Unhelpful Paywalls

It happens quite often—sometimes many times a day—that someone gives me a link to information somewhere that they think I should read. Many of those those links don't actually take me where the person referring me meant for me to go. There's an intermediate stop at a paywall, a chance to subscribe to someone's information source.

Another time I'll talk about what's wrong with news pricing, but for today I hope we can agree that some news subscriptions are too expensive for mere mortals, and even free subscriptions aren't really free—they take time to sign up for, and they promise cascades of unwanted email. So when people reach one of these paywalls, there are various reasons why they often either can't or don't go beyond it. If not out-and-out barriers, paywalls are major impediments to obtaining timely information.

They are also more likely to be actual barriers to someone who is poor than someone who is rich, so they create a stratification of information availability by class in our society, dividing us along familiar lines into “haves” and “have nots,” informationally speaking.

Sometimes the downstream effects of that information imbalance just seem very unjust.

Insisting on a “Paywall Exception”

While I'd like to propose a wholesale rethinking of how we fund our news industry, for now I'll propose something simpler—a “Paywall Exception” for some topics: that are just so important that it isn't in the public interest for them to enjoy intellectual property protection. I just don't want to see paywalls keeping the public from knowing about and sharing important categories of information:

• For impending storms, lives are on the line. Advance notice could make the difference between life and death. If there is information about where those storms are going or how to prepare, that information should be freely available to all. Anyone who wants to profit on such information is guilty of sufficiently immoral behavior that we need a strong legal way to say “don't do that.”

• For pandemics, a lack of information is a danger not just to each citizen's own personal health, but to the health of those impacted by people making poor decisions that might lead to transmission. It is a moral imperative that everyone in society have access to best possible information.

• For existential threats to democracy or humanity, we cannot afford to close our eyes. The stakes are far too high. Democracy is under active assault world-wide, but especially in the United States right now. Climate is similarly urgent, and aggravated by how societally mired we are in deep denial, unwilling to even admit how very serious and rapidly evolving the problem is. Disinformation campaigns are a big part of both situations. Those peddling misleading information are most assuredely going to make their propaganda as freely available as possible. Truth can barely keep up. We don't need further impediments like paywalls on top of that, or else, soon enough, there won't be any of us left to matter.

I get that news outfits need to make money, but when I see critical information about an upcoming storm, or a possible pandemic, or assaults on democracy or climate change, I get more than average frustrated by seeing that such information is stuck behind a paywall.

There must be no secret storms, no secret pandemics, and no secret existential threats to democracy or humanity.

They should make their money another way.

 

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Author's Notes:

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It's beyond the scope of this essay, and would have complicated things too much to mention it in the main body, but there is also the issue of how to implement this exception. It could be voluntary, but I doubt that would work. Or people using the information could assert fair use, but that's risky given the economic stakes in copyright violations. Three strategies occur to me that perhaps I'll elaborate on elsewhere. (1) We could expressly weaken copyright law in some areas related to news, so that it exempted certain topics, or shortened their duration to a very small amount measured in hours or days, depending on the urgency of the situation; (2) we could clarify or extend the present four criteria for fair use; or (3) we could (probably to the horror of some of my lawyer friends) extend intellectual property law to have the analog of what real estate law calls an easement, a right of non-property holders against property holders to make certain uses. I kind of like this latter mechanism, which leaves copyright per se alone and yet could be better structured and more reliable to use than fair use. (One might even sue for such an easement where it didn't occur naturally.) But that's topic for another day.

The graphic was generated at Abacus.ai using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and variously either Dall-E or Flux.1. There are many reasons I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with so-called “AI”—or Large Language Models (“LLMs”)—but for now I am using graphics generation to experiment with the technology since, like it or not, we don't seem to be able to hold the tech at bay. The prompts used were, respectively:

1. (Flux.1) «Design a 500x500 image of a fancy signpost, with text on a brown background and white gold trim, that bears the words "Entry Restricted" with a horizontal line below that text and above additional text that says "Critical Info Beyond Only For The Rich".»

2. (Dall-E) «Design a color image of photocopier under glass with a sign attached that says "In case of societal threat, break glass." A small hammer is affixed, attached by a chain, to help in the case that the glass needs to be broken.» (But then the hammer was not correctly placed in the picture. It was detached from in the chain and in a strange place, so I had to fix that in Gimp.)

