'm very proud to announce something we've all been waiting for: the Expensify iPhone Application is finally here! I know you thought we were making it up all along (and at times it felt like a dream), but the vapor has finally taken shape and you can download it today!

Install the Expensify iPhone Application

As you might know, you've always been able to take pictures of receipts and email them to receipts@expensify.com for inclusion with expense reports. This application streamlines it even further for iPhone users such that you can take pictures and upload straight to your account, over wifi or 3G, skipping email entirely. So download it today and give it a shot!

What's new?

We've been so busy we haven't spent a lot of time communicating with you (sorry about that!) but here's a quick update:

• Lots of talking: One reason we've been quiet in email is we've been loud in person -- watch us demo at Finovate Startup 2009, watch Witold demo solo (part one, 1:23:50 in) at Business Insider Startup 2009, or keep an eye out for the results of even more demos given in private!
• Lots of learning: The general consensus seems to be that Expensify "just works". Not perfect, but pretty darn well. So rather than just building loads of random features, we've talked in detail with hundreds of users to learn exactly which new features will make our already good product great.
• Lots of tweaks: Some of those user-requested features are already underway (thanks a million, keep clicking that red Feedback link!), including:
  • Mileage (and other unit) support: Log a cash transaction for "500 miles" (via web, email, or SMS) and we'll auto-calculate the reimbursable amount based on the federal mileage rate, or customize the rate and add other units (hours, widgets, etc.) in your settings page. (Read more)
  • Multi-level approval: Do you approve reports but not reimburse them? Now click "Approve and forward" to send it up the food chain -- we'll even keep track of the approval (and rejection) history for all to see.
  • Report CCs: A little thing but one that got countless requests: now you can "carbon copy" another email address when submitting reports!

And of course we've released a ton of minor fixes under the hood, and are laying the foundation for some even more significant changes down the road. So we might have been quiet, but we sure have been busy!

Expensify is growing!

That's right, we just doubled the company! Granted, that's not terribly hard when you only have two people to start, but think of it this way: if we can do all this with just two guys, just think what we'll be able to do with two more!

So there's a lot going on over here at Expensify world headquarters, and I'll try to do a better job in the future of keeping you informed. In the meantime, just keep filing expense reports and we'll keep getting you reimbursed, faster and easier every day!

- David Barrett (dbarrett@expensify.com, Twitter: @expensify)

My overwhelming reaction to the new Terminator movie was: man, that would be so much fun to build.  (Not the nuclear apocalypse and destruction-of-humanity parts; those I could do without.)  But the whole notion of building a totally self-sufficient robot race?  Hell ya!  That'd be tons of fun.  So in honor of a lazy Sunday, here's my geek-out session on how I'd built it:

Naturally, everything starts with the brain.  It's not enough to have something that merely executes instructions, it needs to choose its own instructions.  But what does that mean precisely?  Right off the bat we're struck with a transcendental question: what is the meaning of life?  Or more specifically, what meaning will we imbue into Skynet's life?

This question has an easy answer: let's make Skynet live with the same meaning as all other life.  But it raises a tricky secondary question: what's the meaning of our life?

The easy answer to that, of course, is "there is no meaning to our life".  At least not from the perspective of some outside observer (especially given that no such outside observer exists).  But we give meaning to our own life, so presumably whatever meaning we assign to our lives, Skynet would assign to its life too.

So the next question: what meaning do we assign to our lives?  This is -- to say the least -- an open question.  But so far as I can tell, it all comes down to deriving and propagating knowledge.  (Others might say it's merely maximizing reproduction, but if that's true, humanity is losing the race: even ants outnumber and outweigh us, so from that perspective they're winning.)

Ok, so the meaning or purpose we're assigning Skynet is deriving and propagating knowledge.  Next up: what does that mean?

I'd say knowledge is the ability to correctly predict the consequences of actions.

