Slashdot Mirror
The Internet Power Grab
Maple Syrup writes: "Fast Company has an interesting article written by John Ellis about the power shift on the Internet, as large corporate interests use political means to take over what had been a populist medium. The most interesting material comes at the end: 'There are no grass-roots efforts on the Web. The Internet army, which is enormous, hasn't been engaged or conscripted.'"
And my sidekick is Packet Warrior!
it's an old one, but corperate interests have always "fixed" things to get what they want.
Hasn't ANY of our senators and lawmakers been bought out to put businesses in their place and restrict them?
But I know plenty of people online who spend an awful lot of time indulging in grass, root and all.
Ellis is a genius
-Toby Inkster
Engage me, conscript me. We still need a leader (or group of them) to take us in the right direction. Thats the advantage corporations (or groups of) will always have - a leadership (however misguided, Ken Lay) United we stand....
...and it's called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
They are currently active in fighting the DMCA and Fritz Hollings' efforts regarding the CBDTPA, and lots more worthwhile stuff. I'd recommend you check out their site and get involved in any way you can...
:wq
We the lemmings of the Internet, in order to form a more gullible union, promote injustice, insure dissent, provide for common squabbles, promote anarchy, and secure the blessing of captivity and our own demise, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Internet
Copy Right By Me
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
So now the RBOCs and ILECs sweep up the pieces for virtually nothing, and consolidate the landscape. This was obvious years ago.
Add the hegemony of the likes of Disney and Microsoft, and their political champions/marionettes, and we're all set for high-priced enslaved mediocrity!
Can you say Palladium? I know you can!
"Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go dowwwwwwnnnnnn...."
The internet grass movement is called the open source movement. We're bigger than corporations and we're bigger than governments.
If anyone thinks they're conscripting me, I'll move to some other Internet in protest.
There cannot be an effective resistance to corporate interests by some rag-tag "grassroots army" of internet users.
The fantasy of some socioeconomic revolution fueled by internet connectivity is naive at best. Geeks and techies are about as potent a political force as are sheep rangers in Manhattan.
The multinational corporations control everything about us and feel very secure in their poisition. Get over it.
Who would provide hosting services to the majority of the people out there? Who would provide them with software that they can actually use? Sorry boys, but most free software is a POS for the average user. Mozilla and OpenOffice are the exceptions, not the rule. Who would provide the bandwidth? The hardware you use? Who would let you buy stuff online that you couldn't get locally?
The real question is, how far should corporations be protected? The answer is no more than they are offline. A DDoS should be treated with no more severity than throwing a brick through a window during peak hours. The existing copyright statutes were plenty for prosecuting infringers. It isn't illegal to teach someone how to make an explosive, it is to tell them how to use it if your goal is nefarious. Thus there is no logical, let alone ethical, reason to outlaw academic research on copy restriction systems. That research actually benefits copyright holders because it makes them more informed customers.
I will say right now and get it over with WE ARE NOT AT WAR WITH ALL OF CORPORATE AMERICA!!!! The enemy is each and every copyright cartel in the country and those that wield their patents against us. You want to worry about an economic issue (Americans) worry about Bush's hypocrisy. Subsidize American corporations to the tune of $100B a year then protect them from foreign subsidized corporations. We do it, they do it. Corporate protection is about securing votes, not good capitalism. Remember kids, your friends at the LP oppose the DMCA and while the EFF is nice and all, it isn't trying to get people elected to remove that kind of bullshit from the USC. If this kind of issue really bothers you all, vote for the LP. It isn't pissing in the wind if they don't get elected in the next few cycles. The longer they keep getting on the ballot, the more people will see their name. If you vote for a lesser evil, you are still voting for evil. Remember that in the next election cycle (which is IIRC 2 months from now for many of us).
They're outlawing terrorist acts on the internet like circumventing technological protection measures, discussing them, hate speech, anti government speech, etc, etc. WAHAAHAHAH!!!
You criminals on this site need to grow up. The government is always right and you dorks are always wrong. Law breakers get punished. Corley, Felten, Skylarov, etc are going to get their time in prison and be deservingly raped while they are there.