3. (Flux.1) «Draw a 1000x500 image of an elegant sign, with a brown background and white gold borders and lettering, in copperplate font, that has three messages, each on a separate line which are "No Secret Storms", "No Secret Pandemics", and "No Secret Existential Threats", but make these messages share a single use of the word "NO" in the left hand column, tall enough that the rest of the phrases can appear stacked and to the right of the larger word "NO".»

Should Fix Climate

On Mastodon, Bookchin Bot, a bot that posts book quotes, circulated this quote:

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 “The term ought is the stuff out of which ethics is usually made—with the difference that in my view the ‘ought’ is not a formal or arbitrary regulative credo but the product of reasoning, of an unfolding rational process elicited or derived eductively from the potentialities of humanity to develop, however falteringly, mature, self-conscious, free, and ecological communities.”
  —From Urbanization to Cities

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I found this philisophical discussion of “ought” interesting. I learned philosophy from various people, some of whom seemed to grok its importance, and others who lamented its impotence, openly fretting it might have practical value only at cocktail parties.

As a computer professional who's pondered ethics a lot, I've come to see philosophy as what makes the difference between right and wrong answers or actions in tasks involving complex judgment. It can be subtle and elusive, but is nonetheless necessary.

I was Project Editor for the Common Lisp programming language, in effect holding the quill pen for reducing a number of technical decisions about the meaning and effect of the language that were voted by a committee in modular proposals but needed to be expressed in a coherent way. Nerd politics. They decided truth, and I had a free hand in presenting that truth in a palatable way, time and budget permitting. Programming languages are complicated, and implemented by multiple vendors. Some effects must happen, or must not. Others were more optional, and yet not unimportant, so we struggled as a group with the meaning we would assign to “should”.

Computer programs, you see, run slower, or cost more to run, if they are constantly cross-checking data. In real world terms, we might say it's more expensive to have programs that have a police force, or auditors, or other activities that look for things out of place that might cause problems. But without these cross-checks, bad data can slip in and get used without notice, leading to degraded effects, injustices, or catastrophes.

Briefly, a compiler is itself a program that reads a description of something you'd like to do and “compiles” it, making a runnable program, an app, let's say, that does what the description says.

A colleague criticized my use of “should” in early drafts of the language specification, the rules for how a compiler does its job. What is not an imperative has no meaning in such a document, I was told. It's like having a traffic law that says “you should stop for a red light”. You might as well say “but it's OK not to”, so don't say it all. And yet, I thought, people intend something by “should”. What do they intend that is stronger?

As designers of this language, we decided we'd let you say as you compile something that you do or don't want a safe program. In a “safe” world, things run a bit slower or more expensively, but avoid some bad things. Not all bad things. That's not possible. But enough that it's worth discussing whether the expense is a good one. Our kind of “safe” didn't mean safety from everything, but from some specific known problems that we could check for and avoid.

And then we decided “should” was a term that spans two possible worlds. In a “safe” world, it means “must”. That is, if you're wanting to avoid a list of stupid and easily avoidable things, all uses of “should” need to be interpreted as “must” when creating safe applications, whereas in an unsafe world the “should” things can be ignored as optional.

And so it comes down to what kind of world you want to live in.

Climate change, for example, presents us with problems where certain known, stupid, avoidable acts will put humanity at risk. We should not do these things if we want better certainty of survival, of having a habitable planet in which our kids can live happily or perhaps at all. Extinction is threatened if we don't do these things.

But they are expensive, these actions. They take effort and resource to implement. We can do more things more cheaply without them, by being unsafe, until we are blind-sided by the effects of errors we are letting creep in, letting degrade our world, letting set us up for catastrophe.

So we face a choice of whether to live knowingly at risk of catastrophe, or do the costly investment that would allow us to live safely.

We “should” act in ways that will fix Climate.

But we only “must” if we want to sleep at night knowing we have done the things that make us and our children safe.

If we're OK with mounting pain and likely catastrophe one day , perhaps even soon, then we can ignore the “should”. The cost is that we have elected an “unsafe” world that could quickly end because we'd rather spend less money as we risk such collapse than avoid foreseeable, fixable problems that might soon kill us all.

That's how I hear “should”. I hope you find it useful. You really should.

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This post is a mirror of a post I wrote yesterday (March 11, 2024) on Mastodon.

No Halfway Measures on Climate

I have been frustrated over the failure of some Democrats to understand the urgency of the 12-year window. Some Democrats get it, others do not. But whether they get it or not, this is the issue that mankind faces, an issue that will determine all future history in dramatic ways.

