Author And Former Covert CIA Operative Barry Eisler On Why You Should Support Techdirt

from the if-he-says-it,-you-should-do-it... dept

Our crowdfunding campaign to support our coverage of the encryption fight continues, and following on EFF director Cindy Cohn's post on why you should support Techdirt, this week we have former CIA covert operative and current author Barry Eisler -- an occasional Techdirt contributor whose thriller novel NSA surveillance overreach is a must read -- has also shared his thoughts.

Help Techdirt Cut Through The Confusion In The Crypto Fight
When I want to quickly and thoroughly understand an emerging topic in intellectual property, privacy, or governmental overreach—whether as a concerned citizen, or as a novelist researching a story, or both—my first stop is Techdirt. It's not just that their coverage of these topics is so original and insightful—though it always is. It's also that their worldview is so refreshingly nonpartisan, by which I mean they not only don't care, but actually seem not to be aware, of what political, financial, or corporate interests their truth-telling might offend.

The government's current attempt to dragoon Apple into subverting the encryption that keeps its users' data private is a premier example. There is no more important issue facing our information-age society than encryption. If encryption is strong, we can have the same feeling of security about our online lives—what we say, who we associate with, where we go, what we're thinking, etc.—that we do in our physical lives.

If, on the other hand, the government succeeds in forcing Apple to weaken the mechanisms by which its customers keep their communications and information private, those new weaknesses will be exploitable not just by the American government, but also by America's adversaries—including online criminal groups and hackers. And we will have accepted a precedent by which the government can force a private company to divert its engineering efforts to government-ordered ends (pause for a moment to marvel that people who self-identify as "small government" conservatives actually want this to happen). It's hard to know which would be worse—the process, or the outcome.

In short: there's only one thing that might redress the increasing imbalance between what the government knows about us and what we know about the government: ubiquitous strong encryption. Laws are what the government shall not do. Encryption is what the government cannot do.

This is why the government is currently going to such drastic lengths to try to render encryption impotent. And naturally, it's relying on fear and ignorance to help get the job done.

I know of no better weapon against that fear and ignorance than Techdirt—a critical resource for clear thinking, accurate information, and evidence-based arguments fatal to propaganda. I hope you'll join me in supporting their ongoing efforts. After all, the various politicians all scrambling to become president aren't going to help us solve this mess. In fact, as Techdirt itself has chronicled, they're a huge part of the problem.

Help Techdirt Cut Through The Confusion In The Crypto Fight

Filed Under: barry eisler, crowdfunding, techdirt

Techdirt Reading List: The God's Eye View

from the snowden-inspired-thriller dept

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

This week's book is (I think...) our first fiction book in the series. It's also not out yet, but it's coming out on Tuesday so you can pre-order it now. It's Barry Eisler's new Ed Snowden-inspired thriller The God's Eye View. Barry was kind enough to send me a pre-publication draft of the book and it's wonderful on multiple levels. First off, it's a "can't put it down, have to keep turning the pages" thriller that you'd expect from Eisler, whose previous thrillers have ended up on the NY Times best seller list. He knows how to keep you totally gripped to the story and in a state of suspense throughout.

But it's more than just a page-turner thriller. The book is clearly inspired by the Ed Snowden revelations, and not only does it have tons of little Easter Eggs for people who have followed the surveillance debate, but it also includes at the end details of how many of the "crazy" and outlandish spy programs and tactics described in the book are actually happening today, based on the Snowden leaks and other related investigative reporting and whistleblowers. So it's an educational book as well, that helps highlight why we should be so worried about the kind of power and surveillance the NSA is capable of pulling off today. If you want to convince someone why the NSA's powers are so concerning, and want to do it in a truly entertaining way, this is the book for you.

