Every video game system since the Atari 2600
computed a cryptographic hash on the contents of the media
(or of an initial portion of the CD or ROM).

Originally, all games were made in house by Atari.
As demand grew, other games companies got in on
the action. Then small developers. And hobbyists
who fancied themselves as game programmers.
Then novices who fancied themselves game programmers.
The 2600 became a platform, just as the net
(Gnutella, FastTrack, HTTP, FTP) is a platform,
rather than a product of specific commercial
interests. Tragedy of the commons kicked it.
It went something like this:

Boom in demand; Segmentation and healthy competition
as Intellivision, Coleco,
and others got in on the action; Rapid inovation;
Lack of quality control as 3rd party developers
play gimmicky angles with cruddy games and
yet-another clones; lack of consumer confidence;
no commercial model for rewarding innovation;
excessive segmentation; no financial reward
or incentive for innovation.

I'm not suggesting that hobbyists can't build
excellent games - some of the best 2600 games
are now hobbyist creations, long after the
fact. Only that new, small companies have no
interest in preserving the commons, and a platform
is a form of commons.

O'Reilly and other publishers offer product.
It is their name brand. Collecting a fee for
for the name brand gives customers a level of
quality assurance. This differentiates ORA's
work from my own documentation efforts, which
can also be found floating around on the
Internet. Work like mine dilutes the value of
content on the Internet, and though inferior
to ORAs, people are as likely to bite on it
rather than hold out. Tragedy of the commons.

Work right now revolves around how to make the
idea of a platform and the idea of a product
compatiable.

I assert that these two distinct entities aren't
compatiable. Not in this way.

If a product is put on a platform, then you have
the tragedy of the commons - money spent doesn't
go towards development of the product, it goes
towards the platform. People pay for Internet
access but not content. They pay for computer
hardware but only games to a lesser degree,
if they pay for them at all.

Building a platform doesn't pay. No single company
made a fortune building the Internet. IBM
didn't take the lions share of the design of the
PC. Atari created the 2600 and found cheap
knock-offs collecting most of the sales of
ROMs for the thing. It makes little sense for
a publisher of music or books to want to support
P2P, thought it is obviously something that
must be delt with.

Cable television isn't a platform. The cable
company controls content to protect its interests -
both politically and quality. They control the
means of access, the fees. You can get
satellite TV, but it is a competiting, though
similar, product. Game consoles as well. You
can't buy XBox games from someone besides
Microsoft, and you can't buy Playstation-2
games from anyone but Sony, but you can pick
which product you want. You'll never see
copyright-challenged content aired on cable, nor will you
see improperly-licensed software for sale in Best Buy.

It is easy to see why some commecial interests
want to turn the Internet into somethine besides
a platform - some proposed RIAA legistation
would let industry pull the plug on your website
without an investigation or excuse.

Safari is a bit of a platform, but it is closed,
so I'm going to call it a product. Even if
multiple publishers are involved. It is exclusive.

Not for the first time, I think ORA is almost dead on.
The Founders Copyright, inexpensive pocket references,
and other ORA innovations make the illicit P2P
nitch smaller (and I'd love to see P2P go legit).
ORA can do nothing about the economy. Programmers
shoudn't be paupers and technical publishers
should be thriving in a modern, scientificly
minded society. Most of all, they aren't trying
to compete in an area where things are traditionally
free - the commons.

Because the Internet is "free" and cheap clones of
things exist and people tend to bite the cheap clone,
the Internet is a currently a lame platform for brand
name product delivery. Just as your cable bill includes
the cost of programming and the access, perhaps ISPs
should make bulk media purchase deals with providers.
It used to be, when you got a dial up account, you got
access to an NNTP server, a Unix shell account that
was set up to do CGI scripting, and everything associated
with a Unix shell. When you move into an apartment,
often it comes with cable, because the apartment management
has made a deal with the cable company (or vice versa)
where by the entire complex gets cable for far less than
if each person would to buy it individually. The cable
company makes more money than they would otherwise, and
the apartment complex has a value added service.
Perhaps access to Safari and similiar collections of
media could be marketed to major and minor ISPs.

Random thoughts, endless rants,
-scott scott@illogics.org