Copyright :: Architectures of Control

Persuasion & control round-up

Published October 10th, 2007 in Architectures of Control, Bad profits, Blogosphere, Branding, Built Environment, Business model, Consumer rights, Copyright, Design, Design philosophy, Education, Embedding code, Entropy, Environmental, Hidden persuaders, Indoctrination, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Internet economics, Intrusive technology, Lock-in, Marketing, Norms, Philosophy of control, Political design, Propaganda, Retail, Shopping, Site Announcements, Sneaky, Social engineering, Techniques of persuasion, User Psychology, Vague rhetoric and advertising. 6 Comments

New Scientist: Recruiting Smell for the Hard Sell

Samsung’s coercive atmospherics strategy involves the smell of honeydew melon:

THE AIR in Samsung’s flagship electronics store on the upper west side of Manhattan smells like honeydew melon. It is barely perceptible but, together with the soft, constantly morphing light scheme, the scent gives the store a blissfully relaxed, tropical feel. The fragrance I’m sniffing is the company’s signature scent and is being pumped out from hidden devices in the ceiling. Consumers roam the showroom unaware that they are being seduced not just via their eyes and ears but also by their noses.

…

In one recent study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Research, Eric Spangenberg, a consumer psychologist and dean of the College of Business and Economics at Washington State University in Pullman, and his colleagues carried out an experiment in a local clothing store. They discovered that when “feminine scents”, like vanilla, were used, sales of women’s clothes doubled; as did men’s clothes when scents like rose maroc were diffused.

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A spokesman from IFF revealed that the company has developed technology to scent materials from fibres to plastic, suggesting that we can expect a more aromatic future, with everything from scented exercise clothing and towels to MP3 players with a customised scent. As more and more stores and hotels use ambient scents, however, remember that their goal is not just to make your experience more pleasant. They want to imprint a positive memory, influence your future feelings about particular brands and ultimately forge an emotional link to you - and more importantly, your wallet.

(via Martin Howard’s very interesting blog, and the genius Mind Hacks)

Consumerist: 5 Marketing Tricks That Unleash Shopping Frenzies

The Consumerist’s Ben Popken outlines “5 Marketing Tricks That Unleash Shopping Frenzies”:

* Artificially limit supply. They had a giant warehouse full of Beanie Babies, but released them in squirts to prolong the buying orgy.
* Issue press releases about limited supply so news van show up
* Aggressively market to children. Daddy may not play with his kids as much as he should but one morning he can get up at the crack of dawn, get a Teddy Ruxpin, and be a hero.
* Make a line of minute variations on the same theme to create the “collect them all” effect.
* Make it only have one highly specialized function so you can sell one that laughs, one that sings, one that skydives, etc, ad nauseum.

All of us are familiar with these strategies - whether consciously or not - but can similar ideas ever be employed in a way which benefits the consumer, or society in general, without actual deception or underhandedness? For example, can artificially limiting supply to increase demand ever be helpful? Certainly artificially limiting supply to decrease demand can be helpful to consumers might sometimes be helpful - if you knew you could get a healthy snack in 5 minutes, but an unhealthy one took an hour to arrive, you might be more inclined to go for the healthy one; if the number of parking spaces wide enough to take a large 4 x 4 in a city centre were artificially restricted, it might discourage someone from choosing to drive into the city in such a vehicle.

But is it helpful - or ‘right’ - to use these types of strategy to further an aim which, perhaps, deceives the consumer, for the ‘greater good’ (and indeed the consumer’s own benefit, ultimately)? Should energy-saving devices be marketed aggressively to children, so that they pressure their parents to get one?

(Image from Michael_L’s Flickr stream)

Kazys Varnelis: Architecture of Disappearance

Kazys Varnelis notes “the architecture of disappearance”:

I needed to show a new Netlab intern the maps from Banham’s Los Angeles, Architecture of Four Ecologies and realized that I had left the original behind. Luckily, Google Books had a copy here, strangely however, in their quest to remove copyrighted images, Google’s censors (human? algorithmic?) had gone awry and had started producing art such as this image.

It’s not clear here whether there’s a belief that the visual appearance of the building itself is copyrighted (which surely cannot be the case - photographers’ rights (UK at least) are fairly clear on this) or whether that by effectively making the image useless, it prevents someone using an image from Google Books elsewhere. The latter is probabky the case, but then why bother showing it at all?

