Technical Enabler

This Gizmodo interview with Bill Gates about Digital Rights Management reminds me of a joke about him. A woman lost in a runaway hot air balloon is floating past Bill's open office window. She looks in and, not recognizing him, calls out: "Where am I?" Bill responds: "You're in a hot air balloon." The woman then guesses she must be in Redmond because she has just received a technically correct but useless response. And that's what I thought of Bill's response to Gizmodo's prodding on DRM. Viewed from a technical perspective, Bill is only providing the tools, and people are free to use them wisely or unwisely, he says. But Bill is so focused on the tech that he can't see the difference between a pop song and a medical record: "It's the same bits!" Meanwhile, back on Earth, absolutely no one considers her HIV status to be a product of intellectual effort intended for publication. All bits are created equal only in the eyes of a computer program designed specifically to treat them that way; in all other contexts, and especially in human ones, bits are not equal. Enabling people to do stupid things with bits is not the same as requiring them to do those stupid things, but there are still reasons to avoid being an "enabler," and Bill doesn't seem to be considering them.