I keep wanting to believe that part of the problem in the debates around copyright and intellectual property is that the lawyers, lobbyists, and policy makers don't grasp why Turing machines are so radically different than the technologies they are more familiar with. That's the idealist educator in me. We won't talk about what the cynic in me thinks.
The Street Finds its Own Use for the Law of Unintended Consequences
The fact of the matter is that no group of engineers in a boardroom can ever anticipate what normal people will do with their inventions...
Repurposing has turned many a niche invention into a world-changer:
These inventions transcended their inventors' tunnel-vision, mutated by their users into the indispensable firmament of modern living
[...]
But the controls enacted by the DMCA and the CBDTPA won't afford us that freedom. Under their regimen, new technologies will only be brought to market after a "consensus" on their features is negotiated at lawyerpoint between the technology industry and the Political Officers of the entertainment industry. Once this "consensus" has evolved, it will be illegal to make, sell, or distribute any technology that doesn't conform to it.
The technologies that come out of this consensus will be the opposite of Turing's wonderful machine. These technologies will be designed so that every use is either forbidden or mandatory.
Explaining why this is a bad thing is tricky. When Hollywood asks us to enumerate the uses we'll lose if it gets its way, we can't. That's innovation for you. If we could predict the future uses of new technology, they wouldn't be innovative.
That's innovation. It's the force that drives our civilization. It's the force that drives our culture. It's the force that makes us human ("the tool-using animal").
I'm not willing to give it up, even if I don't know what it is.
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