War on the PC and the network: copyright was just the start

My latest Guardian column, "Beware the spyware model of technology - its flaws are built in," is a look at some of the coming battles over the general-purpose PC and the general-purpose network, and how the copyright wars have shown us what's at risk when we do regulation wrong. It's adapted from my talk at last week's University of Toronto iSchool conference:

The growing realm of 3D printing will generate all sorts of new problems in search of solutions. From sex toys (banned in some southern US states) to kits to modify semi-automatic guns and render them automatic, new groups of would-be network/device cops will crop up every day. The list of problematic 3D objects is practically endless: anatomically correct Barbie torsos that can fit the standard head and limbs; keys for high-security locks; patented gizmos; even objects held sacred by indigenous people.

Around the corner are the bio-printers that can output organisms, pharmaceutical compounds, and biological material. The potential for these devices is enormous, but so are the problems, from patent infringement to bioweapons (inadvertent and deliberate).

The thing is, we'll be no more effective at building a bio-printer or a 3D printer or a software radio that can only execute certain programs than we were at building a PC that won't copy a copyrighted song. The flexibility of the universal computer and the universal network is fundamental and non-negotiable. Building a computer that can run every program is infinitely simpler than building a computer that can run any program except for naughty ones. Building a network that can carry every packet is infinitely simpler than building a network that carries all traffic except for the traffic you wish it wouldn't carry.

Beware the spyware model of technology - its flaws are built in

• [Fang Xianfu]

  I didn’t think this article was as good as the talk – you make it sound like creating the controllable computer isn’t impossible (which it essentially is), just really really hard, a problem that’s just waiting for some enterprising engineer to come along and solve. It’s especially obvious in the exerpt.

• [Anonymous]

  “Bad people are going to do bad things with whatever tools they have available, and society will continue to make laws against these acts. But it’s moronic to restrict everyone’s use in an attempt to stop the malicious few …”

  Could someone please tell the TSA?

• [jjesterb]

  “Around the corner are the bio-printers that can output organisms, pharmaceutical compounds, and biological material.”
  I’m sorry, but no, not really. You can “print” DNA or other biopolymers (protein, RNA, short polysaccharides) on a machine, but that’s about it. Small molecules of non-repeating structure are still and will remain very difficult to make, as is all the gunk required to fire up a replicating organism.

• [nemo]

  1. & 2. Irrelevant to my point.

  3. Regulatory bodies should governed by experts in the field, with transparency and public oversight. These bodies may be imperfect, but are the best of a set of imperfect options (with history consistently showing the libertarian option being among the worst), and often do their jobs perfectly well.

  4. False dichotomy. User competence is not the concern, not developer competence.

  • [sabik]

    Well, my point in (1) was that Star-Trek-style replicators are not just for toys, but can be vital in some circumstances. By keeping them out of the hands of the people, you’re condemning some to die of hunger or treatable disease. Point (2) is relevant insofar as it represents current record; it’s not automatic that food or essential medicines would be provided, indeed current record with DRM and IP is quite the opposite.

    Re point (3), any time you say “should” in a context like this, it’s a good idea to think of some mechanism for ensuring it.

    Remember also that we are essentially talking about “the means of production” here. If you’re talking about what history shows, schemes that place control of the means of production in the hands of the state have not been all that good, as a rule.

    Finally, for (4), if it’s a false dichotomy, what would be the other options? The Ubuntu (FOSS) model of software production depends on permitting anyone to use, study, change and share the software — no distinction between users and developers. It won’t work without that. Microsoft’s (closed) model separates the two classes and restricts development to Microsoft’s chosen few (employees and contractors). It also won’t work without that. Do you have some third, better option? If so, you could make a lot of money right now in software, never mind future tech…

• [MengerSponge]

  I don’t think the argument being made is (to use your example) that car bombs should be legal. It’s that we shouldn’t mandate cameras and microphones (or remote killswitches) in all cars, ban all fertilizers for any use, etc. in futile efforts to prevent bombings.

  Bad people are going to do bad things with whatever tools they have available, and society will continue to make laws against these acts. But it’s moronic to restrict everyone’s use in an attempt to stop the malicious few (who, as mentioned, will probably find a way around whatever countermeasures are in place).

  If you drive a car fast enough, you could evade police, make a fast getaway after a bank robbery, or cause a fatal accident. But engineering all cars to max out at 15MPH isn’t the solution.