The FBI, DEA, ATF, etc have the right to kill anyone they want including "hackers" and "open source programmers". Deal with it. They were morally right when they killed the Weavers and when they burned those at Waco. Even the guy who recently got shot in the face and killed despite the fact that he wasn't the guy the FBI was looking for deserved it because he probably committed some crimes in his life.
The constitution has been repealed some time ago and it won't protect you filthy dorks... nor should it.
GOD BLESS AMERICA
As I am doing with Mattel, fighting back to make sure they are stung enough that they won't try with others. I hope that other companies that think about the same and realize that no matter how big they are, they cannot step on the rights of individuals.
Fight Spammers!
I will just attach my computer to the Internet using a strong cable and sit on my ass right beside it. If they want me off the Internet, they can bloody well come over and haul me away from it.
Peace! Connectivity! Protect the Internet!
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
And Steve Jobs says on CNN today,"My company owns 1 of the 2 operating systems out there."
lolroflmoal
God spoke to me
...want to help me harness that teeming throng of disenfranchised net users, and install a worldwide direct democracy that completely circumvents all governments and institutions?
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
One of the biggest grassroots movement right now is run by Voice of Webcasters, who're running a campaign to save Internet Radio by sending one million faxes to Congress. It would be a shame to see a fledging technology like Internet Radio go to /dev/null. If you truly care about Internet Radio technology, I urge you to send a free fax to Congress right now. The US House of Representatives go on Summer Recess on July 26th, while the Senate goes August 2nd. If we don't do anything now, a LOT of non-commercial and small Internet Radio stations will be gone by September!
Even if you don't listen to Net Radio now, you might in the future. Sending a free fax doesn't cost you anything, apart from two minutes of your time.
So I urge you. Please. Prove this article wrong. Show that the grassroots movement is definitely still there.
When are you libertarians going to figure out that the biggest threat to your freedom is not the government, but corporations?
",and the Free Software movement in the gun sights"
Ok, who's holding that gun then?
Free software has been around for as long as I can remember, long before I used linux. I got PD/Freeware stuff for my amiga, I dont think people will ever stop making freely available software. Not even if your extremely weird goverment overthere finds out to make some law, that could be life hard for GNU/OSS and other enemies of software coraporation. And this could actually be plausiable, since it seems like that govement of yours likes to protects its investors(investors, lobbiest whatever =).
So is the govement holding the gun? I dont get it =)
If yes, fire away. I dont think ANY thing would kill Freesoftware, the only thing that could happen was it would be criminalized to use it.
I thought it was actually kinda clever myself.
You have to remember, though...
statistically, every one at some time
or another "fails" to get a joke, simply
because they read it the wrong way.
There are enough people reading/posting
on slashdot that this plays out rather
frequently. Even the most intelligient person,
and the most obvious joke, it will sometimes
happen.
The moral of the story is, if you tell
a joke on slashdot, someone won't get it.
Same thing happens in real life. Consider small settlements with only a few people and a single general store. As the town grows the number of stores increase until big consumer interests see a profitable market. Then WalMart steps in and is soon followed by McDonalds, etc.
Sure these large stores (and web sites) drive the mom and pop shops out of business, but the reason for that is they can afford lower prices with a greater selection. The real problem is after all the competition is gone, they can raise prices to whatever they want.
P2P file-sharing networks might keep prices in check, but only for those who consider them competition (such as Listen.com). The xIAAs still consider them unlawful enemies of capitalism and are attempting to legislate them out of existence. Hopefully it will have as much success as Prohibition.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
There are no natives on this frontier, except for the people who founded it. We've gone and staked our claims already, and the corporations are now coming and using their various methods of leverage to gain control of our claims. We claim rights, domains, fair use, research...all of that to be crushed under the corporate war machine. It isn't fair that they can come in and do this. The government knows that it isn't fair. How long before the corporations start forcing people out of their houses without compensation to build on their land? Enough is enough.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If ridiculous to expect a service to be free, just because you get it from a webpage.
;-)
Do you also think books you order from Amazon should be free?
On the other hand, we are all part of a grassroot movement:
Open source software, helpful usenet articles, detailed personal webpages on everything from pruning trees to recompiling kernels...
If you disagree, just say so and I'll send you a bill for this comment
No sig to see here. Move along.
