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Lawsuits Suck
omnifrog writes: "Suck has an interesting view on all of the legal cases that are currently in the geek media. Jokingly, they claim that, '... as galling as the verdicts have been, the judiciary -- with every curt dismissal of every nerd-approved argument -- is doing the plugged-in set an enormous favor. Because if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks.' An interesting point of view." Excellent piece.
Dear God, it's the E*FBot! We've got to start putting a * in E*F or else this robot will come along and reply with "Our thanks to everyone..."
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"AAAHHH RUN ITS BILL GATES AND HE'S THE SIZE OF GODZILLA!!!!!111" (Source unknown)
me too, I like Clinton. 2 term limit my nutsack ^^;;
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
IF it wasn't for the fact that the tax was taking money from people, the philosophers would have been standing alone, there would have been no revolution. Yet another American miseducated about the "tax on tea". The tea party was not protesting an increase in the amount of money they had to spend on tea. The act that gave the British East India Company a monopoly on the American tea buisness actually lowered the taxes charged on tea and lowered the price of tea by suspending mercantilistic rules that added middlemen. However, to buy the tea at the lower price, the Americans would have to accept the validity of the threepenny tax on tea and the right of Parliament to grant monopolies on American commerce. Those abstract political considerations were sufficient to create American resistance, not just in Boston, but in all U.S. ports where the tea was delivered. Again, Americans protested an act that lowered tea prices over principle, and that protest over principle is what led to the Tea Party. Now, why you aren't taught that in high school American history is left as an exercise for the reader.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Didn't Hatch work with Ted Kennedy on ENDA (the gay rights bill?). And as a Mormon, he's gotten rave reviews on religious tolerance issues. Anyway, I didn't want to turn this into a Hatchathon-- I wanted people to recognize that they aren't voting based on the IP law they talk about here.
If your vote is based on the environment, and not based on IP issues, it shouldn't be any wonder that you get politicians who compete with one another on the environment, but who disagree with you on IP issues. After all, the RIAA has people who will vote based on copyright law.
Right now, the Democrats are against us on nearly ever computer issue. If you are a democrat, you should be writing your congressmen, volunteering for local Democrat candidates who DO agree with us, and voting in the primaries. I'm not saying be a republican, I'm saying recognize your party's problem and work to change it.
I live in New York State, which is pretty much guaranteed to go Democratic, so I don't fear that I will help throw the election to Bush by supporting Nader.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
know everyone has images of big rock stars lounging away all day on yachts with naked women and cocaine coming out of every porthole...
Buddy, have you seen some of the houses these musicians have? Boats/limos/malibu beach front houses? MOST musicians are puppets..RIAA just pulling all the strings. Very simple, and you CANNOT compare it to a freeware program. Not at all. I agree that my anology of downloading songs was not the greatest, but I really don't feel that guilty anymore.
'metallica are dicks,
Least you got that part right!
Oh please, stop the "tell your congressman" plea...Slashdot IS the best forum to bitch on because MOST of the news media is listening to what we say. Have you checked out articles on Wired(C) or The REgister(R) or Zdnet (R) lately (I even recall a CNN report)? They continuously write stories and cite Slashdot for opinions. We are the people that make technology work so why not listen to us?
I never argued that "music should be free". I'm perfectly willing to pay for a CD I really like. I download a new song and if it (all the others) kick serious butt, I will go to my music store and purchase the CD. Pretty simple really...I am NOT going to pay for the MP3 online and then go to pay for a $20 cd. That is double paying. THAT makes no sense. You make reference to a "problem". What problem?
do it coherentky and with legal basis
Ironic about the coherent mispelling, but in anycase there IS no legal basis. There is NO legal precendent stating this fact. There bitching and complaining is similiar to cassette tape mentality. If my friend makes a copy of a song and "gives" it to me on a tape for me to listen to only and NOT to play to a live profit audience, what harm is done? Zilch. The same holds true for an MP3. If I download a song to listen to in the comfort of my home for me to decide whether or not I wish to buy that cd, what harm is done there? None. I could do the same by driving to a record store and asking the person behind the counter to put ANY cd in the store in a player for me to listen too. Is this illegal too? Nope. Why should I waste my money? There will always be that element in society that deams it necessary to abuse this "trust" of the consumer. By strangle holding the customer and shaking him for every last penny, the RIAA is really not earning my Trust YET I still am not breaking the law.
Sidenote: Why do you go to AOL chatrooms? What possible information could be attained there?
Sig it.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.ht ml
Just some helpful info for all...
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"
-- d'arcy poirot
Actually (to both of you), slashdot has run a bunch of stories about RIP, and a bunch more that mention it in passing. See for example:
6 234
5 242
http://slashdot.org/yro/00/03/03/1837216.shtml
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/19/141
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/02/09/144
But hey, don't let the facts stand in your way...
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Yeech! Do you know how many people you're talking about?! You can count slashdot's current staff on one hand.
If people send in the stories, we'll do our best to run them. That's what the YRO section was designed for. But it doesn't seem likely that the posting staff on slashdot will suddenly expand a hundredfold...
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Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Hey, new article just posted... forget this boring lawyer crap!
But what happens when your point of entry and all content is controlled by big media?
If I am saying that the job should be done by those people who can do it better, does this make me an anarchist ?
Do problems that some anarchists have had in the past authomatically apply to all anarchists of the present and future ? Is studying history incompatible with logic ?
This is crap. If you're going to require that someone finish college to become a lawyer, what's the purpose of the bar testing? Why not just skip the college requirement, and let the test results speak for themselves. If Joe A gets the same score as Joe B, and one of them is self-taught, what's the difference?
I've written to my member of parliament but to no avail - didn't even acknowledge me
Ever though of visiting him/her? Announce your plan to visit about a week beforehand. I have no idea whether this would be successful, but it would certainly throw them off balance.
Write your congressional representative.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Take any issue you feel he might be ignorant one (you've pretty much got field to run here) and begin a well-written and concise explanation of the phenomena at play. Remember who you're addressing and even if you don't care for him, consider the fact his vote makes your law. Whatever you write will be filtered to countless staffers, and even if it never makes it all the way up the chain then consider how many of those staffers could be educated and perhaps - by osmosis =P - be able to pass on the information.
For example, I felt concerned about the clipper project and I took the time to explain to my representative Norman Sisisky why and how the technology could be abused. I can now say that I have developed a dialog with him in which I will take the time to explain and educate what to many of our public figures is an incomprehensible melange of jargon and pathetic "it's unconstitutional!!!" rants with little basis in either fact, nor -sadly- understanding.
Very Respectfully (this is how you should sign your letters btw =P),
-Tork
Have you not heard of the Libertarian Party or Harry Browne??
For example, one programmer bragging about how much Java helps his bottom line was one-up'ed by another AC claiming that Perl programming had netted him "$5 million" a year.
Another good troll is to point out that the dot-com industry has, for the most part, only actually made money by selling equity -- not products or ads. Immediately a bunch of AC's will come out and say "oh, you're just jealous because you didn't make tons of money like we did."
Fine. I guess I'm the only person who reads Slashdot who doesn't have a couple mil' in the bank and a private jet.
Why, then, with geeks supposedly swimming in cash, is the EFF "underfunded"? I suspect that the "swimming in cash" is just part of the delusions of granduer that the geek community has. Sure, some geeks are loaded, but I think that a lot more are sitting on some stock options that have yet to do anything and even more are just pulling in a decent paycheck and want, desperately, to believe that they'll be millionaires someday, too (clue: no one ever became rich selling their time).
Well, I think Finland is the most internet aware country in the world, at least in terms of homes wired.
Also one of the first countries with a PKI. Yes, I have a cryptocard issued, like a passport, by the government. The specs are public and it's all based on common public tech (no v-chips here!).
And, from the Finnish constitution:
"The secrecy of correspondence, telephony and other confidential communications is inviolable."
I think a better title for your post would be
"The US does stuff, and sane countries do the right thing anyway". I used to live in Australia. Every now and then I look back and shake my head in disbelief...
Okay, if we aren't playing the game that 'wins', then lets start learning from those that do. Over the last few elections, the (Ugh) Christian Coalition has handed out voting guides detailing the issues that are important to them and how their senator/representative voted. I propose that we do something similar here. Find out how your congressman voted on DMCA and other such legislation. Make it one of those Slashboxes. Make it so you can put in your Zip code and it'll even provide names and addresses. It'll take a little work, but I don't see why it can't be done.
http://libertyboard.org/ is probably what you're wanting. Folks here should spend more time there, methinks.
Coincidentally I am committing "more real action." Downloading as many MP3's as I can.
Seems like too much effort. I've just copied a lot of mp3's to my computer from my CD collection, and set up a script that copies them until they use up all the space. If the record industry is telling the truth (and would they lie?) then I'm costing them a fortune!
What we need is regional slashboxes with local correspondants. That way if I want to know about Tech issues in Uganda I can just enable my Uganda slashbox and the local correspondant will be posting things local to the area sent in by Ugandan readers. And if I want to know about the US I can enable the USian slashbox, and possibly even Subcategories in the US for the States. You just need 1 paid correspondant in each place, possibly 2 in places like california and the UK that have more people. That does nothing but skim through articles in local papers, check out parliament/congress/whatever and post. Then everyone has an easy way to find their local Tech issues and see if they can do anything about it. Plus some of the people who don't give a shit about USian politics wouldn't have to read about it. And those of us who are interested in more than just USian politics can find the stuff.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Shakespeare's character said, "First, we must kill the lawyers." No one listened four hundred years ago. Now we are damned. Of course, fighting back depends on whether you believe the real world is worth fighting for at all.
I'm thinking proper cracking. Trawl all targeted servers, find as much confidential info, publish it, _then_ take the cracked server down. I'm not talking about a one off 5kript kiddie attack here, I'm imagining full out terrorist action. Every server they own, every website. Not a random smattering of sites, but a concerted, planned all out attack. Don't forget how many millions it cost Sun when Mitnick was prowling _one_ of their machines!
I am in no way advocating this as a reasonable course of action (which is probably why we're having this discussion in the first place; most of us nerds are too reasonable and moral to do bad things in the name of a higher purpose; shame that corporations don't feel this way), just a possibility. Note that the downside of this action is _very_ bad - jail for 5+ years does not appeal.
High profile attacks on sites will focus media attention on what's going on, get the message out to more people that they are losing their rights and freedoms via backdoor policies. And don't forget the embarassment of not being able to keep a website up on the internet, or the loss of business that may ensue for many corporates.
Aside from morality, the only flaw in what I've said is the real world cost of getting caught, and it's a biggy. Which is why in my earlier post, I quickly dismissed this line of thinking. The only way forward is the BBS.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
And all the indignant, insular posts in the world will do nothing to stop them.
Ever get the feeling you're being watched?
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
US Leads, and its European lapdog and aircraft carrier,the UK, certainly follows
/. is draconian, damaging to personal freedoms, ill-conceived, and illogical in equal parts. It will kill e-commerce in the UK, drive ISPs off-shore, and boost use of foreign ISPs and GPG by UK netizens with something to hide.
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, now on the UK statute books, which has been well documented in
The UK government has now announced that it is doing nothing about spam, and that ISPs will self-regulate on this issue.
Americans should not believe that they have the monopoly on such legislation. While we may not be the 'best' in the world at much these days, the UK still possesses a powerful blend of stupidity, arrogance and incompetence in its politicians, civil servants and their advisors that will guarantee its place in the top ten for a few decades yet.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
I honestly believe that they are making it up as they go along, and that their premises are fundamentally flawed.
-- Dr. KevorkianFatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
And furthermore, if you consider what those "gormless bunch of dorks who couldn't deal with anything", did through the life's work, I think you might be a little more appreciative of the rights we currently have online.
Not to say we should stop worrying about online rights, but we might want to choose our battles a little more carefully or else be labeled cyberpunks that don't care about the legal system.
trb
Yes the DeCSS case has shown that US laws can be enforced within the 'Western' world. Which Europe is a part of. But do you think if the guy was in Sri Lanka that US laws would effect him? or Pakistan? or Indonesia? or China? What if the Chinease government decided to copy and crack everything, put it on their servers, and offer it to the world... just for fun. No US court decision could do anything to stop that.
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
Then bend over whenever they feel like it, because they have the power. There are two sources of power in this world: guns and, where they're strong enough, laws. Not operating systems, faster processors, better kernels, wearable tech, or any of that jive. Generals and suits might make better guns or more strictly enforce laws with tech., but it ain't nothing by itself.
In the U.S., you've either got to have either a lot of money or other people behind you, and geeks don't have enough now. Other people affect you; that's how a democracy works. Bow out of the whole power discourse, and they'll eat your lunch. Get used to it.
Oh, and for all the talk about geeks with money, practically all of them who get _real_ money join the corps and their lawyers. Can anyone tell me of a tech billionaire who isn't?
--- Submission is feudal.
>As much I hope this would happen, it never will.
>Geeks have neither the balls nor organisatory >skill to do it. Never, ever, ever.
Not organised? LOL.
What about the team work and organisational skills needed to create software such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, Apache, Mozilla, GNU {anything}? What about ORBS / the RBL?
These take an immense about of organisation to maintain / develop.
>Prove me wrong. Please.
I think the above does, quite frankly.
As for `[not having] the balls', I don't think that's even an issue. It's not that they don't have the guts to do it, I think most of us can't be arsed. After all, there are plenty of jobs, most of us are well paid, why should we bother biting the hand that feeds us?
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Their Legal Claims basically amount to all workplaces will buy a licence from them for any music.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
You can use up the space even quicker (and thus cost the RIAA members even more money) if you don't encode them.
Um, what wonderful place do you live in? Here in the US, voting does not make you politically relevant. Campaign contributions make you political ly relevant.
The american corporations and legal system that seem to think they reign supreme over the internet.
Perhaps this is an unfair parallel to draw but american lawyers seem to be coming in and tearing down our world. Perhaps like the european 'pioneers' did to the native americans.
Why do so many geeks have access to cushy jobs, fast modems, broadband Net connections at home, and cheap ISP services? Because the Net can be used to make money, and so lots of people outside the geek world have an interest in it, and they throw lots of money at it.
When you move from the little tidepool into the big ocean, you have a lot more places to eat, but you also have to deal with the sharks.
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Sure some people may be naive about who rules what, but at least you can do something about it. Peaceful resistance, protests, letters to congressmen, pooling money for lawyers and class actions. It is not a helpless situation. It just seems that most people are just passive, sitting on their thumbs, when it comes to their rights...and only raise their voices when it affects their free speech/music. Regardless of how pessimistic people are of the legal system...you can make the difference. Sure companies have tons of money...but WHO supplies them with this money? You.
Sig it.
I didn't say we own it, I said we control it. A trivial distinction really, since geeks are the only people who can make it all work. A lear jet doesn't fly anywhere for it's owner without the pilot, see?
Hi Cris,
I personally agree with you. I read the whole article and found it to be a wake-up call. I intent to mail my congressman about the recent court rulings. I can only hope that will be enough.
I recently looked at the list of comments that were submitted about the DMCA and was appaled. There were only FOURTEEN comments. We need everyone to start sending snail mail. We need to face the reality that some law-makers don't even READ e-mail or web posts.
I challenge everyone to do the following: instead of typing a post, type up a letter to your congressman and other law-makers and SNAIL MAIL it to them.
One of the problems with the damn them all in Congress it's the money attitudes, is people focusing on big checks. Where do you think big checks come from? Sure, big donors somtimes, but small checks become big checks. Why give up because you can't write a big check, at least do the part you can. Sure, money is influential. It's influential everywhere. That's not a reason to give up. A congressman/woman/whatever makes $135,000 a year. The hours pretty much suck judging by how often you can go to a late session. Most of them have to keep two homes and do the traveling thing a lot, which is probably fine if you like it - but how many do. You don't get any time off. Maybe not every single one of them deserves our collective respect, but if you want to get rich, there are probably easier ways to do it. Maybe you need a bigger check to get the attention of some big name guy at the top, but for all of them there are probably a lot of smaller players you can influence more easily. Get some momentum going with those people, so you can get a couple of sure votes and then the influence of a handful (or more) people trying to influence others to your point of view, instead of one guy.
So, if we just kill all the lawyers then all will be well again, am I right?
--
I could be wrong but... isn't that what the EFF is for? Or should the EFF participate as a member of this new association?
/. community.
Ok, forgot about them. Good idea. Maybe half the work has already been done.
Existing infrastucture, recognized name, and pretty much respected by the
Well then maybe they should start collecting member lists and use the numbers as politcal muscle!
"We represent X number of citizens across the country, and they are all registered voters as stipulated in our mambership agreement (or something like that)."
And to Threed who wrote: The US has NEVER been a democracy. It's a REPUBLIC and damn proud of it. Sorry about the mistake, but the point is the same. If you don't have money to burn to fight the good fight, use your numbers as a lobby group. You may not be able to fund a congressmen's next election, but you do have to power to kick him out!
Living in Canada, we do not have such power, or do we seem to get excited about issues of this nature. We have learned some important lessons from our buddies to the south, here's one back at you.
"how to get the unwashed masses attention, interest and energy behind the causes we find important. Those of us here obviously can't do a whole lot of good on our own, we need to get others involved."
Talk about impotent whining. The unwashed masses aren't going to do anything for anyone, that's why they're the unwashed masses! Everybody sitting on their ass looking to figure a way to get the *other guy* off *his* ass. Sad. Get off your ass!
join:
www.lp.org
www.ij.org
write a real physical letter!
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
http://www.senate.gov/senators/index.cfm
vote!
As an attorney active in bringing cases against those who would stalk unwary internet users, I am kind of surprised to read any criticisms of the internet intelligentsia. The Illuminati of the Infobahn usually stick close together: it's a cruel world out amongst the unknowing.
I sued Doubleclick for throwing a digital tattoo on unwary 'net travelers. To digitally identify an individual, track their movements without their cooperation or even their knowledge would seem to be the type of thing that bring the MIT types closer round the campfire. But even some Silicon Valley types agree its egregious.
In the early days of radio, a huge battle raged to attempt to pay for content. Taxing radio tubes was discussed. Ads were seen as an effective way to pay. Now that ads can be circumvented, how to pay for content in the new medium without overreaching individual rights? Tune in tomorrow... Same Bat time, same Bat channel.
The net wants information to be free. Metallica wants to get paid. And Sony is scared it's not seeing anyplace for media middlemen like itself in the new paradigm. Heady times, indeed.