• [Sparrow]

  the sooner we’ll legimitise a technology world whose first rule is “Obey your owner” and whose second rule is “Protect your owner’s interests”.

  I expect that the copyright lobby would highly support just such a device, as long as they were the owner and the user was only a leasee.

• [bcsizemo]

  I’m still waiting for a 3d printer that can make something that’s not plastic…

  I seriously don’t buy that many things, and I’ve only ever wanted to make something out of plastic a couple of times. Now metals…yeah I’d like to be able to “print” out a new bracket for a sway bar mount. Or a new corner piece to fix my lawn mower. Or even a new carb for my old VW.

  When we have an aluminum 3D printer we might have the ability to copy things that I wouldn’t buy from WalMart or the dollar store….

  • [sabik]

    I’m still waiting for a 3d printer that can make something that’s not plastic…

    These have been available for a while now, and places like Shapeways will happily take your file and ship you your gizmo in materials like steel, sterling silver or full-colour sandstone.

    Which is another neat thing — full-colour 3d printing.

    If you have the budget to buy the machine, or go to a professional service bureau, the choice of materials is wider, of course, including medically-inert materials. You can shape replacement bones directly from the MRI data.

• [sabik]

  If some SciFi Star Trek replicator were to appear (not that I have faith this will ever happen) I’d prefer to see it kept out of the hands of people

  * As a general rule, anything that can make medicines can definitely make poisons; anything that can make food can probably make poisons.

  * There is a currently-ongoing, decades-long global conversation about access to patented essential medicines, such as AIDS drugs in Africa.

  * If not the hands of people, then whose hands? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Whatever agency is entrusted with the technology will have a lot of power, and power corrupts. In addition, it too will be staffed by people.

  * As far as competence is concerned, would you prefer designs from Microsoft or Ubuntu?

• [jamiethehutt]

  >>I’m sorry, but no, not really.
  5 years ago you couldn’t print any biopolymers, 5 more years and I think you’ll be eating your words.

  • [nemo]

    It’s true that technology has made some notable advances, but some technically difficult tasks are far far more difficult than others. Printing organisms is more in the class of cold fusion. Even if we reached the point where we could print organisms, perhaps we’d choose not out of bioethical/environmental concerns.

    On a separate note, I don’t agree with Cory’s “hey we can make a device that could empower the worst of us by making it easy to print anthrax effectively and cheaply, but to prevent it would be like DRM, so let’s not worry about the ethics of it.” Maybe we might just have to live with it one day, but maybe devices that can readily produce chemical and biological weapons should be carefully regulated. If we ever make a machine that could pump out Sarin gas cheaply and effectively, we really ought to be careful about the potential for human stupidity as much as malevolence.

    • [blackanvil]

      Nemo, the problem with trying to restrict devices that can ouput deadly poisons is that they already exist, and are self-replicating. Ricin can be extracted from castor beans, which are trivially obtainable; botulism is so common that you have to take several steps when preserving food to keep from accidentally culturing it. Sarin, itself, is an organophosphate — if you were willing to take a couple of chemistry classes and get some common, non-controlled feedstock and lab equipment, you could churn it out yourself.

      A recurring theme in history is that the force multiplier an individual can apply to harm others increases as the general level of technology does. In the modern age, it’s car bombs and IEDs, causing harm even to military targets far in excess of what an individual could have done a few decades ago. All you accomplish by “carefully regulating” such devices, which in the real world means banning them, is slow down such progress, and drive it into the dark, unregulated markets. The device that can output sarin should also be able to output atropine and pralidoxime syringes, if it can create anthrax, it should also be able to make cipro.

      • [Ugly Canuck]

        Count me as being amongst the people who think that car bombs ought to be remain completely banned, rather than somehow regulated or “left to the market”, thank you very much.

        • [Anonymous]

          Why do you hate capitalism?

        • [wormbaby]

          I think you missed the point. Car bombs or rather their componant parts are easily obtainable at any tractor supply store. But rather than banning them, some of the key componants are tightly regulated. If you went in to buy ammonium nitrate in large quantities you would run into barriers because it is regulated since it is the main ingrediant in ANFO. We can’t really ban the know how but at best we can regulate.

      • [nemo]

        >All you accomplish by “carefully regulating” such devices, which in the real world means banning them, is slow down such progress, and drive it into the dark, unregulated markets.

