Tuesday, June 27, 2000

BRAD WARDELL WRITES IN RESPONSE:

The key element in any potential legislation is intent. If the party filing the lawsuit can prove the intent of a given company is to facilate theft, then they will prevail. Napster was created with the intent to facilitate theft. That is the key issue.

In an ideal world, what would have been nice is if some anonymous third party had created something like Gnutella which stormed the internet and then got creators of technology to come out with services and such that used that kind of technology in a more constructive way. For instance, having ISPs be able to sell MP3 sharing services to their customers in which the owners of the intellectual property get a large percentage of the profits.

Corporations live and die on intent. Look at the lawsuits against gun makers, they are largely based on whether it is the intent of the gun manufacturer to get their guns in the hands of criminals. The same is true of tobacco companies. If it can be shown that there is the intent to get cigarettes into the hands of minors, then they're in trouble. In the case of Napster, intent is easily proven based on Shawn's own words on IRC and in interviews. All a law has to do is state that if a given product or service can be shown to be primarily intended for illegal use then that product or service is illegal. Lockpicks are used by professionals all the time for legitimate reasons (most people know someone who's needed one at one time or other).

Napster is very difficult to use legitimately. You only can put in the name of the song or the artist which means you already have to know at least one of those things. So unknown bands and artists can pretty much forget about getting much benefit from it.

Giving away the rights of intellectual property holders is giving away far more freedom than simply making a law that specifies that if illegal use is the intent of the product then the product is illegal. Without intellectual property laws -- copyrights, patents, trademarks, we wouldn't have the technology we have right now to be having this conversation.

I want to be able to, in 10 years, sit on my deck on a lazy sunday afternoon reading a book or magazine or whatever electronically on a nice tablet of some kind. I want to be able to go to Amazon.com with my 100 megabit internet connection and purchase Episode III on DVD2 and download it to my DVD maker for $20 or whatever. But these and hosts of other wonderful technologies that free us from a lot of tedium will never happen as long as the creators of thsi sort of thing have to worry that some 19 year old is going to be legally able to create programs that swipe this stuff.

A world in which all software comes with dongles and requires a constant connection to the software producer's anti-piracy server with corporations building in automatic police reporting features so that anyone using a pirated copy is reported to the police is not the kind of world I want to live in.

But that's exactly what we'll get if those creating intellectual property aren't protected.

--- Brad

posted at 4:00 AM

Today's entry is part of an ongoing thread so you'll need to read some of the entries below this one to get up to speed. It involves a friendly email debate between myself and Brad Wardell the CEO of Stardock Inc. about the Napster controversy. Brad is a cool guy who makes a great software package and we've corresponded in the past. Below is his reply to my message, followed by my reply back to him:

BRAD REPLIES:

Hi Mark.

I'm afraid some of the things you think are illegal are actually quite legal.

For instance, according to copyright law, the copyright holders determine what can and can't be distributed.

Napster deals, arguably primarily with stolen property. Therefore something like Cardster would be just as legal if Napster is legal. The makers of Carder would simply argue that they are letting people put up credit card numbers for eCommerce testing. This has happened in the past believe it or not as outragious as it sounds.

Bankster would not necessarily work inside the bank, it would disable the cameras from outside from a public street.

At best, only a couple of the top 10 are "iffy". The rest are merely Napster in another form.

Napster was written for the intent of pirating music. That will be tough to defend against. Shawn has admitted to this in interviews and particularly on IRC. he wrote Napster so that his roommate and him didn't have to deal with FTP sites and websites looking for pirated MP3s.

My top 10 list was merely a reminder of what a legalized Napster would mean. Once it is demonstrated that a company can get legally rich fascilitating crime, others will join in.

The fact that you only specify 2 points of contention (numbers #7 and #6 which, contrary to what you thought, are quite legal) doesn't help your argument in my opinion.

Seriously, consider this.

Napster wins setting the precedent that companies are not liable for the content on their service.

