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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.
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.
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.
Hey, new article just posted... forget this boring lawyer crap!
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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?
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
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
--
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...
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.
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.
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
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
Or more geeks should become lawyers.
Sig it.
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
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.
--
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.
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
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.
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
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)
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
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.
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
Evil desperately doesn't want you to be aware of what is going on. Exactly who would I be looking for a flame from here? The clueless people with a broken algorithm for life? Does anyone believe they would flame me? If they don't believe what I have to say they would just dismiss me - rather than reply with a flame. Perhaps he thinks I was searching for flames from a psychopath.
I was a little surprised by the category of the moderation down. Flame bait is not sustainable, but I suppose it stands a better chance of staying there than -1 Off topic would have. I personally think you could have done a better job of fooling people with -1 Troll; you might have gotten people to believe -1 Troll. Except of course, you would have had the problem of trying to explain how I intended to say "Ha Ha, I fooled you." at the end of the troll.
Lets see, its not a Troll, its not Flame bait, its not Off topic, perhaps /. needs to come up with another -1 category:
-1 Unpleasant Truth that makes me question what I am doing in life.
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.
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
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)
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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...
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.
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.
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.
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Make mine methylphenidate.
It is so much easier to patch up the GUI so that it looks good than it is to fix the algorithmic problem at the heart of the program.
I should have anticipated the responses:
Majority response: "That can't be right - the world can't work that way. If it did I'd have to rethink my entire life. That would mean that all the people who came before us got fooled also. What horrible things to say - He must be crazy - I'd better go on to the next post."
Second most common response: "I don't want to hear that LA LA LA LA LA LA"
Third most common response "Look, you just don't get the way the world works. Everything is OK, all algorithms have bugs, that is just life, we work around it by ... Well I don't know how we work around it, but its not a problem. I'm sure somebody took care of it."
Fourth most common response: "What's an algorithm?"
Years ago I figured out that trying to change the world won't work because the world doesn't want to change. As Eric Hoffer pointed out: "Given freedom of choice, most people choose to be like everyone else."
I guess Ignorance truly IS bliss.
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Move along, nothing to see here: just some old man talking to himself.
You don't stop a meat grinder by throwing yourself into it. The key is to figure out how to pull the cord.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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-*- 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.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
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?
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
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.
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.
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The shareholder is always right.
Might does not make right - right makes might; a subtle distinction to be sure, but an important one.
You owe it to humanity not to give in - not to allow the outside world to dictate things.
The outside world is coming to the Internet because they can see the happiness that it brings to geeks. There are people who can't stand seeing that anyone is happy, they work to destroy happiness when ever they see it, and that is why they want to change things here - to make us as miserable as they are.
The choice is yours - but the battle is for much more than you think - the battle is for your soul. If that isn't worth fighting for, how could anything, anywhere ever be worth a fight?
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.
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?
"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.
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The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
laws are set in stone, people shouldn't even TRY to change them. Laws werent made to benefit anyone. That's basically the message I got from the article...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
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
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.
> 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.
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
it really would help you to read some history. There have always been anarchists. The problem is they have no goals and can not interact with people by definition.
Any effect they have on the REAL social forces that do indeed CONTROL their lives is arbitrary
Take this personaility test.
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.
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E_NOSIG
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
Yep, but maybe the reverse is true. If more people became aware of the laws that protect them, maybe they would not have to depend on Lawyers as much. I'm not saying that everyone should be going to Law School, but taking a few classes in College or in HS wouldn't hurt.
Sig it.
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
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
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.
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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.
Could you back that 50% figure up please? I don't remember it being that low. I'm pretty sure that this year's US Pres election will be the lowest in history, but don't think that currently its at 50%.
Sig it.
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
You want justice in America? Better get out that checkbook.... or a gun.
Well, at the rate the 2nd amendment is being eroded, we'll probably be left with just the checkbook option really soon.
With regards to lobbyists: if the politicians weren't given so much control and influence over the economy, there wouldn't be so many lobbying groups trying to convince them to favor one company or industry over another one. When legislation has such a dramatic impact on the fate of a company or industry, OF COURSE the companies and industry associations are going to hire lobbyists to win the legislators over to their point of view. I'm not saying it's right or wrong - just inevitable and obvious.
There are those on /. who would suggest that the answer is to give the legislators more power. That just encourages more lobbying. As examples I offer China and post-Soviet Russia. There the legislators have much more power than in the U.S., and corruption is rampant.
I think the answer is to take the power away from those in office and give it back to the people. A good start would be to dust off the Constitution and actually pay attention to it once in a while.
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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.
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/. 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
Wow..that's shocking. What keywords did you use in Google to get that result..I want to read up on that.
Sig it.
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!
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.