Technologyquarterly September 5Th 2009
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Overlaying data The rise of the 3-D images: not on the real world DNA hackers just for cinemas TechnologyQuarterly September 5th 2009 Main title, choose size weight and colour FollowA factory on subtitle, on your as above desk Printing documents is old hat—now you can produce objects in 3-D, like this TQCOVERSEPT5.indd 1 24/8/09 17:09:17 The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 Monitor 1 Contents On the cover Never mind printing documentsnow you can print objects, too, such as this toy car, the plastic pieces of which were produced by a 3•D printer from Z Corporation. 3•D printers are expensive today, but are falling in price and could be widespread within a few years: page 15 Keeping pirates at bay Monitor 1 Cracking down on piracy, oating wind•turbines, smart bridges, cyber tyres, plastic to mop up radiation, batteries that breathe, sorting cancers, digital mapmakers, washing Policing the internet: The music industry has concluded that lawsuits alone without water, hard softwoods, long•term data storage, and are not the way to discourage online piracy spotting humans online HREE big court cases this yearone in buy the Pirate Bay’s internet address for TEurope and two in Americahave SKr60m and open a legal music site. Rational consumer pitted music•industry lawyers against The Pirate Bay is the latest in a long list 9 The road ahead people accused of online piracy. The of le•sharing services, from Napster to What your next satnav will do industry prevailed in each case. But the Grokster to KaZaA, to have come under three trials may mark the end of its e orts assault from the media giants. If it closes, Mobile augmented reality to use the courts to stop piracy, for they some other site will emerge to take its 10 Reality, improved highlighted the limits of this approach. place; the music industry’s victories, in Overlaying data on the real world The European case concerned the short, are never nal. Cases like this also Pirate Bay, one of the world’s largest and provoke a backlash against the music Unmanned military aircraft most notorious le•sharing hubs. The industry, though in Sweden it took an 12 Attack of the drones website does not actually store music, unusual form. In the European elections in The redenition of air power video and other les, but acts as a central June, the Pirate Party won 7.1% of the directory that helps users locate particular Swedish vote, making it the fth•largest Case history les on BitTorrent, a popular le•sharing party in the country and earning it a seat network. Swedish police began investigat• in the European Parliament. All non• 15 A factory on your desk ing the Pirate Bay in 2003, and charges commercial copying and use should be The rise of 3•D printers were led against four men involved in completely free, says its manifesto. running it in 2008. When the trial began in Biohacking February 2009, they claimed the site was So much for that plan 18 Hacking goes squishy merely a search engine, like Google, which The Recording Industry Association of Tinkering with DNA, not software also returns links to illegal material in America (RIAA) has pursued another legal some cases. One defendant, Peter Sunde, avenue against online piracy, which is to 3•D imaging said a guilty verdict would be a huge pursue individual users of le•sharing 20 It’s almost there mistake for the future of the internetðit’s hubs. Over the years it has accused 18,000 How 3•D displays are improving quite obvious which side is the good side. American internet users of engaging in The court agreed that it was obvious illegal le•sharing and demanding settle• Brain scan and found the four men guilty, ning them ments of $4,000 on average. Facing the 22 Paranoid survivor a combined SKr30m ($3.6m) and sentenc• scary prospect of a federal copyright• A prole of Andrew Grove, the ing them each to a year in jail. Despite infringement lawsuit, nearly everyone former boss of Intel tough talk from the defendants, they settled; but two cases have proceeded to appear to have tired of legal entangle• trial. The rst involved Jammie Thomas• ments: in June another rm said it would Rasset, a single mother from Minnesota 1 2 Monitor The Economist Technology Quarterly September 5th 2009 2 who was accused of sharing 24 songs cheaper than going to court and does not But many existing sources of legal using KaZaA in 2005. After a trial in 2007, a involve absurd awards of damages and music have not o ered what le•sharers jury ruled against her and awarded the their attendant bad publicity. A British want. In my view, growing internet pira• record companies almost $10,000 per study found that most le•sharers will cy is a vote of no condence in existing song in statutory damages. stop after receiving a warningbut only if business models, said Viviane Reding, Critics of the RIAA’s campaign pointed it is backed up by the threat of sanctions. the European commissioner for the infor• out that if Ms Thomas•Rasset had stolen a It sounds promising, from the indus• mation society, in July. handful of CDs from Wal•Mart, she would try’s perspective, but graduated response The industry is desperately searching not have faced such severe penalties. The has drawbacks of its own. In New Zealand for better business models, and is o ering judge threw out the verdict, saying that he the government scrapped the idea before its catalogue at low rates to upstarts that had erred by agreeing to a particular jury implementation, and in Britain the idea of could never have acquired such rights a instruction (guidance to the jury on how cutting o access has been ruled out. In decade ago. Services such as Pandora, they should decide a case) that had been France the rst draft of the law was sav• Spotify and we7 that stream free music, backed by the RIAA. He then went further, aged by the Constitutional Council over supported by advertising, are becoming calling the damages wholly dispropor• concerns that internet users would be popular. Most innovative are the plans to tionate and asking Congress to change presumed guilty rather than innocent. o er unlimited downloads for a at fee. the law, on the basis that Ms Thomas• Internet service•providers are opposed to British internet providers are keen to o er Rasset was an individual who had not being forced to act as copyright police. such a service, the cost of which would be sought to prot from piracy. Even the European Parliament has rolled into the monthly bill. Similarly, But at a second trial, which concluded weighed in, criticising any sanctions Nokia’s Comes With Music scheme in June 2009, Ms Thomas•Rasset was imposed without judicial oversight. But includes a year’s downloads in the price found guilty again. To gasps from the the industry is optimistic that the scheme of a mobile phone. The music industry defendant and from other observers, the will be implemented in some form. It does will not abandon legal measures against jury awarded even higher damages of not need to make piracy impossiblejust piracy altogether. But solving the problem $80,000 per song, or $1.92m in total. One less convenient than the legal alternatives. will require carrots as well as sticks. 7 record label’s lawyer admitted that even he was shocked. In July, in a separate case brought against Joel Tenenbaum, a stu• dent at Boston University, a jury ordered him to pay damages of $675,000 for shar• Tilting in the breeze ing 30 songs. According to Steven Marks, general counsel for the RIAA, the main point of pursuing these sorts of cases is to make Energy: A novel design for a oating wind•turbine, which could reduce the other internet users aware that le•sharing of copyrighted material is illegal. Mr cost of o shore wind•power, has been connected to the electricity grid Marks admits that the legal campaign has AR out to sea, the wind blows faster ered with cables to the seabed. And that is not done much to reduce le•sharing, but Fthan it does near the coast. A turbine what StatoilHydro, a Norwegian energy how much worse might things be, he placed there would thus generate more company, and Siemens, a German engi• wonders, if the industry had done noth• power than its inshore or onshore cousins. neering rm, have done. The rst of their ing? This year’s cases, and other examples But attempts to build power plants in such oating o shore turbines has just started a (such as the RIAA’s attempt in 2005 to sue places have foundered because the water two•year test period generating about 1 a grandmother, who had just died, for is generally too deep to attach a traditional megawatt of electricityenough to supply le•sharing), certainly generate head• turbine’s tower to the seabed. 1,600 households. linesbut those headlines can also make One way round this would be to put The Hywind is the rst large turbine to the industry look bad, even to people who the turbine on a oating platform, teth• be deployed in water more than 30 metres 1 agree that piracy is wrong. That helps explain why, in late 2008, the RIAA abandoned the idea of suing individuals for le•sharing. Instead it is now backing another approach that seems to be gaining traction around the world, called graduated response.