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They should get the guy that did the Enron Metal Man ad. That totally made sense and sold things.

Yes, because there ought to be limits on freedom!

if the man is even THINKING of running for President in '08, he certainly isn't going to get elected if he runs on a platform of RESTRICTING basic freedom of speech.

Why not? Bush successfully did it.

The problem with World of Warcraft is that as a game it's a pleasurable "waste of time"
which of course if it doesn't waste a hell of a lot of your time is a good thing the
way I see it.

The problem with WoW is not that it's a waste of time but that it's a time-waster.

If you read what the man has to say on the blog who quit, then it's 12 hours a week you have
to put in just to keep up the game and if you want to "make progress" you have to invest as
much as ten hours a day. Not to mention that you have to be on time and well prepared for raids
and other team events which probably coincide with a lot of what is left of the former
pre-World of Warcraft life.

And the game is designed to take up as much of your time as is possible. After all, all games
like it charge people for the time they spend online. I would however take this one step further
and say that this is just another way people's time, attention and in short life is monopolized.
It's like the blogger said, a second ten hour job. I personally find it surprising that people
who have already more than half of their day wasted with "gainful employment" (commute 30%, working /
pretending that you're working 70%), I find it remarkable that people find so little value in
their remaining "free time" that they'll blow it away like that.

If I were them I would so I wanted to blow the time on profane bs at least try to do something
to "upset the apple cart", like go to RTMark and pick a nice
project to do. Oh wait... I guess that's just what "entertainment" like that is supposed to prevent.

Robet Mugabe is not the only leader of a UN member state who believes there should be limits to freedom on the Internet.

It's like those Barbies that got shipped out with G.I. Joe voice boxes a few years ago.

Actually, it would be pretty awesome if it was like those dolls, because that would mean that the Barbie Liberation Front (BLF) had somehow swapped a bunch of screener DVDs with "subversive" versions before they were sent out. And hey, I guess it's possible (though unlikely) that some disgruntled anti-DRM employee did decide to throw a monkeywrench into the gears...it's happened before.

If I were going to do something like this deliberately though, I'd take it over the top - like insert an opening error screen which complains "This DVD media has not been registered with your retinal print. In order to view it, please submit a DNA sample and a government background check to the MPAA. You will be given a code good for a one-time viewing of this media. Thank you for your cooperation."

The context of that quote, FYI, was that the owner of gwbush.com put up a site criticizing his presidency bid in '99, titled "Just Say No to Former Cocaine User for President." The exact quote is "There ought to be limits to freedom."

http://www.rtmark.com/more/articles/bushdallas0522 bush1bushsite.htm

Do you have an attribution for this quote? I couldn't locate one on Google.

Ah. My bad, that was an "interpreted" Bush quote it seems.
The correct one is "there ought to be limits to freedom". A statement made in 1999 concerning a parody web site he didn't like, ironically, because it contained made-up Bush quotes.

This is not the first time that Dow Chmeicals is victim of an hoax on this matter. In 2002, the activist group RTMark did a hoax site dowethicals.com where they were talking about Bhopal. You can see the press release they did at the time. After that Verizon cut the connectivity of their hosting provider thing.net without any warning, and obviously Dow was behind.

This is not the first time that Dow Chmeicals is victim of an hoax on this matter. In 2002, the activist group RTMark did a hoax site dowethicals.com where they were talking about Bhopal. You can see the press release they did at the time. After that Verizon cut the connectivity of their hosting provider thing.net without any warning, and obviously Dow was behind.

This is not the first time that Dow Chmeicals is victim of an hoax on this matter. In 2002, the activist group RTMark did a hoax site dowethicals.com where they were talking about Bhopal. You can see the press release they did at the time. After that Verizon cut the connectivity of their hosting provider thing.net without any warning, and obviously Dow was behind.

From RT Mark "The satirical website GWBush.com has received several million hits since a press conference Friday at which Texas governor and probable presidential candidate George W. Bush called its owner "a garbage man" and said "There ought to be limits to freedom." The outburst followed two separate attempts by Bush campaign attorneys to shut down the site."

Wonder if GWBush site got it's revenge :-]

Seriously wtf will blocking non-us people from seeing the site do other than cause massive publicity, many /. comments and numerous newspaper articles.

