Every so often, I have to sit down at a computer running Windows XP Professional Edition and do some work. This seems to be something that the software designers never anticipated, for there’s plenty to do before any work can commence.
Usually, the first interruption is an announcement that it could not “reconnect to all network drives,” and I have to click to close it. Just why I need to know that before I can do anything else is beyond me. If I try to access one of those network drives and that computer is not on, I’ll be told so then, so why do I need to know this now?
Then comes an “Instant Message” offering something really important, like a picture of Brad and Angelina’s baby, and try as I might to disable this feature, it never goes away for more than a fortnight before re-appearing.
As soon as I close that window, there’s a notification that the anti-virus subscription that came with the computer has expired, and do I want to renew it? I put it off another day, meanwhile wondering whether I should get anti-spyware, anti-worm and anti-trojan software. That can cause me to forget why I turned on the computer in the first place.
And if that doesn’t make me forget, often there’s a message from Microsoft about new security updates that I need to install immediately.
Eventually I remember what I planned to do, and load a graphics program. The moment it loads, a browser pops up telling me that the company has produced an “embroidery effects” plug-in and do I want to download it now? I don’t want or need embroidery effects, but I have yet to find a way to halt this nagging, so I’ll end up with embroidery effects.
All this makes me glad that I use a Linux box most of the time, since it just lets me go to work. Turn it on, log in, and there aren’t any notices.
But the vast majority of people use nothing but Windows, and its aggravations make me wonder whether the term “personal computer” is obsolete, since our computers seem to be less “personal” these days and more the agents of distant strangers.
Indeed, the concept of “private property” seems obsolete, at least as far as individuals go in the computer world, although corporate rights are certainly protected.
A few weeks ago, a local organization opposed to Christo’s “Over the River” project produced a DVD and sent me a copy. The DVD player in the living room works pretty well, but it had trouble with this one; it stalled a couple of minutes in.
I reasoned that a computer’s DVD drive might be able to play it, even if the living-room one balked. That’s the way it worked for audio CDs in the past.
How foolish was I. Thanks to the valiant efforts of Hollywood lobbyists and associated campaign contributors, our computers don’t just play DVDs the way they can just play CDs. You have to buy extra software to make it happen with Windows. And it appears to be a violation of federal law to play a DVD on a Linux machine.
Think about this for a moment: I own the DVD, which was given to me by its producer. I own the computer with a DVD drive. And yet, on account of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I can’t watch the DVD that I own on a computer that I own? Isn’t this my property, to use as I wish?
Suppose you bought a book, and its copyright page had a provision that you could read it only by candlelight. If you were caught reading it under a fluorescent or incandescent lamp, or even by natural sunlight, you’d be in violation of federal law.
Or if you bought an audio CD, and you could play it on a boom box, but not in a car stereo? Or if this newspaper had a copyright provision that you could read it on a bus, but not in a diner?
The DVD situation is just as absurd. The argument for it is that it’s important to “prevent piracy” and “stop the theft of intellectual property.”
But for some reason, nobody seems to care about protecting the property of us peons. So our computers are being taken over by distant strangers, and you might be violating federal law if you try to control your own property.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
