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Innovation according to Orange or how to maintain cultural imperialism in France | | | | |
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< | Innovation according to Orange or how cautionary tales come true | >
> | On October, 9th, on the French radio station France Culture, Christine Albanel, France’s former Minister for Culture and Communication turned Executive Vice President for Communication, Philanthropy, Content and Strategy of the France Telecom Orange Group talked about Orange’s latest project: an e-book called Read & Go. The process that Orange wants to set up is, in some respects, completely new in France and has not been set up anywhere else before. | | | | |
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< | -- By AliceAudreyRiviere - 27 Oct 2011 | >
> | When using “traditional” digitalized books, the buyer downloads a book-length publication in digital form consisting of text and or images and thus acquires the right to access the document, to copy it, to reproduce it, provided it’s for personal use. With the Read & Go, however, Orange suggests to sell, as a “trustful third person”, a personal “right to read” which the company intends to “manage” .
In terms of results and from a technological point of view, this system is not different from other access control technologies used to limit the use and the sharing of digitalized books. As a matter of fact, almost every publisher commercializing e-books, regardless of the format used, has limited, to different degrees, the access to their content with the help of either DRM systems or digital watermarking processes . Thus, no matter what technology is used, the result is the same: the use of digitalized books is controlled by security systems. | | | | |
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> | From a legal point of view, the structure of this new e-book is different from what has been done before in the sense that it gives rise to a whole different conception of use and ownership. However, even if the philosophy behind the fact of acquiring a right to read an e-book is different from acquiring a license to read a book, -it confers fewer rights on purchasers and imposes more constraints upon them, the reality showed us that the imposition of such restrictions is indeed an impossible thing to do: it will always be physically possible to give one’s e-book to another person or to scan a book and print it or send it to other persons. | | | | |
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< | In 1997 Richard Stallman published a short novel called "The Right to Read", on an imaginary near future where Digital Rights Management (DRM) has gone so far that the sharing of digitalized books is a crime punished by imprisonment. Indeed, in this cautionary tale digitalized books are only to be read by the owner of the computer who purchased a personal right to read it, so that the mere reading of books by unauthorized persons is illegal. The whole process is controlled by an agency, The Software Protection Authority, with the help of a "copyright monitor" inserted in each book reporting "when and where it was read, and by whom, to Central Licensing" . | >
> | This new conception of use and ownership is particularly interesting to study while thinking of its special connection to France. Indeed, France always had a unique and somehow peculiar view on culture in general and on French culture in particular. | | | | |
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< | In the light of what Christine Albanel, France's former Minister for Culture and Communication turned Executive Vice President for Communication, Philanthropy, Content and Strategy of the France Telecom Orange Group, announced two weeks ago, this cautionary tale appears to have been indeed a visionary prediction.
On October, 9th, on the French radio station France Culture, Ms. Albanel talked about Orange's latest project: an e-book called Read & Go. The process that Orange wants to set up is, in some respects, completely new in France. When using "traditional" digitalized books, the buyer downloads a book-length publication in digital form consisting of text and or images and thus acquires the right to access the document, to copy it, to reproduce it, provided it's for personal use. With the Read & Go, however, Orange suggests to sell, as a "trustful third person", a personal "right to read" which the company intends to "manage" . | >
> | France’s attitude toward cultural has always been an attitude of cultural imperialism. France’s cultural imperialism is lead by three pillars: a language policy aiming to promote French worldwide through institutions such as “la Francophonie”, a linguistic imperialism trying to expand the French language by marginalizing dialects throughout France and maintain French as official, or at least main spoken language in France’s former colonies. The last characteristic of French cultural imperialism is the so-called “exception culturelle” politic initiated in 1959, when a Minister of Culture was created and given into care to writer André Malraux, designating the action of support to the cultural sector and the artistic creation field. In every creative field -such as the field of cinema, of theatre or television, this support is conveyed by “systems of help to creation” automatically deducting a certain amount of the final price to create a kind of fund supposed to be used in a way of promoting and spreading French culture and “France’s cultural heritage”. For instance, the National Center of Cinematography deducts a percentage of every cinema ticket sold to support the creation and the diffusion of French expression work. The result is actually nothing more than a tax on cultural goods so that, throughout the years, this concept, by imposing taxes on consumers and by giving the arrogant feeling than French culture is better than others and worthy of more protection, turned out to be very controversial. Apart from these polemical aspects, this concept shows us the idea that in France, culture is something people have to pay for. | | | | |
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< | In terms of results and from a technological point of view, this system is not different from other access control technologies used to limit the use and the sharing of digitalized books. As a matter of fact, almost every publisher commercializing e-books, regardless of the format used, has limited, to different degrees, the access to their content with the help of either DRM systems or digital watermarking processes . Thus, while many e-books are indeed limited to a certain number of reading devices , some e-publishers use more stringent e-book DRM schemes limiting at some point the opening of an e-book only to the computer with which it was downloaded . | >
> | What is really interesting to observe with Orange’s new project is that, once again, it is up to consumers to pay and with it to defense a certain idea of culture some people have. It denotes the belief that culture is a kind of “holly grail”, which shouldn’t be free to access but restricted to a certain category of people, who by paying for it are worth having it. | | | | |
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< | Thus, no matter what technology is used, the result is the same: the use of digitalized books is controlled by security systems.