Well, regardless, it is nice to see that as a lawyer I rule the world. Maybe I should ask for a nicer car....
Paul C. Whalen, Esq.
http://www.manhasset.net
The Law Office of Paul C. Whalen, P.C.
565 Plandome Road, #212
Manhasset, NY 11030-1301
pcwhalen@manhasset.net
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Work for your congrtessman as staff.
(Assuming your not lieing) you seem to have a lot of contact with your congress person. Now broaden your issues a bit, and decide which canidate for congress most fits your broad ideals. Work with him to get him ellected. Knock on doors. Write (for him) reasoned positions on geek issues. After spending all day in congress (either the general session or committie meetings) congressmen do not really have time to become educated on all issues. They hire staff that generally thinks like them to help them understand the issues fast. Staff is often hired from the ranks of those who helped with the campaign.
So if you work to get someone elected, make it known that you'd like a staff job (but don't come across too heavy) you have a chance of being the one who opens constituants letters (for summery), and a chance to read and contribute to bills. Remember your congressman cannot read and understand every bill (with ammendments) that come along. So if the bill is on a subject he knows nothing about but one staffer has strong feelings about (either ammendments that are needed, or just plain vote against) you have influence.
You go to the grocery store and buy some stuff. You slide your saver card across and save 40 cents on toilet paper. Now we know who you are and based on how much toilet paper you bought this week, about how many times you take a dump.
Maybe you pay for your gas with that exxon credit card. Now we know that's the third time you bought gas this week and we have your credit history to dig through too.
Maybe you call someone on your cell phone (Which we see you paid for with your credit card this month.) Now we have your calling record, we know who you're talking to, when and for how long.
We know about all those live goat porn sites you're so fond of browsing from AOL.
We know what songs you download with napster, what movies you rent at blockbuster, what CDs you buy at the music store. We know what kind of car you drive. We know when you buy a latte at starbucks. We know what you watch on cable.
Find a place that doesn't use computers these days. It's next to impossible to stay off our radar.
Seems to me that if we organized and communicated just a bit, we could take over and run the show. Quietly and behind the scenes, we could be Big Brother. Because it ain't Lars out there writing the software that runs all that stuff.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Let's say that everyone who has ever read Slashdot will wake up tomorrow as the most rabid freedom-loving voters ever to live. That's still not enough people to even make a dent in our political system.
In case you were not paying attention in school, that's how the US got started you dolt. Unlike Canada, we had the brass cajones to tell the limeys to take a hike. Our nation was founded by BOMBING and SHOOTING the cocksuckers who were ripping us off.
You may meekly submit to the indignities heaped upon you, that is your perogitive, but I won't. Give me liberty or give me death.... oh yea, you wouldn't understand that would you?
I don't hate Canadians, I just feel better when they are not around.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
Freedom when given is never appreciated. We are
going to have to earn our rights and freedoms...
"Give me Liberty or give me Death"
means more than "Give me my MP3's or I will sulk around the dorm room"
-- SJS smooge at smoogespace dot com
Suck admits to preaching to the choir in the article, which I found hilarious. In the section "Discussions and cries of hypocrisy and malformed analogies have consumed megabyte upon megabyte of masturbatory rage and self-indulgent self-righteousness." Suck links "self-indulgent self-righteousness" to their own article! I thought that was hilarious, and I'm surprised more people don't give them credit for their sense of irony.
Walt
Thank you for saying this. It really needed to be said.
The only thing I would add is that Suck apparantly has no clue about what political influence is. PACs and Associations and campaign donations aren't nearly as effective as personal involvement, especially on the local level. A volunteer who puts just two hours a week into a local campaign office for two months has just given a resource that cannot be measured in dollars. Most campaigns need a sysadmin. Glamourous? No, but your investment of time and effort will help tremendously. And be remembered. If you vote, that will be remembered. Especially which issues you vote on. If you vote based on abortion alone (either direction, then don't complain that your view on DeCSS isn't represented.
Corporations use PACs because they are a substitute for real live volunteers-- who are very hard to find. Money is cheaper than time, work or votes, so that's what they use. But work is more valued. The unions slather their party in volunteers, and evidence is being reported which says that they had the power last election to approve or veto the campaign strategies of their favorite candidates. Tremendous, possibly inappropriate power. Bought with time, not money.
The media wants to talk about PACs because they: 1) buy ads which are aired by the media, 2) are more interesting to report on than the volunteer in the back room, and 3) inflame people's outrage at corruption, causing them to spend more time watching the media to hear about it. But the truth is this: time you put in to candidates you like equals issues you believe in being advocated. You didn't 'buy' that influence. You helped people who agree with you get into a position to advance those issues for you.
I'm a good geek. I send checks to the EFF and am renewing my membership with IEEE after discovering that they will be fighting UCITA (and after a long email from their Intellectual Property Comittee chair that shows a pretty good track record on all of the issues that seem to be confounding us recently.) I wrote a cuecat barcode decoder. I bought both DeCSS T-Shirts. I mail the FCC, the LOC, my senators and representatives several times a week about some right or another that is being taken away. I vote, but nobody even knows who stands which way on these issues. I wrote 12-page comments for the LOC in regards to seciton 1201 of the DMCA.
But this stuff is not enough. I want to do more, but I am just a geek. I've never run a campaign, nor do I know how to get the necessary zillions of geeks all together in an organization like this. Additionally, I'm not a lawyer, and although I'm capable of good, logical argument (as anyone who programs is to some degree)-- normal people aren't interested/don't understand and apparently what seems valid to me is not valid to a judge.
My questions, then:
1. What else can I do?
2. Who could head up an "internet users association" like we need? (possibly someone at the EFF? IEEE? ACM? A friendly lawyer you know?)
3. What do we have to do to get this person (or people) to work on our behalf?
4. How do we get enough members to join?
5. Once we get members, how do we become an unstoppable juggernaut lobby like the NRA?
"Contrary to popular belief, the sun does not shine out of your collective backside."
I realise that due to the incomprehensible and alien nature of this idea, it may need to be repeated regularly until it is understood and absorbed. As the Jews were commanded to do with Mosaic Law in the Bible, repeat it to yourself when you wake, and when you go to bed...write it on the walls wherever you go...it will serve you well.
Seriously...something the Linux/UNIX community really needs to wake up to in my view is the realisation that you are NOT the last hold-out of human intelligence, as this article suggests. Other people might not be more intelligent than you...but they really don't have to be...because your own arrogance defeats you in what you try to do.
Microsoft's rise to prominence is a case in point. Ok, so Red Hat and other groups have come up with decent user interfaces now...but it's been slow going...primarily because of a group of CLI die-hards who consider a coherent interface to be an insult to human intelligence.
Gates is scum...and worse than scum...I will agree with anyone here who says that...but the Gates' and the lawyers of this world will win for as long as the people holding the alternatives are too tripped up by their own arrogance, and have attitudes like,
"If you can't figure out what all of our cryptic commands mean, you don't deserve to use a computer."
Think about it, guys...after a certain amount of exposure to the Internet (5+ years) a particular stereotype has developed in my head...one which I've unfortunately found to have no small number of adherents...what I refer to as,
"The elitist UNIX-using asshole." Someone who uses text only UNIX and who looks down their nose at anyone who uses any other operating system under the sun...with the possible slight exception of the AmigaOS. Sound familiar, anyone?
One of the things I've noticed over the years, is that things get done in life out of need. We needed a better OS. Got linux. We needed a better way to get music. Mp3. The Lawyers and Industries needed to control it, send in the troops.
While a small group of individuals may form up to try and start something wonderful, you can't get the mass population behind it unless you can show them they NEED it. There are LOTS of OS projects right now, but none of them are getting the mass backing because really, most of us are content to sit where we are and be happy.
Wouldn't be great if along with the EFF, we made some kind of giant geek-law repository? A place where anyone thinking of starting a project that might wind up pissing some corp off could go and at least ask to see if there might be legal problems? Programmers don't think about if their code is going to wind up in the supreme court against company X. Geeks are smart mofo's, however, they live in an idealized world. And the world is FAR from ideal.
What we need is a pool of lawyer geeks. People who understand the technology but can throw down with the best of the Perry Masons. We are sadly out of our environment when it comes to law. And like suck said, the law is everything.
I would love to see a site where free legal information could be pooled into a giant database.
I wondered what would of happened to the DeCSS argument if we had a whole world of lawyers offering help instead of the few that sat at the table.
The problem there is that geeks albeit well paid most of the time, don't go into this industry for the money, they love the tech. Lawyers almost ALWAYS go for the money, and casually forget about what is right.
And the last problem with really putting something like that together is that there is always someone ready to step up and say, yah, I did that, give me the credit, the fame, etc... Things like this can't have a key person, they have to be borg like in their execution. But that'll never happen. I live in an idealized world, and am happy where I am.
The main problem is that people can't remember why a gormless bunch of dorks who couldn't deal with anything started wanking in their basements? That's what the problem is??? Too many people are dealing with reality? If everybody were to just get back to their fantasy world, everything would be okay???
I think you need to read the bloody article again.
--------------------------------
Yesterday(?), everybody joined in to kick RMS for being obsessed with the finer details of licenses and for nit-picking over KDE going GPL.
RMS certainly is an odd one, but he's thinking about the law, about copyright and about how to protect OSS freedoms in the real world.
Just being in the right (in your own view), doesn't mean that everyone else is going to agree and lawyers will walk all over you if all you've got is a notion that your side of the argument is "fair".
Also, it's interesting that the author describes geeks as arrogant, self-satisfied and complacent. Makes a change from the persecuted loners Katz keeps on about.
Sure, those are associations as well.. However, they are associations of corporations, not of individuals.. Corporations with millions of dollars to burn, in fact. Maybe if all the Slashdot readers contributed 5% of their annual income to the "Internet Association", then there'd be enough money to get some lobbying done.
...nothing will get better.
/. every day, post about how f'ed up the world is, get pissed off every time they think their rights are affected, but NEVER ACT ON IT.
This article is completely correct. Digital rights are being destroyed because a very, very large percentage of the population doesn't even know whats going on. Then you have another large percentage who know something is going on, but don't understand how it would ever affect them, so they just dismiss it. Then you have another percentage who might read
How many people who continually bitch about the loss of rights ever contact their congressperson? (email or otherwise) How many here are signed up for the email ACLU action alerts? How many dontate to or support the EFF?
And even if you can't do these simple things, educate everyone you meet. Your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers. Get THEM fired up and help them understand what is going on and how THEIR personal freedom is going to be affected once the lawyers are done.
Normal people think these are just Geek issues and don't understand that we are talking about the systematic destruction of freedom. Educate them, and spell out the possible future if these rulings go unchecked. Sure, it might be DeCSS now, but it could be a lot worse later. Precendent is a very BAD thing.
I sig, therefore I am.
Must be an election year, the trolls are everywhere.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If everyone on slashdot gave $50 to the EFF... Or better yet, find out the candidates who they think best will advocate the issues we believe in, and donated some expert assistance. Setting up a dinky file server. Helping a press secretary print. Configuring Postgres to track voters.
If even 1% of slashdot did any of that, we wouldn't have anything to worry about.
Ah, but the Internet corporations with a vested interest in seeing that domains are property that code is free speech, and want to ensure that it stays so in the future have far more money than the corporations they are fighting.
Geeks associations of corporations have the potential to be far more powerful in defining the legal future of their nations.
Jayson
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Although a hot flamebait, it's a nice reminder. Of course geeks should be more political active. It's never too late in finding life paradoxal and humorous. However, I think most geeks already knows this.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
-Elendale (and one more thing, vote Nader!)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
While there is quite a bit of truth to what you're saying, the Queen makes a good point. The US political system is in disrepair due to voter apathy - and saying it's broke, ain't gonna fix it. What's needed is for people to express their opinions, rather than crawl into a hole, feeling sorry that no one agrees with their unspoken views.
Geeks are in a unique position w.r.t. the rest of the electorate. We have a very different set of concerns than the bulk of society. And... We're the Morlocks, they're the Eloi.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
My sense of humor is clearly no match for your penetrating powers of observation.
Yes, I'm a US citizen. Of course, the whole freakin *point* of this article is that it is the *US* government that is chipping away the freedoms of *US* citizens. Clear enough?
Um, I'm a member of the Libertarian Party. I've written to my Congressmsn on several occasions and attended local Q&A sessions trying to make my point. What have I gotten... my name and address placed on their junk mailing lists.
This is why I said I can't make difference on my own. I'm looking for ways to get others in the vain hope that a mass of letters might have some sort of impact.
Thanks for your support.
Lib.BENCH the only site you'll ever need!
It is a pleasure to read such a well written article. His (what was his name again?) article was clear, consise, funny, and (IMO of course) absolutely correct.
/. articles and posts) is to change that.
When this article drifts to the bottom of the slashdot page, we will doubtlessly forget about it, like all (or many) of those that passed before. For those of you familiar with the Lain series, she said it best: if nobody remembers, did it ever happen? and if so does it matter? This is corallary to the famous quote about the tree falling in the woods with nobody to hear it.
This type of post has been seen more than once here, and has been read by all of us. I doubt you remember the topic of the article you read it under, doubt it not, for it is true.
Luckily, we have the power to change all of this. Just take a look, for instance, at the complexity of the code in this page alone. We understand how extremely complex systems work, and many of us understand very well. What we don't do well is extend our knowledge of complex systems into the real world. Our challenge (and the unstated intent of so many
This page and all of us have been screaming.. or at least typing in CAPS.. for a fix to this problem.
The answer is obvious. We need to VOTE and to LOBBY. But, (and here is the tricky part) we need to unite our forces for some common goals that we can all relate to. What are these goals and how do we define them? Easy! It has already has been done for us by the founders of this country.
1. Freedom of Speech (read: freedom to link to whatever you want)
2. Freedom to take apart whatever you own (read: the analogy to Ford motors, ie. what if the hood of your car was locked and only the dealer had the key?)
3. Freedom to own (read: I paid $70 for my domain name and I don't own it?!?!)
You can probably think of a few more, but for brevity's sake I won't.
So how do we get our rights back? That will require some work. The people who founded this country were willing to die for these things, they regretted they had only one life to give for the cause, so if you are unwilling to work a little bit, fuck you.
In conclusion: here is your assignment.
1. Write a letter to your senator, use the same one for your representatives. The letter should clearly state that your rights are being taken away (please explain HOW to them), and that if they don't smarten up they can kiss their office good-bye. 2. Support the EFF. Oh, wait, I mean PAY them some MONEY. Think of each dollar as a line of code in Linux, yeah, there are a hell of a lot of them needed, but each and every one of them is needed to make it work.. 3. Talk (not type) to your real-life friends (if you don't have any, you can stand on the street corner and yell). Tell them that their rights are being taken away and they don't even know about it. Give them a copy of your letter(s), and tell them to write some too. Be patient with your explanations.
We can win, and although the process might be rather slow for us who count our time in milliseconds, it will happen (if you). Have a care.
C:\>ls
bad command or file name
C:\>uptime
Don't forget The Institue for Justice:
http://www.ij.org/profile/index.html
It would be interesting to see the results of that. I don't think the results would be particularly cut-and-dried, as it were.
I could be wrong but... isn't that what the EFF is for? Or should the EFF participate as a member of this new association?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Actually the solution is simpler then that. Create a new network, and put an EULA on it forbiding member of the legal profession as well as sharing information with members of the legal profession including goverment. The minute they violate that rule sue them for everything they have. As the organizer you have the rights to violate your own EULA so do it. It wouldnt be a bad idea to target spammers at the same time in the same way.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
It's the contempt geeks show for the non-computer savy that's at the root of all this. Geeks are going to have an extremely difficult time trying to change anybody's mind about anything with the patronizing elitist attitude that prevails in our community. In our meritocracy, if someone doesn't get it we don't the spend the time to explain it to them in a way that won't leave them with a distaste for us (and therefore our point of view).
And I don't think the Napster contraversy has done anything to help. The rest of the world (that bothers to look at this) sees it pretty clearly. It's copyright infringement. And you know what? It is. Just because you think it's in the best interest of the Music Industry to embrace the technology, doesn't mean you can force them to do it.
It's more than our lack of action that has lead us here, it's our attitude and our treatment of other people both in and out of our community.
dynamo
Perspectrum - The spectrum of all different perspectives
https://www.eff.org/support/joineff.html
It's SSL, and they take many forms of payment, including PayPal and e-gold. I've heard that one reason the Mormon church does so well politically despite the fact that they are small numerically is that almost all of them tithe their income. Well, when are geeks gonna start?
Can your IM do this?
You know, people have been saying "Just wait until suck goes under. Then we'll have a laugh." for years. And yet, there they are.
Greg Knauss has been writing for suck since '96. Is that when they lost their "better writers"?
Face it, He's right on this one.
-nme!
The author claims that Law will triumph over Technology. What about Napster or Freenet? These are only the begining.
Information truly wants to be free, and no law can stop it. Let me explain.
If you close off a person completely, no information can come in or out. But if you give them a slight hole to peek through, they can send anything. Muffle me with a gag, but still let me send ones and zeros with my grunts, and I can say anything. If I'm smart enough, I can scramble those bits in ways that outside listeners won't be able to figure out (encryption).
And if I'm not allowed to grunt, but someone can watch my cell, I can send information by doing things that seem normal to someone who doesn't know what to watch for: moving a cup around, scratching my head, etc. (steganography)
Why hasn't information been free before the internet? Because these sorts of bit contortions can be very complicated and require both the sender and the receiver to know what's going on. Computers allow bit scrambling and hiding schemes to be arbitrarily complex and arbitrarily effective, but still be just as easy to use.
Which leads to my assertion: Give me a small hole to send data through, and as long as I'm not blocked off, I can send anything through that hole. Legal measures can't stop me, not even technical measures can stop me.
--
SUCK is right; if we don't start DOING something instead of whining on /. then that's probably EXACTLY what will happen. Corperations are comming to the internet with just as much care for it's current inhabitants as european settlers had for indians. (i.e. very little, except when we're useful to exploit) Obviously, if we don't start doing something productive NOW, Coperations will regulate the internet, and if we're lucky, we'll end up with nothing but university networks to play on as reservations.
Do not forget. History will be written by the winners.
I guess this is because the US is really not as much the nation of freedom as it is the nation of CORPORATE freedom and power.