(Thanks to Katrin for this)

Fanatic Attack
Finally, in self-regarding nonsense news, this blog’s been featured on Fanatic Attack, a very interesting, fairly new site highlighting “entrancement, entertainment, and an enhancement of curiosity”: people, organisations and projects that display a deep passion or obsession with a particular subject or theme. I’m grateful to be considered as such!

The right to click

Published July 4th, 2007 in Analog hole, Arbitrary, Architectures of Control, Bad design, Britain, Bureaucracy, Children, Circumvention, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Copyfight, Copyright, DRM, Design, Design attitudes, Design philosophy, Digital rights, Do artifacts have politics?, Education, Intellectual property, Interaction design, Intrusive technology, Killjoy technology, Philosophy of control, Political design, Public money, Restriction, Software, Technical protection measures, Technology policy, Technology underclass, User experience and Your property. 13 Comments

English Heritage, officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, and funded by the taxpayer and by visitors to some of its properties, does a great deal of very good work in widening public appreciation of, and engagement with, history and the country’s heritage.

But its ViewFinder image gallery website* sadly falls into the trap of trying to restrict public engagement rather than make it easy. Yes, someone specified the old ‘right click disabled‘ policy:

English Heritage Viewfinder: right-click disabled
Screenshots of this page, launched from this page.

Now, the image in question - here’s a direct link - which happens to be an engraving of the former Datchet bridge**, in 1840 according to this page (with a colour image) is, even taking English Heritage’s “1860-1922” suggested date range, surely out of copyright, so presumably there cannot be any ‘legal’ question over ‘letting’ people save a copy (which is easiest to do by right-clicking on the most common operating systems and browsers). Using Javascript to remove the browser toolbars and menus also hides the ability to print the image for most users, presumably also deliberately.

Yes, of course, many (most?) readers of this post will know how to get around the no-right-click architecture of control, but you’re reading a technology blog; think of whom the site is presumably aimed at. It is supposed to be a resource to encourage public engagement with history and heritage. Most users will be computer-literate enough to know how to search and probably familiar with right-clicking, but not to mess round with selectively disabling Javascript. Why should they have to? Incidentally, if you do disable Javascript entirely, you can’t even view an enlarged image at all:

English Heritage Viewfinder

What actual use to the public, other than for momentary on-screen interest, is a photo archive website where nothing can be ‘done’ with the images? What is a child doing a local history project supposed to do? Order a print at £18.80 for each photo and then scan it in? Does English Heritage really think that the ability for someone to save or print or e-mail a low-resolution 72 dpi image is going to devalue or compete with the organisation in some way?

It’s ridiculous: such a short-sighted, narrow-mindset policy removes a significant proportion of the usefulness of the site. I don’t know whether the site developer did this with or without English Heritage’s instruction or cognizance (and it was in 2002, so perhaps different thinking would apply today), but it seems that no-one bothered to think through what an actual user might want to get from interacting with the site.

In fact, regardless of the fact that this particular image (as with many others on the site) is in the public domain, even the images which are still under copyright (or “© English Heritage.NMR” as the site puts it, NMR being the National Monuments Record) should, of course, be freely downloadable, printable, and do-whatever-you-want-able. Their acquisition, preservation and cataloguing were paid for by the public, and they should all be available as widely, and easily, as possible. As it is, I would call the website a waste of public money, since it does not appear to offer what most intended users would expect and need.

Still, at least the site’s not one giant bundle of Flash. That would make it marginally more hassle to extract the images.

*Partially funded by the Big Lottery Fund, and thus not entirely directly taxpayer-funded, unless one regards the National Lottery as an extra tax on the hopeful and desperate, which some commentators would.
**Almost exactly the spot where I’ve been testing a prototype radio-controlled toy for a client this very afternoon, in fact, though the bridge is long gone.

“You do not enumerate the freedoms you want”

Published April 22nd, 2007 in 1984, Architectures of Control, Civil rights, Consumer rights, Control, Copyright, Design, Design philosophy, Discriminatory Architecture, Do artifacts have politics?, Embedding code, Erosion of liberty, Freedom to tinker, Law, Legislation, Liberty, Oppression, Orwellian, Philosophy of control, Political design, Regulation, Social engineering, Software and Technology policy. 9 Comments

Crosbie Fitch, in the Atom feed summary for this post looking at how ‘freedom’ can and should be defined, says:

You see copyright’s suspension of your freedom to perform particular activities, and so for each activity you demand a specific freedom. This is how the GPL arose.
This is an inverted perspective from which to define ‘free culture’ (and free software).
To define freedom you define its constraints – you do not enumerate the freedoms you want.
This is because freedom is what we start off with in the first place. We constrain it to make it better. It is when we under or over-constrain it that we make it worse.