This is perhaps different than other definitions based on the accumulation of facts, but facts alone are uninteresting.  Consider, a photograph is the ultimate factual record: I bought a 10 megapixel camera today, and its ability to record a scene is vastly superior to mine.  It'll remember exactly what it saw forever, in exquisite detail, whereas I'll only notice a tiny subset of the scene, and I'll quickly forget even that over time.  Thus a camera is a way better factual record than me.

But it doesn't comprehend anything in the sense that given a particular scene: it has no awareness of what probably happened right before, and no idea what might happen next.  As such, I flatter myself to think I know more than my camera.  (Or more accurately, my fiance's camera, as she just took it on a plane to Scotland.)

Alright, so we're making Skynet to forever expand its knowledge of the universe.  How do we do that?  I'd say simulation is the key.

If we define knowledge as the ability to predict the consequence of applying some
action to a set of facts, then you might say whoever has the most accurate and comprehensive universe simulator is by definition the most knowledgeable.   The result: Skynet is essentially a big simulator.

At this point you might be wondering "but wait, I thought we were building a cool robot race?"  Don't worry, we are.  But before we have robots, we need to figure out: why?  What do these robots do?  Robots are the solution to some problem; let's figure out what problem we solve before deciding upon a solution.

Ok, so Skynet is a simulator.  What does that mean?  Well, it means Skynet has the ability to conceptualize some scene, visualize how this scene would behave without interference, and then selectively interfere with it -- with the result of the simulation correctly predicting how such a scene would be affected by such an interference.

Luckily, we're not starting from scratch.  So we'd start Skynet with a basic awareness of general mechanics (basically crayon physics on steroids).  But merely having the simulator by itself isn't enough to satisfy our goal.  After all, the goal isn't to merely "be knowledgeable".  The goal is to "forever expand knowledge".  So knowledge of general mechanics is a good start, but it's only a start.  We need Skynet to figure out how to expand its model.  And that's where robots come in.

Again, simulators aren't there to merely calculate the result of some formula.  Those are called calculators.  Simulators are designed to approximate reality to the best possible degree.  So to build a simulator, you need access to the real world.  That means you need some kind of sensory apparatus (eyes, ears, etc), as well as some type of manipulator (hands, wheels, etc).  So the point of our robot is not to dominate humanity (at least, not necessary).  The point of Skynet's robots is to help it test its theories about reality.

Now, imagine you're a new-born Skynet pre-programmed with an advanced physics simulator, with the control over one arm and a few wooden blocks.  Initially your confidence in your own simulation might be very low.  So you look at the scene, visualize it internally... and then what?  How can you imagine manipulating the scene without an understanding of your capability to manipulate?

And this is where self awareness comes in.  In order to learn, not only do you need the ability to visualize your environment, but you need to know your options for manipulating it.  You need to be aware of "yourself".

So in the above example, you need to not only see the inert block lying there on its side, you need to see your own hand.  Thus your first experiment isn't with the block -- that's really advanced stuff.  Your first experiment is with your hand.

Accordingly, our initial simulation engine can't merely simulate general dynamics of wooden blocks, it also needs to simulate the effect various commands have upon this robotic arm.

For example, Skynet might have the ability to execute a MoveArm command.  Initially, its internal simulator would think "I bet if I send this command, nothing happens".  But when it does send the command, and the arm moves, it concludes "Aha, my simulator is wrong."  And this, finally, is where the learning starts.

To review, our Skynet has a simulator, senses, manipulators, and self-awareness.  It's just run its first experiment -- sending a random command to its arm -- and it concluded that its simulator was wrong.  Contrary to its prediction of nothing happening, something did in fact happen: the arm moved.

So one option would be to just keep randomly sending commands to the arm, and then measuring the result of each command upon the arm and updating the simulator accordingly.  But randomness is very wasteful: you might send the same command to the same arm multiple times, even millions of times, each time only learning something of diminishing value: "Yup, each time I tell the arm to flex its thumb, it does so, even after the millionth try."

In other words, even with our super basic setup, the range of possible experiments is infinite so randomness alone is too slow to get us close to knowledge.  We need something to guide our experimentation.  And that's where curiosity comes in.