Come on what do you think is great with liberalism ? Individual freedom ? pffff....
et les Shadoks pompaient...
Most of these issues -- law vs. cyberspace -- were explored at a much higher intellectual level in Lessig's book "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace". Highly recommended.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You know who you are. You believe in the phrase 'NEVER ASCRIBE TO MALICE THAT WHICH MAY BE EXPLAINED BY STUPIDITY'. You think that point of view makes you wise and sophisticated. Your air of smug pseudo sophistication is stifling.
Well guess what: YOUR ALGORITHM HAS A BUG IN IT!!!! The bug is that evil need only mask its malice is a thin veil of apparent stupidity in order for you to never detect it. In addition you are totally unaware of the implied corollary to your algorithm: "One MAY ascribe to malice that which stupidity CAN'T explain."
You go through life THINKING you understand what is going on; but the truth is YOU HAVEN'T GOT A CLUE! Do you think the evil people in the world don't know how you think? If you were evil wouldn't you exploit that bug in your algorithm? Do you think that evil people are too stupid to see that the key to getting away with what they do is to make sure that no one suspects?
The fact is that it is people like you who are responsible for the success of evil in the world; you wouldn't know evil if spat in your face - you would think it was just someone clearing their throat.
Did it ever occur to you that the perfect hiding place for a psychopathic serial killer is as a judge or a prosecutor? I can assure it occurs to the psychopathic serial killers. Why do you think that Ted Bundy was studying the law? He wanted to be a prosecutor and a judge. Can you picture what kind of prosecutor Ted Bundy would have made? Do you think he would have loved prosecuting somebody like you? About 10% of all judges and prosecutors ARE psychopaths; the only thing distinguishing them from Ted Bundy is that they were able to delay their gratification until they got into a position of power. Do you know that the judge who sentenced Bundy to death was sad that Bundy had thrown away a promising legal career? Bundy was a psychopath ; who but another psychopath would be sad that Bundy had thrown away his career in the legal system?
Perhaps now you can begin to grasp the true meaning of my signature, and get some idea of what I mean by it.
--
The law, 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
>>why should we bother biting the hand that feeds us?
Pod person! It's *we* that are feeding *them*. Where, after all, did all this wonderful technology come from? Not from MBAs in suits, I assure you.
Let's face it, people are getting jealous from geeks. We do what we love, we get huge money out of it, some of us play games like Diablo and Quake and we also get music and porn for free. Unlike many other people we have a damn good life, the government's job is to make it miserable just like the rest of the society.
From a Google hit:
"In 1994, less than 39 percent of voting-age Americans cast general election ballots -- and that was up from 36.5 percent in the off-year congressional elections of 1990, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Even for the 1992 presidential contest, turnout was a mere 55.2 percent of the voting-age populace, though that too was up from 50.1 percent in 1988."
http://www.ij.org/
Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice is what a civil liberties law firm should be. As our nation's only libertarian public interest law firm, we pursue cutting-edge litigation in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion on behalf of individuals whose most basic rights are denied by the State - rights like economic liberty, private property rights, and the right to free speech, not only on paper but also on the Internet.
Simply put, we sue the government when it stands in the way of people trying to earn an honest living, when it takes away individuals' property, when bureaucrats instead of parents dictate the education of children, and when government stifles. We seek a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society.
With all due respect, where the Hell did you go to school? Though my life, from Michigan to Arizona, it's always been the jocks and business majors who were "partying and getting all the girls." They would periodically stop ignoring activism in order to scoff at it.
And who are these english majors that are trendy activists for a living? I don't know any english majors who are making *shit* right now, except for me, who also majored in CS. Which is the only reason I have a job, BTW. I think maybe your rosy view of activism is the result of some strange upbringing... I can tell you it's not like that everywhere.
>> After all, there are plenty of jobs, most of >> us are well paid, why should we bother biting >> the hand that feeds us? Because it's the same hand that ties the leash around our necks, pats us on the head and tells us what good complacent geeks we are.
They should not be allowed to post thost pictures, and just because someone is able to get away with a crime, does not make other crimes acceptable. They do go after and prosecute child pornographers in many countries, but just because one person gets away with violating that law does not make breaking copyright law acceptable.
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
I agree this is the mentality of a lot of geeks. Many claim they have "libertarian" values and take the stance you describe.
Libertarianism supports personal freedom. Freedom to donate to whom you wish in the amounts that you wish, but it also requires personal responsiblity. The responsiblity to actually donate your time and money to causes that are important to you.
That's the problem here, and it's far more pervasive than geeks alone. Americans shun personal responsiblity. They even give up their freedoms in order to aviod responsiblity. They feel more comfortable paying taxes and having their money funneled to programs they don't support.
No political system that requires personal responsiblity is going to work in this country unless there is a major shift in values. Libertarianism, communism, direct democracy, are all flawed because they rely on the citizens. Only the represtative republic sufficiently removes responsiblity from the individual, but it has a lot of compromises.
Anyhow, that's my rant.
Jon Katz can't because: a) he can't write. b) noone has heard of him except for slashdot people (who he has only a little credibility with). c) he doesn't agree with the views of most /. readers. d) He can't work with many politicians. A good leader will work with anyone to get the job done-- not dragging in other issues that aren't related to your group.
Finally, I really don't think that most slashdot readers would actually rally behind anyone except someone who courted them to the exclusion of everyone else.But let's try a test. Who wants to support Orin Hatch? Anyone, anyone? He's fought for fair use protection in copyright law, and as chairman of the Judiciary committee is able to get stuff done. His opponents in the committee are opposed to fair use protections. He was worried about MS before most people. Any takers? No? Why not?
If people on slashdot reward him with thank you emails, and if Utah slashdotters volunteer for him, it will be a sign that this can work. But most computer people I've talked to don't like Hatch. And do you know what? THEY DON'T KNOW WHY! Read up on him. And if you still don't like him, at least admit that some other issue is more important to you than IP law.
If you are apathetic, don't defend it with a lengthy chain of justifications and false fanaticism. Just admit that you aren't doing anything.
If you are involved, I'll apologize to you in person next time I see you. It isn't like there are that many of us.
Are we going to start to see lawsuits coming down on us because "if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks."
Do they really think that we can't see how the crappy old world works? I thought the whole raison d'etre for geekdom was a retirement from the real world - I certainly have no desire to get sucked into the suits world!
I think my brain is dribbling out down the back of my legs
you should read jesse ventura's latest book. :) What you are describing is an abuse of power.
Politicians didn't always only listen to the people who voted for them last election.
How would poor districts ever become rich districts if that were true?
Take this personaility test.
I wonder where the presidential candidates stand on issues like this? Have heard a lot about foreign policy and campaign reform, but nothing about the internet. Wouldn't an on-line chat with Gore or Bush be cool, then all the geeks could get the lowdown on tech related issues.
Q: Mr. Gore, what do you think about the DeCSS ruling? Did you even hear about it?
A: Uhhhh, I like invented the internet.
No seriously, these issues need to be brought up for the coming elections. Good debate material.
According to the Suck.com essay template: That car crash I was in two years ago was the best thing for me. It taught me a lesson, it did. And getting beaten up every day in eighth grade- character building.
When suck goes under, we'll say that it was good for them and the cause of open-source internet humor.
I get my smarmy rants from a more pure source... www.ridiculopathy.com
With the recent slamming of corporations on the Internet, it is becoming more evident that geeks do need organization. This organization cannot be led by extremist, but those more in the mainstream whose pulse is more inline with John Q. Public and his needs. The best way to fight law is not with the anarchy that we all know we can create on the web, but to fight law with law.
An excellent example our favorite geek corporation Microsoft who can hire better lawyers than the government can possibly obtain. We own the lawyers. We can own all the best lawyers, because we have the money now. US society follows profit and the lawyers don't care what laws they pass, just where their paycheck comes from and what they have to do to get a better one.
Individuals getting into the fight is a great way to rally grassroots, but grassroots is an extremely inefficient way to get something done on a major political level (look at what it took to stop Vietnam). The battle will have to be waged at a corporate to corporate level, when large Internet companies start to see declining profits as a direct result of poor legislation we will really see what geek corporations can do. Our high profile losses are the mighty legacy corporations attacking small entities and then vigorously publicizing their victories.
We should hope to see more takeover's like the kind of AOL consuming Time Warner. AOL's interests coincide with our's (I'm certain they want aol.com to be property) and they have the clout to see them through legally.
Worry not about these border skirmishes, but do rally, educate, tout, and organize for the major battles ahead. Legal decision can be overturned.
Jayson Pifer
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
The DeCSS case has shown that yes, U.S. laws can bust you no matter where you reside.
the saddest part is that te US, by far the most Internetr aware country sets such a poor example. And this leads the rest of the countries to follow suit. For example, till recently the Eu treated software as math algos, but now the new rule they r trying to implement is 'Patent everything'. Countries as diverse as Australia (censor everything), India (spy on eveything) and france (u r liable for everything) are implementing bone head rules trying to regulate freedom. The US had a golden oppurtunity to spread true freedom all over the world, but sadly missed it. I am putting my neck out quite a bit but at the zenith of a nations powers lie the seeds of its decadence. The US is taking away from its citizens the very thing that empowered the nation - freedom. and naturally the world follows suit
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
I feel like a child being taught a lesson by his parents.
... is doing the plugged-in set an enourmous favor." But may I point out one fact: the Internet is not the world. It was not brought up by Lawyers, Politicians, Mathemeticians, or even "John Q. Public." It was born and raised of and by geeks. By nerds, by social outcasts; by those who were misunderstood.
The article states that "Lawyers rule the world." And also "the judiciary
What is happening is that the rest of the world is trying to take over this world without understanding it. Lawyers understand law, they don't understand collective agreements. It is generally understood (or was, I should say) that domain names were property. Then the court steps in, because of some swift legal maneuvering and pretty words, and states that they are not property. Geeks understand each other. We understand implicit rules, because we think alike. We know that linking to a program isn't wrong. But the public doesn't.
While I agree completely with the Suck article, I think that there were some points left out. I have only read a few of the Slashdot comments, and my impression was that people simply exclaimed that the article sucked, they didn't understand (amongst the usual trolls, flamebaits, and first-posts). We have two cultures coming together: a geek culture, and the rest of the world. There will be clashes. And as much as I hate to say this, we do need to learn to play by their rules. They are bigger, and they set the standards. As much as we all may hate Microsoft, they are the standard, and we develop by their "rules" (not in the internals of programs, but what they do and how they look).
I have never liked the statement "You need to learn to play by their rules." It doesn't sit well with me. Why? Why should I learn their rules? Why can't they learn mine? Because their bigger. The only reason we need to learn their rules is because they want in, and they're bigger and (pardon my generalization) not quite as bright. And if we let them in, of which we have not much of a choice, we need to learn to play by their rules.
The only thing in the article that doesn't sit well with me was that "Millions use the internet without the slightest idea that their rights are being stripped away, blissfully unaware of what's going on because they don't happen to be members of the choir." Suck makes it sound as though they don't care. They may not directly care, but they will. They will care that they can't send something to someone in private. They will care that they don't own their own domain. When they stumble on these things, they will care. They may need to be educated, but most of all, they need people to fight on their behalf.
And we should. We should learn the rules, but teach the Lawyers a few of our own. Let them know that they are entering a world unlike their own, and there are other standards and expectations of them that they must follow by. But because they aren't as bright, we need to teach them this in their own terms.
Agreed. The lawyers can only prosecute legal entities or individuals; their scope does not include the internet in general. This may mean that the large or identifiable organizations partaking in "questionable" activities will dissapear, but this should not hinder the average user's ability to transfer whatever, with whomever, they want.
I usually can't stand "Suck"'s smarmy attitude, but this time, I gotta say, they're spot on. We of the geek set spend most of our time writing about our gripes and actually doing precious little about them. "I'll show them...I'll write a nasty post on Slashdot!"...that effectively summarizes our modus operandi (and I'm not excluding myself here).
Most of us don't have the money to make the system change. And most of us don't have the connections to make the system change. The only tool available to us is our numbers. I've suggested this before: if we were to coordinate our disregard for these rulings with massive civil disobedience (say by posting links to the deCSS software on every BBS and message board we know of, preferably message boards on corporate sites) we'd be able to put a lot more pressure on the system.
Of course, we'd have to be willing to suffer the legal consequences. We can mitigate the individual suffering by making sure a lot of people participate. It's harder to persecute movements than individuals. But damnit, if we don't start doing stuff like this, Suck will be absolutely right and we will get what we deserve.
Think Different
'nuff said.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
What he's proposing is to create a SIG, not a political party. A SIG lobbies congressmen, and in turn, pays for a part of their campaign.
--
Comparing the skillful manipulation of peoples' opinions to the delicate manipulation of peoples' organs... Um, I sense a logical break here.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Anyone should be able to practice law. If a self-proclaimed lawyer turns out to be a hack, he won't get much business will he? Let the Bar stand as a sort of "certification", a'la MCSE... You don't need it to do the job, but you're more likely to get the job if you have it.
There used to be a legal precept that if the law was too complicated for the average joe to understand, then it is invalid. Think about it: If its impossible to determine just from reading the legal code whether or not something I want to do is a crime, then I shouldn't be helf liable. And "Average Joe" is a legally admissible concept (example: defamation - its only defamation if the average joe would have believed it, and so claiming that President Clinton likes to have sex with his cat before every press conference would be written up as hyperbole.)
Vote Libertarian... They're the only party that wants to make the law easier to understand, defend your freedom, and put Average Joes in office. (USians only, others please disregard)
The real Threed's
--Threed
He also might just save the internet.
Here is a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Suck is always so resplendant with useless links, they could at least have included a useful one.
Thank you for not thinking.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Years ago (15) I believed that the income tax system was unjust, corrupt and unconstitutional. In the sureness of my convictions I refused to file my annual income tax return for several years running. And then came the figurative knock at the door by men with guns. The only thing that saved me was the meagerness of my income.
Geekdom is just getting it's first knock on the door. Best to study the enemy, what they want and how to stop them. The lesson I learned from the IRS was that knee-jerk reactions to injustice usually kick your own ass.
Moderate this guy's post UP. It is important. We need action NOW. DMCA sneaked by precicely because 90% of America had no idea what rights they have and how they are being lost. Everyone write a letter to your Senate, US rep, state senators, state reps. Give a copy of that letter and stamps to all of your family and friends. Tell them to do the same for their friends and family. This is only a start. Join the ACLU. Join the EFF. Educate the masses. Most people have no idea what they are losing. We need a voice that is heard outside of the pages of /. Hell, we need articles editiorals and ads in maintream popular media. TV spots telling people exactly what rights the DMCA takes away. I know this takes lots of money. Maybe we need our own special interest group. For know just write the letters.
I tried giving the EFF money, and I had to fill out waaaaay to many forms and eventually I just gave up. I'd gladly donate 10% of my paycheck every two weeks to them because I know they're actually going to something useful that pertains to me with it. But what happened to anonymity? I don't want to give them my life story just so I can try to help them defend my privacy... Now I just don't care. (unless of course someone can tell me where I'm supposed to send my check)
Apathy: that which is killing us all because we're too damn lazy to do anything about this. Seriously:
1. Starcraft or lobby against DMCA?
2. Porn or trying to figure out what candidate is right for us? (everyone says go with Nader but his foreign policy is laughable)
3. Speak out in favor of personal freedom or go try out gnutella freenet?
Ai yai yai, we're not gonna win jack like this.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
What happens when 499 pounds of that mail is from people who don't vote in the district that the congressman/woman comes from? It goes in the trash.
Our thanks to everyone who is responding by joining EFF. It's heartwarming to see the slashdot community rally to our support; we have been processing memberships all morning. The NY DVD litigation has cost us $1 million so far--a major strain on our small organization. We really need and appreciate your help. FYI, for anyone who joins at the $65 level or higher, we'll send you a 10th anniversary T-shirt as a small token of our appreciation. Thanks again! Shari Steele, Executive Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation, http://www.eff.org/join
Really makes me sad to see so much arrogant trolling in one place... Telling people that they have "zero effect" and then touting how great you supposedly are isn't going to solve anything.
Encourage people to speak - make them think, and hopefully more and more people will become aware of some of the huge problems facing us today in the US and actually choose to make a difference instead of just going along with the crowd, or worse, the media. Actually contributing to the media's impression of over-ego'd and mindless fanatic geeks by posting crap like this, IMHO, is even worse. Even if it is only a troll. "Wellstone"? Rofl, probably not a well known politician nationally, but well known enough... Sigh, everyone, let's at least TRY to be constructive...
By the way...did someone make sure to send Jon Katz the URL for the article?
Spot on! As I sit here waiting for a database and log to dump, I worked through your post. Very cogent. Communications is the key, and a majority of the "l33t" can't do that without resorting to flames and profanity. In particular they can't respond without vilifying the intelligence of the originator which results in an automatic shut-out. And when you're dealing with Congresscritters and attorneys, you have to be respectful and direct, otherwise you're summarily dismissed.
So the analogy holds true: we have a bunch of madmen who live beyond civilization, they explored it, built infrastructure, showed us where to live, and now that civilization encroaches they try to get mean, as a result civ doesn't like them and they don't like civ, so they retreat further west into increasingly obscure technology. And I must plead ignorance as history isn't my strong suit: who is Turner? Dinking with this stuff for 25 years definitely is rotting my mind.
I hate to invoke Shatner, but get a life! Learn to live in society, because you don't have much of a choice, unless you're planning on moving to an oil platform in the middle of the sea. Believe it or not, there's more to life than computers and coding. I actually survived four days without email! It can be done!
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
The unfortunate part is that it takes a long time for the nonsense to get straightened out due to way to many self interested lobbyist groups that only care only about one thing and will never lessen to common sense. Many of them are small, but all too many of them are way to large, the tobacco industry, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) (Determined mothers are the worst offenders of the bunch), Insurance Institute For Highway Safety (IIHS) (there care nothing about safety, only saving insurance companies money and will rather see ever Interstate highway with a speed limit of 50 or less). See my now outdated RDU page for more information on the latter two. Even though the latter two look like they win most of there battles, they don't win them all. The National Speed Limit is now a goner despite IIHS wishes. The unfortunate part is that it took over 14 years for it to happen.
