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Alan Cox Resigns USENIX Post Over DMCA Arrest
1millionmhz writes: "NewsForge is reporting that Alan Cox has resigned from his position on the USENIX ALS committee in protest of Dimitry Sklyarov's arrest in Las Vegas. He is also urging non-US programmers to boycott American computing conferences until the DMCA is overturned." Boy, aren't you glad that the DMCA now has nine special units to prosecute hacking and copyright violations? At least it will help keep the country safe from programmers. Update: 07/22 01:05 AM by T : Yup, it's a dupe. Mea culpa -- I missed it the first time. Worth dwelling on, though ;)
Great reporting, guys.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
It won't. Understandably, Alan is concerned about his personal security in a State which seems to have incorporated kidnap of alien nationals by its Police Apparatus as a law enforcement tool.
The question which should be asked is simply:-
"Why do the US State Security organs want to kidnap a Russian citizen"?
No, just like people their wealthy varies all over the map, in fact, most corporations are quite small and unheard of.
Yes, they are afford some protections that humans are not. However, it is clear that you are confusing this with the limited liability that the shareholders have. Just because the shareholder cannot be held personally liable, does not mean that the corporation is immune, nor does it mean that the investor bears no risk; it just means that the investor can only lose what the investor invested.
Corporations are dissolved quite often. Shareholders can, and do, lose ALL of their investment. For some shareholders, this can be pretty traumatic. Anyways, the proof is in the pudding, investors are clearly risk averse. Baring all but the most fly by night corporations, the threat of criminal and civil lawsuits is taken very seriously indeed.
You totally fail to consider WHY corporations exist in the first place, or why they're founded. The shareholders of corporations bear a significantly increased task burden, it generally far exceeds that of sole proprietorships or partnerships. Essentially, they pay taxes twice. The corporations pay taxes on their earnings and the shareholders pay taxes on both capital gains and dividend checks (the two ways that investors get a return on their investment). They are willing to accept the diminishment of earnings because it is quite necessary.
Without corporate status, each and every one of the investors takes a great deal of personal risk (baring some notable and hardly relevant exceptions). What this means is that if you own even the tinniest number of shares, you stand lose your house, your car, and all of your savings. Consider investing in a well diversified portfolio. You could very expose yourself to MORE risk, not less risk, since just one company need default on a loan, run affoul of the law, get sued by some ambulance chaser, get struck down by some overzealous bureaocrat, or what have you. Many many businesses would simply become impalatable for the reasonable investor, not just "evil" corporations like tabacco companies, but medical devices companies, medical technology companies, drug companies, car companies, you name it. Without investment, those industries would eventually die.
July 21, 2001
The Honorable Brad Sherman
1524 Longworth Building
Washington, DC 20515-0524
Dear Congressman Sherman,
Several months ago, I had the opportunity to talk with you after you spoke at Temple Judea in West Hills. At that time, I attempted to convey to you my concern about some of the more onerous provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Recent events have deepened my concern, and as one of your voting constituents, I ask you to work towards the repeal of the DMCA.
While I am fully in favor of creators retaining control over distribution of their works, the DMCA goes several steps further. The "anti-circumvention" provision restricts time-honored Fair Use rights of consumers, and essentially also destroys the First Sale doctrine. These, in and of themselves, could be considered a reason to work towards its repeal. However, the actual situation is much worse.
(Any references given in this letter are World Wide Web links, I don't have access to the necessary hard copy.)
The DMCA has had a chilling effect on academic research. Professor Edward Felten, a distinguished professor, who was also one of the lead witnesses for the Department of Justice in the Microsoft anti-trust trial, was recently prevented from delivering an academic paper on information hiding and watermarks (see http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Felten_v_RIAA). This sort of chilling effect is precisely what the First Amendment is designed to prevent.
Again, that would be sufficient to work towards overturning. Even worse, however, the criminal provisions of the DMCA have been invoked against a Russian national, Dmitry Sklyarov, who performed "anti-circumvention" work in Russia for his employer, where he broke no Russian law. He came to the US to deliver a speech about his work, and was arrested subsequent to that speech. This sets a dangerous precedent. What would the US government do, if a US citizen was arrested for violating foreign law, while the act was performed in the US where it was perfectly legal? Needless to say, the irony of this occuring to a Russian citizen is immense, and embarrassing to the United States.
Here are some references to the Sklyarov case:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45298, 00 .html (Wired)
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/archiv es /2001/jul/18/512096646.html (Las Vegas Sun)
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/010718/n17166094_2.html (Reuters)
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nyt/20010718/tc/u_s _a rrests_russian_cryptographer_as_copyright_violator _1.html (New York Times)
Congressman Sherman, please help ordinary people by working to repeal this draconian law.
Sincerely,
etc...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'd think the folks in Las Vegas who promote conventions would be a little pissed at Adobe & the DMCA too.
The next Defcon conference should be outside the US... and other conferences should think twice before having a US based conference attended by programmers from outside the US.
Since the DMCA is protecting wealthy capitalists by disallowing any programs that compete with their popular programs, it is only prudent to avoid putting your programmers in harms way.
It was the ultra-conservative Republican, Orin Hatch (representing ultra-conservative Utah) that wrote the DMCA. Strange that these republicans say they want to "open markets", then pass laws to protect wealthy capitalists instead.
Maybe this is cause to boycott the 2002 Winter Olympic games in Utah too (it's worth boycotting since they won't let outsiders bring in their own booze, and must purchase booze from the limited variety offerred by the state store).
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
As other slashdotters have pointed out, mere compaining is not likely to do anything in particular. An organized show of support against adobe, and against the DMCA is much more likely to be effective.