Jaj
Sometimes you REALLY couldn't make it up.

Too bad all the source sites I've seen for this appear to be fake and its a challenge posted on RTMark . Would have been an interresting story otherwise, myself not being a Bush supporter :)

It would also be commercial terrorism. Never mind that the Utah law on Commercial Terrorism has been struck down thanks to the ACLU, it'll be back, I promise you and it wont matter if most Americans are stupid enough to vote just between either Bush or Kerry, either of the two will make it happen on federal level. Read up on commercial terrorism here, and here

reminds me of RTMark

I wish that were true, but some people just haven't figured out it's a bad idea yet.

However, it is correct that cameras garner far more hatred. Also, some more amusing moments.

The quote is with regard to freedom of speech. Bush didn't like a parody website. link.

A copy of that May 21, 1999 story is at href=http://www.rtmark.com/more/bushap.html

"There ought to be limits on freedom"

I agree that there should be limits, but you might want to consider the context.

A parody web site was erected, and his election committee was not happy. When asked about the web site on television, his response was the source fo the quote.

More information see here, here, and here.

Google for it, dick breath.

Sorry, google is intended for morons, so you may have trouble - Here, get someone to read it to ya, there arn't any pictures, and I would hate for you to have trouble with all those big words.

" In April 1999, (R)TMark constructed GWBush.com, a website that at first glance appeared to be that of Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush (his website is GeorgeWBush.com). (R)TMark's first version incurred Bush's wrath, and his lawyers sent a threatening letter. The domain's owner, Zack Exley, then took down the site and attempted to sell his domain to the Bush camp. " ...

"These attacks resulted in a major international news story, which was then magnified by Bush's televised response to a reporter's question about the site: "There ought to be limits to freedom," Bush said--an ominous gaffe that many still remember. "

"The Bush campaign's intimidation tactics raised the eyebrows of several constitutional lawyers, who offered to support GWBush.com in potential copyright and electoral procedure lawsuits, arguing that although there ought indeed to be "limits to freedom", restricting free speech and limiting citizens' access to the political process was not the proper place to draw the line. "

So the context is BECAUSE OF A WEB SITE HE DIDN'T LIKE 'dubya said on television that there ought to be limits to freedom - referring to freedom of speech.

Like limiting the freedom to commit murder.

Last time I looked, that was already in the law books - no "ought to be" about it.

Like limiting the freedom to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

Also already on the books.

Like the freedom to libel others.

Batting 1.000 with invalid examples, arn't you.

I can see why you would post AC; I am sure if I were posting stupid shit I would want to know post AC also!

Limits on freedom. Click here for my audio clip of saying this.

You might mean the CueHack, a program for those free :CueCats we bummed off RadioShack. CueJack was previously reported on Slashdot a coupla years ago.

A corporation can buy, trade, sell and make loans. A corporation can literally do anything you as a person can do as long as these thoughts and actions are simply documented by resolution. When you think it through, the possibilities become fascinating. The key point to remember here, is that when you own a corporation, the corporation exists as a separate entity or person.

Reminds me of the Cue JACK scanner. You can scan barcodes of food products with this, but instead of returning price info to you, it looks up who he manufacturer is and tells you about their shadey side. Shadey side being environmental problems they caused, if they use sweat shops, how they treat animals, etc, etc. Corporate crime stuff.

Nobody ever discloses any evidence before discovery. Ever.

are you sure about that?

Still think the US it the "land of the free"?

Ok, I've been annoyed for years at the disparity between corporations and customers in who knows what about who. I think its time someone came up with a P2p, open source, reputation system in which we can turn the lens of datamining back on them. Technologies like Cuejack combined with the efforts of groups like Transparency International, can help bring about Participitory Capitalism.

Power to the people!

Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

"There ought to be limits to, uh, to freedom."

But the truly pathetic problem with this is that, while it might offer a significant deterrent against DoS and other malicious attacks, the fact that Congress is even considering a bill like this, and still haven't introduced something along the same lines for huge Corporate thieving and shananagans, is utterly asenine.

Look at it this way, hacking usually is malicious toward large corporate entities, unless it has to do with stealing personal info such as credit cards, S/N's and the like (which falls under identity theft, and should be getting its own life sentence IMHO soon). These big corporations can easily absorb most attacks (i.e. write off fictitious losses to capital losses, and have the hit go to the stock holders).