It’s the “To define freedom you define its constraints – you do not enumerate the freedoms you want” which especially stands out to me. This seems such an important principle, yet one which so many politicians entirely ignore when they talk about their commitments to ‘human rights’.

Am I being overly simplistic to equate this to the contrast between a ‘planned’ society - where everything is banned unless specifically permitted in an enumerated list of freedoms - and an ‘evolving’ society - where everything is permitted unless specifically banned? (Also: how does the contrast between codified Roman law and ‘evolving’ common law compare to this?)

Whatever the political and legal comparisons might be, the principle is certainly pertinent to the rise of architectures of control in technology. Up until just a few years ago, most technology was effectively ‘open’, assuming you could get hold of it. All of us had freedom to do what we wanted with it - take it apart, modify it, repurpose it, improve it, break it, even if the originators had never expressly intended anything like this, and even if it were ‘illegal’. Now, though, we have (some) technology into which intentions can be codified. We have products with hyper-restrictive End-User Licence Agreements which we must accept before we use them, and which can report back if we don’t abide by them. We have products which are intended to provide one-function-and-nothing-but-that-function, and are designed to frustrate or punish users who try anything different. We have politicians seeking to specify exactly what technology can and can’t do. How do I know what freedoms I want until I’ve experimented? How can I even explain them until I’ve experienced them? Should the progress of tomorrow really be shackled by registering as law the prejudices and errors of today?

Of course, in the context of this blog, I’m merely striking the key-note once again, and that can make for a very dull tune. But that phrase, “you do not enumerate the freedoms you want,” will stay with me. It’s important.

No photography allowed

Published January 22nd, 2007 in Analog hole, Arbitrary, Architectures of Control, Business model, Cargo cult, Censorship, Copyfight, Copyright, Design, Design attitudes, Design philosophy, Designers, Digital rights, Do artifacts have politics?, Gravy train, Intellectual property, Nonsense, Philosophy of control, Political design, Propaganda, Restriction, Specious arguments, Techniques of persuasion and Vague rhetoric. 3 Comments

A couple of recent stories on photography of certain items being ‘banned’ - Cory Doctorow on a Magritte exhibition’s hypocrisy, and Jen Graves on a sculpture of which “photography is prohibited” - highlight what makes me tense up and want to scream about so much of the ‘intellectual property debate’: photons are no more regulable than bits. And bits, like knowledge itself, aren’t regulable either (Cory again). Just as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me, so he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine (Jefferson, via Scott Carpenter).

So this sign available from ACID (Anti-Copying In Design) made me laugh with astonishment, and cringe a little:

No photography allowed, from ACID
Image from an ACID leaflet, “You wouldn’t say that copying was the sincerest form of flattery if it cost you your business”. The sign doesn’t seem to be shown on ACID’s Deterrent Products online store.

I understand what ACID is trying to do, and unlike most anti-copying initiatives, ACID is set up specifically to protect the little guy rather than enormous intransigent oligarchies. ACID’s sample legal agreements and advice for freelancers on dealing with clients, registering designs, etc, are great initiatives and I’m sure they’ve been a fantastic help to a lot of young designer-makers.

But a sign ‘banning’ photography at exhibitions? At design exhibitions where new aesthetic ideas are the primary reason for most visitors attending? That seems hopelessly naïve, akin to a child defensively wrapping his or her arm around a piece of work to stop the kid at the next desk copying what’s being written, but then pleading with teacher to put it up on the wall.

And I would have thought, to be honest, that “with phone cameras your ideas… [being] sent globally within seconds” is more likely to lead to instant fame and international recognition for the designer on sites such as Cool Hunting, We Make Money Not Art, or Core77 than (presumably unauthorised) “mass production”. But maybe I’m wrong: I’m sure you’ll let me know!

Most young designers are desperate for exposure. I know every design exhibition I’ve shown stuff at (not many, to be fair), I’ve been delighted when someone photographs my work. ACID’s sign also raises the question, of course, whether when someone displaying the sign actually sells a piece of work, it comes with a label attached telling the purchaser than he or she may not photograph it, or show it to friends. Wouldn’t that be a logical extension?