Therefore I write a program called Universal Sharing.

Universal Sharing lets people share any information they might want and lets the users create any category they want.

Users then create a category called "Credit Card Numbers" and begin sharing those numbers. The numbers are not stored on a central server, they are ready from individual machines around the world. The company is therefore not liable if Napster isn't liable for pointing people to stolen goods in the form of MP3s.

If it turns out that it is legal to create things whose primary use is the facilitation of crime and that there looks to be a lot of money in doing so, it will create a demand for those kinds of devices.

In short, the problem isn't piracy per se, the problem is making it legal for corporations to engage in its facilitation.

--- Brad

MARK REPLIES:

Hi Brad,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I may have made a mistake by referring to the legality or illegality of any specific item on the top ten list as it's not at all central to my point. They could all be legal and my question still stands. How can we draft a law that makes a data sharing technology illegal, when the legality depends totally on the data that the users choose to share?

Is an ISP responsible for libels committed on Usenet feeds they carry? Is a landlord responsible if a tenant runs a telephone scam from a rented house? Should we ban guns because almost all violent criminals use them to commit their crimes?

An example: A company makes a device that jams all RF transmission in an area. It is designed for opera houses and theaters to use to stop the very annoying disruption of performances caused by cell phones ringing. It is very popular and successful (although this is hypothetical, I'm pretty sure I've read about such a device). Then the same device is used in a string of bank robberies to jam the cameras and other alarms. It is used in home invasion robberies to jam the wireless 'panic button' alarm. It is used in car-heists to jam the 'Lo-Jack' locating transmitter. Should the device itself be outlawed and the company driven out of business?

It's not illegal to make and sell lockpicks but it's illegal to use them to commit a crime. Was Kelloggs responsible when phone phreaks started using the whistles in Cap'n Crunch boxes to make free phone calls? Well, no because Kelloggs certainly didn't intend for the whistles to be used to commit crimes. So then are we to use the 'intent' of the creator in determining whether to ban a technology? The Napster creators intended to make theft easier with Napster. This certainly makes them an unsavory example as their intent was bad. This makes it pretty easy to pillory them, but that's my concern - we may be about to set a far-reaching legal precedent using a very specific and unpopular example.

As terrible as it is, this is why the ACLU sometimes chooses to defend the KKK. It's easy to use a case involving the KKK to further restrict, say, the right of public assembly. The problem is, once the law is on the books, the next time it might not be the KKK. Maybe next time it'll be the abortion folks (either side), Louis Farrakan, or the Gay Pride Parade.

A perfect example of how seemingly good laws can have unintended consequences is those racketeering (RICO) laws that got passed about confiscating anything used in the commision of a crime. There were lots of great examples to rally public opinion, those damn Columbian drug smugglers driving around in their Ferrari's, speeding away in their racing boats, flying off in their jets. Yes, lots of those things were confiscated. But there have been big problems too, like the case of a neighbor who borrowed a car. Turns out the neighbor was going to a drug chieftain meeting wherein everyone got busted. The car got confiscated and sold by the DEA (and the funds went to expand the DEA's budget). The unsuspecting neighbor whose son lent the car? Turns out he was a federal judge who'd saved for years to get the car. He never did get the car back. The law is the law, and it was used in a crime. Which is why we have to be so incredibly careful when it comes to making laws. How does one put into words a law that will confiscate that drug runner's Ferrari but let the judge keep his car?

So we damn Napster because it IS actually used by a lot of pirates and the creators definitely had larceny in their hearts when they created it. Ok, what about these new companies like FilesAnywhere.com and FreeDrive.com? I just read an article on ZDNet about how these internet storage services are being used to commit widescale theft of music, software, etc. It's apparently even more convenient than Napster because the user simply sets up an account and then shares the account name and password over Usenet. Others can instantly access 100MB or more of data and the original user doesn't even have to be online.