This is not a time for compromise. The physics will not allow it. Better to fail trying than to give up the entire game by thinking it unwinnable, as Nancy Pelosi seems bent on doing. Shame on her. That is not leadership. Lately I look to Elizabeth Warren for leadership among the Democrats. She understands that sometimes you can't pick the timing or worry about appearances but must do what needs doing.

And addressing Climate needs doing. Climate Change is a cancer. It must be treated early and properly. If we wait too long, no treatment will be possible. There is nothing radical about an aggressive response to an existential threat to humanity. There is nothing moderate about a take-your-time or middle ground approach to the Climate Crisis.

Jay Inslee is right that we need a climate-change-only debate. There are some good policy proposals out there for discussion, including these:

• H.R. 9. Climate Action Now Act
  This bill requires the President to develop and update annually a plan for the United States to meet its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
• H.R. 763. Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019
  This bill imposes a fee on the carbon content of fuels, including crude oil, natural gas, coal, or any other product derived from those fuels that will be used so as to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
• H.R. 3761. Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act (OFF)
  This bill transitions away from fossil fuel sources of energy to clean energy sources (e.g., energy efficiency, energy conservation, and renewable energy).
• S.Res. 59. A resolution recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
  This resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal.
• Beto For America. Taking On Our Greatest Threat: Climate Change
  A four-part framework to mobilize a historic $5 trillion over ten years, require net-zero emissions by 2050, and address the greatest threat we face.
• Inslee for America. America's Climate Mission
  Building a Just, Innovative and Inclusive Clean Energy Economy.
  Subsequent to publishing this article, Inslee announced a lot more specifics. To read his position paper on the “Evergreen Economy,” which he refers to as a refinement in detail to the abstract concept of a “Green New Deal,” click here.
• Warren for President
  Subsequent to publishing this article, Elizabeth Warren published Our Military Can Help Lead the Fight Against Climate Change and My Green Manufacturing Plan for America.
• Bernie Sanders Subsequent to publishing this article, Bernie Sanders came out with his Green New Deal which has been lauded as very ambitious. He also made a great presentation at the MSNBC/Georgetown climate event, September 19.

I have my own preferences and concerns, but we can't let the perfect be enemy of the good. We need to discuss all of them, respectfully. We need to collaborate among them, understand that each has good points that might be combined or borrowed from. We need to move ahead on as many of these as we can or we will not make the 2030 deadline set for us by physics.

I said it already, but it bears repeating: The physics part is not something we can compromise on. It's what we're given. Physics doesn't grade on the curve. It doesn't care about the complexities of politics. It doesn't award trophies for trying or meaning well. We will either take necessary action in the time allotted, or condemn our descendants to live forever with the unhappy consequences, assuming the happy case that human extinction is not one of those consequences. I recommend David Wallace-Wells' book The Uninhabitable Earth if you need a visualization of what such a future world might look like.

I'll close here with one more appeal to metaphor, from a recent tweet of mine:

Climate is a train out of control, accelerating. Delay lets it accelerate more. Biden wants to schedule serious braking for another day. Physics says no, that if we delay, the brakes won't later be strong enough to use at all.

Denial = Delay
Centrism = Delay
Delay = Catastrophe https://t.co/8vngZKNFqM

— Kent Pitman (@KentPitman) May 10, 2019

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Article and comic image ("Gray Matters: Halfway Measures") copyright © 2019 by Kent M. Pitman. All Rights Reserved.

Included public domain Elephant image obtained from Wikimedia.

Included Donkey images, before modification for this use, was created by Steven Braeger, placed in public domain, and obtained by me from Wikimedia.

By the way, it was the utter maddening nature of this news story that drove me to write this piece: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy.

Passing of the Salmon

“I have some bad news,” the bartender tells me, just recently, in fact. I prepare myself for the worst. She’s getting to know me quite well and probably actually knows the things that matter to me, I realize.

I don’t drink, mind you, but I’m there several times a week. I drink diet coke and ask them to take their ahi tuna salad and substitute salmon. I’m pretty regular about that. It’s not typical bar food, I suppose, but it suits me.

I like salmon. I eat it a lot. I have a couple ounces for breakfast. And it’s a common thing for me to eat when I eat out.

“I have some bad news,” she says again, making sure she has my attention, and that I’m prepared. “They’re changing the menu. There’s not going to be any more salmon.”

I am stunned. I stare at her in anguish. It’s what she expected, and she seems sad. She knew this wouldn’t sit well. But I elaborate.