It's also pretty cheap for a new release these days. If you're signed up for Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, it's actually included so it doesn't cost anything extra. But if you're not, the ebook is just $5.99, which is way below most ebooks these days. If you don't know Barry Eisler, he's a former CIA spook, who became a best selling novelist, and who famously turned down a huge publishing contract to self-publish. He's also written a bunch of guest posts for us and been on our podcast (twice!).

Finally, if you're in the California Bay Area, on Wednesday night, I'll be interviewing Barry at a Commonwealth Club event about the new book and probably lots of other topics as well (surveillance, publishing and who knows what else...). It'll be a fun discussion, so if you're in the area, check it out. And, either way, I highly recommend the book.

Filed Under: barry eisler, ed snowden, nsa, surveillance, techdirt reading list

The Deeper Meaning Of Miranda's Detention And The Destruction Of The Guardian's Hard Drives

from the deny-and-disrupt dept

As many have already observed, the detention of David Miranda comes across as an act of blatant intimidation, as does the farcical destruction of the Guardian's hard drives. But something doesn't ring true about these episodes: spooks may be cynical and ruthless, but they are not generally clueless idiots.

They would have guessed that Miranda would not possess the keys for any encrypted files that he was carrying, so seizing his equipment simply left them with a bunch of ones and zeroes that they were unable to read (unless strong encryption has been broken and we don't yet know about it). Equally, they would have assumed that the Guardian had made backups of its files on the hard drives, so destroying them was literally quite pointless. What's really going on here? A brilliant post by author Barry Eisler, who used to work for the CIA, offers perhaps the most plausible explanation so far:

The purpose was to demonstrate to journalists that what they thought was a secure secondary means of communication -- a courier, possibly to ferry encrypted thumb drives from one air-gapped computer to another -- can be compromised, and thereby to make the journalists' efforts harder and slower.

The same is true for the destruction of the Guardian's hard drives:

The point was to make the Guardian spend time and energy developing suboptimal backup options -- that is, to make journalism harder, slower, and less secure.

What is particularly chilling, as Eisler notes, is that this technique is not new:

Does this sort of "deny and disrupt" campaign sound familiar? It should: you've seen it before, deployed against terror networks. That's because part of the value in targeting the electronic communications of actual terrorists is that the terrorists are forced to use far slower means of plotting. The NSA has learned this lesson well, and is now applying it to journalists. I suppose it's fitting that Miranda was held pursuant to a law that is ostensibly limited to anti-terror efforts. The National Surveillance State understands that what works for one can be usefully directed against the other. In fact, it's not clear the National Surveillance State even recognizes a meaningful difference.

The US and UK governments' equating of journalism and whistleblowing with terrorism is becoming clearer by the day.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: barry eisler, david miranda, detention, journalism

Best Selling Author Barry Eisler On Copyright, Piracy And Why SOPA/PIPA Are 'Extremely Disturbing'

from the papyrus-scrolls-are-difficult-to-pirate dept

I've written about best-selling author Barry Eisler a few times, for his recent decisions to turn down a half million dollar publishing deal in order to focus on alternative paths to bringing his books to market (first self-publishing ebooks and then doing a deal with a much more innovative and nimble Amazon). I had the pleasure of meeting up with Barry for lunch recently, where we had a fascinating conversation on a variety of topics -- some of which we decided to turn into a few interview posts for Techdirt. The first one is on copyright, a subject Eisler is quite familiar with. Prior to becoming such a successful author... he was an IP lawyer. Of course, now, as an author, many might think he would support stricter copyright laws, but he actually goes the other way and makes a bunch of cogent points not just on copyright in general, or even the legal proposals like SOPA and PIPA, but also why we're in such a situation with those laws being proposed.

Techdirt: While millions of people know you as a bestselling novelist, many people might not realize that prior to your career as a writer you were an intellectual property lawyer. Obviously, the combination gives you an unusual perspective on the question of copyright law. What are your thoughts on the state of copyright law today?