Now those companies certainly weren't created with piracy in mind. They started out with lots of legitimate users doing legit things. But now it seems that more than half of the data volume on those services may be piracy-related. However, there are still lots of legit users too. Do we ban these companies and try to write a law that stops the idea of data sharing? At what point did these company's activities become illegal? Was it when more than 10% of their users were pirating? 20%? 50%? And how would we even know what percentage as they don't look inside the users drive folders? The user is renting the drive space (in exchange for having ads listed there). There are laws against landlords snooping around on a tenant's sublet property. Are these laws somehow different for a data landlord? What if the data tenant encrypts the data and passes out the decryption key with the account name and password. Then there's literally no way for the data landlord to know what's in there even if it was feasible to look through every account. Should they still be outlawed?

Brad, I'm really concerned because if I was "King of the World" (no, not Leonardo DiCaprio :-)), I don't know how I'd draft effective laws in this area to stop all the bad stuff from happening without hopelessly screwing up the good stuff (the good stuff being the rights of lawful citizens to use and enjoy the benefits of this technology and many other technologies that we can't even imagine yet). I'm thinking that letting unsavory things like Napster exist may be the high price we have to pay for freedom. Technology itself is neither moral or immoral. It's how it is used. If we open the gate and let the government legislate legality or illegality onto a technology itself instead of how an individual USES that technology, I'm afraid we'll be opening a pandora's box of government intervention and we won't like where we end up. The cure could be worse than the disease...

Sincerely,

--- Mark

posted at 3:24 AM

Monday, June 19, 2000

------- INSERT ON ----------

This Month's Top 10:

The popular MP3 downloading program Napster has recently gotten another $15 million in investment showing that it pays to make programs that make it easy to take the property of others. With there now being a financial incentive to start companies revolving around the now accepted premise of aiding theft, here are 10 Napster inspired company ideas. BTW, something to think about: All these company ideas would use the same model and have virtually the same claim to legality as Napster's defenders argue.

** Top 10 New Napster Inspired Companies **

#10 Hubcapster (company dedicated to showing where cars with nice and unsecure hubcaps are located)

#9 NotHomester (company that lets everyone know which houses have people on vacation and don't have a security system)

#8 PickPocketster (small device that tells how much money is in a person's wallet and how fast that person can run)

#7 Bankster (company that makes a device that disables bank security cameras)

#6 Cardster (company that makes a program that has a real time list of stolen credit card numbers)

#5 Looterster (web company that gives city maps that displays where the police currently are located to make looting easier)

#4 Musicster (company that makes a program that tells you where you can download pirated music. Oops, wait, that genre is taken already).

#3 DVDster (company that makes a program that tells you where you can download pirated DVDs)

#2 Junkiester (company that makes a program that has a real time list of illegal drug suppliers for real time ordering).

#1 Nabster (a program that lists people using Napster by their IP address and sends data to law enforcement officials for later use.)

---- INSERT END -------

I read this with a fair amount of incredulity. Yes, the author is a software publisher so one would expect some justifiable bias as the piracy issue certainly hits close to home, but this is over the top. I'm part of a software publisher too but that doesn't mean that I've become bereft of all common sense.

First, the point is made that all the humorous examples have roughly the same legality as Napster. Wrong! Item #7 would stop a legal device that someone else owns from working on their own property. This is clearly illegal. Item #6 purports to deal only in stolen property. This would be illegal too. If #6 was a program that shared numbers of any kind (like say a web message board program) then it wouldn't be illegal.

It is undetermined yet if Napster is in fact legal or illegal (which is why it's going to court instead of the local police precinct.) Many highly respected legal experts disagree sharply on the Napster issue so it is far from open-and-shut. In fact the recording industry has not yet succeeded in getting a preliminary injunction from the court against Napster. Preliminary injunction rulings can be a barometer in determining the strength of a case and so far Napster is winning this initial skirmish. Another interesting bit of news... David Boies, the legendary anti-trust expert who recently won the Microsoft case for the U.S. Government, has just agreed to defend Napster. He signed on because he says this case represents important constitutional issues. I'd agree...