The basic point is eventually things do get better in the United States, it takes way to long for things to happen. So keep on fighting and have faith in the System, just expect to waste way to mush time and money fighting through bureaucrats and layers neither of which tend to demonstrate very much common sense.
she was amazed that the underappreciated, downtrodden nerd didn't associate with other underappreciated downtrodden people, like minorities, environmentalists, labor, etc. but rather associated with big business.
I'm sorry. At my school, the labor and environmentalist activists were partying and getting all the girls. They were the cool crowd. The professors liked them, and the administration lavished them with money. How anyone can say that being a leftist activist in college is not cool is beyond me.
Everyone like that who I knew in HS went to college and majored in English, New Media or Political Science. They are now Cool Kids and Trendy Activists for a living. Despite my 'downtrodden' status, I still haven't dated any of them.
Corporations like Transmeta, VA Linux, Red Hat, etc.-- now THEY hate geeks. Sure. They aren't just in favor of us. They ARE us. They own the server this comment is posted on. They made the computer many of you read this with. They fund the trade shows that other corporations pay to send us to so we can hang out.
With enemies like that, who needs friends?
I don't really have "a lot of contact" with my congress person-- my letters seem to vanish into a black hole with the exception of the email autoresponder that the staff uses to thank me for my email. My written letters usually get a generic "thank you" form letter about a month and a half after I send them.
I am going to start looking into the volunteer thing, as you (and many other posters) have suggested-- it seems to be the best way to get some influence. I don't like it, and it smacks of immorality and a corrupt political system, but if it's the way it must be done-- so be it.
Additionally, I will be talking to the EFF about starting a local chapter. I'm in Indianapolis, if anyone is interested in working with me. People in other cities and states should pursue this route as well.
Good luck.
Every time these subjects come up on /., the favored response is: 'write your congressmen letters'; clue time, that ain't gonna work unless you include a big ole fucking check (cash would be better... what am I saying?! A bomb would be better) to buy off the slimebag. We can't win with moral indignation, not when the IP companies fly the judges out to LA to 'educate' them on the case with luxury hotels and kickbacks.
You want justice in America? Better get out that checkbook.... or a gun.
"Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi"
This post both saddens and worries me. It is just this sort of hubris, this sort of arrogance, that, uncorrected, will seal the doom of freedom on the net.
It is, I guess, understandable. A group of people are used to being the effective rulers, the kings of the court. Most importantly, that group is used to viewing itself as omni-competent. A good feeling. Must be very difficult to face the possiblity that, given the tasks and risks that lie ahead, one's skill set may currently be inadequate, that there are others, who while certainly not smarter, are more knowledgeable in now relevant data and theory, that one is no longer one of the rulers.
Must be really irritating, prehaps humiliating, to face the possibility that one can code in six different languages, and sys admin four different linux distributions and three brands of BSD, manage routers, handle encryption... and then have to bow down to an attorney, a scum bag attorney, because he has a subpoena and a complaint and, though you don't want to admit it, some knowledge you do not have -- knowledge of the law.
I've heard cliches -- the internet was designed to survive an nuclear attack. The net routes around blockage. Bullshit.
The net is grounded in physical reality. Servers, buildings, companies, corporations, people. People who don't want to be arrested, or sued, or lose risk their homes, their jobs or their childrens' college fund. No matter how much you might wish it, the net is beyond neither the reach of the law nor the jurisdiction of the court.
I've already seen the fight played out on the usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology regarding the Scientology secret scriptures. The hubris, the arrogance, the reliance on "technical" solutions, the inevitable result. Yes, the secret scriptures were placed on a server in Russia, and then in China, and people had great fun. People relied on anonymous remailers -- until they were threatened with lawsuits. For awhile the secret scriputres were publicly all over the place. And where are they now? Nowhere. Oh, I'm sure somebody here could point me to a gopher site somewhere that still has them, or some hidden directory of a web site, or someplace else hidden, but that wasn't the point of the net, was it? If it isn't visible on Yahoo or Google or Hot Bot or Alta Vista, it is not there -- not unless your only purpose is to communicate with the "in" crowd, those already in the know. In the meantime one technically very smart, very well meaning, brave alt.religion.scientology person has a $75,000 judgment against him and has filed bankruptcy. Why? Because he thought he was so f*cking smart that his interpretation of the law was correct, he could represent himself in pro per, and all of the lawyers were full of shit. (Sigh, this is perhaps a bit harsh. I've just seen far too many "netizens" assume that all lawyers and judges are scum and idiots, who learn nothing in either law school or practice, and that one can learn it in a weekend.) Why did the other alt.religion.scientology people lose the battle over the secret scriptures? Because they relied only on remailers and distant web sites, and wouldn't bother to learn the law of fair use. (Again, this is a probably a bit unfair, in that some did try to learn, and stay within fair use, but not enough. You get my point.)
Forgive me for perhaps overreacting to your post, and perhaps striking down a strawman that was not there. No offense intended. I actually mean well.
Again, there is a belief among some Slashdoters, and perhaps a need... a craving to believe, that the net is beyond the governments, the law, the jurisdiction of courts. Perhaps a need to believe that one is completely self-reliant, and that one doesn't need attorneys, or to learn the law.
I can predict at least one inevitable response to this post. Freenet. Freenet will save us. If you think that the governments, the legal systems, the societies of the world are really going to allow a completely uncontrolled, unregulated, extra-legal international forum capable of sending child porn, defamtion, slander, trade secrets, and the the binary data for every program, song, film or scanned book ever made to anyone anywhere anytime, you don't get it, and you really really need to. I already saw what happened with the anonymous remailers re: Scientology.
Again, I appolize if I sound harsh. Please consider it tough love. I want you to protect yourselves.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
One could say, hypothetically that we have a constitution thats not largely ignored by the government (I know, a stretch!). And one of the consitutional amendments is the right to keep and bear arms. The founding fathers (who now are probably rolling in their graves) felt this right to be _so important_ as to make it second only to the rights to free speech and association.
Even with such constitutional protection the right to keep and bear arms is under heavy assult. Imagine how vulnerable things that aren't contitutionally protected are to bad law or legal decisions.
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Why is it that people can still post images of 8-year-olds giving blowjobs but dear God, you post a Metallica MP3 and they call out the National Gurad.
The problems I have with the article are twofold:
Suck is pseudo-journalism based on stirring up sensationalism, just like Slashdot.
Hamish
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Money rules. Lawers are bought and sold like whores and judges.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
From the suck article:
"But the decisions are no less legally binding for being silly..."
This is why the article is right. This is what the point is: Being morally right, being technically correct, having half a clue; none of these things will overcome determination, money, big business, and organisation. In othwr words, You're not going to win just because you're right!"
This is the way the world works. Deal with it, or get dirty and change it--really change it--but don't bother ranting and vandalising web sites.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
That's the practical way to take action.
Well Jon Katz, what do you say? I'll be the first here to volunteer wherever I can to make this happen. Anyone here interested in organizing a national effort perhaps by creating local chapters of the EFF? The first person we should contact regarding such local chapters would be EFF's membership coordinator Kathleen Guneratne, who can be reached at kathleen@eff.org If you live in Nevada, please feel free to contact me directly at paul@planetp.cc
www.enthea.org
When did John Katz start writting under the pseudonym of Greg Knauss?!
Midwatch Industries
We all need to get over the notion that John Q. Sheeple and Betsy Nailpolish are going to *ever* become enlightened, put down the remote control and the Doritos and save us all from big bad government.
Active and vocal minorities are what got us where we are (no mean feat). Active and vocal minorities will be what, if anything, saves freedom.
But then, any group of people in the modern day US who believe in freedom are politically irrelevant.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The people in the constitution means ALL the people including geeks. It seem's to me money is becoming the people and if you ain't got any you NOT people.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Ah, the futile plaintive cry of an individual fighting historic inevitability. Fesh, I think you're right. The Internet should be thought of as physical space, as in a "place of our own". But, given that premise, you need to look at how physical space is populated. I don't know how often the point has been made, but once you get thinking along those lines you have to start contemplating Turner's thesis. Rather than a cause for despair for a lost techie Eden, I think Turner would make some interesting points about the values of the frontier/Internet informing popular values in the oh-so-messy analog world. Let's say we accept a comparison between cyberspace and the frontier as Turner knew it when he wrote before the War. Yes, it begins as empty geography and its wildness inculcates values such as democracy, freedom of speech and even lawlessness. Pioneers rough out their existence, preferably growing a little more prosperous, a little fatter, on the unpopulated plains and farms by the new land's shore. Those who came first, however, are forced to move West as the next wave of settlers comes in to populate and build on the rudiments of society as built by the first pioneers. In our discussion, let's pretend "West" is a metaphor for an increasingly sophisticated technology which bars all but the most savvy from joining. That second wave of pioneers, however, learns from those who went before. They continue to have rudimentary dealings with the wave which went West. Their values are informed by the libertarian priorities of those who built the first institutions, and they pass those values on to the third wave of pioneers before they themselves go West in search of more space and freedom. Those first institutions - rough houses, saloons, banks and law - are roughly analogous to the development of the Internet as you (single-handedly by the tone of your post) built. Simple connections between individual computers became more sophisticated with the development of bulletin-boards, browsers, IRC, Hotline and Napster. I'm not tech-savvy, and presume the truly "l33t" are trading kiddie porn far from the prying eyes of technologically stunted lawmen and lawwomen by using a protocol or platform most of us have never heard of - yet. In Turner's thesis, America is a democratic nation which values liberty and the pursuit of, blah blah blah, because those who built its government were influenced by the values of the frontier (my apologies for the over-simplification, Australians and Canadians please note that I'm leaving an entire anti-Turner historiography out of my post for no reason other than brevity). Is the loss of the Internet as purely geek-inhabited space a cause for the gnashing of teeth you demonstrated in your post? Probably not. Values in the analog world are being changed by the ideas created west of the digital Appalacians. The world's media, its governments, and the most important financial and cultural institutions are online - populating the "civilized" portion left empty long ago by the geeks forced to move further west in a search for space. The non-digital world most of us inhabit today is changing quickly because the values of the Internet pioneer are changing institutions. Our politicians understand that peer-to-peer relationships, no matter who the peer is, will win elections. Our banks are quick-changing into responsive, collaborative institutions as they come to understand their physical presence is an anachronism in a world of purely imaginative money. The way the Internet has changed the analog world would please Turner, who would see developments as proof he was right in 1911. The physical frontier was declared closed by the Bureau of the Census in 1901, but the same forces Turner explored are at play one hundred years later in cyberspace. No, geeks don't deserve any recognition for building the Internet, unless we count the geek-as-Jebediah Springfield monument in the digital town square a mark of gratitude for those who tilled the first pastures. The values which sprung up in unpopulated and wild cyberspace were predictable, as has been the subsequent development of the Army Of Lamers and the snake-oil salesmen selling us streaming video as a necessary complement to the 500-channel TV universe. The Internet's builders have played the same role as telephone repairmen 20 years ago and barrel-makers in the nineteenth century. They are technicians with no special claims to special values. The forces which shape frontier development are at the root of our Wild West perception of the Internet. Geeks have played the valuable role of railroad tie-layers on the first digital highways, but their behaviour and beliefs are no different from those which have existed in every generation of Westward-looking sons and daughters
I'm gonna explode! The US has NEVER been a democracy. It's a REPUBLIC and damn proud of it.
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
This is not simple quibbling, it's a very important point. People throw the word "democracy" around without realizing exactly what it means...
In a democracy, the second the people realize that they don't have to vote for the good of the nation, its all downhill from there.
A republic has the same problem on a different level: Special Interest Groups. These fuckers have got to GO.
The real Threed's
--Threed
EFF, ACLU support, registering to vote is all good, but here is another suggestion which has worked for me.
Bear in mind, that the lawyer, etc., are in the "real world". Internet activism is kinda useless, in the sense you are fighting in two different arenas.
One suggestion, which is an extension of what I have used for the efforts of promoting Linux is what amounts to grassroots activism. Actually leave your computer and go out and talk to people. Spread the facts. How many people out there believe they own their copy of Windows, and not just a license to use it? The point is, many people who vote, or have influence, really have no idea what is going on. But, as geeks, we have an enormous benefit - that people listen and respect what we say when it comes to technology. These people have checkbooks as well, as well as a vote. User groups, such as LUGs, can organize to spread information, have people sign petions, raise funds, etc. As you do this, you gain influence.
An example of this is a place I worked about 3 years ago. I basically installed and got their whole computer system up and running. The owner was in such awe of what I did. (Not saying I am good, but relative to him, I appeared to be a genius.) He actually asked my to speak at one of his Businessmens clubs meetings. Which gives me the opportunity to speak to many people, who actually come to listen to me, and what I have to say. Presenting them with facts of how these laws hurt their businesses, this gives them reason to help support what I am for. Whether it be getting them to switch to Linux for their servers, or getting them to write a $500 (tax deductible) to the EFF, with the hopes that no law will be passed that might say, allow monitoring of their email. These types of opportunities present themselves often to those who seek them out.
On another note - don't think lawyers are technically unsavvy. As I have mentioned before, my brother is an IT lawyer. He spends half his time in school learning electronics, coding, an other computer related technologies. The reason is obvious, the more he knows, the more he can win, and the higher his price tag becomes.
The reason I believe so firmly in this type of activism is it works. And well, and has for a long time, on many issues. I can rant and rave and post my ass off, but these don't change anything. Getting the truth out to those people who repect me, well, that helps a lot.
a lesson in the way the real world works
That the entrenched powers will always win their case. Individuals do not matter. Money is everything. The Bill of Rights was an afterthought. Etc, etc, etc.
I much prefer optimism. The precedents which are being set now need be reversed. Then the geeks can move in and set the sorry state of affairs of our judiciary and corporate welfare right.
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Do you REALLY UNDERSTAND what your CALL TO ACTION entails? If geeks were to (somehow) magically organize, "put on suits" and "fight the lawyers" on their own terms; then you better get ready to drain your wallet. It is a FACT that lawyers, (as well as many other well organized "professionals"), learned a long time ago that paying off politicians, (excuse me, "Contributing to the political process"), is simply part of the cost of doing business. Just about every major interest group in the country, (i.e. AARP, NRA, AMA, RIAA, MPAA, NMA, ABA - there are at least a thousand other acronyms representing this group or that group ...), organize their members and collect "voluntary" (or not so voluntary) dues. This money is then used to influence (read "persuade") the lawmakers - or get them to at least consider the group's point of view. (It is no accident that a very substantial percentage - about one-third - of ALL politicians are lawyers.) Even if a miracle happened and geeks somehow managed to form some kind of ASSOCIATION, what are the chances that there would EVER be agreement (and a "united front") against things like UCITA and the DMCA that are being (very aggressively) sought by the lawyers and corporate interests? How much money are you personally willing to pay (in yearly membership dues) to oppose all these erosions to our cherished freedoms? FACT: "Freedom" costs money. How much are you willing to pay?
An old Chinese proverb states: "Choose your enemy carefully, for he is the one you are most likely to become." Engineers in general (and geeks in particular) have always been adverse to heavy political involvement. You can't do engineering work, (or any kind of work that requires heavy and prolonged concentration), and also do politics. They're BOTH full time jobs. Unless geeks (en masse) are willing to put up [at least] $50 to $100 per year in order to hire lobbyists, (and also consent to having your thinking decided for you by your association's leadership); then you shouldn't be too surprised that lawyers (who do play this game) will continue to rule the world.
This has it's precedents, Can you say "Boston Tea Party", but on a much larger scale, of course.
G
Nader is against corporations controlling the government and making unsafe products, etc. This does not mean he is for big government as in "oppressive." This means that if a business wants to make money in America, it must abide by the rules and be subject to the will of the people, not the other way around.
I agree with most libertarian values, i.e. personal freedom above all. But unfettered business is destructive. They will lie, cheat, and steal in the pursuit of profit. When an individual breaks the law, he goes to jail or in extreme cases he loses his life! (I disagree with the death penalty because there is no way to guarantee that the convicted is not innocent. Due process and all that, I know, but some people are still murdered by the state. And that is more evil than any DMCA or UCITA don't you think?) A corporation, if the coverup is not complete, might be convicted and may get a large fine. Ouchie. Because a corporation is a profit consuming undying monster, we need a body set up to strictly govern them and make sure they stay in their place. Libertarians seem mostly to be corporate employees, VC's and the like whose "eliminate government!" mantra is really just a self serving wallent expanding point of view.
So I lean more towards Nader, who has a proven track record of protecting the individual, making big business accountable and selflessly serving the public trust. He isn't a lifetime politician, just an intelligent, honest man who has proven his ability to work for YOUR rights over those of BUSINESS. No other candidate has this, hence I will vote for him in November.
Maybe you should too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AFAIK the most egregious portions of those bills have been removed. But we get closer and closer to the brink every time this oppressive shit comes down to the wire.
Suck, like Slashdot, is a business. They get revenue from eyeballs and will do whatever it takes to get them. People in glass houses...
I challenge anybody to get the geeks into a cohesive movement that's taken seriously. All the yammering about 'open source', 'free knowledge', etc... Will just make the whole body look like a bunch of lunatics. Not to forget, rags like 2600, and the rest of the same ilk who can't seem to move on with their lives past 'phreaking' or whatever the hell it was they were doing when they were 15 during their 'glory years'.
You just can't take a group of people that look and act like misfits seriously no matter how large they are.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I know that's why I started dialing BBS's back in the 80's. You could find discussions that DIDN'T revolve around real world issues. I could talk to people about writing software or about how this new protocol called zmodem was the fastest transfer available. I mean, it wasn't cool to be a computer geek back then, but that's why we liked the 'net' (if you can call a bunch of 300-2400 baud modems a net).
I think a main problem with the net is that it has become way to chic, people seem to forget who and what was originally on it.
trb
I'm nearly ready to join the omnifrog fan club, seeing as s/he got away with the remark that it seems the majority of "geeks" have no clue about how the world works.
Does anybody else here get sick of the constant adolescent whining about RIAA, Metallica, IP, "ageism" - there's a good one - and whatever else? And ah, yes.. Like several of the trolls enjoy pointing out, how much of a contrast it is to the zealous protection of the GPL. OH MY GOD!! THEY DIDN'T RELEASE THE SOURCE CODE!! Let's start an emailing campaign because we're ignorant of the fact that it is laughed off and too lazy to actually put pen to paper. (Online voting - "Some of us care a lot about politics. Really! But... We can't take ten minutes out of our day to go to a polling station and vote once every four years.")
