None of the features of PictureMarc seem to be relevant to the problem that Charles Mann described: how the flexibility of cyberspace is "pushing the price toward the vanishing point." If space permitted, I could describe some of the other gadgets and programs that are listed in the ITAA article: electronic "containers" of one sort or another, with their own varied "locks" and "keys;" "WebArmor," program which "archives your web site and affixes an authoritative, encrypted time-date stamp and content signature" so that "you can then show, in court if necessary, what your web site looked like at a particular instant in time;" the "Flickering Screen" from Bellcore Corporation, which displays data on a screen in such a way that the human eye can see it but the computer supposedly can not dump it to a printer; and so on and so forth, almost without limit. After all is said and done, one does not need to be an expert to decide whether or not technology is really likely to protect intellectual property. All one has to be is an ordinary computer user. The next time that you sit down at the keyboard and go into your word processor or email program, ask yourself: is there really anything that prevents you from taking any piece of text and sending copies of it anywhere in the world? If you are using a web browser, ask yourself the same question about graphic images and other media. I restate what I said near the beginning of this essay: I use a computer daily, and I look at the evidence staring me right in the face. It is two years after the ITAA produced their document, with all of its contradictory statements of confidence and caution; it is more than twice that long since Barlow described the holes in the hull of the sinking ship; and no group of technical geniuses, no matter how intelligent and well-paid they may be, has yet found really effective patches for those holes. I am not betting that they will in the foreseeable future. Part 4: So...
