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Finally, A Solution To The DMCA
morcego writes: "Well, finally someone came up with a solution to the DMCA problem.
You can read it on the archive of the Humorix list." Well, combine this with my ULC Reverendship, and we're well underway *grin*.
Freedom of Religion? How 'bout Freedom of Speech? We've already eroded freedom of religion to the point that kids have to fight hard to convince their school administrations to allow Bible clubs, even though such groups are explicitly legal. Oh well. :)
Also note that having sex with a dozen teenage chicks at a time is part of my religion.
Does this mean that if I sin & distribute DeCSS but confess to it in the DMCA house of god, the evidence can't be used against me in court?
Then the Great Programmer leaned back in his executive chair, and gazed upon the newborn Universe.
And frowned. He knew those sentient humans would be a problem. Even after He had sweated over a hot terminal for thirteen days, those humans were ungrateful. They called their place of existence the "Universe", not the "Great Programmer/Universe".
Richard M Stallman, eat your heart out...!
If God gave us curiosity
If American Indians can't eat peyote for religious rituals, I doubt this idea will fly either... but still, it's a nice thought.
BILL GATES!!!
NO!!!!!
of course, that would explain why humans are so insecure and unstable....
The P.I. believes that the holy document was actually written last Wednesday when the High Priest had a little too much to drink.
This procedure for creating a religion seems pretty popular, I believe Scientology was created that way.
> Also note that having sex with a dozen teenage chicks at a time is part of my religion.
Actually, by the time they're teenaged, they're not "chicks" any more. They're just "chickens" at that point.
Virg
Didn't go very far, but you had to admire their gusto.
- - -
Radio Free Nation
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In most cases (in America), you cannot break the law in the name of religion. Aztecs cannot sacrifice people, Mormons can't practice polygamy, White Power churches cannot lynch people and violate civil rights, Branch Davidians couldn't violate gun laws and practice statutory rape (depending on who you believe).
However, there are a lot of exceptions, mostly cultural. Amish are except from certain mandatory schooling laws. Native tribes are excempt from prohibitions against hunting endangered animals. Underage Cattholics can drink alcohol as part of services.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Annoying those of us who don't need him (e.g. the citizens of Minnesota)...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Actually, I have been having some pretty serious discussions about this with friends of mine, most of whom are grads from divinity and transpersonal psych backgrounds, as well as with my tech friends (the two happen to coincide quite often as well).
Truth is, freedom of religion pretty much trumps just about every other right in the US. There are exceptions, but in general, even those who have lost on gambles such as polygamy and controlled substances still have a pretty wide berth on just about anything else.
As such, many of my friends thought that creating a religion that covers code as an expressive form of religion has come up very often. If you think about it, people who have a deep understanding (deep by the average citizens' point of view, shallow in the tech world) of computers and technology are pretty much regarded as witches by most folks out in the world. The best way, my friends and I thought, to fight this kind of mindset is simply to adopt a shroud of religion.
Hey Joe, you got a problem with the fact that I know things you don't? Well, I know this because God says ITS OK TO KNOW IT. Join my religion, and you can know it too. Just follow the rules. All of the sudden, most of the arguements over whether it should be legal to even KNOW about system security or info sec goes out the window by most peoples' standards if a christian church says its ok, then maybe it isnt the work of the devil, or witches, or evil haxors. Its ok, because god says it can exist.
Yeah, I know that there is some moral reckoning in how the above is presented that wouldn't wash with some knowledgeable and highly ethical people. I don't care. I care about not being picked out of a crowd because I know something other people don't. I care about having something besides the EFF to back my ass up when someone decides to sue me or press charges over something nobody really understands, but hey, THATS OK to press charges, HE knows TECH. He's GOT TO be a witch/evil haxor/apostate.
Fact is, I really do think whatever force that holds it all together talks through us and what we do. I don't think that it would be too unusual to start a church or temple or whatever to back that up, and to spread more knowledge around. Yeah, there are the baptists down the street, they are having a bake sale; the Catholics are having roulette night...oh, look over there, that new church, they are having free computer lessons!
Anyways, we never got around to getting that IDEA off the ground. It was a nice one. However, that may happen in the future. Essentially, at the time, nobody wanted to do the research to write the canon and background literature. Everybody was busy working. Well, now that the bubble has burst, we've got that time. Maybe it will happen, maybe not.
But really think about it...not many organizations can pull off the kind of stunts that folks need when shit hits the fan. Maybe a religion might not be a bad idea, jokes aside.