Pft.
And while I'm whining on the topic of all this other whining, I'd like to ask that Slashdot adds a Napster catagory, so I and the others who feel likewise can filter out the crap.
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Suck seems to think that we can. It is time to stand up and take back what's supposed to be ours. But it's not going to happen by playing by their rules. Does anyone really believe that even a large group of people can effect the outcome of a case going through the US Court System? The people will eventually have to take what belongs to them from the power elite. Don't play by their rules, let's make a new set of rules that benefit all people worldwide not just the power elite!!!!!
High School:
Anyway.. Everyone studies economics, government, and lots of history in high school. It's pretty hard to get work without graduating from high school. Maybe college should start in 10th grade. Because 10th-12th are just fuck around times. I think they keep you there just so you can mature. Because you have to take the same classes over in College. Unless you take AP classes which is just extra work for you, for no reason, when you should be enjoying your high school years.
College:
Government (at three colleges I've been at) has been required. US History is also required. Economics isn't, but social sciences is. Also several humanities classes.
And I agree with you. It should be changed to Tech news that matters. I'm not a nerd. I don't believe everything on Slashdot matters.
Sincerely,
Deepak Jagannath
IS Administrator - Juma Ventures - www.jumaventures.org
Webmaster - Got Speed? - www.gotspeed.com
anon.penet.fi hrm?
I wouldn't crow too loudly. That said, finland is certainly one of the most civilised countries in the world in that it practices what it preaches and preaches pretty insightfully. For example, it is one of the few to support female emancipation.
Ok, aside from the fact that Special Interest Groups are slowly but surely crushing freedom in this country, we gotta remember the old adage: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
Yesterday we were talking about forming a union, an idea that was quickly dumped as impractical and unnecessary. Today we're talking about how geeks aren't participating in the political process and as a result we're getting our rights trampled on.
Let's go back to that union idea, shall we? If we had a union, we could lobby against crap we don't like. We could negotiate with our employers and tell them "Hey, you support this law, you don't get tech support for a week. Try doing business without your servers, chum." or even "Hey, you encrypt that format and try to make it another DeCSS fiasco, and we'll make you pay for it."
In short, a union would give the geeks a blunt instrument to bash the idiots of the world on the head with. It would help us on the job front AND on the political front. I say let's do it, and get our frickin' heads out of the sand! The government, big business, and what not do NOT operate on the same principles we do. Money counts more than technichal merit right now and we gotta turn that trend around! The ONLY way to do that is to play their game and beat 'em at it.
The real Threed's
--Threed
--- Submission is feudal.
I commend you for being so proactive - I personally would never spare the energy to write to a congressperson. It's not that I'm lazy (well, not totally) but because I know that it will do no good. Elected officials (most, anyways) only care about one thing: being re-elected. The fact that one or two people out of his or her district disagrees with the DMCA means nothing. So long as they promise to "restore dignigy" to their office, "cut taxes for those who really need it," and along the way smear the reputation of their opponent, they are going to get re-elected, which means another 4 or 6 years of not having to go to a job.
I agree with you, though. People in general do not do enough to make their causes known. I myself am guilty of this on multiple occasions. The difference is, I'm cynical and pessimistic enough to realize that it won't do me a bit of good to write to a congressperson (through E-mail, snail mail, or carrier pigeon) because I represent a very small portion of their voting constituency. "Please some of the people all of the time" and you will get elected; I guarantee.
On a side note: look at us now. What do we do? We post to Slashdot. We gripe to our co-workers. We refuse to take action. This is exactly what Salon was talking about, and I for one am disgusted at my own hypocracy (not enough to change, though)
------
The geeks control technology in America. Woe to anyone who thinks they can run roughshod over us forever. Trivial example #1: most all of the internet, e-commerce and all, coming to a grinding halt on Internet Strike Day, which is currently scheduled for... Jan 01, 2001.
It's going to be one of those things like Call in Sick Day -- no one can say the server/router/switch didn't really go bad/crash/get cracked on that day. Promises to be great fun.
This anger was visible in the verdict against Microsoft. I can imagine the judge thinking, "Not only have you broken the law, defied my will and flaunted it, YOU LIED TO ME and WASTED MY TIME, damn you!"
Unfortunately, such anger does not disscriminate and the spanking is comming our way too. Pervesely, it's doing more good for the larger companies that frustrated the public to begin with.
The solution is education. Let people know that there is a better way. I gave my sister a 3 minute talk about the open software business model, including the bit about how Tech Support might be able to fix her problem and then share the fix openly so that others don't have it. She loved it and, as a person who makes a living by charging for her time, immediatly grasped the concept. Before hand she really had no idea such things existed. Not everyone has time to read the New York Times, let alone Slashdot. Tell your friends first hand.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
to keep the real world out, I'd get used to it. I read a lot of Slashdot posts that boil down to "Why don't we just make the Internet back into what it was?" The answer is: We can't. Of the millions (billions?) of people on the internet, only a small fraction really care about anything beyond whether their e-mail and AIM work. Of that small fraction, at least half corporate types who lean towards the views of their company and paycheck. Of the half that are left a good number think that some real world influence on the net is positive (I happen to like being able to buy stuff online.) Since last I checked it is pretty much impossible to throw all of these people off the 'Net, we have to deal with the fact that the real world is now firmly entrenched and not leaving. We have to choices:
1) Absorb the good stuff and fight the bad stuff that is coming in. (Yes, that means we WILL lose some fights against the bad stuff, but life works that way.), or:
2) Stick our heads in the sand and loose everything while we hang out in ever more isolated enclaves that will eventually be destroyed.
People do not forget who and what was originally here, they don't care. We're like the indians being sent further and further west, except we don't even shoot back. (No, I am not talking about literal armed resistance.) Whining about how they are ruining our place isn't going to stop it from being ruined. We can't make things like they were (and I for one would not particuarlly want to) so we need to take a hand in how they will be.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Reading through the posts here, I see more criticisms of this article than praises. Did everyone read the article? Or was the first paragraph and every subsequent negative thing read? He's exactly right, he hit it dead on the nail. Our freedoms are being swept out from our feet every day and those who even realize this can't make a coherent movement to stop it. The best we can do is scream and accuse and flame and make stupid posts like virtually every one to this story so far.
We do need a lesson... a lesson in putting on your game face and getting results. Bitching and moaning is going to get you ignored, or worse, targetted. Exactly as the suck article says, we need to play their game. Whether you like it or not, bite the bullet, face reality, and deal with it. The rest of the world deals with it every day, or at least the part that isn't having its freedoms stripped away...
The article (As most do on Suck, I've found) takes great delight in lambasting people or ideas inconstructively, preferring to use emotion-laced terms ('caterwauling'? Please.) to get their point across. The author gets the opportunity to cloak his disgust for the Internet communities' response to litigation in ostensibly a wake-up call format, while spending most of the time making fun of 'geeks'.
That having been said, the article does bring up some interesting points. I happen to think he's wrong on many of them, and believe the author needs to spend less time insulting people and more time researching history.
I see two major flaws with the article:
First, the concept that the Internet's response to things such as the deCSS ruling should have been an immediate grass-roots lobbying effort. I will point out to Mr. Knauss that throughout history it has taken more than a year or two's worth of bad judgement on the part of our judiciary or legislature to spur the American people to action, online or off. One needs only to look at the history of civil rights, women's sufferage, the drug war, and more recently civil asset forfeiture to see that in fact moral outrage takes time to build, and even more time to organize. This situation is complicated by the fact that, as Mr. Knauss himself points out, the 'right' decisions were being made for some time, giving those of us who are aware of these issues the impression that perhaps the old adages of personal freedom, privacy, and free speech would be applied as appropriate to the online sector. I, for one, fault no one for still resting on their laurels after the CDA decision and subsequent judgements based on it's precedent sent a clear message that freedom of speech would not be infringed in any forum, online not just included but especially.
Mr. Knauss implies but does not say explicitly what he means about lawyers ruling the world -- He means CORPORATE lawyers. The online community is as complacent as it is because nearly every attempt by the US goverment trying to shape the Internet to it's desires of privacy and anti-pornography on it's own have failed. Only when corporate America jumped into the fray with an alacrity that no one would have forseen did the whole landscape flip upside-down, and seemingly black-and-white issues become greyed by back-alley lobbying and special interest groups.
Which brings us to my second main problem with the article: What exactly does Mr. Knauss expect the online community to do? Is he under the (mistaken) belief that there's a large number of lobbying groups out there that exist solely for preserving free speech? Does he have evidence that in the past, in response to outright threats against freedom of speech or consumer's rights, massive grass-roots efforts have sprung forth with millions of dollars behind them to battle the corporate America behemoth? When the RIAA fought succesfully to impose tariffs on recordable media, when CD price-fixing investigations shockingly came up empty, when the FCC bowed to pressure and reversed their recent decision on lower-power FM broadcast licenses, when the laws were changed to allow even greated radio monopolies in geographic areas, did the teeming millions rise up to fight these threats?
No, they did not. Why? Because, just like now, they didn't know it was happening, nor did they understand the implications of it -- What it meant to *them*. Educating the American public is a difficult if nigh-impossible task, particularly when the powers-that-be have a vested interested in their continued ignorance both in general and on a specific issue, and whining (And make no mistake, he IS engaging in the very sort of behavior he mocks) about it in insignificant online magazines certainly isn't going to change that. Neither is posts to Slashdot, or letters to Time magazine.
The Internet is, at it's core, a forum for speech. As such, it responds to threats against it with the *only* tool it has -- More speech. Americcan is FOUNDED on the notion that from such speech can come action, and that the more public debate, discussion, and strategizing there is about issues that affect us the better off we are. We are, in effect, betting on the future legitimacy of the Internet as a lobbying tool in and of itself, with the capability of tapping into the public's thoughts on various subjects and acting on them accordingly without big dollars needing to be spent. No, it's not working. No, it may not ever work. But I wouldn't even consider belittling those who are relying on it, as a fundamentally American method of getting your voice heard -- Talking.
Corporate America will, as they always have, have their way the the people judicially and legislatively. Attempting to fight the combined marketing, lobbying, and financial power of these giants is a waste of time, and history proves this absolutely. The war will be fought in the courtooms, as it has been, and the war will be lost at first, as it's always been. Whether we will win or not time will tell, but I for one will contribute to the effort as Mr. Knauss did -- With speech.
-- If we were in any other industry they would've shot us a long time ago.
However, Democrats generally have a major of issues they agree upon and the Republicans too -- (I'm not so sure we can say the same about the Reform Party but I digress.)
The point is there are some issues that the "Geek" community does agree on. And perhaps you/we/us/them/it should develop a PAC or, hell, even a Party that is formed on those issues.
Just a thought.
"a) he can't write. b) noone has heard of him except for slashdot people (who he has only a little credibility with). c) he doesn't agree with the views of most /. readers. d) He can't work with many politicians."
a) Unfortunately, you are a writing eununch, sir, who can critique it but not do it yourself.
b) I live in Canada, and sometimes I read a province wide newspaper. I have seen articles and quotations by Jon Katz in my backwoods little Albertan newspaper. Jon Katz is internationally showcased.
c) He doesn't? Well, he's a paranoid libertairian, at least.
d) Are you kidneying?
the difference is that it's actually possible to get big government to be on your side through the democratic/lobbying/activism process, where big business will always only be on the side of profit
No, the difference is that if I don't like a business I just don't buy their product. Regardless of if I like or dislike government I have no choice to buy their product... alot of their product.. so much that nearly half of my income goes to purchase that product.
I don't associate with environmentalists, minority (activist groups), or labor because these people see the government as a big club to beat over the heads of those who do not agree with them. I (and probably most geeks) would like the government to perform just the jobs they are constitutionally bound to do and nothing else (i.e. national defense and protecting constitutional rights).
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
If a party knows you will cast your vote for them no matter what, then you can hardly influence them much.
By voting for Nader, I hope to send a message to the Democrats that their practice of creeping rightwards year after year is alienating me.
--
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Please don't believe this. Please. It is a matter of incentive, subpeonas, and economics.
Again, I would point to the history of the usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology regarding the Scientology secret scriptures. ISPs subpoened, anonymous remailers intimidated, individuals subpeoned and sued, at least one bankrupted.
You might respond, persuasively, that the newsgroup had maybe 100 or so people participating, while the net has millions. Perhaps your view of salvation is fast pipe DSL --cable modem -- T1 peer to peer networking among millions of people sharing mp3s, films, books, win2k, whatever. Perhaps you think that the authorities could never prosecute everyone. I predict that owners of IP might adopt a modified IRS model -- a few, high profile, devestating lawsuits -- perhaps punitive damages or even criminal prosecutions for wilfull copyright violations. They would seed the system with spies who download stuff, and then launch the supoenas -- phone records, ISP log on data. Get some favorable, seemingly harmless legislation through congress requiring the retention of such data for a period of, say, 5 years, for the purpose of suit. Perhaps such legislation would even have strengthened safeguards re: probable cause -- which will always be satisfied give the prima facie case establised by the recorded illicit download.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not saying that the situation is hopeless, or that the IP owners and their lawyers will inevitably win every argument, or that technical solutions that increase the cost of enforcement are without merit. Not at all. Just please don't rely only on technical solutions, and please don't assume that technical solutions alone will keep you safe.
Unfortunately, while technical ability is very important, you also need lawyers, lobbyists, politicians and organization.
(I was attempted to refer to Warren Zevon's song "Laywer's Guns and Money," but I don't want to give anyone any bad ideas.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
While we're on the subject of clue-stick beatings, consider that your third-party vote has ZERO impact on the political process. There is exactly zippy chance that your candidate would win, thus, your vote goes into a black hole of 'votes that don't help decide the outcome'.
A person who doesn't vote is only voting for whoever wins, goes the old saying. By the same token, whoever votes for Ralph Nader is simply abstaining from participation in the political process, at least from a macro perspective.
You are, of course, free to vote for whomever you want. Just know that you're just as bad as the folks who don't vote.
== It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. -Aristotle
I've returned to the U.S. for the first time in a year and I'm freaked out. Part of it, I suppose, is the craziness of election year. Part of it is genuine culture shock. I know living overseas that its boomtime for the economy and so on, but that didn't prepare me for how confused and despondent and cynical and unhappy everyone seems.
In the culture as a whole, all it seems there is to do is shop. The Net offered us freedom from that. But no longer. It's over. It's a big strip mall. We lost. When Britney Fucking Spears is singing about her email lover you know that ubiquity won out and what made us geeks special is lost forever. So we adapt or die. What we have to fight to preserve now are essential freedoms. It's the falling action, the final movement. At least some of us might get it together now. You know, for all the talk of Napster blah blah blah, this week was a real eye opener about another side to the whole fucking story. My friend's in a band in Seattle. Recently Paul Schell, the idiot who fucked up the WTO situation, vetoed a law approved 7:1 by the city council to change laws regarding all ages shows so that they would retain the protection and safety that club owners need while lifting age restrictions so that young people could take part in a culture, a scene, a lifestyle - something other than going to the fucking mall.
My friends in a band were playing the Bumbershoot festival and called up Paul Schell in front of 700 audience members and got everyone to let him know what his chances of getting their votes are. It was great. In one coordinated moment it was made clear Mr. Schell had lost 700 votes. Audience was instructed to meet with people passing out fliers to learn about more constructive ways they can help.
This was real action on a micro level that could extend out, was active, was real, had consequences and reality to it. Unlike the bitching and moaning us creative typists who clog bandwidth with our universally fleeting opinions that register for about a nanosecond in the constantly updating Net, where things are to be forgotten as soon as possible.
And this band, who have NOT sold out, who have refused corporate sponsorship and money and even deals that would extend creative autonomny with corporate money - just out of passion and experience with their culture of music - they will barely make the poverty line in income off of their album this year. Most of them work full time in a non profit center shipping anti violence pamphlets to schools to make a living. Despite being "successful", with albums sold across the US, sold out shows, and real media coverage. So how many of their tracks can I find on Napster? Plenty.
What I find distressing about the current geek climate is that there has been no change in our culture to reflect the changes in society and politics. What I find is a bizzare generation of mostly male zealots who believe themselves to be the front runners for a massive change in civilization, entirely conservative at their core in their political beliefs as far as it extends to protecting their ability to make money and save on taxes - yet when it comes to the "liberty" of being able to rip off some other culture for their own enjoyment and because they can, the greed comes out in spades.
Seeing what I did in Seattle this week taught me that. We're completely adrift and need to wake up and change what's important and agree on major things as a whole, determine what's really fucking important instead of whining forever and forever until we are treated like a grown up AV club.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
One thing you missed is there are a lot of people that work in the technology industry here. A lot of us don't have time to volunteer. A lot of us are in college too. And more importantly we must have fun. You can't be a gimp working 24/7. I myself have to hang out, travel, snowboard, dj, etc.
I would love to help if I can do it electronically. Donations, petitions, alerts on issues very important that affects a lot of people.
I am not a great leader. I have already thought about it. I asked the Slashdot staff and they said a lot of people have asked them, but they didn't do anything. I looked at the EFF. I wasn't too impressed.
And there is money out there. Nonprofits get LOTS AND LOTS of money. There is plenty of money in Silicon Valley to go to something like this. I'm sure even companies that are being sued over an issue would donate too. It sucks, I read about lawsuits all the time lately this year, and their decisions are going to effect the whole industry. And big business has control. It's sickening.
Sincerely,
Deepak Jagannath
IS Administrator - Juma Ventures - www.jumaventures.org
Webmaster - Got Speed? - www.gotspeed.com
The article is probably the best i've seen with respect to what is going on in the intersection between the law and the net, but it misses two key points (which are actually probably related).
(1) The people who post in discussion fora such as these are a distinctly *different* group than the average web user. We (mostly) work on computers, and (again mostly) view the net as an essential part of our day-to-day lives. The average web user, however, is just looking for (a) information about some specific topic; (b) entertainment; (c) the ability to purchase things online rather than in a store. These people *don't care* about the theoretical arguments we're involved in. They don't understand the technical arguments, and they fail to see why the same rules that apply to the people already providing what they want from the net shouldn't apply to people on the net as well.
(b) Effective political action depends on the confluence of *three* things: the number of people who care about an issue, the intensity with which they care, and the amount of money they have to throw at the issue. The 'online community' is having problems with all three of those.