        Regulation doesn’t exactly mean banning, though it does mean restriction. If some things require licensing and other related forms of regulation that’s fine by me. Most people do not fly airplanes, as this is regulated. Most people don’t own highly radioactive materials as their ownership is regulated. Most people don’t own nuclear weapons, biological weapons, large amounts of explosives, etc. as their ownership is regulated. We are all better off for this.

        I do not see a lack of regulation as slowing down progress, rather I see it as the key to a developed society where progress is possible, while a lack of reasonable regulation is a kind of naive libertarian regressiveness that harms society and is a block to progress.

        If some SciFi Star Trek replicator were to appear (not that I have faith this will ever happen) I’d prefer to see it kept out of the hands of people not trained in the proper safe use of the thing, since this would help regulate putting a highly dangerous tool in the hands of the stupid, reckless, and criminal. If someone were to break the law and bypass regulations, then we could properly prosecute those individuals, and I’m fine with that – the regulation is working and we have teeth to keep stupid/negligent/malicious people from doing things that are harmful to society.

        It’s really people not properly trained to handle such a dangerous piece of equipment that I’d be worried about more than bad guys. Having a device where one was able to click around a bit and have that device pour out fumes that would take out all life in the apartment block is not something I’d want to see sold at WalMart without even a Driver’s License check. This is not because I think Joe Evil is going to use it try to destroy/take over the world, but because Joe Chucklehead high on Meth. might use the thing and accidentally do great harm to himself and/or those around him. To synthesize Sarin actually take a lot of engagement, learning, and effort. A society where every crack head has unlicensed access to a machine where they might inadvertently synthesize Sarin (or C-4, or whatever) by clicking around in an interface they don’t understand doesn’t sound like progress to me.

• [WeightedCompanionCube]

  the sooner we’ll legimitise a technology world whose first rule is “Obey your owner” and whose second rule is “Protect your owner’s interests”.

  You’re roughly restating Asimov’s Second Law of Robotics. Which is fine, but the laws assume robots have some degree of sentience and can make judgment calls.

  As “smart” as devices are these days, they still do exactly what they are programmed to do by the software loaded on them, and the software is owned by the manufacturer. The device is defined by the software running it. In that way, technology is behaving exactly how you say it should: it is protecting the interests of those who ‘gave it life’ If you replace the software on a device, it will do exactly what you want it to do, but it won’t be the same device.

  Even if we all agree to follow Asimov’s laws, we run into a situation: The First Law, which takes precedence over the Second Law, is that “a robot may not harm a human or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.” You might not think creating a virus could harm a human, but your bioprinter disagrees. Why does it disagree? Because someone programmed it to, or at least gave it the AI to make that call.

  Asimov’s lesser known Zeroth law, one that trumps the First Law, is that a robot may not allow humanity to come to harm. Which means it is completely within the law for your device to self-destruct and take you with it if you try to use it for something that “harms humanity”… like dangerous speech, if whoever is in charge of your device’s programming decides as such.

  Who is that someone? Ultimately, it’s not going to be the “owner”.

• [M]

  I hate to adopt an NRA position on this, but it’s not printers that will be the problem; it’s people. Don’t start right out by blaming technology if you want to get a real handle on the problem.

• [Chris S]

  Years back, the entanglement of software and patents suggested to me the phrase “machines built from words”. Copyrights and patents were beginning to increasingly struggle over which one would hold supremacy over this unforeseen environment.

  3D printers are taking us one giant leap closer to the ultimate realization of “machines built from words”, where freedom of speech becomes a freedom to own, and – almost magically – to describe something is now sufficient to build it.

• [jjesterb]

  >>5 years ago you couldn’t print any biopolymers, 5 more years and I think you’ll be eating your words.

  First of all, your time line is totally wrong- I was printing biopolymers in grad school 10 years ago (I ran our group’s DNA synthesizer) and it was already a well developed technology at that point.
  Secondly, your understanding of chemistry is seriously lacking if you believe that. The fundamental difference between printing 3D objects or biopolymers and printing specific chemical structures in that in one case you have one or a few starting materials while in the other you need a huge assortment of starting materials depending on what you want. A polymer’s properties depend on the order or location you put together the monomers.
  Now, maybe you’d argue that a drug is just a polymer of atoms. Unfortunately we are nowhere near the ability to manipulate individual atoms and make them form the correct kinds of bonds, nor can we do it at any kind of scale. The closest is research that moves atoms around on a surface with an AFM tip, but that is limited to certain elements, nothing like what we’d need to make specific compounds.