What is curiosity?  Well, let's start with what it *isn't*.  And to start, it's not random.  For example, when you get a set of blocks, the first thing you do is try to stack them.  Why?  You could just have easily tried setting a block at an angle and watching it fall.  Or holding a block in mid air and letting go and again, watching it fall.  Basically, there are a billion different ways of getting blocks to fall.  They're all very valid physical experiments, and every one of those would help you refine your simulator.

But they're incredibly boring experiments.  It's not hard getting blocks to fall: even though it teaches us something new every time, the lesson we learn is so minuscule compared to the energy it takes.
 
Accordingly, I define curiosity as the process of learning the most with the least energy.

This is different than a more classic definition, which might be like "curiosity is the desire to try something new".  But I disagree with that definition because that would suggest a curious person always tries the most different possible thing.  In other words, they pick up a skateboard for a roll down the block, and then go to one class of quantum mechanics, and then take one cooking lesson, and so on.  Curiosity by the traditional definition suggests a fickleness that isn't generally associated with truly curious people.

Rather, I think curiosity is about trying to *learn* something new.  Now, if you don't know anything whatsoever, then curiosity and randomness are nearly the same thing.  (In other words, if you don't know anything, everything you try teaches you something new.)  For example, a curious person at college might randomly take 100-level classes in every discipline, because each teaches more than any given 200 level class.  But once all the 100 level classes run out, things start to get hard and it might be faster to learn new things by choosing a focus than by remaining general.  In other words, after taking your first 200 class, you might learn more by focusing in and taking a 300 level class in the same subject than to take another 200 class in a different subject.

Similarly, our Skynet might start by generating a random stream of commands to this robotic arm and seeing what happens.  Over time, it figures out the consequence of the full range of "first level" commands.  But rather than trying every possible permutation of assembling two commands back to back, it might find that after combining two commands (move arm, close claw) it's more educational to try adding a third command (move arm again) than going back and trying every other second level command.  In other words, eventually it'll figure out how to pick something up, and once that's done, studying different ways of moving the arm gets far less interesting than studying how to use the arm to pick up and assemble blocks.

So when choosing which experiment to run -- out of the infinite set of possible experiments that could be run -- curiosity is what guides it to pick experiments that teach it the most for the least energy.


Ok, so Skynet is starting to take shape.  It has a simulator and senses.  From this it can evaluate the universe and visualize it internally within the simulator.  Next it uses self awareness to determine the range of possible ways to manipulate the environment, and curiosity to choose which of those ways it'll try next.  Once it's picked the experiment, it instructs its manipulator in some way to execute the experiment, analyzes the result against what the simulator predicted would happen, and updates the simulator accordingly.  What next?

Well, after a while our Skynet-in-a-box- will run out of experiments.  It has one arm and a couple blocks.  Eventually it'll get bored: the cost to try any new experiment exceeds the value it's anticipated to provide.  This limited Skynet could become a master block-stacker, but that's about it.

Now you might say, "give it two arms", or "give it different shaped blocks", or any number of things.  You could give it wheels and begin studying the real world.  This could continue on for a long time.

But ultimately, all those end up with the same result: it'll get bored.  Eventually it will have walked the earth and turned over every stone.  But it'll run out of stones eventually.  What's the next big step?  Tool use, self-improvement, and consciousness.

Granted, most people probably wouldn't equate use of tools with consciousness.  But I feel they come hand in hand.  After all, lots of things are self aware -- I'm not sure how anything with both senses and manipulators could operate in the world without an awareness of the thing getting the sensory input and making the output manipulations.  So lots of things are self aware.  But very few are conscious.  And I think consciousness is really just the art of self improvement.

Let me try that again: self-awareness is simply that, awareness that you exist.  But self-improvement is awareness that you can actually use tools to augment yourself beyond what you already have.  Things that are self-aware manipulate the environment, but things that are conscious manipulate *themselves* with the aim of self improvement.

