Slashdot Mirror
Cybercitizenship Definition Of Crime
pbf writes: "This article from securityfocus.com has an interesting view on what RIAA-funded site Cybercitizenship.org believes is legal or not on the Internet, as well as how you should educate your kids for that matter. This is quite interesting and the conclusion indicates fairly accurately the tone of the article: "When did federal prosecutors and hi-tech industry moguls became regarded as authorities on cyber ethics or effective parenting?" Indeed... So are you surfing like a hero or are surfing like a zero ?"
"If we are to ensure public safety and responsible computer use, then government, industry and the public must all work together,"
translation:
"if we are to ensure corporate control of the masses and prevent 12-year-old kids from doing BAD THINGS (tm) that we can't otherwise stop, the well-funded politicians, the RIAA/MPAA and othewise gullible parents must work together to spread our propaganda."
Anyone else have an alternate translation of Reno's statement?
This is supposed to be great art. So why does it look like a bunch of decapitated naked people? -- Calvin
Warning: this is to be taken as tongue-in-cheek humor, not as flamebait (that little bit is added b/c I prefer not to post as an anonymous coward, and do not want my inbox to resemble a target for gelatinous gasoline in the morning)
The only people this website could fool are the same sloths who believe everything else TV and the internet has told them. These are the same people buying stock because they heard a tip on IRC, then sueing for fraud, the same people who acquitted OJ, and the same people that made oprah a millionaire...
Yes, the sheep are being led by greedy wolves in shepherds' clothing. We may also want to remember a quote from Abraham Lincoln that was to the effect of "A man who reads nothing is better educated than a man who reads only newspapers", or something like that. I personally think you're giving the average sheep too much credit with saying that they bought stock on a tip they heard on IRC because: 1) that would imply that they were smart enough to set up an etrade account, and 2) they were able to figure out how to use IRC. I fail to see how they could sue for fraud, because last I checked, screen names are not legal proof of identification, making it impossible to sue the person who gave them the tip. I won't even touch on the OJ case for fear of napalm. Oprah, I think, has made much more than one million dollars, as have several other talk show hosts. Then there's the whole issue of the most intellectually dulling shows in the history of the television: Big Brother (would anyone really want to live in an antiutopian, Orwellian environment completely cut off from the rest of the world?), Survivor (Oh, hey, we fished last week, but somehow forgot how to, so lets eat these rats over here, plus if this was a real survival show we'd just raid the camera crews' supplies relentlessly), Who Wants to be a Millionaire (oh, gee, now the gecko on the windowscreen ten feet away has the intelligence to have a 7-digit payout), and Greed (let's take 6 people, put them on a team, build teamwork, then pit them against each other in sudden-death challenges, and give the winner some outrageously huge payout that they don't really deserve).
Its because of pathetic crap like this that the American public demands that I would love to be one of the first people to colonize Mars. Hell, I'd even take the Moon, Venus, or the Asteroid Belt, as long as the "colonies" become self-governing. Then we'd finally be able to get rid of the fascist laws and acts that restrict our constitutional rights.
I might as well turn this into a full-fledged rant and toss the warning at the top to Grethnor. Last I checked, songs and song lyrics are speech, and source code was either speech or press, or both (First Amendment), scanning/probing of computers and electronic transmissions without explicit permission, à la Carnivore, is a direct violation of the right to freedom from unwarranted search (Fourth Amendment). As far as I can tell, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is in explicit or near-explicit violation of most of those rights, as well as in violation of that home recording act of 1992.
This concludes my rant.
--Given the way things have been going personally lately, I'm due for a landslide of karma points.