But on the other hand, the recent rash (or at least the sudden disclosure) of many corporate scandals basically leaves the stock holders and employees feeling the loss. The actual perpetrators never feel the same loss as someone who no longer has a retirement fund to speak of. So the worst punishment these thieves can receive is some vacation at a minimum security country club. But they have ruined MANY peoples whole lives, yet they have never faced the threat of true consequences.

Now to keep from being completely off topic: So congress has a bill pushed through that will enable hackers to receive a life sentence for their malicious acts. But all that we've heard about cracking down on corporate crime is some fluff regarding the SEC and accounting procedures, and much of the same from George W's podium. (But wait, what was that Harken Energy thingy?)

Seems quite ironic to me considering that the "great economic expansion" of the 90's was just a load of crap ontop of inflated profits. So let's go after those real criminals, Mr. Ashcroft! You just point your finger and we'll tap their phones and ISP to see what kind of mischief they're really getting into.

After all, they never do anything good, do they Yahoo?

there are a lot of net.artists which works are hard to find in galleries, and who themselves (more or less) call net.artists and that dot makes the difference...

its work usually digs into political issues and specific issues of the media itself (net part of the net.art coin) rather then playing in the field of aesthetics and continuum of ugly and beautiful... media hacks are better thain paintings... just to start a little flamewar :)

links sometimes worths kilowords:
http://www.calarts.edu/~line/history.html
http://rtmark.com
http://www.irational.org
http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk

and few others in tribute to net.art: interview with the hacker... work in progress...

3-6 months - someone actually writes a fully functional OpenAOL client that people are willing to use.

+ 2-3 months - AOL figures things out, issues cease and desist letters, starts blocking OpenAOL clients.

+ 1 week - OpenAOL figures out new protocols (return to previous step as needed while Lawyers OpenAOL users)

+ ??? months - AOL finally wins in a DMCA case that no one cares about because by this time everyone is using DSL and realizes that AOL and is another weight throwing mega-corp.

Note: AOL will probably blow a LOT of money fighting this too, that's why this is so humorous to me... I look forward to seeing ideas like this show up on rtmark.com.

... if they ever pass this "Proposed Federal Criminal Statute Addressing the Solicitation of Commercial Terrorism Through the Internet" or a comparable piece of legislation.

Published in the Winter 2000 Harvard Journal on Legislation this draft would make it possible to prosecute those who run disparaging web sites aimed at corporations and their products or otherwise by their activities on the net cause damage to corporation's public image or revenues:

(excerpt) The development of the Internet as a means of communication marks a dramatic change in the manner in which information is exchanged and disseminated in our culture. Quickly fading are the days in which a person's main venue for expressing her revolutionary views included standing on a soapbox or distributing leaflets. Instead, the Internet provides any person with any opinion the ability to reach a virtually unlimited audience without the formidable barriers previously posed by costly and inaccessible mainstream visual or print media. n1 In the current "Information Age," the marketplace of ideas is booming on the Internet.

However, along with the benefits of increased access to information, ease of communication, and new avenues for commerce have come the problems associated with a largely unregulated {page 160} environment. In its present infant stage, the Internet resembles the lawless "Wild West." The Internet is open to governance by human instincts, including those of greed, deception, and hate. In recent months there has been an alarming increase in the use of the Internet to sponsor, solicit and encourage the use of "commercial terrorism." n2 For the purposes of this Model Statute , "commercial terrorism" is defined as the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce commercial interests. (/excerpt)

Now to be sure, this is just a draft. It may not even have entered the "legislative process" yet. But all the same it certainly is an indication that people are thinking along these lines... and given the laws that have been passed the last five years I wouldn't be the least surprised if something like this would come up in the near future.

this is one brave and seriously laudable move ob behalf of Brazil, as the WTO could levy massive sanctions against them for this action. for those who don't know what the kids in Seattle were fighting in the streets over, the WTO is a transnational body-- a meta-government, if you will-- that is capable of coercing states (basically by suing them) out of erecting "barriers to free trade." a "barrier to free trade" is essentially any national law which presents any sort of a hindrance to international commerce. disregarding international patent conventions falls under this category (as does elements of Amercia's Endangered Species Act and our ban against importing British beef, as the WTO has taught us in the past).

see (R)TMark's http://www.gatt.org, a very honest parody of wto.org, for a more on the WTO.

the political fallout of a WTO action against Brazil on behalf of Roche would probably make Seattle look like a playground skirmish, so maybe the WTO might just back down. not that they've backed down in the name of human life before....

we'll just have to see to that.