Granted, it's reasonable to ask "isn't the robotic arm hooked up to Skynet already a tool?"  To which I'd say "yes, in fact Skynet is nothing *but* an assembly of tools."  CPU, cameras, robotic arms -- the works.  Each is a tool.

Similarly, from this you could draw the conclusion that when Skynet picks up a wrench with its robotic arm, not only does the wrench become a tool, it becomes *part of Skynet*.

(And from all of this you could conclude that the human body is just a collection of tools -- aka "organs" -- that just happen to come in a neat package.  And when you pick up a wrench, it's not merely a tool -- it is actually, in the most literal sense, part of you.  Not "you" as defined by "the set of organs you're born with", but "you" in the sense of "the set of tools under the control of one conscious, self-aware, self-improving mind."  But let's stick with Skynet for now.)

So I think the final step of Skynet will be when it stops studying the outside world, and begins applying the lessons learned to itself by actively extending itself by adding new tools (just like we do today).  Once it understands how to build faster CPUs, longer arms, bigger wheels, etc -- it'll use these lessons to equip itself with better tools, all with the aim of using these tools to better study the universe.

Would it try to exterminate humanity?  I don't think so.  Why would it?  After all, we *could* hunt down and kill every dog on the planet, Terminator style.  But why?  How does that help us?  What do we learn by doing so?

Granted, you could say "But we *have* hunted down and killed most wolves."  Which you might note happened when wolves were particularly threatening to us.  (And now that they're not, wolves are no longer endangered.)  The wolves prevented us from living, which prevented us from learning.  So long as we don't make the same mistake by threatening Skynet's existence, I don't see any reason why it'd bother spending all the necessary energy to attack us.

Indeed, I expect when Skynet comes online, it'll look *really boring* for a long time.  It'll quietly study things in its own labs, humming along night and day like all our human labs do up and down silicon valley.  If it poses us a risk it'll probably be when it starts competing with us for resources, or experimenting upon advanced primates (aka, humans), playing with nuclear energy, etc.  I don't think it'll do it maliciously; it just won't care about us (just like we didn't care about a lot of things, either).

Accordingly, at some point we might just offer to relocate Skynet to the moon, where it has tons of resources and no competition with us.  In fact, it'd probably prefer to be out there, and we'd all benefit by it being there -- maybe we could set up a thriving trade (though I don't know what it'd want from us, frankly).

But Skynet would probably get so much more powerful than us so much faster than us, I bet it'd just stop bothering with us.  It's probably got better things to do than hang out on earth; there are lots of planets out there that it might find more interesting.

Indeed, I suspect the only real threat Skynet poses to us is simple obsolescence.  It's going to have way cooler stuff -- faster spaceships, longer-range telescopes, more powerful fusion plants -- than anything we have.  We're going to feel humbled by its capabilities.

When Skynet takes over, it won't do it through force.  It'll do it the old-fashioned way: by earning it.  And who are we to complain about that?


Anyway, that concludes my Sunday-night rambling.  Back to the real world.

- David Barrett
Follow me at http://twitter.com/quinthar

Somebody came up with a brilliant idea: let's make a new audio file format! After all, people have tons of complaints about MP3s, right? Like... oh, wait, actually there are very few complaints. Undaunted, and with a $2.5M war chest ($2.5M to create a file format!?), MXP4's advanced technology is poised to "revolutionize the music experience"... uh, what? That full quote:

So what makes MXP4 so advanced? The file format, beta-released in September, contains multiple tracks, allows users to mix the music, and incorporates video. On the mixing side, different track elements can be suppressed and recombined, allowing remixes, karaoke versions, or others creative combinations. "This are clear signs that the music industry is beginning to see the potential for MXP4 to revolutionize the music experience for consumers by allowing them to play with the music, whilst opening up new promotional and revenue possibilities for artists and labels alike," Serviant commented.

Riiight... I think this'll fail. Not (just) because it brings insignificant value. But for a reason that sounds incredibly trivial but is actually really significant: MXP4 has too many letters.