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
It has come to my attention that some of you think that we should incorporate ourselves as a religion based on tightly holding on to our intellectual property and trampling anyone who thinks their pitiful little rights matter.
This would be pointless. I know that some of you are concerned because some religions have sprung up that worship free speech and such things.
Just remember what happened years ago when John Lennon made the mistake of saying that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.
He was wrong. The Beatles weren't. We, however, are.
Sincerely yours,
Jack Valenti
the First Disassembly of God church.
/etc/hosts file.)
In the First Disassembly of God church we seek to reverse engineer the nature of the cosmos and supply weekly diffs and patches at our worship services. (As well as debugging of the faithful, documenting the numberous ways of violating syntax, and distribution of the Wine libraries and
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
WASHINGTON POSTTIMESHEARLD
.0000001% of all our net net revenues. We're very serious about this."
WASHINGTON, DC: Aug 30, 2001
As Congress furiously discussed what to do with the newly discovered "First Church Of Digital Grepping" and its alleged dogma that requires its members to constantly search through copyrighted materials for sacred meaning and salvation, the lobbying organizations for the entertainment and publishing sprang into action.
The entertainments' lawyer and lobbyists have already brought about a marked increase in donations of cash, luxury cars, booze, dope and the deployment of hookers.
One crack addict in a poor neighborhood of DC told us today, "Man, you can't score any good shit with it all going to them Congressmen. We down here smoking Draino and hoping those lobbyists from the entertainment industment get whatever the hell it is they want so we can get our freak back on!"
Another professional worker in the recreational sex business tells relates a similar story, "Geez, it's normally bad enough here with all these Congressmen around. Can't keep in they pants, anyway. You know how it is, if they ain't doing one of us out here, they doing the American people in there. But with all them lawyers and lobbyists working Congress about that Geek Religion thing, its nearly as bad for a sex worker as it is when they ain't no interns around. That's the worst, it's just every ho for themselves then and pray for new load of interns."
Sources within the entertainment industry say their goal is the simple protection of the artists.
One anonymous source said, "Look we all know that the actual artist, the creator who is the principal beneficiary of our actions here. We're going to ensure that the people who create the movies, music and books that we all love and cherish continue to receive their
Another source said that perhaps a solution similar to the one used with Native American peoples would be effective in dealing with "The First Church Of Digital Grepping".
That is, round all them up, march two thousand miles in the middle of winter. Take their computers and ATM cards away from them. Give them habitats in faroff remote Northern rural areas, and allow them to practice their supposed religion two or three times a year, under close Bureau of Geek Affairs supervision.
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
ah, geez, and don't get me started on the "void main" thing.
(that should be "int main")
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
That all depends on if He planned for the universe to ever exit(). We will need to consult the prophets to find the answer.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Even if he did make it somewhat inflammatory. I'd like to know as well. What makes a religion "legitimate" in the eyes of the government?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Were government run schools really around much when the constitution was written? I though they became the norm 50-100 years later.
The best solution to this whole mess would be to get the governemnt out of the school business altogether. It's not like they're doing a good job or anything...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
The unclear part is how to apply this when the each of these two adjacent sentence clauses (no establishment/no prohibition) contradict each other.
It is unclear whether providing overhead (electricity, land, janitorial services etc) support for people egaged in religious activity constitutes a move, however tiny, towards the establishment of religion. Neither is it perfectly clear that forbidding equally all such support to all such groups effectively prohibits their right to excercise freedom of religion.
People tend to see the issue as perfectly clear cut on one side or the other. It isn't, in my opinion. It is perfectly possible, in my view, that the framers left us with situations where those two adjacent phrases give us two contradictory imperatives, at least viewed using two valued logic.
Let A be the proposition that letting the students meet on school property is kind of state establishment of religion. Let B be the proposition that not letting the students meet on school property limits their free excercise of religion.
It's not a black and white issue. Propositions like this aren't true or false in the same way that "3 > 2" or "pi is irrational" are. They are matters of judgement, and can be somewhat true or somewhat false. I happen to think A is practically completely false (but to a tiny degree true); and B is mostly false (but considerably more true than A). Therefore, I favor the students being allowed to meet, but I can see how other people would have different opinions.
Since neither A, nor B is anything like 50% true, I'm not going to get very worked up either way. Since there is not way to split the difference (the students are allowed to meet on the property or they are not), then either decision is somewhat good and somewhat bad.
Now, if the policy where not applied equally to atheists, jews, pagans, muslims and christians, then I would definitely get very excited about it, since it would be a clear step towards establishment.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We don't even have our own religion for a freakin' day and already it gets forked into splinter factions! Bah!
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.