Eisler: It’s out of balance. The purpose of copyright laws—indeed, the purpose of intellectual property laws generally—is to create a limited monopoly on the part of the copyright holder sufficient to incentivize artists and inventors to create. The theory behind copyright is that without a means by which they might profit from their work, many artists might not bother, in which case the wider society would be denied the benefit of paintings, movies, music, novels, software, etc. But extending the monopoly past the point at which it creates the incentive itself is harmful to society, because doing so keeps copyrighted works out of the public domain. Think of it this way: anything beyond what’s required to incentivize artists is a windfall to artists and a detriment to society.

Historically, copyright law has moved in one direction only—it’s expanded. A common theory of copyright is that great protections must be good for authors, and if it’s good for authors, it’s good for the public. In your experience, is that accurate... and as an author, how do you feel about this view of copyright law?

Many people approach the question of how long a copyright should endure from the standpoint of what’s fair to artists (purely coincidentally, many of these people are artists). “But the artist created it!” the thinking goes. “Shouldn’t she profit?”

The answer is yes—but unless you believe that, for some sort of artist-centric moral reason, the artist should profit forever (along with her heirs into perpetuity), the next question is, “For how long?” And this question is properly answered not only by reference to profits for artists, but also by a consideration of benefits for society.

Imagine you’re starting a new country and that you have three alternatives for the creation of the country’s copyright law. You can have no protection for artists at all, in which case less art and fewer useful inventions will be produced, meaning that society is denied the benefit of these unproduced items. Second, you can have copyright protection lasting forever, in which case art and inventions will be available but always at a price. Third, you can have a limited copyright term just sufficient to incentivize the production of art and useful inventions, in which case art and inventions will be available and in relatively short order will become part of the public domain. Of these three possibilities, if your primary concern is what is good for the wider society, you’ll design your copyright laws based on #3, and you won’t have a term that’s a day longer than what you judge necessary to incentivize artists and inventors.

Copyright terms have grown to be over a century. No reasonable person can claim that, with a term of less than a century, artists wouldn’t be adequately incentivized to create. So current copyright terms are clearly too long from the standpoint of what’s best for society overall. Personally, I think a twenty-five year term would be more than enough. Anyone who claims he wouldn’t bother creating if he could only commercially exploit his creation for a quarter century wasn’t going to create anything worthwhile anyway.

Frequently, the battles over copyright law are positioned as being the “tech industry” vs. the “content industry.” And yet, many of the innovations from the tech industry have resulted in a much healthier content industry—since the tech world provides many of the tools that help create, distribute, promote and monetize works. As someone who’s lived in both worlds, is this a battle between two sides? If not, why do you think many view it that way?

I don’t see it as a battle at all, for precisely the reason you articulate. For example, I sell more books now in digital than I ever did in paper, so without the advent of digital distribution technology, I’d be making less of a living from my books. Now, digital enables piracy in a way paper never did, so you might argue that digital is bad for authors, but this argument is belied by my own bottom line and that of increasing numbers of other authors. In fact, anyone who thinks that new distribution technology, by enabling piracy, must be bad for artists must also believe artists were better off in the age of papyrus scrolls and stone tablets, which, as we all know, are notoriously difficult to pirate.

Anyway, all these concerns about new technologies enabling piracy are missing a larger and more important point. To prove that piracy has hurt an artist’s profits, you have to demonstrate that: (i) the artist would be making more money in the absence of the pirate-enabling technology than in its presence (that is, that for example a novelist would be making more money in a pure paper world than in an increasingly digital one); and (ii) pirates, if somehow denied the opportunity to pirate the artist’s work for free, would have instead purchased a legitimate copy. These are exceedingly difficult things to prove and so far as I know no one has ever offered empirical evidence in support. By contrast, there is ample empirical evidence to show that piracy actually boosts legitimate sales.