Take, for example, the deCSS case. The number of people who actually care *in either direction* is fairly small; most people outside of the two industries involved haven't even heard of it. For all that some advocates of free computing are really passionate about this issue, *in general*, the intensity with which the MPAA cares is much higher --- in their viewpoint, it's literally a life-or-death fight. Partly as a result of the lack of intensity, the MPAA is able to throw more money at the problem than the geeks are; it is almost inevitably going to win.
The same balance of forces exists in almost every part of the law where geeks are currently losing: the number of people who care is small, the other side cares more intensely, and the other side can throw more money at the problem.
In order to fix this *at the political level* (because the politicians can change the law, this is where the battle really needs to take place), at least two of those three need to change. But that's a difficult proposition *until the law accidentally steps on the toes of non-geeks*, for reasons explained under (1) above.
I think that eventually that will happen: the courts will issue a ruling which accidentally broadens the number of people who care and deepens the intensity with which they care. But *until* that happens, I doubt there's anything that can be done which will actually be effective in reshaping the law in ways that make more sense from the point of view of the technology crowd.
Big business is fine.
Big business affecting government for it's own profit is bad.
The least amount of government in order for the system to function is best. Thats why I don't like democrats.
Sincerely,
Deepak Jagannath
IS Administrator - Juma Ventures - www.jumaventures.org
Webmaster - Got Speed? - www.gotspeed.com
This is exactly the type of thing Borsook was talking about in her book--she was amazed that the underappreciated, downtrodden nerd didn't associate with other underappreciated downtrodden people, like minorities, environmentalists, labor, etc. but rather associated with big business.
Now we're learning that big business isn't the nerd's friend any more than big government is; and the difference is that it's actually possible to get big government to be on your side through the democratic/lobbying/activism process, where big business will always only be on the side of profit, which may or may not be in the nerds' best interest.
And it's always a good bet that small government (i.e. local, or all those other downtrodden minorities) can be on the nerd's side if a little activism takes place.
So support the EFF and ACLU, and build coalitions with other activists, as is starting to happen at the coalition demonstrations like those in Seattle, Philly, and LA. Prague's coming up!
Note that the demonstrations, while valuable and important, are less effective than lobbying and working with the system, especially since we're talking about national law-making, not local problems (like police violence) or global problems (like the World Bank), though there are plently of local and global considerations.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
If you were lucky enough you were born into it, if not you have to practically sell your soul.
Once upon a time hard work would get you money. Today is who you know, how you market and how much you have.
There are less and less working stiffs becoming rich today.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
As group of individuals with common goal we need to policticly organize. Start letter writing campiagns. Make the everyday person aware what are the things that are being lost here the ability to share information with your peers and the freedom of choices.
But he's forgetting something, the 'can be done' attitude is what will prevail for a simple reason: short of shutting down the net, you can't stop information from being transmitted. It's the same in the case against Napster. Just because you shut one program down doesn't mean you've solved the problem.
You can scan for bit patterns all you want, someone's just gonna come up with a new way to organize those bits. As long as the information is allowed to pass from point A to point B, you can check it all you want, but if the information is well hidden, it's gonna get through. Not that it's ethical to steal music or software, but it's going to happen. Thankfully I think most of us agree that the good parts of the net outweigh the bad. When that is no longer true, then we can really worry.
trb
OK, this will have zero effect. Why? Because slashdot people don't vote. And when they do vote, they vote for third parties that have no chance of winning. And when they do vote for major party candidates, it is based on abortion, or human rights in Uzbekistan, etc. Or more likely, who the media told them is the 'hip' candidate.
Slashdot people also refuse to volunteer in campaigns. They also refuse to help local candidates in local elections. They love watching, and writing about, the media COVERAGE of politics, but have no interest in the political process.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Support third parties; don't vote; don't get involved and volunteer; don't write even a simple letter your congressman; ignore local elections. Oops! No wonder political leaders don't listen to you. YOU HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING TO THEM YET. You've told the Slashdot moderators a lot. But in terms of actual opinions stated, backed by the willingness to work, you've done ZERO. Note that I haven't talked money yet. Donating money is great, but peanuts compared to actual involvement.
Do you think hiring a PAC will make a difference? PACs are important because they represent voters-- individually, their contribution limits prevent any one PAC from being too influential. Politicians have learned the hard way that Slashdot people don't vote for them, no matter how hard they try to court them.
I'm sorry. I am not accustomed to flaming all of Slashdot, but you all win this year's oscar for unfounded bitching. I have been involved in politics for three years, half of which were spent volunteering on and off. I've never worked with or joined a special interest group (unless /. counts as a special interest) and I have never given a dime of money-- just time and work.
I know lobbyists, politicians, campaign operatives, Very Important People, and congressional staffers. I can guarantee you that in my three years I have seen exactly one slashdot regular. ONE. He's doing his part. I'm doing mine. Are you doing yours?
I have worked ceaselessly to promote issues important to us. And while I've made some tiny progress, I am alone. The EFF, which is our PAC, is alone. The labor unions can rally millions of voters to the polls. They gave Ralph Nader a shred of a chance, then took it away. How? With votes-- the basic unit of political influence.
Every plan for an Association will fail based on the critical insight that Slashdot people won't Associate. They might put some money, but they certainly won't vote based on these issues. Except possibly for President-- one vote in four years isn't too much to ask for. But then again, most civil libertarians are voting for Harry Browne, so why would the major party candidates care?
I guess I'm mad because I've put the last few years of my life and some damn hard work into politics. I have gotten real, measurable results. And the rest of you, instead of helping, complain ceaselessly on slashdot about stuff that you get DEAD WRONG, and wonder why things don't go your way. If you can't participate, personally, in the process, then don't complain that it doesn't go your way. Democracy's great strength is feature, but it is also a user requirement.
I have suggested that people read Heinlein's Take Back Your Government . Someone once called me naive for thinking that that is how things work in the Real World. As a registered member of the Real World, I can assure you that I have personal experience that Heinlein is right, rather than the experience of watching pundit shows on TV.
Democracy is participated in, not purchased. It isn't what people who sell advertisements to fund their news shows say, but it is true.
Er, actually, you only need more votes than anyone else. Clinton was elected with less than 50% of the popular vote.
I think they're close in their analysis, but I think they just missed on three big points.
First of all, I don't think the decisions of late have been all that bad on a fundamental level. There are two type of legal decisions we may disagree with - those that are merely upholding existing law (i.e., the mp3.com case) and those that strike at fundamental constitutional issues (i.e., the Communications Decency Act, the DeCSS case). With the notable exception of the DeCSS case, the courts have been doing the Right Thing with the net. We have thus far managed to avoid the kind of broad-based regulation that other media technologies received during their initial rises to popularity. The Communications Decency act really restored my faith in our nation's court systems - a bunch of old white guys who had never even seen a computer were still able to "get it" about the net and free speech. The DeCSS case is unfortunate, but there is a competing precedent at the Federal level, in the 9th circuit, in which Judge Patel (currently hated becuase of her Napster decision) decided very clearly in the Bernstein case, "[S]ource code...must be viewed as expressive for First Ammendment purposes, and thus is entitled to the protections of the prior restraint doctrine" (i.e., the government can't prevent you from publishing source code). Judge Patel's ruling is clearly in conflict with the recent DeCSS decision, and I'd expect the Supreme Court to take this one up.
If Patel was so cool on crypto, why doesn't she get Napster? Well, they're two different issues. The crypto issue was a fundamental freedom of speech issue, bringing up new legal arguments, attempting to determine if there was constitutional protection for a given type of speech. She found (correctly, in my view) that there is. On Napster, she is being asked to decide whether Napster is violating current copyright law by being a Vicarious Infringer. Clearly, according to the DMCA, they are. The argument about whether the DMCA should prohibit what Napster does is a complex one. My personal view is that, as long as the Constitution calls out Intellectual Property protections, something like the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions make sense. The question of whether the Constitution aught to have IP in it at ALL is a different one, but Judge Patel has no ability to simply change the Constitution. I guess what I'm trying to get across here is that the legal system's main power [in fundamental Net issues] has to do with finding laws unconstitutional. Judge Patel is currently trying to balance the IP protections given in the Constitution with the First Ammendment. In the case of Napster, I think the current DMCA prohibitions make constitutional sense. They say, "You can't copy this stuff." In the case of DeCSS, they don't make Constitutional sense. They say "You can't make a device (or provide speech that explains in exact detail) that could copy this stuff." It's essentially the same issue Judge Patel ruled on in the Bernstein case. I'm optimistic the Supreme Court will do the Right Thing when asked to decide whether Bernstein was right or the MPAA is right. If you think the Constitution is wrong on the issue of IP, that's another point, but you need to be organizing a Constitutional Ammendment, not getting angrgy at judges who are just doing their jobs.
Secondly, the Suck article says, basically, the geeks naively think they're gonna win because they don't really understand how things work. I think personally that geeks think we're going to win because we have a fundamental faith that, if we get up and make logical arguments, that logic will overcome corporate lobbying, etc. Amazingly, I believe there is some truth to this. We do need to be eternally vigilant, and the efforts of the EFF, for example, are invaluable in leading the fight. One place we really need to be on the lookout in the future is copyright law - the big copyright holders are going to continue to lobby congress for as many prohibitions on our right to fair use as they can. And, as I said above, the Constitution calls out IP protection as one of the few things Congress can actually do something about, so we don't really have a Constitutional leg to stand on unless they do something that ridiculously violates the First Ammendment.
Finally, I think the biggest trouble we get in is uninformed legal theorizing and hair splitting. This is exactly what just hung mp3.com out to dry. They said, "This makes sense to me, the end-user isn't violating anything, let's do it." Clearly, under current copyright law, however, they made 80,000 unauthorized copies of CDs for commercial gain. You can argue if you want about whether this should be legal, but it is unquestionable right now that it is not legal, and hasn't been for 125 years. The second part, the hair-splitting, is where we read laws (or often times don't), and say things like, "Aha! It says here in the DMCA that copyright controls have to be effective, and if I can break them, they're obviously not, so we're OK!" The law, as the Suck article rightly points out, is grey shades and precedents. It's intent and "Legislative History" (what were the Congresspeople talking about when they wrote this, what did they really mean). Cases can be turned over on technicalities, but laws never are.
Moving forward, there are two areas we need to think about. The first are the fundamental, Constitutional issues. Things like source code as speech, linking, the Communications Decency Act, etc. I think that we will continue to win these, because they are pretty clearly cut in our favor. The second issue has to do with IP, and things like UCITA, and the DMCA's anti-reverse engineering provisions. These items either may be Constitutional, or there is some basic doubt about whether they are, or not. The copyright owners, as well, will continue to lobby Congress to extend their rights and reduce ours, and we'll need a solid lobbying organization to fight that.
There are challenges ahead of us, as always. But if we think about what we say, and put our money where our mouths are, I think we can win the important ones. There will be some battles we won't like the outcome of, but that's pretty well inevitable in a democracy.
Oh, and, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss!"
History is on your side, of course, no third party has ever had an effect on the American system. That's why we have to put up with the South and their "peculiar institution" of slavery to this very day.
I wish you Whigs good luck in the general election, as for me, I'll continue to vote Libertarian.
~moron~
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
He was shilling a site- and wasted a hell of a lot fewer lines of text than you did missing the point.
P.s. If you really do have a metaphorical ass, it's probably best not to mention it in mixed company.
Another ignorant idiot. The victory in Europe was not won by the Americans; it was won by the bravery and sacrifices of the Soviet people. Normandy happened after the fate of the war was already decided on the Eastern front.
;-)
Without the US they would not be speaking German, they'd be speaking Russian and building communism
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Frankly, you're full of it.
I vote. I vote for third party candidates. So what if they "don't have a chance of winning"? This is an election, not a horse race. The two major candidates are, IMHO, slime. Why vote for one or the other? That's what they want you to do.
If I vote for a third-party candidate, and one of the big two win, I get a slime officer. If I vote for one of the big two, and he or she wins, I get a slime officer; same difference. If one slimer needs one more vote to win, I stop him whether I vote for the other slimer or the third party candidate. You don't need more votes than anybody else, you need over 50% of the vote, period.
But if enough votes go to third party candidates, then a couple of things can happen. First, the slimers can see the lost votes and try to get us back. Secondly, if they fail, other voters see the third parties, believe they can make a difference, vote them in, and you get third-party officers. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
Democrats and republicans want you to believe that they are the only choices. Since they're both slime, that causes apathy, and an apathetic population is easier to control. Prove them wrong at the ballot box. It may take several elections, but it will work.
--The basis of all love is respect
Sorry, the correct quote is ' Evil lawyers rule the world'. If you aren't qualified to work for Wolfram and Hart you don't get anything; you're just one of the cattle for the slaughter.
But where Suck goes wrong is assuming that the U.S. legal system rules the world. We're trying to impose it on the world, or at the least "important" part which is that the government should act as the paid agents of multi-national corporations, but haven't managed to succeed quite yet.
What good is democracy when you have a misinformed, television-dependent populace? Or a malicious one, or a bigotted one, or a short-sighted one? Democracies are as good as the people in them. Without a strong education, a high literacy rate, a sense of enfranchisement and fairness, and good critical thinking skills in the populace, I'd as well have a benevolent dictatorship or a technocratic oligarchy.
You think pursuing a technical field in college is a way to make people more politically savvy?
You're joking, right?
Look, in technical majors and at technical schools, voter registration is abysmal. Here (Cambridge, MA), the voter rolls are posted outside publically so you can see who at which address is registered; back at MIT, I discovered that of my dorm 90~ people, all of 6 of us had registered to vote locally. And two of those were the housemaster and housemistress. Clearly one can't be sure how many people were sending absentee ballots back home, but considering that MIT was losing a battle with the City of Camb. ("Hey, where did all the on-street parking go?") because no one who cared about MIT was registered to vote locally, I'm none to impressed with absentee voting.
Frankly, sheltering in the desmesne of the Ivory Tower isn't particularly likely to inspire geeks to take a political interest in the real world. The only thing that makes the likes of us interested in politics is a vested interest: when they bite us where it hurts, then we care.
----------------------------------------------
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Senator Orin Hatch is the only politician I truly respect. He isn't afraid to do research and then vote for and support the side he thinks is right. Every time I see him on CSPAN or read his views on a topic, I am always amazed at how clear and well-grounded his opinions are. I don't always agree with his conclusions. I agree with the parent post, it's truly a shame that more computer-savvy people don't give him a chance.
Jesus, get off your fucking high horse. You're making a generality here about Slashdot readers which doesn't even approximate the truth. If you're so fucking in touch with the political scene, why do you insist on treating a mass of people as a single average point? Fuck you.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Once upon a time hard work would get you money. Today is who you know, how you market and how much you have.
The Lord have us brains and there is no sin in using them to obtain advantage for oneself. By hard work I did not specifically mean manual labor, merely the will to succeed which is the hallmark of our USian dream.
The same is true for others: members of the RIAA understand that digital media and file-sharing will end their empire. But they don't care about jumping on the train of renewal right away, simply because it is in their financial interest not to do so. They'll stall their downfall for as long as possible: and make loads of money in the meantime.
In other words: doing or supporting things you know won't stand up in today's court or next year's court, does not mean you don't understand the way the world works.
I thought most of the money in the US belongs to corporations, which have no religion and do not do any hard work. Their power seems to be directed more to making themselves lots of money than to any Good Christian kind of ethical influence. I don't know what shocks you so much about the idea of putting the power in the hands of people and not large corporate entities.
This offer void where prohibited by law or by the dictator.
Apparently you need to review your United States history. This country was "designed" by revolutionaries, who most certainly were NOT looking to decide who was "right-thinking" and who wasn't.
Please join the DigitalContent mailing list
http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalco ntent/ we will plan to proactively voice the web communities concerns about copyright and free speech. Please join.
DigitalContent PAC
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
http://www.egroups.com/group/digitalcontent/
DigitalContent PAC
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
I don't agree with most of the republican philosophy, but I am at least one liberal/progressive geek who recognizes the work Orin Hatch has done. I was pleasantly surprised how clueful he was in the hearing on the Future of Digital Music, and I even typed up a long letter thanking him, and others there for their open minds. Unfortunately I got buried under a pile of work and that thank-you never got out. But know there is at least one of us out here whose mind is open, but not so much that his brains fall out.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
As someone who can't hold a candle to a real nerd or a real geek (IE: I got a liberal arts background first and THEN got into computers and the Internet) I can predict the future for you all. Social skills are not as difficult as computer languages. Those of us with social skills were amazed at how easy computer languages and the Internet came to us and we now have both arrows in our quivers. But if geeks and nerds refuse to learn social skills and would rather simply preach to the choir here on Slashdot for the rest of their lives, then the socially well-adjusted are going to whisk this whole Interweb thing away from those who invented it just because those who invented it decided that it was, in the end, just way too traumatic to deal with the real world. The choice is yours. Learn how the real world works, or be content to just write indignant posts for the rest of your lives.
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
James Madison in Federalist #10 makes this case far better than I could- it is deeply important, because there haven't been any examples of pure majority-dominated democracy that worked worth a damn, and our founding fathers _knew_ that when they made the rules and wrote all these things that have colored how American government works.
If our government is truly failing at this it will be destroyed. There is no way to blindly stomp all the little factions and get away with it- you end up with bloody revolution, and sooner rather than later. To survive as a country we NEED to be listening to those South Florida Cubans, to the computer geekocracy, to all the little factions. That doesn't mean there will be a clear answer- when the clear answer disenfranchises lots of different groups of Americans, you need to quit looking for a clear answer and go for a muddier answer that's more flexible and adaptable.
We've all heard the anecdotes. "International borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway." "The 'Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Well, these things are actually true. Suck doesn't see it.
Napster might be pummeled into submission by the US legal system. Will this have much impact on the trading of copyrighted material by individuals? Hell no! They are switching to peer-to-peer systems. The draconian laws of Prohibition have little effect on the consumption of cannabis in this country. Stiff anti-piracy measures will be even less effective; you will never see ninja cops busting down people's doors at 3am to sieze someone's MP3 server. We've all seen how much success the Federal Courts have had at supressing DeCSS. They are shouting but most people on the net are ignoring them. Ostracism is the ultimate punishment on the 'Net.
The fact is that cryptography enables people to communicate secretly, without even knowing whom they are communicating with (but they are assured they are communicating with the same trustworthy folks they have dealt with in the past). Networks are international. Entities offering services will use "Regualatory Arbitrage," to keep the data flowing to people everywhere. Crypto hides the content, and obscures who is speaking to whom.