Mark this one under -1 Subversive...
Seriously, though, if you believe that corporatism on the Internet is evil and must be fought, then surely supporting an underground resistance movement to fight and deface the corporate internet presence is a valid response?
Consider -- you read something like Thoreau's commentary on civil disobedience and he basically says that paying your taxes under an unjust regime is in itself a crime, and NOT paying your taxes is a virtue. Now, considering that our options for resisting the corporate takeover are non-existent since laws and social institutions are in place to enable their power (ie: automatic deduction of taxes from income, which the government distributes to corporations as it sees fit (in other words, corporate socialism)) there is no way to deny them the money they feel is owed to them, as Thoreau says he thinks we should do. In that sense, can we not regard this as theft as retalliate accordingly?
For instance, if a company is promoting immoral behaviour and has a web presence, is it not justifiable to go after their web presence, if this is the only way I can fight back?
(Don't mind me, I'm just trying to see how fast I can get "wrinkledshirt" into an FBI file.)
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Vote Democrat. We have a republican in the oval office who appointed Ashcroft as attorny general. The Libratarians are even worse about supporting capatialistic monopolies; even if they don't say it, that's the net effect of their platform. And Green party is more annoying than RMS.
Everyone knows that the Internet is moving from free to fee. So why isn't the Internet army fighting back?
..and they never will be. People need to EAT. (When is this everything-free fantasy going to go away? IT DOESN'T EXIST!!)
Because for all the yelping and whining, they realize, like everyone else, that bandwidth and "content" (I hate that term) are NOT free, and that giving away a product is an inherently flawed business model that will cost jobs and good products.
People who want everything for free are indirectly supporting a minimum-wage, no-opportunity society where the only companies allowed to make money are those who charge for Internet access.
Want to see some of the cool sites/businesses on the Internet succeed? Great! BUY SOMETHING AND QUIT WHINING ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING ISN'T FREE!
Votes with dollars sometimes count just as much as votes with voices or ballots when it comes to the economy.
And so the end of free content nears.
There was never "free" content. It was just donated. "Free" content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
calls it "the counterrevolution": mature companies in mature categories striking back at Silicon Valley technology and the pricing-power collapse that it implies.
And they are doing this with employment and B2B purchasing *at least* as much as they are with on-line customers.
Their efforts are meeting with considerable success.
For now.
in the future ( through Internet-Protocol telephony ), all voice calls would be free.
No, they would be less expensive, and paid to someone else.
Voice calls are still not free.
but it is a measure of Hollywood's clout that California senator Dianne Feinstein -- formerly the mayor of San Francisco -- has cosponsored it.
Huh? She's a democrat senator from the state where Hollywood is. Hello? McFly?
may well pass both houses of Congress. That's real power.
Which is well-balanced by a certain pen at the other end of Pennsylvania avenue, and a gavel or three around the corner.
These days, their business depends on it.
What business? I thought everything was free?
Basic Rule of the Internet: Bandwidth is not free. Therefore content is not free. Period.
The Internet will continue to change business until it is totally dissimilar to what it is today. It will provide opportunity on a scale unimaginable 20 years ago for people to start and grow their own businesses, PROVIDED those who are served by those businesses participate without the incessant whining about having to fork over/cough up/shell out/plunk down a few dollars here and there.
It's a classic pattern of economics that the big businesses will move in and take over the Internet over the next few years. Economic boom-bust cycles for new technologies follow the pattern of: Innovation, Growth Boom, Shakeout, Maturity Boom.
The Innovation phase happened when the Internet first gained the attention of commercial interests (I'm not saying that this is technological innovation). The Growth Boom happened during the late 1990's. Lots of small companies try lots of different things. The Internet growth boom was particularly excessive and lots investments were made in nonsense ideas, and the feeding frenzy started feeding on itself.
These poor investments and hair-brained schemes lead to the Shakeout phase (which we are presently in), and the crap is washed away. But, not all is crap, and the good ideas and technologies survive the shakeout.
After the Shakeout comes the Maturity Boom, where the good ideas that survives from the Growth Boom come to fruition and are adopted by the survivors, which tend to be large businesses. This is a consolidation phase, and you can expect the large-caps to be throwing their weight around, and we will enter this phase sometime soon. Since large businesses aren't particularly innovative, they resort to heavy-handed tactics to consolidate power.
