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DMCA 2, Freedom 0
Politech is featuring this press release from EFF stating Judge Garrett Brown of the Federal District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, threw out the EFF-Felten case challenging the DMCA after less than 25 minutes of debate. DoJ and RIAA both made motions to dismiss the case, which the court granted. We'll have a story about what occurred at the hearing tomorrow. EFF plans to appeal. In addition, 2600 is reporting that they've lost their Appeal in the 2nd Circuit court.
I have no problem with the ideas and goals of the EFF (and usually I agree with them), but they must be the most incompetent organization known to mankind. Hopefully this is another notice to its members that all the people making decisions at the EFF need to be replaced with folks who have at least an iota of a clue.
If there are "hundreds" of scientists that are afraid to present their research, PRESENT THE DAMN SCIENTISTS. Good grief, this is ridiculous. First they jeopardize my freedom as a coder by pushing the Corley case up to the District Level when it is clear that Corley is completely unsympathetic, now they fubar this one. Someone please take a lesson from Thurgood Marshall who passed up hundreds of chances to challenge civil rights laws until he finally got a case with facts that were clear cut, and prejudice was obvious (Brown v Board of Education for those interested). This is ridiculous, with friends like the EFF, who needs enemies. At this rate we'll have no freedom left by 2010, whereas if they would just let the non radicals get it worked out we'd be fine.
Karma be damned! I am so tired of the idiots at the EFF. Mind their own business, and stay out of technology issues they clearly do not understand, and laws they are too incompetent to affect.
Funny, I've talked to a lot of people who are far from geeks, much less "pirates". I've told them about the attempt to place unexpirable "access controls" on material slated to be public domain. I've told them about the arrest of a foreign national for writing a program legal in his country. I've told them about the intimidation and outright threatening of scientists who dare to expose flaws in a sham security system. I've told them about being blocked from watching a movie they've bought wherever they want on whatever machine they choose. I've told them about losing their time-honored rights to Fair Use, to First Sale, to archival copies...
You know what? They don't think any of those things should be occuring. They don't think that reverse engineering for system interoperability should be illegal. They don't think allowing backups should be illegal. They don't think allowing you to read an eBook on whatever machine you choose, should be illegal. They don't think control over your own movie collection should be illegal. They don't think that quotation from a digital source, for the purposes of scholarship, should be illegal. They don't think that scientific research should be illegal.
So don't get on your high horse and tell me what people think should be illegal and what not. You don't know a thing about what people want. When the mists are lifted, when the DMCA and its implications are laid bare in ordinary language, and not swirled up and hidden behind copyright-lawyerese, then even the "ordinary" people do care.
In this fight, the problem is not that the majority understand the issues and are against. The problem is that they do not understand the issues. They stand neither against us nor for us, for they have not yet thought it through. In my experience, when they do stop to think about it, when the shape of things is made clear, then the rational citizens I encounter invariable end up quite upset with the DMCA.
People are only as stupid as you seem to think they are, when they listen to you tell them how stupid they are.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
"The only way to fight gags is to shut up"
Not really. Try this instead: "The only way to fight gun control is to reduce gun fatalities."
Whether that means trigger locks, better ethics amongst dealers, or something else. The government doesn't try to ban something unless there's a problem. And billions of dollars of losses for one of Congress' biggest "sponsors" is a Big Problem(tm).
The time for reform is now. The time to blow defiant raspberries at The Man has passed. Don't pick a fight with a cop if you've got something to hide.
~wally
It's important to be able to protect your assests from copying. People should have to pay for movies and music. I know that sounds horrible to commies like you, but that's the truth.
If artists didn't get paid for their work, there would be no more art.
Holy shit, you mean the DMCA actually allows racists to kill people?
This is the sort of argument that I'm talking about. You can't even defend your position without a straw-man argument.