What concerns me about the message that showed up in my inbox is that it attempts to sway opinion against Napster, not with valid arguments but with obfuscation. It confuses the issue by drawing a guilt-by-association analogy between Napster and some humorously hypothetical scenarios that are simply not the same thing.

Let's get one thing straight. Copying someone else's intellectual property without their permission is absolutely illegal. In my opinion it is also highly unethical and deeply immoral. It strikes at the very core of the creative process that drives our economy and society forward.

- Using a Xerox machine to copy a Stephen King novel for someone else is illegal.
- Using a VCR to copy "Star Wars" for someone else is illegal.
- Using a cassette tape recorder to copy a "Madonna" CD for someone else is illegal.
- Using the Microsoft Outlook email program to send someone a copy of a "Madonna" CD is illegal.
- Using Napster to transfer a copy of a "Madonna" CD to someone else is illegal.

However, Xerox machines, VCRs, cassette tape recorders, and Microsoft Outlook are not illegal (yet). The big question... should Napster be treated differently? Well, let's look at the differences...

- Xerox machines, VCRs et al, have very beneficial and legal uses. So does Napster (many unpublished musicians have released their music through Napster).
- Xerox machines, VCRs et al, are frequently used for illegal activities. So is Napster.

Napster is most different from the others in one aspect. Currently Napster users are (in my opinion) probably using it for illegal activities 99% or more of the time.

This is bad. Very, very bad. But does it mean that Napster should be outlawed? What the users are doing is already illegal. Do we need another law? If so what are we outlawing? Napster the company? Any Napster-like file-sharing technology? The internet itself? It's easy to outlaw a company. It's almost impossible to outlaw a technology or the internet (just ask the Soviets and the Chinese).

A great American patriot once said that our freedoms are chipped away a little at a time and the chipping always starts with an unpopular aspect of a larger issue. It takes an eternally vigilant populace to recognize when an unpopular 'whipping boy' is being used to establish a far reaching precedent that could mean losing vital freedoms. So which is it in this case? That's a tough question...

Fortunately, we have some historical precedents to look at. Although many people don't remember it, there were serious legal and/or congressional battles fought over VCRs, DAT recorders, cassette recorders and more. The entertainment industry actually fought for (and almost succeeded in) getting time-shifting with VCRs declared illegal and by extension having the recording ability removed from all VCRs sold in the U.S. Going even further back, John Phillip Sousa (who wrote "The Stars and Stripes Forever") argued in the 1890s for having Edison's phonograph banned because it would 'replace' performing musicians, putting them out of work and spelling the end of music! Fortunately, all these efforts to ban a technology (instead of the illegal use of the technology) failed. Today, more people make a living producing music than at any other time in history. The entertainment industry (including movies, television, music, and more) has seen and is continuing to see incredible growth and profits.

Interestingly, each time the 'status quo' entertainment industry has tried to ban or tax a new technology, that new technology ultimately ends up making the industry far more money than before (from phonographs to CDs, from DATs to VCRs, from cable to direct satellite, the list is pretty amazing). Does this mean that people using Napster to steal music are somehow less guilty of theft? Absolutely not! However, it does mean that we should think very carefully about the long-term ramifications of letting the government exercise it's power to ban a whole communications technology - instead of the illegal use of that technology. Because that ban will be for everyone and forever, and as Prince said, "Forever is a mighty long time".

posted at 1:06 AM

Sunday, June 11, 2000

Today, a cross-post from a message thread about software piracy, wherein a writer named Axelrod has admitted to using pirated software but justifies this by stating that he is a student and cannot afford to buy the software. Others have condemned Axelrod with much righteous indignation...

===================================

Ahhh the old piracy debate...