These economic patterns repeat at micro and macro levels.
I wrote an article a few months ago arguing that it was in society's interests as well as ours for engineers to get more involved in politics, and putting forward a few ides about why we are so ineffective. I had enough difficulty publishing it.
That's exactly the drawback to entities like the EFF, though; the ways in which one can get involved are usually limited to writing out a check, which is certainly useful but hardly motivational. And in no way will it rally the troops in the way Mr. Ellis seems to desire here.
(Mandatory disclaimer: I have tremendous respect for, and am greatly indebted to, the EFF. They perform a great service for this entire community on a daily basis and I'm not questioning their goals or motives. Just worndering aloud whether or not they fit the definition of a "grass-roots" movement into which the "internet army" could be actively conscripted.)
So while it's great to have rallying cries like this FastCompany article, perhaps what we really need are a few ramparts on which we can all stand, wave flags, and yell somewhat threatening slogans in French. Help me out here, folks. That is to say, in addition to all this writing -- either a checks to foundations or letters to government reps, what we really need are some good old-fashioned symbolic activities that, while not incredibly effective on their own, serve to get a large segement of a population involved in and excited about a movement on a personal level.
A perfect example, in my mind, would be the wartime "victory gardens" found in U.S. backyards during the first half of the 20th century.
So... any suggestions?
P.S. - Pardon any typos. Sliced my right hand on a piece of case metal while slotting a card this morning, so I'm down to pecking at keys with the left. Please mod this at (-1, Klutz) accordingly.
This rag-tag "grassroots army" has power: we vote. Dollars can buy senators, but voters can depose them. If we make enough noise, they will listen.
The author of the article was trying to spur us into action. It's not enough to vote, we have to shout our opinions. If enough senators get letters from concerned geeks, we will be noticed. Remember the volume of letters sent in during the Tunney Act comment period following the Microsoft-DOJ deal? We can organize, we can make our voice heard.
The United States was founded by a rag-tag group of intellectuals leading a "grassroots army", an army that defeated a well organized and provisioned imperial army. The grassroots effort is central to American politics. If you do not believe this, then you don't understand what it is to be an American. If you live in the United States, you should be ashamed for having written such drivel.
It's a good thing you posted that anonymously, Mr. Valenti.
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:40:47 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh
To: politech@politechbot.com
Subject: FC: Public Knowledge hopes to turn geeks into, well, geektivists
X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
Bring in the geeks
By Declan McCullagh
July 15, 2002, 4:00 AM PT
WASHINGTON--Gigi Sohn hopes that geeks have become so enraged by recent anti-piracy schemes that they'll finally want to fight back.
The 40-year old lawyer, head of the Public Knowledge nonprofit group here, plans to recruit ragtag band of technophiles and train them to become a corps of effective political activists on the Internet front.
To Sohn, this means seizing on widespread discontent created by the attempts of Hollywood and the music labels to curtail file-swapping networks while promoting sweeping new anti-copying laws and standards.
E-mail campaigns are easily ignored, and transforming online ire into effective political action is hardly a trivial task.
Geek armies have always been eager to vent in online forums and clog the e-mail inboxes of errant congressional types. As far back as 1995, over 50,000 peeved Netizens signed an electronic petition slamming the Clinton administration's privacy-invasive Clipper Chip.
[...]
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
To subscribe to Politech:
http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at
http://www.politechbot.com/
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at
http://www.mccullagh.org/
Like Politech? Make a donation here:
http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
What isn't from Declan's post to politech is that Gigi has already raised $1.1M.
At last, we have the chance to work with something with at least the possibility of success.
No, $1.1M isn't enough so we can afford to sit on her asses and let her solve the problems for us. It's only a start. We're going to have to put our own time and effort into this or we won't be making a living in high-tech in the USA.
Will she spend the money she's raised on the heavy artillery we need to back up our grassroots efforts and make them effective? (fax servers, ad purchases, campaign contributions, a top-bracket political lobbyist, political consultants, etc.) We'll see.