The 'Net will create it's own currency. By keeping things on the Net, people will avoid the hassles of credit card paper trails banking regulations when buying services on the Net. This is already happening, check out Mojo Nation which is creating a currency backed in CPU, disk space, and bandwidth.
Burris
Flaming MPAA on Slashdot doesn't cause 2600 to win, so sure, we're impotent. But also: DeCSS was outlawed, but that didn't make it go away. So they're impotent too.
Geeks might be out of touch with the real world ruled by lawyers, and all our declarations and arguing don't change anything, but the lawyers are equally out of touch with the reality of the internet, and all their injunctions and rulings don't change anything.
We do watch movies on unauthorized players. We do listen to music stored in a different media and format than what we bought it on. And we will come up with a way to exchange goods and services that does not use government-approved currency, and that is done with privacy and anonymity without the government ever knowing if a transaction took place. Words on a page, signed by a judge, do not change that reality.
Yes, but Gov. Ventura was very much the exception. He had a mainstream message and a well-organized movement that made him both attractive to John Q Public and credible as an opponent to the major-party candidates. Unfortunately, many third-party candidates just don't have either of these, and so they lose.
Case in point: the /. favorite Ralph Nader. He's Mr. Clean - but he is also against free trade and the independence of the Federal Reserve, and potentially in favor of censorship of internet and/or television. I for one would never vote for the guy, because he'd be an unmitigated disaster for the economy.
The key to a workable opposition is not to scare the masses while you're building your movement. This can absolutely be done by a pro-free-speech, anti-corruption candidate -- who doesn't also want to either (a) destroy capitalism or (b) shut down the government. It just hasn't happened yet. Any volunteers?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
See, I knew it was too good.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
Obviously this is nonsense, look at what Nader has done to upset the Democrats. Here in Illinois part of his 39,000+ petition was challened and may not make the 25,000 sigs needed to get on the ballot. The Dems know that there are a great deal of people with left progressive ideals ready to vote for Nader. These people, yes some of them are slashdotters, are not only going to build a stronger Green party after this election but are giving the dems the clear message of "Either embrace left ideals or your numbers will shrink and ours will rise." Whichever happens doesn't matter as long as prog lefties get some decent representation, or at least exposure.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Thanks. I've joined too. Now I feel all tingly.
www.iww.org
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Thanks for volunteering.
No, but brains don't get you everyplace. Because of years of mainting the "status quo" within the US, certain skin tones will. The system DOES NOT WORK. The "Lord" does create us all equal, but in the US, more people are "equal" than others in the corporate world.
Sig it.
AC - I went on Westlaw and searched for the USENET convention of 1984. Rule 23, part 17 deals with flamewars. It has nothing to do this "suction" you refer to.
I hope that cleared it up for you.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
China will do anything to get the trade status besides ceding the power of the current ruling elite; Pakistan and Sri Lanka will choke if the US decides to impose some sanctions.
Only a country that has no goods to sell to the Western world and no goods to import from them can try to host it. Still, it has a very good chance to get a visit from US Marines or CIA-engineered revolt in this case.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Your proposed solution is not what people use - if it were they wouldn't complain about legal rulings. They would see that Judge 'A' was putting forth psychopathic judgments and remove him. They never do. Judges get voted out - but never for those reasons. People blissfully expect the legal system to do good work - when it doesn't 'Well it can't be malice, it must be stupidity.'
Oh, by the way, since you said that I was merely pointing out a well recognized failure in the malice algorithm - would you be kind enough to point out a reference where that failure is discussed, and solutions proposed?
Sticking to your guns in the face of (attempted) oppression can be attributed to many things, and possibly more than one thing at a time. Idealism and naivete are just two--but they are largely orthogonal.
There is no sense in which "the world works that way" that makes it OK for Company X to suppress free speech about their products. There is no sense in which "growing up" makes it OK for corporations to use money to subvert the government against the people it was created for.
That's not to say everyone on Slashdot is a nascent Gandhi--clearly many of us DO need to grow up, some of us literally. But please don't interpret that statement as "and lose your ideals"--interpret it as "see the other side, change your tactics, refine your logic, improve your rhetoric".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
"Why? Because slashdot people don't vote. And when they do vote, they vote for third parties that have no chance of winning."
You, sir, are a complete dumbass.
Are you so disillusioned with third parties that you feel the Republicans and Democrats are the only choices out there? It's not like I can't vote for Nader, Browne, Buchanan, or anyone else, right? To insinuate that voting for a third party is a wasted vote is pure arrogance on your behalf. Yes, Nader, Browne, and Buchanan don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election. That doesn't mean that we can't stick it to the Big Two with a vote for a third party candidate, which says "We're sick of politics as usual, if you don't want to listen to us, we'll find a candidate who will." Eventually, the Big Two will look behind them, and see just how close those third parties are catching up. It's not going to happen today, tomorrow, next week, or even next year, but it will happen.
The elections aren't like a horse race. I'm not going to vote for Joe Candidate just because I think he'll win, I'm going to vote for Joe Candidate based on the issues. Take a look at Minnesota. Dear God, some third party professional wrestler is the governor over there! Those idiots who voted for him wasted their votes! They should've voted Republican or Democrat! Hmmmm, I guess those people voted on the issues. I know, I know...to you, it's a new concept, but it's a cool concept! You can say that Jesse Ventura got elected just because of his past with Hollywood and the WWF, but something lit a fire underneath the collective asses of Minnesota voters that got them to say "Go Ventura!" Say what you will about the guy, but he is an effective politician who's getting the job done, and he's not afraid to speak his mind on anything. Oh oh, wait...Reform Party...third party...wasted vote.
You think that voting for a third party is a wasted vote? Here's a wasted vote: voting for someone "just because." And I have a feeling that's how you vote.
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
Yes, some people have been marked by the Devil as being his, and it is not suprising that in a decent Christian society that (they?) are unable to find the opportunities that God-fearing men do.
So _that's_ why Howard Stern's ratings have been going down lately!
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
What do the laws do, where money alone rules/
Or where no poor person is able to win?/
They themselves who spend their time with the Cynic purse/
Often are accustomed to selling their words for money/
Therefore judgement is nothing, unless the selling is a public thing/
and the Judge who sits in the case passes judgement on things that have been BOUGHT."
-Ascyltos, Satyricon
"I am so cool, you could keep a side of meat in me for a month
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
>>>>If I am saying that the job should be done by those people who can do it better, does this make me an anarchist ?
:)
Yeah kind-of , I guess. "better" is such a vague word. I don't think you want things to be "better" - you want things to be different. That's at the heart of anarchy
>>>>>Do problems that some anarchists have had in the past authomatically apply to all anarchists of the present and future ?
Heh, heh. Looks like we did get a bad grade in history
>>>>>Is studying history incompatible with logic ?
Yes. Human logic anyway. Most people's logic has zero predictive power historically speaking. By studying history you are dedicating yourself to observing first and drawing conclusions SECOND.
Take this personaility test.
Here I am complaining about moderation. I don't know what's got into me, as the whole subject of /. moderation is beneath my dignity even to take into account.
But it so happens that the above comment, which is both interesting and insightful, not to mention intelligently and amusingly written, happens to be completely on-topic for the discussion at hand. It obviously has a connection to Mr. Knauss's commentary in Suck, which, I guess I should remind readers, is the subject of this particular slashdot article. If readers are too God damn lazy to read that Suck article, let me at least quote the pertinent part (for which flagrant violation of a dozen "intellectual property" rights belonging to various multinational corporations, I nevertheless hope I won't be sentenced to jail). Quoth Mr. Knauss:
Which, of course, accomplishes exactly nothing . For all the endless caterwauling that each addle-headed legal decision generates, the impact extends only as far as the smallish communities that spawn it. Even ignoring the significant percentage of the population that remains stubbornly off-line -- including the vast majority of Congress and the judiciary -- the cage-rattlers have failed even to involve those who might actually care. Millions use the Internet without the slightest idea that their rights are being stripped away, blissfully unaware of what's going on because they don't happen to be members of the choir. The tempest not only fits in a teapot, it doesn't even rattle the lid. In this age of omnipresent email and mainstream technology news, pictures of ribbons don't cut it as tools of moral suasion anymore...
Italics mine. Now you with moderator points, reread the above post, the one that got moderated down to virtual invisibilty as "offtopic," and ask yourselves if it doesn't say something important about the nature of this chasing-your-own-tail "community" you inhabit "here" within slashdot.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
I love how a lot of you chose to prove his statement by whining here.Posting a thread to Slashdot doesn't amount to a fart in a hurricane.Until some of you educate yourselves to the real world's rules and laws ,your legal opinions won't matter.When you live by non-sensical sayings like "free as in beer" you are all doomed to be run over by the powers that be.Not everything in life is free and you wishing it to be won't change that.I can't stand how most of you pick on Lars because they chose to fight a company that was profiting from their talent with no compensation.You all jumped on the Napster bandwagon without realizing how you were being used.Napster doesn't care if you get music for free,Napster just wants to make money for Napster.Should music be free?I know at the end of the week I expect to get paid for my labor.
The author at Suck is right,most of you need to wake up and smell reality.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
You do is kill all the lawyers.
Attributed to Will S.
Having lived in South Florida for many years and being of Irish descent not Cuban. I learn a lot about cultures and different viewpoints. When Ellian Gonzolez was sent back to Cuba amid all the protests and picketing. I realized that you can have a thousand or more people screaming for change and it isn't enough. There are over 450 posts here already and none of them are going to make a difference against the juggernaut that is the judical system. The Cuban culture came away with a very bruised ego and hard dose of reality. Learning they don't have enough clout to make all the changes they want right or wrong. Geek culture egos are getting smashed also and in a more insidious way one legal step at a time. Your Ellian is the internet and it is going to Cuba and there is not a damn thing you can do about it. You are not a big enough majority you are a tiny minority that people don't understand, if you think otherwise than of course you completly understood the cuban population in south Florida.
The road to hell is paved with good intention. I have often head of the internet refered to as a superhighway that just means it will get you to hell a lot faster.
A very good post; people united for a common cause sometimes make strange bedfellows. I admit ego sometimes is a hard thing to overcome.
'I can't work with Jones 'cause he's gay!' or similar rants are not going to get you anywhere except fighting among yourselves. If you have a workable goal then let that be the cause that unites you. Anything else is secondary. You can work with gays, liberals, converatives, Texans, hillbillies and geeks. As long as you're united in the important cause.
Recently, I was involved in an online group seeking to halt credit card abuse (the hiking of interest rates willy-nilly) and the people who joined our group were from every walk of life: from religious conservatives to Ralph Nader. It was great. We filed our suit and got the job done. It was a great lesson for me!
UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL, PRETTY MUCH SEZ IT ALL.
They were supposed to deliver the declaration at 8am Pearl Harbor time, they were just (for very small values of 'just') late with it.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Not only do I vote for third party Green candidates, sometimes they actually win. The City of Seattle has five Green Party of Seattle members in its ranks (although one of them joined the party just for the endorsement and has turned out to be a coporate whore anyway). Although Seattle's City Council is unlikely to put an end to the injustices of the DMCA anytime soon, they have made several progressive moves.
It doesn't take the president to change the law. Check out your local elections, and support your local progressive party (the one that is most likely to support the geek cause is probably the same one that wants to end corporate dominance). Let's get some progressive candidates in at state and local levels, then we can work up to the House and the Senate. There is a movement at work, and geek support can make a difference. Just start at the roots.
I realize that, in the happy circumstance that Canadian law is more "enlightened" and we don't have these nasty, nasty laws in place already, we should still mention them to our government reps to warn them to keep things that way. Things like the DMCA seemed (from an external point of view) to blindside a lot of people in the US (and for all I know, they've already blindsided us in Canada, too).
Thanks.
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
but how is that action?
Who are you impressing?
You're just proving to the lawhorde that there are more cockroaches to stomp, and it's time to grind the boot down a little harder.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
While it may be true that laywers rule the world, one thing that we should remember is that most don't have any agenda of their own and only do what their paymasters dictate. If we have a lobby organization powerful (and by powerful, I reluctantly mean wealthy) enough, be it an extension of the FSF or whatever, then I see no problem.
One nice anology would be MP3s and guns. One could say, hypothetically, guns are bad, while MP3 is good. Yet, the fact that a huge gun association and lobby exists make them legal, while the latter, for lack of a strong counterpart, has all but been deemed illegal. It hasn't been deemed illegal, I know, but for the sake of the anology, let's just suppose that is the case!
One question I have that someone could perhaps shed some light on would be the relative fees / membership roll of, say, the FSF, the gun lobbies and the ACLU... perhaps throw in Greenpeace and other special interest groups. That information would make good reading in supporting, or disproving this line of thought.
Karma makes sense. It makes a lot more sense if you add reincarnation.
Last I heard, the UK and the US were both democracies, with more than 2 parties to vote for. If you're not happy with your elected 'representative', vote for someone else. The poll turnout in both the UK and the US are below 50%, meaning that a relatively small number of people can turn a vote. So what are we waiting and whinging for?
Remember when you were writing about your car crash and your expirience in 8th grade, and this little voice said, "I don't really belive this, but it's funny to write it anyway."? That was your sense of sarcasm, which must have been on a coffee break when you read the suck article. You talk about them being "obvious" for attacking demographics that might visit suck, but only when your demographic it in the line of fire. Please. Spare us all your ego and stop taking yourself so seriously. They make an important point, that if we want something done about the legal problems on the Internet, we should get off out metaphorical ass and do something. None of your egotistical posturing can take away from that. Your post should have been rated a "Flamebait," and consider the bait taken.
-=The Rimstalker=-
-=The Rimstalker=-
I understand the difficulty the American Working Man has putting food
For one, I'm not a US citizen, but have been following all this very closely.
/. and don't exclude someone just because they are not a "Linux" zelot, but if they feel the same way as you on most political issues, welcome them.
That out of the way, the solution is painfully obvious, yet might be difficult.
Organize an association of Internet users and like minded people. Call yourselves "Internet users of America" or something along those lines. Gather ACTUAL names and addresses, attract new members, vote on a platform, elect a leader...then LOBBY!!!!
Easier said than done is the big problem. You might be able to start with Slashdot and K5 active members, then expand to other web based gathering sites. The EGO thing will also be hard to overcome, but if someone credible, and a name you all recognize starts it, and at least gets a buy in from editors, it might actually work.
How can you fight the "Motion Picture ASSOCIATION of America" and the "Recording Industry ASSOCIATION of America" with being an asociation or special interest group yourself?
The article on Suck had some very good points, defacing a web page for kicks is not going to accomplish ANYTHING except irritate John Q. Public.
Not to belittle the monumental hurtles and battles of the African Americans in the last century, but if all Martin Luther King did was spray paint graffiti on a few walls, would anything have been accomplished?
For simplicitys sake, and to avoid fractures, start here, start on
Consider this a CALL TO ACTION for someone (for legal purposes...someone of voting age) to carry the torch and start something, hell.....even Jon Katz could do this. You may not like what he has to say, but he has credibility in the real world. and in an association he HAS to listen to the active voting members.
Like it or not, this is quickly becoming a battle of the most organized, not the most technical.
No?
Ah well, it was worth a shot...
> well-nigh apocalyptic decision after another
> has unfortunately been the same as the
> Internet's collective response to just about
> everything: posts, lots and lots of posts.
Hehe. And here we go again. (See below, passim.) Saying "Lawyers rule the world" could be interpreted in a number of different ways. Most productively, it's saying something about the realities of political and legal institutions and organizations. The Geek world is very good at a particular kind of organization --- the distributed, decentralized network. Geeks often think that the robust, flexible qualities of this kind of organization make it practically and morally superior to all the alternatives. This article shows in part why this is wrong: the distributed network of geeks spends most of its time whingeing to itself, while well-organized competitors kick it in the ass legally.
I think the key contradiction in geek culture is that even though they routinely rail against corporate greed, etc, they espouse an absurd kind of libertarian / ayn randian ideal of freedom, where one's ultimate desire is to be left the hell alone, typically in order to become a very rich person. The enormously high tolerance of personal abuse in online groups (like this one) shows that geeks generally haven't the first idea about civic engagement or political organization, and gives the lie to the idea that there really is a well-developed community out there in any meaningful sense. Real communities have some solidarity, can form hierarchical organizations to defend their interests when needed, and don't tolerate too much static in the public sphere. By contrast, it seems thet Geeks just want a bigger cubicle, a steady supply of snacks, and a new computer. In the near future, watch and be amazed as the hardline efforts of people like RMS to generate real legal innovations get written off as the ravings of ideologues, interested groups write the laws they want, and geeks get bought out by the corporations they're supposed to despise, no doubt whining every step of the way.
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. - Max Weber.
no ball, ac
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks
I do not care about so-called 'real world'. It is stupid, cruel and illogical. Geeks are clever, nice and logical. If anybody needs a lesson, it's real world. If laws are wrong, they should be changed. Laws, not people should be changed. The best laws can be written by geeks, not lawyers. Like best programs are written by programmers, not lusers. Dixi.
all I can see are assholes.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Geeks are not politically irrelevant unless they don't vote, regardless of what they believe in. I write my congressmen/women, and I vote (not quite as often as I should but...), which unfortunately puts me in a minority here on the rant boards of /. - if I'm wrong about that, you politically active geeks come out and be counted! Do we have a voice or not?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Correct. You could think whatever you liked*, unless you were a Tory, which could get you shot.
* Offer only applies to white, property-owning males.
--
--
E_NOSIG
I think very few of us (and this certainly includes myself) have done anything. I know I haven't even done something as simple as writing a letter to my congressman, or sending a donation to EFF.org
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
But clearly you would not say that robbing a bank is moral, even if I were to make lots of money. So there remains the fact that one should use some kind of moral guidelines to define how one can earn money.
And by my morals, a lot of the lawyers and politicians you mention should be grouped in with the bank robbers.
God damn Jon, that one's one of the best, it's got an edge on it. You're so good at this and it takes such big balls to fire off so wild-eyed, evil a notion as that with your face so straight. What bland words, and the base idea split in two across two different voices! And I'll bet you even mispelt suprising on purpose!
Still best you watch out honey, you bad man, Morris Dees come down the mountain, take away all your house and goods...