As I recall, that nasty rift between those lads Cain and Abel started with a nice friendly discussion about piracy :-)

Just to chime in with my own opinion, I believe strongly that piracy is wrong. Period. It goes to the essential (and I think pretty obvious) principle that what a person (or group) creates with their own time, thought and sweat belongs to that person (or group). It's theirs to do with as they please. They can decide to sell it or keep it all to themselves. Set a stupendously high price or give it away. They can even choose to destroy it on a whim.

If we as a society grant others the right to take from a creator that which they have created then we are on perilous ground indeed.

HOWEVER... I am not in practice nearly as militant or absolute as the above statement might make me sound. I just think it's essential that we get the basic ethical issue out of the way first, namely; taking something that belongs to someone else is wrong.

The reason that it's important to agree on this first point is that there are actually a few people out there who think that it should be OK for one person (or group) to take that which belongs to another person. You've seen these folks around, they rant about how all software should be free, the greater good, the needs of the many, etc. etc. They are in my opinion just plain wrong. Such a practice would undermine the very creative engine that has elevated our species to it's current state of relative success. I hope we can all agree on at least this basic point.

Now that THAT'S out of the way(!), we can move on to the more interesting and subtle distinctions that I think are lurking about within this issue.

First, there's that whole "right and wrong" thing as it relates to "legal and illegal". Ethics can be such a messy business! For instance, I believe that by most objective measures I am a moral and ethical person. In fact, a pretty darn moral and ethical person, perhaps registering above average on the Moral and Ethical Chart of Weights and Measures (if such a handy thing could be found).

I am also a LAW-BREAKER. A common criminal. In fact a habitual, unrepentant, repeat offender! To wit: I have sped on the highway. I have jay-walked. I have trespassed on government property. I once drove without insurance (for three weeks!). I have received stolen property (a Peter Frampton Live LP copied to a cassette tape). Once, several years ago, I with malice and forethought was a party to violating a direct order from the U.S. Federal Government forbidding the transport of five tons of powdered milk to a Cambodian refugee camp. There's more but I'll spare you the sordid details of my criminal past...

On the other hand... although I'm not a religious man, should I one day find myself in front of Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, I hope there will be at least a few paltry items to tilt the golden scales of judgement favorably as my mortal soul hangs in the balance. To wit: I once returned an extra $20 in change given to me in error at a check-out stand. I have also upon numerous occasions pointed out to a clerk an extra item that wasn't added to my bill. I once even drove across town to return a rather nice set of tools that was mistakenly included with my purchases at a lumber yard. Although quite minor, these incidents are examples of situations where it certainly wouldn't have been illegal for me to simply do nothing and benefit from the error or omission of others. But something inside me evoked the feeling that this would have been immoral.

Poor deluded Mark! He feels he is moral even though he has done that which is illegal. Yet he has avoided that which is legal but he feels is immoral. Hmmmm... messy indeed!

I don't feel that my confessed speeding infractions are in any way justifiable simply because I don't agree with the particular law. Facts is facts, and speeding is illegal, regardless of the reason for my speeding or my disagreement with the law. Similarly, Axelrod using software he has not paid for is illegal, regardless of whether or not he is a student (or orphan, or cripple, or other sympathetic stereotype) and can't afford it.

Yet in the paragraphs above there is painted a scenario that calls into question whether the whole legal/illegal thing is even a reliable litmus test as to moral right and wrong. Thus we find ourselves on quite a slippery slope! Could Axelrod have done something illegal and yet not morally wrong? By the way, I should point out that I've been in computers for a long time and so, yes, I have in the past used software that I did not pay for. Therefore in this case, Axelrod and I find ourselves sharing the same (quite crowded!) moral boat.

So can these two concepts be reconciled? Or am I just putting a rock garden around my glass house? Well, I don't quite know for sure (if I did I'd be running a religion and you'd be genuflecting :-) ). But I do have a few ideas. However, they'll need to wait for another post on another day as my fingers are a bit weary tonight. In the meantime, what do you think?

posted at 2:19 AM

Saturday, June 10, 2000

"I heard you on the wireless back in Fifty Two
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you.
If I was young it didn't stop you coming through.