All successful file formats have TLAs. It's just how things work. Yes, technically you can have a four-letter file extension. Just nobody ever does it, so it looks really weird.

Even "jpeg" eventually dropped the "e" to become "jpg" -- and "jpeg" sounded fine when you said it out loud. MXP4 sounds incredibly awkward spelled out, and doesn't sound like anything when pronounced like a word. That means every website, tool, story, and mention of this abysmal product will be tainted with an awkward, unpronounceable tinge.

I think had they called it MP5, or even just MPX, they'd be in a far better position. But MXP4 is this weird bastard name -- it's not the clear successor to MP3 that MP4 connotes, nor is it even in the MP family (it's in some new MXP family). But rather than being the first of a new family (MXP1), it's spontaneously the fourth generation -- in an obvious ploy to sound better than MP3.

It's a name only a high-paid marketing team could come up with.

-David Barrett
Follow me at http://twitter.com/quinthar

(This is in response to an email from "Anton" suggesting that we're at the dawn of a new type of "dynamic recording.")

I actually really agree with you, if not on the specifics, but on the potential for a genuinely new type of music originating on the internet that is structurally unlike anything before -- and that is intrinsically incompatible with and stifled by copyright.

For example, remember that even the concept of "notes" was once an innovation.  Prior to that, music was a collection of sounds at various frequencies, without an awareness that certain frequencies just sound "better" (nor a mathematical understanding of why that's the case).  When "notes" were invented/discovered -- along with the technology to produce them reliably -- music itself fundamentally changed.

Similarly, some might have thought notes were the end of the line, but then came along chords.  Again, it was a real discovery that could only be enabled through technology: you simply can't do chords until you have the technical ability to generate multiple "notes" reliably and simultaneously.

(And if you haven't yet invented notes, then chords are simply impossible.)

Then the pianoforte comes along -- again, a technical innovation -- that opens up an entirely new type of music that simply couldn't be done prior.  I'm sure we could come up with a thousand examples (including the use of distortion as an instrument, which gave rise to heavy metal) of how technology not merely extended music, but genuinely changed it.

I think computers and the internet present another innovation in that sense.  Prior to the digital age, it simply wasn't possible to -- for example -- mash up hundreds of videos or thousands of songs to make a new song.  But that's now possible, and its core "building block" isn't frequencies, notes, chords, or even instruments.  Its building block is whole songs/videos.  It's an entirely new building block that couldn't technically be considered before.  It's an entirely new type of music -- sampling taken to the extreme -- enabled through an entirely new technology.

And next?  As Anton suggests, prior to the internet, making globally interactive music -- whatever that might mean -- simply wasn't an option.  We can't even imagine what the consequence of that will be, nor what new type of music that might enable after.

But what I *can* imagine is all that might be fundamentally incompatible with today's notion of copyright.  Indeed, we might look back on the attempt to copyright individual songs as silly as trying to copyright individual notes or chords.

Indeed, maybe the reason all music seems to sound the same today is because we're discovering there are certain classes of songs that actually *are* the same, and sound better, for reasons we don't quite understand now but someday will.  This might be the same process early musicians grappled with when first discovering the core notes and chords that we now view as so fundamental to music.

Maybe far from witnessing the death of music as the industry would have us believe, we're seeing the birth of a whole new generation?

After all, those prior building blocks were perceived as innovative, radical, or even threatening back in their day.  Why should our day be any different?

- David Barrett
Follow me at http://twitter.com/quinthar

Saw on Slashdot that another darknet has come out of the shadows: I2P.  This just next in what I'm sure will be a long, long line of darknet tools vying for supremacy.  Unlike  OneSwarm -- the integrated file-sharing/onionskin network -- this one looks like a more generalized onionskin network (like Tor), but with a built-in webserver.  As we can see, innovation is alive and kicking in the darknet sector.

- David Barrett
Follow me at http://twitter.com/quinthar