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
-- Al Gore, March 9, 1999; CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer
The EFF only has about 10,000 members???
Look at other political organization like the NRA (Which I do NOT endorse). They have about 3,000,000 members.
Any political organization with so few members will be laughed at as a bunch of crazy extremist lunatics.
Each and every American Slashdot reader needs to get a EFF membership. And each EFF member has to recruit more members. Only then we can make a difference.
"And so, my fellow Geeks, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." (stolen from JFK).
regards,
florian nierhaus
Because of years of mainting the "status quo" within the US, certain skin tones will. The system DOES NOT WORK. The "Lord" does create us all equal, but in the US, more people are "equal" than others in the corporate world.
Yes, some people have been marked by the Devil as being his, and it is not suprising that in a decent Christian society that are unable to find the opportunities that God-fearing men do.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
They DO NOT have total control. If Napster servers where offshore could they sue them? and if they couldn't would they then try to block access from ISP's? or would they try to search every home, and every cpu to try and stop the evil mp3's? and what point does it become too much for the public to bare?
I guess my point is, ya corporate bullies will flex their muscles and eventually they will find their limits. The public can and will be pushed around until something real ugly happens (like the searching of all cpu's for mp3's). The biggest lesson geeks should learn is that if you can figure out a way of making more money your way then you will win... or you will sell it (icq anyone?).
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
The one about young men skipping college to go into techie jobs. Not that a broader education is necessarily a cure for tunnelvision, but perhaps if more geeks had studied history, political science, economics, etc., there would be a greater number of technical folks able to do more than flame.
One important question is how to bring some of this "News for Nerds" to the attention of the masses, in a way that they can understand. The vast majority of people are not technically savvy, yet making them understand that their rights are being eroded is essential to stopping and even reversing these dangerous and often ill-considered rulings.
--meredith
--meredith
--meredith
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis
Yeah, Eric has some good points. However, the reverse can sometimes be true. I just got done working on the production end of a newsaper, and, to tell the truth, sometimes *I* was telling the folks with years of experience what to do...not out of arrogance, but just because I knew what to do. They taught me a lot, but I taught them a thing or too, also.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
But do you think if the guy was in Sri Lanka that US laws would effect him? or Pakistan? or Indonesia? or China?
Great, so if I ever get to the point where I can program my way out of a wet paper sack, and it comes into my mind to write a computer program, what you're saying is I've got to move to Pakistan? I don't even know what language they speak there much less do I speak it myself.
What if the Chinese government decided to copy and crack everything, put it on their servers, and offer it to the world... just for fun.
Let us ignore the fantastic unlikelihood of America's good business partners the Chinese, who fill our store shelves with goods in shrinkwrap for far less than we could charge and stay afloat if we manufactured them here in the U.S., or else let's imagine that you specified another country with less to lose by offending the U.S. business community. In the case any country accepts your advice, then that country will be quickly isolated off from the internet as cleanly and thoroughly as you would be if I sliced the telephone or TV cables leading into your house.
There's this stuff called IP, that's short for intellectual property, it's just a coincidence that it's also one a then internet acronyms, which in the literature subconsciously ties investors into this big 'net thing I guess...that IP, the heart of all the worth of Disney, Parke-Davis and Microsoft, is immensely valuable now; and stockholders's proxies dream of a soon day when by Congressional fiat, should you innocently jerk off whilst daydreaming about Natalie P. dressed in Naboo garb, then by statute George Lucas's film company has the rights to all the information encoded in your sperm. No kidding, lobbyists delivered the draft legislation to your Congressional Representative just this afternoon, together with a nice check for his re-election campaign.
Anyway that fabulously valuable IP you picture "China" or whatever blithely warez-ifying vastly dwarfs in dollars all those Havana hotels and latifundia the Cuban government nationalized in their revolution, yet for no other reason beside that appropriation the U.S. has been flogging Cuba unremittingly for four decades now. With a provocation like what you suggest you don't think Washington/Wall Street/Hollywood Inc. could bring themselves to slice a few wires?
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
And another one ;-)
I've heard about lend-lease; I've also heard about PQ-17.
Speaking of the second front, it was opened after the fate of the war was decided. In 1942 it would be a significant event, but not in 1944.
You've never been talking to the Soviet veterans of this war if you think it was for the fear of Stalin. If you say "At War" in Russia, no one will question you which one you mean (Russian language does not have articles; this is why I haven't used "At the War"). It became the trouble that united the whole country, all nations. Soviet people won this war even despite of Stalin and his blunders.
Who told you I'm bragging ??? I just don't like when someone tries to rewrite history.
And the history includes facts about your beloved USA (and especially Brits). First of all, Brits and French have pretty much started that war by pressuring Chekhs to cede Sudet Mountains to Hitler. If they would not do that, his ambitions might well have come to an end since Chekhs had about the same army as Germans (45 vs 47 divisions). someone tells they were trying to appese Hitler, but the reality was that they wanted him to go East, not thinking about him going West first.
Another example - both Brits and Americans knew about Holocost. But when Hitler offered them to exchange 100,000 Jews for 100,000 trucks in 1944 (IIRC), they asked "Why do we need 100,000 Jews?".
And even before the war they virtually closed the immigration stream - both to the US and to what was Palestine then. Do I need to tell more ???
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Maybe the Internet group (né geeks) would have a better case if it weren't for the fact that so many of us support a right to infringe copyright holders.
Now, I don't like DMCA or UCITA, and I want to have my privacy and speech protected.
But I am not going to fight for the right to illegally copy the latest Janet Jackson tune.
Look... I can understand the ambivilence, or hostility, towards the role that lawyers play in the economy. I don't defend the bloodsucking contingency lawyers that lurk behind every tort. But if you take a step back and look at the upcoming wave of litigation, the Internet needs it. The lax standards and vulnerable protocols have allowed people to be negligent with their network activity that they would never get away with in the real world. When a company refuses to secure their networks against, for example, denial of service daemons, why shouldn't the guy who is targeted get pissed at the guy who allowed his computer to participate in the attack? I really ate to admit it, but cars and air travel are safer as a result of previous litigation that required the companies to look out for the good of others. Isn't it time we estblish a bit of accountabilty on the Interent?
Not that complete bullshit about "Because if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks" - no-one deserves that sort of "lesson" - but that preaching to the choir is a waste of time.
If you really care about internet freedom (or any other freedom for that matter), find something to _do_ about it - whether to contribute to the Electronic Frontier Foundation or ACLU, get involved in a political party that supports your views (I'm not going to bother arguing about which one, but I suspect the major two parties are a worthless), arrange to _visit_ your representative, lobby your workplace or other organisations you belong to to have policies supporting open source or whatever you regard as 'freedom' , lot's of things I haven't thought of - nearly everyone can do _something_ constructive.
Think of the column as a 'call to arms', or at least a call to find some _effective_ action.
Cheers,
Roy Ward.
Of course, that sucked up so much of the budget that they had to retire the Vulcan bombers for lack of funds to upkeep them...
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
[Nader:]I'd really put meat in the process of progressive taxation. The richer people are, the more the percentage you pay. After all, it's their influence that rigged the system to get them that rich to begin with. And, second, we should tax things we don't like. We should tax stock market speculation. We should tax pollution. We should tax activities that we don't like, like sprawl, in order to get a better planning system and better zoning system. And we should lighten the taxes on things we do like, like honest labor, like food. It's really interesting. In some places in this country, you go and you pay taxes on food and on books, but you don't pay taxes on what you buy on the Internet. Even though the small businesses in this country are the ones that support the charity and fiber of the community. It's really not fair.
The entire quotation is even scarier than the previous poster's 'out-of-context' little chunk. Nader is advocating for central government 'planners' to direct every facet of the economy, to *decide for the rest of us what we like and dislike*, and to forcibly redistribute wealth in an attempt to achieve income equality.
Oh, and FYI, the red scare ended years ago, bro. Mis-labeling someone a socialist or a communist has really fallen out of vogue.
Notwithstanding the unfortunate current lack of a 'red scare', bro, I have listened to several Nader speeches and the guy is quite definitely a socialist with communist leanings. On a number of occasions he has advocated that the government take over management of private businesses that fail to meet his expectations. He's all about forced redistribution of wealth, and for christ's sake, the guy even proposes more extensive government regulation of the nutritional content of McDonald's food...
Like the ones in your quote, most of his positions and ideas are very much socialist and/or communist, and it is quite accurate to label him as such.
That said, there are a handful of things I agree with him on... and actually think he makes some sense... but for the most part he scares the hell out of me.
--
Enough with the lawyer bashing already. The article sounds like a load of whiny tripe. Let's look seriously at the alleged gross injustices perpetrated by our legal system in the service of corporate lackeys identified within the article:
1. "Domain names aren't property and therefore cannot be stolen"
Why is this inherently unjust? We do not treat the electromagnetic spectrum as the sort of Oklahoma land rush that Internet domain names became. Why should people who can type fast enough to register "mtv.com" hold a trademarked business name hostage? Trademark protection has been around a lot longer than the Internet.
This issue is, of course, subject to debate. There are various interests involved here, protection of trademarks vs. the winners of the Internet Land Rush is just one. However, in the great scheme of things, this issue is being, and should be, resolved by the traditional methods of resolving conflicting rights: the Law and the political process. Nobody is going to take slashdot's or yahoo's or amazon.com's domain name away from them. But why should the law protect some schmo who manages to register abcnewsfan.com? Let him build his own trademark instead of cashing in on someone else's.
2. The ability to decrypt a DVD cooresponds directly with the intent to pirate it.
While it is very understandable that Linux should have DVD drivers just like other operating systems, should these drivers have been authored to allow users to download digitally perfect DVD movies onto their hard drives, with the potential for illegal distribution? That's really the big issue with DeCSS. If DeCSS were simply a DVD driver for Linux nobody in the industry would have cared. However, DeCSS + DVD-RAM = the potential for digitally perfect copies of everything released on DVD. Yes, I know you cannot (yet) put as much data on a DVD-RAM as a publisher can on a DVD, but the potential is out there. Release a Linux DVD driver that does not allow you to copy a DVD and you won't be accused of piracy.
3. Linking to a program declared illegal is itself illegal.
So we should be able to offer links to illegally duplicated software or even child pornography stored on someone else's server? While the actual present issue is that people shouldn't get sued for linking to DeCSS, an absolute right to link to any matter, legal or illegal, is not in the best interests of society.
I am not technically savvy, at least not nearly as much as the typical slashdot member. I don't even use Linux. (If I am technically incorrect with regard to DeCSS I apologize for my ignorance in advance.) But, I think the point that the author does not understand is that just because something is technically feasible doesn't mean that we should allow it. I am not in favor of technology run amuck in just the same way that I am not in favor of science run amuck. Also, the rights of others, even detestible mega-corporations, have to be respected if we expect our own rights to be respected. The system will stomp on those who attempt to work outside of it. To those who support information freedom, look to the civil rights movement and how long that took to get any real results (and it's not over yet). Then, write your checks to EFF. But enough with the whining already.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I graduated, got a job, and joined the EFF. Follow the articles advice and join up. Every $10, $25, $50 or $500 helps. Let's /. the EFF membership!
Nice analogy about how geeks are a big tuna and the sharks (lawyers) are eating them.
:)
Well one way of getting people in "power" to do what you want is to write protest letters. Stupid right? What happens when a politician gets 500 pounds of mail telling him he sucks? Now imagine organizing a dedicated effort that tracks down ALL IPs and email addresses that politicians use and buries them under personal complaints, thereby cutting off the politicians access to the web untill he does something constructive.
Well maybe it would be too hard to explain the technical aspects of this correctly. The key is to make it impossible for the politician to do business(web or real life) until he deals with the collective concerns of everyone who knows how to click a mouse button. Clicking a button should cause them much grief! Empower us oh technical people!
One other alternative is that we take the water away from the sharks. We don't use them to make decisions for us. This would require WANTING to do this.
We could also teach ourselves to never use information from mass information outlets.
This would require realizing that if we want to get "the best" we don't have to go to ONE place in the WORLD, we just have to go someplace "LOCAL"
(geographically or otherwise)
In any case util you AND your associates are AFFECTED and MOTIVATED to do something and actually DO something, then you don't have the right to an OPINION (much less the right of complaining). If you can't make yourself or your friends do something then why are you talking about it at all?
The first step is cuting taxes. And the zeroth step is raising taxes to educate kids so they will know to cut taxes
Take this personaility test.
After all, December 7th is when the Japanese bombed Perl Harbor in a surprise attack while we were in treaty negotiations with the Japanese.
I don't think it's a good idea, not because it's a "USian" thing, but because of the parallels- the Japanese attacked us under a flag of truce while we were negotiating a peace treaty with them.
Frankly speaking, I'm not sure about the "strike" day either. It almost seems like we're stooping to their level- I'd almost like to see something better if we could pull it off.
(Oh, BTW, that "USian" thing makes you look like a three year old- you might want to give it up...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Nah, that's a Micro$lop trick - maybe CT is using SQL server?
I've lost count of the functions in Win32 that either take a parameter of "reserved" or a pointer to a struct which has several "Reserved for internal use" mmebers... Tried tracing them through a few times, there's some weird shit that goes through the guts of Windows...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
I read about how all these bad things are happening, and very few people are trying to to anything effective about it.
... Oh, and I _know_ it's really uphill for the little guy to try and change things. The powers that be like us to think we are powerless, too. If enough of us act, we can make a difference.
It takes real effort (or money) to change laws. That's the lesson that corporations have learned that we haven't
I'm thinking the military kind makes more sense. You can rage your next war without your global computer network.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's something that I had forgotten to add to this. With respect to the idea that "domain names are not property", the court's decision was based on the common law concept that the tort of conversion applies only to chattel, which has been defined by case law to consist only of "tangible personal property". What's that? If you can put it into a box (not a virtual box) and ship it somewhere, then it's tangible.
Please note that while the court did dismiss the claim on the basis that the tort of conversion did not apply, the court did allow the plaintiff original registrants of sex.com to amend their complaint to include a claim for unfair business practices. The result will be the same - ultimately the court will order the defendant to transfer the rights to sex.com back to the original owner. It is unfair to say that there is no remedy for the "theft" of a domain name, even if the law may decide that a domain name is intangible and cannot be stolen (a trait shared by trademarks and copyrights).
Consider this as a matter of programming syntax. The lawyer for the plaintiff used the wrong function in crafting his program, and the system crashed. Now, he gets to debug his program and run it again. This time it should work.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
In the US, actual voters form a minority of citizens. If we got a sizable portion of geeks and Slashdot readers to vote, it probably WOULD make a dent. Most geeks do have non-geek friends they can try to convince, as well. The essential problem of geeks caring about things that mean fuck-all remains, of course.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
Fine we all know that there is a problem. But we need an Statement Of Work for activity. The options are all discussed here without even a clear definition of the problem. The obvious response to this is going to be wake up and stop smoking pot but there is more passion here than a will for action. You know how lawyers win. They write mountains of documents in a terse language we have no clue about. And we have a tough time writing 5 pages of documentation for an application that we spend nights coding.
...
/. instead of just archiving this action items start a section for monitoring the status of the action items. And please stop critisizing your senators. They are angels compared to any other nations politicians and if you care so much become one. You will know why they are so.
Let us clearly define our problem here.
1. Excess and unwarrented Patenting (Dont denigrate statements with emotions) of *Ideas*.
2. Definition of what can be sued.
- DeCSS (Source code reverse engineered)
- Mp3.com (Post songs on the web)
- Napster (Peer2Peer computing with file sharing)
3.
Can we come up with a list and a set of possible action items for each of them. Can
Scanning through the discussion I've seen a lot of impotent whining about Suck commenting on /.'s impotent whining.
Does anyone have any real suggestions on how we can start making a difference instead of beating our meat in a /. board? I wish I did, but I'm not that smart so I'm just trying to make an opening for smart people to come up with a suggestion.
Please don't talk about boycotts. Talk about something on how to get the unwashed masses attention, interest and energy behind the causes we find important. Those of us here obviously can't do a whole lot of good on our own, we need to get others involved.
Lib.BENCH the only site you'll ever need!
Sadly, things just don't work that way.
--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
So let the anger build, remember you guidence counsler? Dont internal your anger or you will snap. Internalize it. Let it build until you cant take it anymore. Then someday, in what i predict to be the not to distant future, snap with the rest of us and we can tie those lawyers to stakes and using recipes we downloaded from the Great Evil Internet burn them at the stake with illegal incendary devices we made using bathroom soap and yak's milk.
Sorry to rant but i'm angry too, I dont believe in freedom as some suggest here. Well, I believe in but I know we dont have it and that freedom has a cost but Im happy to stand and die next to others when we do finally snap. Im tired of pacifism. We have become on the lethargic and we need to do something about it but the politicians and the lawyers wont let us if we follow there system. The time for change is coming.....
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
With enough money one can get a lawyer or politician to do anything, ANYTHING. If the readership of Slashdot really are the super-nerds and the tech-elite they claim to be then in this economy the readership of Slashdot must be a massively wealthy demographic. There must easily be a few million dollars in the couch cushions of just the people reading this post at this moment. What am I getting at you ask? Well with all this money you can vote using your money, send money, and I mean a few hundred k to the politicians who support your geek views, fund vast legal defense funds to fight for the causes you believe in like the EFF. Make the rest of the world see that your voice is as big as your wallet.
What?!?! You aren't that rich? You're telling me that a half-backed reject geek like Bill can have that much money and you the self proclaimed super geeks are just sitting there flaming away at Slashdot posts?
Damn it get up and do something to help the geek cause, even if you can't afford $100k surely you can afford $100, You have to do something now, don't let it be like high school again, the "cool kids" laughing at your inability to fight back as the push you down, they've already hit you with the DMCA and the DeCSS ruling and this is your chance at redemption or are you going to let them hit you again?
Help the cause any way you can. Donations to the EFF or ACLU and showing up at your congressman's or Senators office to voice you concern all help the cause, just sitting there typing flames doesn't.
Are you going to do something to get your voice heard and protect your rights or are you just going to go watch "The Matrix" for the hundredth time and hope somebody else takes care of it? The choice is yours.
My Excuse? Don't need one any more, I just sent as much of my meager income to the EFF as I can afford. Will you do the same? Lets if you geeks can really rule the world.
I don't need no real world. When I get hit by a truck as I cross a road at a pedestrian crossing, I'll die knowing that I was in the right. FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863