Oh-a, oh...

They took the credit for your second symphony.
Rewritten by machine and new technology,
and now I understand the problems you can see.

Oh-a, oh,
I met your children
Oh-a, oh...
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star.
Video killed the radio star.
Pictures came and broke your heart."

--- The Buggles (1979)

posted at 5:25 AM

Monday, June 5, 2000

This has turned out to be an unexpectedly good thing. I'm liking listening to ShoutCast MP3 radio broadcasts in bed and being woken up by my favorite CD, MP3 or even DVD. Having a net-connected computer in bed is also cool when someone calls you and says, "Hey, did you see that news story on CNN.com?" This is starting to make me think that wireless 'webpad' type devices will actually be a pretty cool thing.

posted at 10:27 PM

Thursday, April 27, 2000

1,139,110 hits for "Pen"

Making the pen roughly three times 'mightier' than the sword even in the era of the internet.

However, before we start feeling too good about the relative values represented on the net let's keep in mind that the venerable "Pen" was handily beaten out by "Tits" which scored 1,205,305. What the net lacks in quality it can make up in diversity as there are 261 sites which contain all three.

posted at 4:12 PM

Monday, March 27, 2000

Microsoft is early with the next 9x based Windows upgrade, "Windows ME" (the industry's worst name since 'Itanium'). They achieved this apparent 'earliness' simply hacking out all the features. Now we'll have to decide whether any of the new features are worth the day-long hassle of upgrading and getting everything working again.

Look here...

posted at 3:13 AM

Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Last night I read "Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner" by Paul Sammon. The book gives an enormous amount of background information on one of my favorite movies of all time. It features interviews with all the key crew and cast both during the making and also a decade after. It's rare to see a "Making of..." book where the author was present during pre-production, shooting and post-production, but fortunately not a part of the crew thus gaining valuable perspective. Sammon was writing a huge and in-depth 'double issue' feature for Cinefantastique Magazine and was given unprecedented access to all aspects of the creation of the movie. What's even more unusual is that the book didn't come out until fifteen years after the movies release. Thus the book accurately documents the scathing initial reviews, the poor box office, and then the slow and certain rise of the film into a cult classic including the releases of various workprints, bootlegs and director's cuts.

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book is seeing how the Hollywood system was subverted into funding a 28 million dollar film (a huge amount for a movie at that time) that they never would have touched had they known what Ridley Scott was creating. It was a fascinating situation in that the money men bought into the project thinking they would get another Star Wars type film. They had the director of "Aliens" and one of the stars of "Star Wars", an instant formula for success they thought. Except producer Michael Deeley and director Ridley Scott were making an incredibly sophisticated and philisophical film exploring moral issues and the nature of what it is to be human. It was serious adult sci-fi; intellectual, brooding and entirely unlike anything that had ever been put to film before.

Two weeks after principal photography was concluded, the money men started to get an idea of what Deeley and Scott had shot and immediately fired both of them. The producer and director however were consumed with the film and ignored their firing and just kept working on completing their masterpiece. As the money men stepped in and tried to wrest control of the film, various members of the crew including editors and production assistants began creative stonewalling to block the takeover of the project. After a few weeks Deeley and Scott were returned to control of the film and it was completed largely as they had envisioned (with the exception of a terrible voice over and a happy ending that were stuck on).

When it was released almost every critic panned the film. The majority of audiences didn't understand it and it flopped at the box office. Since then however it has become one of the most popular home video, laserdisc and DVD films of all time. It is now critically acclaimed as one of the greatest science fiction films ever created. It influenced the visual style for dozens of motion pictures and set the tone for the forthcoming dystopian cyberpunk literary movement.