From a legal point of view, however, the structure of this new e-book is different from what has been done before in the sense that it gives rise to a whole different conception of use and ownership. | >
> | This new conception of use and ownership took exactly place in France because it serves an other purpose than the mere restriction of the sharing of a piece of work: it goes indeed beyond economic considerations and clearly indicates a form of cultural imperialism. This result is not surprising: in the information society we live in, cultural imperialism is the business of the public media, may it result from a private initiative like the one of Orange, which by operating enterprises has a direct access to the dominating center of the system. | | | | |
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< | First of all, it must be emphasized that, as law stands in France, there is no such "right to read" for, as Guillaume Champeau, journalist at the French magazine Numerama, rightly points out, "the law forbids the copy of a book, its adaptation, its recitation but never its reading" . Hence, it's questionable how licenses granting a digitalized right to read are going to be drafted in order to respect the constitutional imperative of article 13 of the Preamble of the Constitution of the 4th Republic , effectively consecrating the equal access for culture to every citizen. Due to the absence of decisions on this issue, which has not been dealt with by any French jurisdictions yet, no answer can be given to that question for the time being. | >
> | The death of this system is now just a matter of time: what is the point of trying to maintain an “exception cultural” and thereby justify an illegitimate monopole on culture when the entire world virtually has access to every piece of information imaginable? No doubt that the people at Orange pertinently know that. But what is the point of stopping a system when it is still possible to make money while literally being able to thank Victor Hugo for that? As long as the ton doesn’t bell for oneself, why not trying to make pay them for whom it does? | | | | |
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< | The philosophy behind the fact of acquiring a right to read an e-book is different from acquiring a license to read a book: it confers fewer rights on purchasers and impose more constraints upon them: what about Orange deciding to resort to face recognition processes on their e-books to effectively enforce their strategy? It's fine for the moment since we still do have the choice whether or not to resort to e-books, but what about the day where no paper books will be edited anymore? In this respect, Orange's latest project seems to be nothing more than the creation of an illegitimate monopole on technologies permitting access to education and culture. Similar monopoles have been created on other materials (music and movies) by the French DADVSI law, the initiator of which was precisely Ms. Albanel. But things are doubly different here: first of all, Ms. Albanel isn't Minister for Culture anymore, but works for a private company, so that the monopole she wants to establish is even less legitimate. Secondly, reading, as French philosopher Alain Finkelkraut said, is not just an "act of cultural consumption", but also the backbone of our whole western culture; "reading is a conversation". | >
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< | But there's no reality in this essay.
There's no way for DRM'd reading schemes to succeed in even the
medium-run, let alone the long run. The problem is that all text is
eventually displayed where people quaintly known as "readers" can see
it. And we all possess text recording devices of perfect sufficiency,
called cameras. To turn a DRM'd e-book into an open text by cracking
the encryption is usually easy. And once the encryption on one book
has been cracked, the remainder of the thief's inventory is also
cracked, and can be read and shared by honest readers everywhere.
(Hence the intercontinental joke that is Mobipocket, the last time "la
Francophonie" came up with a brain-dead "we control all our readers
here, because they use the world's most intelligent language and are
the dumbest possible people so we pwn them" bullshit.) But if the
encryption resists cracking, every DRM'd ebook can be opened by
photographing each page as it is displayed, and then turning those
scans back into e-text. This is more laborious than cracking the
encryption on the entire library, but as it only needs to be done once
per book, rather than once per reader, it's sufficient to ensure the
failure of the scheme.
This is not seriously disputed information: everybody knows it
including the thieves and liars promoting these outrageous power
grabs. An essay taking seriously their ridiculous posturing is worse
then useless, because it gives the reader the very sense of
helplessness in the face of remorseless power that thuggery wants to
create.
The important issue isn't the possibility of success, which is zero,
but the unique political conditions that result in repeated efforts to
pretend to do this in France. There isn't anywhere else is the
supposedly civilized world where this particular form of the nonsense
goes on. You give one hint in the essay of the reason for this, but
you don't follow it up. You should: that's where your essay actually
is.
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