The good news is that if those of us trying to make a living at high-tech do get in and pitch and Public Knowledge does the right things, we might wind up with our own lobbying organization line NRA and AARP, and we'll never have to worry about politicians not listening to us again.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I find it difficult to believe that anything can kill OSS / FS. This is b/c there is no fixed target in regulating OSS / FS software. Lets say you make a regulation on software -- i.e., all cryptology must have government backdoors. How do you enforce this against OSS / FS software? Who do you target? Who's to be punished if its not made so? As its not a business, financial means are not viable. Maybe you could target the developers in charge of the products themselves, but they could simply start posting updates anonymously from public terminals, or move off-shore, to a place where your government has no influence. Alternatively, they could include government backdoors, but provide clear instructions on which source code to remove to get rid of them, or provide a program to get rid of it. I do not see how you can effectively regulate/prevent OSS / FS from having whatever the developers and users want in it.
As for the internet, no one ever said everything was free. Certainly, bandwidth costs money. But the price for putting information on the net and having it broadly distributed is much cheaper than that via traditional means, and likely to go down in the future.
True, producing information -- or formatting already known information -- has a cost, in time, money, etc. However, there is a nice reciprocity feature of the internet, in that any one contributor to the internet invariably gets much much more back from the net than (s)he puts into it. I am posting this one post -- contributing my information, my logic -- to slashdot. However, I get much much more back than I could possibly give.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
We have to stop saying: The Internet should be free as in beer, and start designing, specing and implementing payment mechanisms. They should be implemented in "our" browsers, and who knows, perhaps it could be a "killer app" that breaks MS monopoly.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Scorecards can also list Who is donating to the Congress critters and the people running against them, and how much they given each of the people running. Federal law requires that donation lists be made public, so it's just a matter of gathering the data, putting it in one place, and making sure as many people as possible know where it is by posting it on sites like /.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Few willingly join, but we have been conscripted.
It's been happening all along.
First, nothing begins if not opening
"Geekdom is fantastic at being AGAINST something, and it's hopeless at being FOR something" says the The Register's Andrew Orlowski in a piece entitled "Congressman vows Pigopolist legislation". He talks in glowing terms about representative Rick Boucher's efforts on behalf of individuals' rights vs. the RIAA and its ilk. Orlowski goes on to say "Boucher has scoped the battlefield, defined it in terms we can understand, and elaborated a battle plan, and now it's up to the rest of the community to see how far this notion flies." but suggests that such things as the efforts of the EFF and Slashdot rants do little to get the word out to the common man. He says "It's pretty easy to rally a Slashdot crusade against something, but for every one of us hollering, there are maybe twenty or so friends and relatives who are none the wiser".
He's probably right. Is it time for a look in the mirror?
Fight evil corporate control of your words. Use the QingPL and SlashdotSucks.
"Alterslash is illegal. And is violating copyright. And unfortunately, under the way US copyright law works they will probably get a cease and desist soon." - Hemos
Thats totally a copyright violation.... I wish people wouldn't steal." - CmdrTaco
When they outlaw command lines, only outlaws will have command lines.
You can have my shell account when you pry it out of my cold sticky fingers.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I got PD/Freeware stuff for my amiga, I dont think people will ever stop making freely available software.
How will you be able to make it if you can't afford a computer that will run it? How do you know that it won't cost 20 times more to get a "developer's computer" that can run binaries that have not been approved by the computer vendor? This is already the situation with the Xbox and GameCube, and it's pretty close to the situation with the PS2 (that is, until somebody reverses the I/O subsystem).
Scene: Computer store of the future.
Personal computer that runs only signed binaries: $500.
Personal computer that runs unsigned binaries: $10,000.
Tools for signing binaries: $1,000,000.
Look on Bill Gates's face once his company wields its DRM OS patent to control the entire industry: Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. U.S. Senators aren't one of them.
Will I retire or break 10K?
umm... this is hugely off topic but... can anyone say whether every vote a U.S congressman makes is public record? I mean, they cant make anonymous votes right?
:)
Pizaz: I'm pretty sure that ALL votes are public and recorded and people can get access to them.