It's sad that most of the 'triumphs' of the traditional Hollywood system were actually accidents or outright mutinies.

posted at 7:42 PM

Monday, March 20, 2000

It was a really nice day outside so I decided to wash Cooper out in the front yard so that he could 'drip dry' in the sun. Someday when I build my dream house I need to remember to build-in hot water taps in addition to cold water for the garden hoses.

posted at 3:01 AM

Saturday, March 18, 2000

posted at 2:25 AM

Yesterday an airplane came tumbling out of the sky and crashed in a huge fireball not a half mile from where I stood. In one bright flash three lives were snuffed out.

At first I thought it was perhaps a propane tank explosion. One doesn't naturally think of planes falling out of the nighttime sky. But as I drove towards the smoke and fire to see what it was, the news came filtering in. In my case it came via a friend on my cell phone who was near a tv. At first it was vague, "Some kind of plane crash". Then, "DC-8 cargo jet".

I turned my car around to escape the gridlock as more fire trucks and police cars raced by and helicopters began to circle above. A half hour or so later some friends and I met at a local restaurant for dinner. The news was on the tv and we watched.

I don't watch news very much. I've been spoiled by technology. I prefer to get my data from the internet. There I can surf the topics to satisfy my interest. I've grown used to the freedom of jumping from point to point in a non-linear fashion. Also, in the world of instant print media, when there's nothing to say, the story is short. Something like, "Cargo plane crashes in Rancho Cordova salvage yard shortly before 8 pm. More data as it develops."

However, in the case of an unfolding disaster story like this one, the tv news folks don't have the luxury of saying what they know and moving on. The camera continues to roll and it must be fed regardless of whether there's actually anything more to say.

We watched on the tv as cub reporters fresh from Journalism 101 arrived on the scene and talked and talked and talked without saying much of anything. After a bit it started to become comedic.

Reporter: "Behind me the fire department is putting water on the fire."

Peanut Gallery: "Really? Water on a fire? Wow, never expected the fire department to do THAT! Good thing there's a news crew there to tell us..."

News Anchor: "It appears that the airplane had difficulty achieving the necessary lift while in flight."

Peanut Gallery: "Yes. That would be the definition of 'crash' wouldn't it?"

At first I resented this onslaught of inane chatter-babble. This mad rush to grab anything not nailed down and hurl it towards the gaping throat of the camera lens to feed the insatiable media hunger. But after a while of watching this unfold I changed my mind. I came to realize that what the hapless live reporters are doing is actually therapeutic.

They are unwittingly performing the service that rodeo clowns perform when a rodeo cowboy has been gored and trampled by a bull. Their antics distract and distance us, the spectators, from the tragedy. They are providing the comic relief from the stress of a horrible event. Their buffoonery is actually a public service. The tv babble is salve that numbs the wound.

Then something different happened. As we were preparing to leave the restaurant I walked over close to the television, and suddenly the sound stopped. Simply a technical glitch at the tv station of course. They were on a helicopter shot and I'm sure the people in the studio were hearing the pilot babbling with the anchor, but unknown to them, it wasn't going out over the air. We were just seeing the picture. In silence. Three acres of burning cars in a dark salvage yard. Twisted metal frames being caressed by fingers of flame. And time to think... think about the three lives lost. Time to feel. It was unsettling.

For the first time in my life I think I understood how those gazelle feel in the nature videos. You know the ones, where you see the rest of the herd after a lion has felled one of the gazelles. Now the herd has moved off. They know they are in no longer in danger, yet you can see in their eyes that they are spooked. Sudden death brushing by, right up close and personal, has touched them in some deep way. This particular feeling I'm describing isn't related to all the higher-order brain things going on like sadness, regret and compassion. It's primal. It's the feeling of being spooked...

Then suddenly the sound came back on in mid-sentence and the numbing commentary washed over us again. The feeling that had crept through in just 15 seconds of silence was intense... and it lingered.

Have you heard about that old film school experiment? The one where the teacher shows a scary movie to the class but then turns the sound off. The students learn that without the sound, even the scariest movie just isn't scary anymore.

I learned yesterday that the exact opposite is true of live television news.

posted at 2:09 AM