If, as Stowe Boyd says, "Time Is The New Space" then DRM is a Massive Black Hole in the Internet OS

"As content is the medium by which the message (the Internet Operating System [IOS]) - is being created, DRM is like a massive black hole that is creating 'gravitational shearing' through out the Universe - holding back development in some areas and twisting and distorting it in others as the Universe comes into being."

In Stowe Boyd's January 26th stoweboyd and the /messengers blog, "Time Is The New Space: Moments, Not Memos" he outlines how business can better understand/use 'social tools' through a General Relativity metaphor. It's a good metaphor. As soon as the five bulleted points were in my brain I began to create associative landscapes.

"Time Is The New Space" is the concept title and while it's not the point of this post - you should go.

The point of this piece is that while Stowe Boyd, a computer scientist, a developer, both a teacher and student, a philosopher and historian of the "renaissance" (Boyd's perfect term for the IT revolution/apocalypse), his piece includes a video which is being blocked from viewers here in Canada by Hulu Video - pursuant to their obligation in law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

From Stowe Boyd's stoweboyd and the /messengers: Time Is The New Space: Moments, Not Memos.

(Not his fault - if he's even aware of it - all content going out of the USA is probably default blocked; the owner of the content, "140 Characters Conference" needs to send notification to Hulu to un-block it.)

As a developer in the Open Source Movement, the irony of blocking Stowe Boyd's content is two fold; first no one's stealing the content - as it's being offered for free. Secondly, his talk is about a vision of the development of an open network of producers and consumers. Or as Boyd's raison d'etre represented by his Twitter Bio says, "I am made greater by the sum of my connections, and so are my connections."

This is a perfect example of how the Digital Rights Management (DRM) "octopus" that was born of the successful inking-out of Napster (the first popular social network), has "tentacled" all over the Internet Universe - including the relatively obscure developer sub-culture Stowe Boyd fondly refers to as 'Edglings'.

As content is the medium by which the message (the Internet Operating System [IOS]) - is being created, DRM is like a massive black hole that is creating 'gravitational shearing' through out the Universe - holding back development in some areas and twisting and distorting it in others as the Universe comes into being. Who knows where Internet TV, for example would be by now if these Klingon's had some vision.


I'm not sure below is the video Stowe Boyde was pointing to, as Hulu doesn't even give the title of the blocked thing, but here's a video - I think the right one - from Youtube user "realplayerrsp" who has posted: "140 Characters Conference Presents Stowe Boyd".





This 10 minute video is a series of statements threaded together by a deep and many vectored philosophical understanding of network effects, business acumen and computer science. Intriguing is an understatement.

Good Evening Edglings. ;)



Pixilated (stoweboyd) images courtesy of stoweboyd and the /messengers.

Not pixalated (Stowe Boyd) image by Brian Solis courtesy of stoweboyd and the /messengers.

Hulu Video image from Stowe Boyd's blog by ScreenPrint32 v3. Download for free at PC World.



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