Somebody should write a open source utility that is localized for each State & District within each state that will easily allow people to know on a daily basis, what their "REPRESENTATIVE" is doing
pizaz: heh, a congress ticker
damn straight
cuz right now they think they can pass anything
under our noses
"There are no grass-roots blah de blah" .. of
course not. Just because you're "on the net"
doesn't automatically make you any single thing,
part of any particular demographic other than
"on the net". By and large, the net is commercial.
Back *before* http (yes, there was such a time),
you archie'd around for what you needed, hung out
on the few net-connected BBS's that were around ..
back Then, it was a community. Now, its a mish
mash of commercial MTV-ized Crap. Let the corps
do what they want with it - they own the comm
lines, they own the schools. I fail to
understand the sense of entitlement people feel
to the web - "this is "ours"" .. bullshit. It
isn't. It is theirs. That 'they' might have
failed to anticipate or guage the potential of
the medium is moot .. it was, and remains, theirs
to do with what they will. The only thing you
own are the lost weekend and evenings you've
spent zipping from pr0n site to pr0n site.
Face it, people. You're running around in someone elses back yard, by their leave. You can get the boot any time.
Packet radio, anyone?
*8D-{
The Internet army, which is enormous, hasn't been engaged or conscripted.
I think he has it wrong, there necessarily is no internet army, being that an army is a hostile force of a centralized means (vowing to a government, revolution, etc...). the beauty of the internet in general terms is that no 'army' (corporate or not) could really revolt or take over, people would just route thru alternate servers and/or drop some cable and use their own computer, creating there own 'country' when others are 'neutralized'. Kind of like HavenCo...
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
The Internet exists only because the government used tax dollars to fund it. It was never a populist movement.
Why bother with a grass roots efforts to attempt to compel corporate america to play nice. They don't care. The only reason most of them exist is to rip off at least a double digit percentage of the population or not do it.
We're paying 50+ bucks a month for cable and the company isn't going to be around by the end of the year. Their solution is to now raise rate even more and decrease service because who is going to stop them and might as well line their pockets while the gettin' is good.
With corporate greed on the fast track and providers unable to guarantee anything (Worldcom, XO, Metromedia Fiber Network to name a few) there had better be another way and don't look to corporate america to do it.
The geek shall inherit the earth by a network of parasitic grids utilizing wireless and/or free space optics.
2
This parallels the history of radio in the late twenties and early thirties.
Broadcast radio was pioneered by universities, amateurs, and visionary entrepreneurs. It started out as a sort of friendly enterprise. In fact, in the early days of broadcast radio, it was normal practice for radio stations to keep their transmitters off for one (randomly selected) day each week in order to make it easier for listeners to receive more distant stations.
Basically the Communications Act of 1934 represented a victory for the commercial interests.
The "educational" licenses that still exist at the low end of the FM dial are the bone that was thrown to the noncommercial interests.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why do you check so often? Are you his proctologist?
Why? Simple...because it's easier to regulate a few big companies then millions of individuals.
The Internet scares the Govt., because it's (now) a populist medium. Joe Citizen...or G.W. Bush are equals on the net, because an IP address is what it is regardless of who's on the computer connected to it. The Governnment can't regulate the 'net, and they want to. In some ways, the pendulum has swung all the way to the right. The communist block imploded because their govts. (try as they did) could not control their access to information about the rest of the world.When the USSR jammed RFE broadcasats, they shifted to another frequency. When Khomeni was kicked out of Iran, he used the Long distance telephone system to dial into Iran from France and disseminate his message, which was playing on thousands of cassettes within Tehran within hours. Now our Government wants to pull the same crap...Problem is, they can't.
Information is a virus that can't be controlled. Just ask the former Soviets.
because of the many lawsuits, we should join EFF
http://www.eff.org
The electronic frontier foundation fights for the rights of the people, for linux, for open source and for keeping the internet free!
If you do not want the Internet and WWW hijacked by Fascist Corporations or Fascist Big Govenment JOIN WWW.EFF.ORG AND JOIN THE ACLU.ORG THEY FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS ONLINE!
FIGHT BACK AND DO NOT BE A POWERLESS COWARD!
You'll be drinking urine in your water, breathing poison in your air, and paying whatever the corperations decide.
The LP won't subsidise corperations, but likewise it has no interst in consumer rights or public safty.