One other thing you’d have to do to prove that piracy is harmful: you’d have to screen out the benefits of piratical word of mouth. Because how many legitimate copies were purchased as a result of the wider awareness of the work caused by pirates accessing it for free? Novelist J.A. Konrath, for example, practically begs people to pirate his books, and has sold over a half-million legitimate copies in part as a result. Anyone who believes there’s no word-of-mouth benefit to piracy must also believe there’s no word-of-mouth benefit to library loans.

The only way to fight piracy, and the best way to turn it to your advantage, is with cost and convenience. Fighting piracy with DRM and lawsuits is not only futile; it’s actually detrimental to the artist’s bottom line.

As to why some people insist on viewing the relationship between content and distribution technology as a battle, I think it’s a manifestation of a weird but widespread human tendency to think in either/or terms when more often things are both. Look at the way digital publishing is often discussed, with many people, including authors, insisting that writers must be legacy-published or self-published when common sense and empirical evidence demonstrate that in fact, authors can (and often should) be both.

I think there’s an element of fear at work, as well. After all, if we’re making a living one way and something disruptive comes along, it’s natural to see the new thing as a threat to what’s established rather than as an enabler of something even better, and we’ll often fight the new thing rather than opening our minds and figuring out a way to embrace and exploit it. Natural, but from a business standpoint, counterproductive.

Do you have any thoughts specifically about the new bills proposed in Congress to expand copyright law (SOPA in the House, PROTECT IP in the Senate) by making third party service providers liable for certain forms of infringement and/or requiring them to cut off access and services to accused websites?

I’d call these bills insane except that, like many bills that seem insane when you judge them by their ostensible purposes, this one begins to make a great deal of sense when you understand what it’s really intended to do. For example, you might wonder why the Bush administration scooped up thousands of terror suspects and tortured them in Guantanamo and black sites, or why Obama administration has been so public about its torture of accused Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. Both cases, at first blush, seem to be public relations disasters for the politicians in question, and it’s only when you understand what these politicians are in fact trying to accomplish—a demonstration that the US government can pluck you out of any recognizable legal framework, prevent you even from access to a lawyer and from visits from the Red Cross, hold you indefinitely and abuse and torture you mercilessly—that you can begin to understand that these policies are not insane, but are instead carefully designed to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who might oppose US policy or undermine its obsessive secrecy.

Similarly, you might think Obama’s attempts at health insurance reform were a fiasco, until you realize that it makes perfect political sense for him to pay lip service to progressive goals so as to garner progressive votes, and then blame Republican obstruction for the failure to achieve those goals and for the passage of insurance industry-serving legislation instead, thereby ensuring continued receipt of industry campaign contributions. Votes from the base; money from the corporations. Every politician’s wet dream, and no accident when it happens.

So yes, on the surface, the notion that the government might via SOPA shut down any website that doesn’t police content to the government’s satisfaction seems insane—as insane as penalizing kitchen knife manufacturers for stabbings or automotive companies for drunken driving or telcos for crank calls. But when you consider that SOPA will not only grant content providers enormous power to intimidate and disable content outlets of which they disapprove—a shortcoming that has been extensively covered here on Techdirt and elsewhere—but also that SOPA will give the government, too, unprecedented power to police Internet content, you start to understand that from a certain nefarious perspective, SOPA begins to make a great deal of sense indeed. And for anyone who values Internet freedom, such a purpose and result should be extremely disturbing and worthy of a fight.

As someone who has long relied on new technologies yourself—and who is now betting strongly on ebooks—do you worry about the unintended consequences of bills like these to actually do more harm than good to your own efforts as an author?

I do. Every time content providers try to slow, control, or stop new distribution technology, they wind up hurting not just consumers, but also themselves. Hollywood fought television and then video recorders, both of which turned out to be huge Hollywood moneymakers after Hollywood’s litigation attempts failed. The music industry succeeded in destroying Napster, and in the process helped turn Apple into the world’s largest online music retailer, with the record labels as its supplicants. Lower-cost, more efficient distribution methods are developments content providers should embrace, not attempt to stymy, and fighting technologies that benefit consumers is about the best way I can imagine to lose money, create new pirates, and seed business opportunities to competitors.