“The salmon were going away anyway,” I explain. “I always expected that. They’ll be extinct. And often when I eat salmon, I think, I’m really going to miss this. I just didn’t expect it so soon, and for this reason.”

There are still salmon in the world. That’s good at least. But she’s right that I’ll be sad when I come to the restaurant. Still, maybe it’s a wake-up call. Practice. The salmon aren’t quite gone, like the rest of the ecology. Climate change mostly, though we’re fishing out the oceans anyway, and not taking very good care of anything else.

I expect mankind itself to go extinct inside of 20 years. It’s not going to be pretty. Maybe if we started saying it out loud now, it would hit us in time to do something.

I’m going to miss the salmon, when it happens for real.

And soon after that, humanity itself.

Though whatever’s left probably won’t miss us.

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Author's Note: I attended a Cary Tennis writing workshop this last weekend. This is one of the stories I wrote. The writing prompt was:
Visualize something you really love. Use the phrase “I'm going to miss you.”

Postscript: In August 2022, this article appeared: What’s Behind Chinook and Chum Salmon Declines in Alaska?. In March 2023, another appeared: California cancels salmon fishing season as population dwindles due to drought: “It's devastating”. I feel like my 20-year timeline is on track, and not just because of these stories. It's very upsetting.

A Change of Climate

I sit on a wooden bench, held by wrought iron curves in a hallway of sandstones. An antique building, lovingly refurbished in layers of creeping modernity, the mortar that probably once held these stones long since bolstered, replaced, or just newly imitated by concrete. And yet in the old style. A curvature of bricks overhead, forming an arch down the hallway. The terrace at my feet is well-worn criss-crossed stone.

It is cool in here, outside the reach of the piercing midday sun, but I can see the sky at the end of this tunnel of a hall—and through a rectangular stone opening. The blue of that distant sky beckons, beyond tall trees that seem designed to emphasize the sky’s elusive height. Wisps of cumulus clouds dart about, seeming to float higher than they belong, and yet with the occasional light cirrus streak well above that. The sky is big here, and even the tallest trees struggle to reach it. Crooked pine-like trees, unlike the pines at home, with only a few broad branches high up, not the triangles of New England pines, but more like large green dandelions or fuzzy umbrellas. Ivy works its way up part of their shafts, adding to the exotic look, but giving up the climb long before the top.

The valley stretches for miles, with row upon row of contented buildings, with their red tile roofs and distinctive walls of muted orange and sun-drunk beige. Nothing is in particularly neat lines, yet there is still a relaxed order to it all, a comfortableness perhaps borne of tradition, a peace with the pace of existence, a well-worn efficiency that I imagine to come of understanding what is necessary or beautiful to life, and what can be rightly ignored. Even where there is wear on things here, it seems less product of neglect and more just a well-earned badge of honor.

There is a timeless quality to it all, like a place that has existed in essentially this form since long before me, and that will go on this way long after. The residents are adapted to life here. They know its rhythms. They are in harmony with how things are.

I’ll miss all of that.

Not when I leave, I mean, because I could return.

But because the harmony is a property not only of the people with the earth, but the earth with the people.

And Climate Change will take all of that away, never to return.

I’m glad I saw this place before it became a desert, unable to grow olives and grapes. I’m glad I saw this place when its people were prosperous and proud.

Science is an odd thing, and hard for some to trust. But science sees things that others do not. Things in the distance, and yet not always that far distant, because we can be so very nearsighted when we wish to be.

The earth has a cancer, and cancer starts innocently, unpresumingly. If you wait until it’s obvious, it’s too late. There are those among us who would wait to fix the Climate until it’s obvious. And that will be too late.

So I’m glad I saw this place before the effect of that indifference takes hold. It was a great achievement, that easy civilization.

I will miss it. I think we all will.

Assuming any of us are even left to do so.

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Originally published June 11, 2014 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): extinction, cancer, death, life, desert, drought, climate change, climate, memory, beauty, beautiful view, scene, view, le santucce, tuscany, italy

The photo, titled "Tuscany Italy Countryside" by Linnaea Mallette was obtained from publicdomainpictures.net, which asserts that it is in the public domain.

Background & Context: I wrote this last week while at a writing retreat hosted by Cary Tennis at Le Santucce in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy last week. It was a beautiful place to sit and think, but devastating Climate effects will not discriminate as to venue. They'll happen everywhere and to all of us.