P.S. We’ve looked before at actual technologies to ‘prevent’ photography, such as Georgia Tech’s CCD-blinder and Hewlett-Packard’s “remote image degradation” device (in the wider context of “plugging the analogue hole”). As I replied to a commenter on the Georgia Tech story:

It won’t be too long (20 years?) before photographic (eidetic) memory and computers start to overlap (or even interface), to some extent, even if it’s only a refinement of something like the Sensecam. What’s going to happen then? If I can ‘print out’ anything I’ve ever seen, on a whim, why will I worry about what anyone else thinks?

Digital control round-up

Published December 30th, 2006 in Analog hole, Architectures of Control, Bad design, Broadcast flag, Business model, Circumvention, Consumer rights, Control, Copyfight, Copyright, Creeping erosion of norms, DRM, Design, Digital rights, Embedding code, Erosion of liberty, Feature deletion, Freedom to tinker, Future, Gravy train, Internet economics, Intrusive technology, Lobbying, MP3, MPAA, Monopoly, Movie industry, Music, Music industry, Norms, Orwellian, Propaganda, RIAA, Rent-seeking, Sneaky, Software, Stifling innovation, Technical protection measures, Technology underclass, Treacherous computing, Trusted Computing, Usability, User Psychology, User experience, Vague rhetoric, Video, Worldwide and Your property. 1 Comment

Some developments in - and commentary on - digital architectures of control to end 2006:

Peter Gutmann’s ‘A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection’ (via Bruce Schneier) looks very lucidly at the effects that Vista’s DRM and measures to ‘protect’ content will have - on users themselves, and knock-on effects elsewhere. The more one reads, the more astonishing this whole affair is:

Possibly for the first time ever, computer design is being dictated not by electronic design rules, physical layout requirements, and thermal issues, but by the wishes of the content industry.

Vista appears to be just about the worst consumer product of all time. However, unlike other discretionary purchases, consumers will have less of a choice: Vista will come with any PC you buy from a major store, and all the hardware manufacturers will have to pass on the extra costs and complexity required to customers, whether or not they intend to use that hardware with Vista. When critical military and healthcare systems start to be run on Vista, we’ll all end up paying.

As Peter puts it:

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history

In a similar vein, the ‘format wars’ over high-definition video appear to have descended into a farce:

Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because of them.

And, of course, HD-DVD encryption has already been “(partially) cracked” as Uninnovate puts it, with that decryption effort being triggered directly as a result of consumer frustration with incompatibility:

I just bought a HD-DVD drive to plug on my PC, and a HD movie, cool! But when I realized the 2 software players on Windows don’t allowed me to play the movie at all, because my video card is not HDCP compliant and because I have a HD monitor plugged with DVI interface, I started to get mad… This is not what we can call “fair use”! So I decide to decrypt that movie.

“Consumers buy only 23 songs per iPod” - clearly, the vast majority of music on iPods and other portable music players has been acquired through CD-ripping or file-sharing, something which we all know, but which has been an elephant in the room for a long time when the industry is discussed (and remember that the Gowers’ Review has only just recommended that ripping CDs be legalised in the UK).

Of course, Bill Gates also recommends ripping CDs (see also some great commentary from LilBambi on this).

Andrew Kantor in USA Today has some pragmatic analysis of the situation:

People want their music without restrictions, and too many legal downloads, like those from iTunes, come with restrictions. You can’t copy them to another player, or you’re limited to how often you can do it, or you have to jump through the hoops of burning your iTunes tracks to CD and re-ripping them to a more useful format… as cellphones with built-in MP3 players gain popularity, users will find themselves up against an entirely new set of usage restrictions. Some subscription services will delete the music from your player when you cancel your subscription.

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Buy a CD or use a program like eMule… and you have no restrictions. And that’s what people want.

They don’t want to have to match their music store with their music player any more than they want to have to match their brands of gasoline with their brands of car. They want, in short, to be able to use today’s music the same ways they used yesterday’s: Any way they want.

In fact, the industry’s been down this road before and hit a similar wall. In the first decades of the 20th century, the wax cylinders (and, later, 78rpm disks) on which music was recorded worked only with specific players. Industry attempts to monopolize the technology led only to poor sales.

Finally, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer tells us that in 2007 the consumer will be “back in control”. It doesn’t mean much out of context, nor in the context he used it in fact, but it looks like Doublespeak is alive and well.

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What are Architectures of Control?

Audi A2 : The user cannot open the bonnet; Bench designed to prevent lying down: 'redesigned to face contemporary urban realities'; Some HP printers shut down the cartridges at a pre-determined date regardless of whether they are empty

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

This site aims—with readers’ input—to examine and analyse the ideas and techniques of these architectures of control in design, through examples and anecdotes, and by keeping up-to-date with relevant developments... More