Why We Need Protection From The Technologies That Protect Copyright »
Technology as a Propaganda Model
posted by:Jason Millar // 07:22 PM // June 14, 2005 // TechLife
Almost all technologies act to constrain the various choices that we are able to make with regards to the use of that technology. Designers of automobile transmissions have embedded control mechanisms that prevent drivers from shifting into reverse while moving forward. Designers of the modern pop can have eliminated the old style of pull tab, which needed to be removed from the can prior to drinking from it. The new ones were introduced in order to prevent consumers from littering. Anyone over thirty will remember seeing those little metal strips on the street or sidewalk almost as often as cigarette butts. These examples both seem to be designs that restrict choice, through the use of embedded control mechanisms, as a means of preventing or eliminating a certain type of harmful behaviour when using the technology.
Those design choices might have been motivated primarily by the moral issues they act to promote—safe driving in the first case, cleaning up the environment in the second. In cases where there is a strong moral element associated with the design it is difficult to argue against the use of those technologies.
Other embedded control mechanisms are not necessarily driven by moral considerations. Take Digital Rights Management (DRM) for example. DRM is a technology being developed for use in digital media such as audio recordings, digital art or photographs, electronic books, and any other digital information that falls under the legal protection of copyright. DRM protects copyrighted material by attaching to it a piece of software that works in consort with your computer to detect and block any unauthorized attempt to copy or even open or play it. Although the companies who are developing this technology claim that DRM is primarily a response to alleged immoral behaviour (peer to peer file sharing), the scope of DRM technology being deployed today places extremely strict copy protection into copyrighted files, much stricter than in the past.
Given that the protection measures are so strong, one must ask whether those who are implementing DRM are primarily interested in the moral issue of piracy, or if there is some other primary concern motivating their actions. In the case of DRM examples of such concerns might include increasing control over copyright far beyond what was previously possible or, as Ian Kerr discusses in his most recent blog on this site ("HACKING@PRIVACY:
Why We Need Protection From The Technologies That Protect Copyright"), monitoring the behaviour patterns of consumers.
If embedded control mechanisms like DRM are primarily motivated by concerns other than moral ones, and have as their primary design function the restriction of a certain type of action, there is still a moral component to them. Restricting or preventing any subset of choices that an otherwise autonomous individual might make seems inherently tied to the larger issue of morality. But overriding moral autonomy with a technology that contains only a secondary consideration as its moral justification might not itself be morally justified.
Consider the case of the automobile transmission mentioned earlier. Trumping autonomy on the primary basis of passenger safety is probably justified. However, trumping autonomy on the basis of a secondary moral consideration, such as the prevention of piracy, might prove less tenable.
As such, designs should be scrutinized to ensure that the moral grounds for embedding control mechanisms—secondary ones in particular—are urgent enough to warrant their use.
Designed into pervasive social technologies, such as portable music players, and software such as Windows Media Player, embedded control mechanisms could take on an interesting social role. One interesting possibility is that the social function of such technologies is not to further a particular moral position (in the case of copyright infringement the moral aspect is arguably a thin one when compared to, say, the moral dilemma associated with break and enter or firearms proliferation—both discouraged by the use of locks as embedded control mechanisms). Rather, we might consider those technologies functioning more properly as propaganda mechanisms.
Mass media—the traditional playground of the propagandist—is typically seen delivering propaganda (used here in a value neutral sense) through messages such as news stories, posters, images, sounds, etc.. Indeed, the literature on propaganda focuses heavily on how language based messages are used to motivate people towards a certain type of action or belief. But our interactions with the technology of mass media, specifically our exposure to messages that can be delivered through a targeted use of embedded control mechanisms, should also be considered as a means to the same end.
In this sense embedded control mechanisms function primarily as a means of controlling not only behaviour, but also our understanding of the limits of responsible action, through repeated suggestion of the ‘only’ correct way to behave when interacting with such technology. These technologies, in combination with the strong traditional messages delivered via press releases and advertising, function as an essential component of the propaganda mechanism. Having a device that constantly reminds you not to burn music onto a CD, by preventing you from doing so, is not so different than placing that same message on a poster on the wall, or a billboard on the highway. It is simply more effective.
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