Rtmark came up with the idea originally I think. Basically if a corporation is a person therefor it is deathsentancable. That was the basic Idea

rtmark.com

Yesterday someone posted a connection between Microsoft & CoS. The Germans have good reason for their decision, especially considering that the disk-caching and defragmentation utilities shipped in NT & 2K were developed by a company founded by a Scientologist. Germany and CoS are not good friends (read more on google)

The internet has spawned interesting phenomena such as rtmark, which seeks to subvert worldwide corporatization by arranging contributions to fund legal anti-corporate activities. It's about time for someone to conduct similar efforts toward confirming back doors in OS software.

Until then, we all have to wonder whether this is paranoia from the intelligence community, or reality.

I almost hope this actually happens the way they predict, if for no other reason than to see ®TMark find a way to sabotage it.

In the case in which it was first called upon to interpret [the Equal Protection] clause, the [U.S. Supreme] Court doubted whether "any action of a State not directed by way of discrimination against the [N]egroes as a class, or on account of their race, will ever be held to come within the purview of this provision." Nonetheless, in deciding the Granger Cases shortly thereafter [in 1877], the Justices seemingly entertained no doubt that the railroad corporations were entitled to invoke the protection of the clause. Nine years later [in 1886], Chief Justice Waite announced from the bench that the Court would not hear argument on the question whether the equal protection clause applied to corporations. "We are all of the opinion that it does."

http://www.rtmark.com

The purpose of rtmark is to perform acts of corporate sabotage, among other things. It accomplishes this risk-free by, among other things, bribing workers for target corporations with the money it receives from rtmark's members. RTmark's executives are free of liability for any of the actions of the corporation thanks to the limited liability inherent in a corporation.

Some of their past projects include:

The etoy Fund: rtmark helped to organize the massive 'virtual sit-in' against eToys, Inc., when that company sued the tiny art site etoy.com for copyright infringement or some nonsense due to the similarity in the name.

GWBush.com: rtmark helped to set up and also provided content for parody site GWBush.com, which pissed off good old W. enough that he committed one of his (many) vocal blunders, saying that "There ought to be limits to freedom." (Audio at the rtmark site) Well, sure, there should be limits to freedom, but certainly not when it comes to having the freedom to express ones' opinion of a presidential candidate.

And, perhaps most famously, the B.L.O., where, in 1993, RTMark channeled $8000 from a military veterans' group to the Barbie Liberation Organization, which used the investment to switch the voiceboxes of three hundred BarbieTM and G.I. JoeTM dolls.

Lots of interesting stuff at the site.
---------------

What they should do is create a .tm for trademark or a .c for copyright, and reserve those for persons or corporations (which rtmark.com claims are the same under some obscure american law, see CRPP) who have slogans or name compyrighted or trademarked, and then allow the rest of the domains to be free as in speech. It's not as though WIPO is against reserving domain names, hence the criteria for getting a .edu or .gov. This would just make it alot simpler and less litigious.

-chorder

Causing someone to suffer a DoS is, well, not my style. I don't really have the time, nor am I interested in being in a p1ssing match w/ anyone on who can wipe the other off the Internet quicker/bigger/with more media attention.

That doesn't change the fact that there *ARE* readers here that want to do exactly that. I'm speaking to them. RTMARK's experiments that push legal boundaries are very interesting to me. Just the fact that someone might read your reply and go visit the site makes me glad to be in this discussion with yet another Anonymous Coward.

I have to disagree with you, though, that these actions will, in the end, hurt the "little guy". What would probably end up happening, is that this (or another RTMARK sceme) is found out, the media descend on the situation, and no matter what the legal outcome, more people have heard of the project and contributed what they can, just by being aware and asking questions.

Sound like Napster? DeCSS? I wonder why...