And of course, then there’s the problem of a new Chinese-firewall level of governmental control over content. But as I note above, that’s not an unintended consequence. That one is by design.

What would you say to the big traditional publishers in New York who think laws like this are necessary?

I’d tell them to make original mistakes instead of repeating ones already made by the music and movie industries. I’d tell them to stop relying on monopoly rents to shore up their business and learn to compete in the digital marketplace, instead. I’d tell them that properly understood, digital distribution is an enormous opportunity, not a threat, and if they could only focus on building windmills rather than windbreaks, they could survive and even thrive in the digital world that, whether they like it or not, is fast displacing analogue.

Thanks to Barry for an enjoyable conversation. We'll have a further discussion more specific to publishing and his experiences there soon....

Filed Under: barry eisler, copyright, pipa, protect ip, sopa

Believing Legacy Gatekeepers Will Fail To Adapt Is Not The Same As Wanting Them To Fail

from the important-distinctions dept

Years back, I wrote a blog post called "Why I Hope the RIAA Succeeds." I got a lot of flack for it, because many people here seem to think that groups like the RIAA and MPAA should fail. I feel quite the opposite. I don't want them to fail at all. I think that they are failing, and I'm hoping that they wake up, pay heed to what we (and the wider public) are telling them, and adapt to a changing world full of opportunities. What I dislike is not the RIAA or the MPAA itself. But the strategies those groups employ, which I believe, quite strongly, are self-defeating and harmful to the public and the creative folks they claim to represent.

Still, many people assume that I hate these groups and want them to fail.

Author Barry Eisler, who has been in the news lately for turning down a half-a-million dollar deal from a traditional publisher to instead self-publish (and more recently, for signing a deal directly with Amazon, allowing him a sort of hybrid model between publisher and self-publishing), has been taking some similar heat lately as well. He wrote a guest post for Joe Konrath's blog, in which he discussed the nature of the legacy publishing business (short hand: "New York," just as people refer to "Hollywood" when discussing the legacy movie business), which he doesn't think is handling the digital transition particularly well -- especially compared to Amazon.

In response, many people accused him of hating "New York" and wanting those publishers to fail. In a followup post, Eisler does a nice job clarifying his position and explaining why wanting an institution (or group of them) to change and believing their current path is destined to fail, is not the same thing as wanting them to fail:

Now, if you ask me to bet on the likelihood that New York will successfully adapt to the advent of digital and the emergence of Amazon as a publisher, I would have to regretfully decline to bet very much. As I noted in my previous post, companies coddled by a lack of competition get flabby, and New York, which hasn't faced real competition in living memory, is now squaring off against a formidable competitor indeed. I don't think it's likely legacy publishers will be able to adapt and survive. And though I hope I'm wrong about that, my hope doesn't lead me to want to protect New York from competition, either.

Maybe I'm clarifying here more than is really necessary, but I've learned from recent experience how willing and even eager people can be to mischaracterize arguments they find threatening. So again: the fact that I'm predicting an outcome doesn't mean I'm hoping for it. I predict that one day I will be dead, but that doesn't render me particularly enamored of or eager for that outcome. Similarly, though I don't think New York's chances are good, come on, guys, I'm cheering you on. I want you to step up, not give up.

Indeed. That is very much the way I feel about the legacy music and movie businesses. I'm a huge fan of movies, music and books. I would love for all those industries to continue to be as successful as possible, but that requires adapting, and, like Barry, I just don't see many of those legacy players doing a very good job adapting. But that doesn't mean I want them to fail, or even dislike them. I just wish they'd stop trying to muck up the rest of the world while they attempt to figure all of this out.

Filed Under: adapting, barry eisler, economics, innovation, predictions, self-publishing