What is the best approach to organizing against adobe and the DMCA? Letter writing? Boycott? Something else?
What about flooding local editorial pages of newspapers with well written letters describing the dangers of the DMCA so that our non-linux guru friends (and the media) can understand and support the cause?
While this is a good gesture to make, I fear it will do little to resolve the fundamental issue at hand.
The cold fact is this - the US lawmakers could not care less about what the non-corporate computer world thinks of their laws. Our opinions don't matter to them.
Consider! There are at last count a few hundred MILLION americans. Most of them can vote, a major percentage of them DO vote. There are also thousands of issues waiting to be addressed, most of which are more emotionally relevant to people than computers. Most people in the world use computers only to get specific jobs done - they have no need to appreciate the whole picture. Consider how small the percentage of voters who are worried about this are relative to the rest of the population. Probably about the same number who stand to profit from the DMCA. The net result, when you throw money into the mix, is that we are irrelevant.
So our vote doesn't scare them. What about what Cox tried, encouraging people to move their operations elsewhere. From the government's point of view, that's probably just what they are looking for! They have Microsoft in the US, and lawsuits or no it isn't going anywhere. And Microsoft controls probably between fifty and seventy percent of all computing, depending on how you count. On desktops considerably more than that. The Microserfs both within and out of the company aren't going anywhere, and neither is their economic clout or control of personal computing. So what do they care if they lose a few independant thinkers? From their standpoint it makes security through obscurity easier. The fact that this isn't secure at all apparently doesn't mean much to them.
Consider how much damage things like the Love virus do, and yet no action is taken to fix the fundamental problem (Microsoft's security). If that didn't teach them that unknown security problems are a danger, nothing will. They (and the companies) just want the visible problems gone. They are both monopolies - they don't have to care about a small buch of techno-geeks. We are bad. We wave problems in the face of everyone and teach people how to destroy the system! We should be stopped!
All the people who wrote the DMCA are interested in is money and public image. They've got the crap beat out of us on both. We insist that people THINK about the problem and find real solutions. The people are lazy. Most think a login prompt is a major hassle. They don't want to have to think about whether they are really secure. They just want to get buy. Anyone shooting their mouth off about problems makes that impossible, and people have to work more. Ohh, we can't have that.
That battle, at least in the US, is hopeless. It's money and votes people are interested in, and we don't have either. Therefore, our opinions don't matter to the powers that be.
The once chance that things will improve might be if all the best computer people go somewhere else to work because of the stupid US legislation. Enough dumb rules, and it might just happen.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
In space, no one can hear you moo.
You may be forgetting that capitalism is a relatively new concept in Western Civilization. It took a long time for us to figure out that feudalism was flawed. Had Slashdot been around back then I'm sure most serfs would respond to criticism of the system with a cliche like "If you don't like it, become a noble and start your own fief!"
Historically, "Father of the free market" Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations wasn't published until 1776. There was organized trade before that (e.g. Dutch East India Company), but the world's economic landscape looked nothing like it does today.
I just pulled Peter Lynch's book "Learn to Earn" off of the shelf, I wish I had a better reference.. Anyway, consider this sentence:
"By 1800, there were 295 corporations formed in the United States, but most of these remained in private hands so the general public couldn't own them."
In the early 1800s, there were various stock market panics and bubbles that didn't do much to encourage Americans to invest in the stock market. But during the later half of the 1800s, the corporation in the United States really took off. That's when we saw the proliferation of inventions like the steamboat, the cotton gin, fancy pistols, Edison's inventions, etc. Getting these new products out there took a lot of investment, and that's when the stock market became very active.
Since then we've incurred incredible societal changes with a move from agrarian life to urban and suburban life, various ethnic groups have more representation in government and less discrimination. The industrial revolution and factories have made mass production of prpducts possible. Corporations are a lot more VISIBLE now. Brand names weren't well known until the early 20th century thanks to A&P being the first popular chain store, making mass produced items like Nabisco crackers and Heinz ketchup ubiquitously known in American towns. Chain stores have now made our cities (particularly the suburbs) look like carbon copies of one another (read The Geography of Nowhere.) Advertising has gone from Burma Shave billboards along Route 66 to huge screens on buildings displaying brightly lit, flashing animated ads that distract drivers on the road.
Historically, you don't really have a CLUE what the answer is to the question "Which is better: GOVERNMENT or CORPORATION?" because the impact of the corporation on our culture has changed so much in only the past 150 years.
Henry Fool
While I commend Alan on taking a stand, you have to wonder what effect it will have. How much power do the conference organizers have? Even if programmers boycotted conferences en masse, would it have any effect and would there be a receptive ear in Washington? I sincerely doubt it. Not until we elect representatives that a) aren't beholden to corporate America and b) understand technology, the DMCA will remain the law of the land unfortunately. And the likelyhood of A & B happening are slim and none so its likely the only way the DMCA will go down is in the courts and even that is iffy. Not trying to be depressing, but our representatives don't know squat about the Internet and buy into the media hysteria hook line and sinker. And good luck finding main stream media that portrays hackers (NOT crackers) in anything but a bad light.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I am not being sarcastic; I really don't understand--can anyone clear it up?
Yes it is illegal for anybody in america to decrypt my post. If you do the fbi will arrest you.
MYY YOUR NMFR MER BELONG GB US
Now do you see?
The story of the new nine special units to prosecute/pursue such crimes is a new /. story, I think. Also, I understand that the U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuting Sklyarov (Robert Mueller) has been nominated by President Bush to be the next head of the FBI.
I have a feeling that the Bush Administration isn't opposed to DMCA?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"