Causing someone to suffer a DoS is, well, not my style. I don't really have the time, nor am I interested in being in a p1ssing match w/ anyone on who can wipe the other off the Internet quicker/bigger/with more media attention.

That doesn't change the fact that there *ARE* readers here that want to do exactly that. I'm speaking to them. RTMARK's experiments that push legal boundaries are very interesting to me. Just the fact that someone might read your reply and go visit the site makes me glad to be in this discussion with yet another Anonymous Coward.

I have to disagree with you, though, that these actions will, in the end, hurt the "little guy". What would probably end up happening, is that this (or another RTMARK sceme) is found out, the media descend on the situation, and no matter what the legal outcome, more people have heard of the project and contributed what they can, just by being aware and asking questions.

Sound like Napster? DeCSS? I wonder why...

rtmark.com has done this in the past when they temporarily disabled the web sites of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Pentagon, and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo ( HERE)

DoS is more like trying to talk louder than you than taping your mouth shut; you're free to block the IPs that originate the traffic, call ISPs to get people shut down, however far you'd like to take things.

I've always considered a belief in DoS like a belief in the death penalty. Some people don't think that death is a valid punishment, no matter what the crime. However, there are others...

rtmark.com has done this in the past when they temporarily disabled the web sites of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Pentagon, and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo ( HERE)

DoS is more like trying to talk louder than you than taping your mouth shut; you're free to block the IPs that originate the traffic, call ISPs to get people shut down, however far you'd like to take things.

I've always considered a belief in DoS like a belief in the death penalty. Some people don't think that death is a valid punishment, no matter what the crime. However, there are others...

So, it's not like ESR just got invited out of the blue to join the PTO advisory board. It took a lot of work from Open Source and Web freedom advocates.

Check out especially this page on BurnAllGifs.org and this article on Pigdog Journal. Cool groups like RTMark also got into the fight.

Of course, this story was submitted several times to Slashdot -- BEFORE the nominations process was over -- but apparently it wasn't important enough then to cover. And now that it's a done deal, it's covered here like it was an effortless thing.

Too bad Slashdot is doing such a bad job covering the important movements that are changing the face of the Internet. Just remember: for every rotten turn of events you read about on Slashdot, there's a group of dedicated people somewhere working to fight it. Too bad /. can't help you find them and work for freedom, too.

There is a website dedicated to online parodies and making fun of large corporate bullies:

This was something of a dare proposed by your friends at ®TMark (pronouced art-mark). See http://www.rtmark.com/simcopter.html.

I keep seeing these draconian laws being passed by our government, and these orwellian systems being created and implemented by profit- and power-hungry corporations. It seems every day there's a different post to Slashdot describing some new method for controlling the flow of information and the freedoms that we should be taking for granted...

And what are we doing about it? Why do we keep allowing our rights and freedoms to be taken away?

Why are those in power doing this to us? That's easy to answer: Because they can. Because anybody in power will seek to extend their power and control.

Why are we allowing this to happen? I don't know. Some of us are fighting back as much as we can, but most of us simply post to Slashdot and complain.

Listen up! All this bullshit that we've been fed ("We live in a free country!", "The economy is doing great!"), it's all just that: bullshit! We're losing our rights and freedoms on a daily basis, our economy is fake (the drop on last Friday was equivalent to Black Tuesday in 1929), people all over the world are being forced into sweatshop slavery in the name of "economic progress", and our environment is being raped and destroyed at an alarming rate in the name of profit.

And most importantly? The technology that we all love and support is being turned back on us in order to control and monitor people. They're usurping something that they have no right to usurp. We have to put the power of technology back into the hands of the people!

It's time to fight back! It's time for a revolution!

http://www.indymedia.org - Support independant media!
http://www.soaw.org - Why are our tax dollars being spent on training murderers?
http://www.corpwatch.org - So you think only governments can oppress and censor?

http://www.spunk.org
http://www.infoshop.org - Communism is dead, Capitalism is close to it. There is another alternative, and it's time we started exploring it.

http://www.adbusters.org
http://www.rtmark.com
http://www.subvertise.org - Subvertising (also known as adbusting) at it's best.

http://www.ainfos.ca - Keep informed on what is happening in the world, from an anti-authoritarian, grassroots perspective.

http://www.a16.org - Seattle and D.C. are just the beginning.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net