Mention Disney to most people and the first thing that will pop in their heads is lovable cartoons. They associate the word "Disney" with wholesome family entertainment. Most people will consider being associated with Disney as being a good thing.
When you call Fritz the "Senator from Disney" some geeks might get the message, but a hell of more people will get this message "The Senator is for family entertainment" and is something that will help him far more than hurt him.
Put the right spin on it. Point out that Fritz is spending a hell of a lot of time representing the intrests of an out of state company that made big donations to him instead of representing the intrests of the people who elected him.
There are only 6 Senators who can claim they are representing the intrests of the people in their state when they back Media Companies, the ones from California, New York, and Tennessee. If you don't live in one of these 3 states you have a damn good reason to make representating out of state intrests into a campaign issuse.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Conscripted, by whom? I'd love to join up and defend my rights, no need to conscript, but it's not exactly like anyone is recruiting. I mean, where do I join?
I'm trying to figure out if this is the same John Ellis, cousin of George W. Bush, who misreported election 2000 for FoxNews?
I can't find any confirmation as he appears to be trying to hide his history, but the tone of the article, and the subjects of his other comments seems to point to that conclusion.
Reading the column it seems to be a case of someone trying to manipulate people by playing off their hot buttons. It's pretty standard political boilerplate opinion column. Reading through his blog I see a variety of the same.
Anyway, I guess the point is, it's good to know whose opinion it is you are reading. This certainly appears to be the same John Ellis, and I personally would not trust him to have my interests in mind.
The big problem with representative democracy has finally become apparent to even the most distracted and deluded (Americans): Your representatives are for sale, highest bidder wins. Been true for the past 200+ years, still true now. Need to bone up on that history, Homer.
Here's a clue: The power in America resides with those who control the law making process _and_ have control of the means to enforce the laws, that is, fine, lock up, or kill.
The phrase should read, "Of the people, by the government, for the big business interests" which seems much more accurate of our historical reality. The really, truely sad thing is this has been true for so long and folks just don't want to acknowledge it.
Another phrase comes to mind which could be more accurately modified: "Those who ignore history are screwed."
Ancient Greece, representative democracy. Rome, representative democracy for most of its existence. Ever wonder why the representative democracy types get so rankled when direct democracy is discussed? Have a clue yet? Ever wonder why those great states died even with the supposed strength of democracy? Here's a hint: The word "corruption."
Wake up, time to get a clue!
Sorry if I sound sarcastic, it's not my intent here.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Useless personal attack, no factual content. Ad hominem.
So *any* stipulation regarding the code they give away makes someone who donates works "greedy children"? Whiny and argumentative. Ad hominem again.
Bandwidth isn't free. Hardware isn't free.
I pay monthly for bandwidth. I pay for hardware. If carriers are losing money, up the rates. Your points are irrelevant.
Not sure what your point is. Not everything is free? So? Who ever said it was?
Here's the hint of the day. ....
Yet more ad hominen attacks with a patronizing slice of straw dog thrown in. See a trend here? The entire feel of your post is that of a distasteful jocks vs. geeks diatribe, and you're the jock. The logic rarely elevates above "things cost money so corporations should own the 'Net" level.
Moderators, please step back from the pipe.
They are licensed under open source licenses, but they are not the Open Source Software that people on Slashdot ramble about. Linux was a grass-roots project, though the Enterprise features didn't show up until IBM paid some developers to really implement it.
OpenOffice? Sun writes it. Sure the "community" may write SOME code, but Sun pays for the overwhelming majority of it.
Mozilla? Netscape sponsers it. Netscape pays engineers to code. I wonder what percentage of the code is Copyright Netscape (a whole owned subsidiary of AOL Time Warner)? 85%? 90%?
Open Source has had some incredible accomplishments (Apache comes to mind), but Mozilla and Open Office aren't among them.
Alex
for FidoNet - 21st century style.
and by all accounts downmod the ludicrous "alpha-person" tirade two levels up.
Pardonne
In an area that I follow, access to financial data, Edgar Online bought up most of the other services that reprocessed and indexed SEC filings, such as FreeEdgar. Then they introduced pay services and mandatory registration, moving away from a service funded by DoubleClick ad revenue. They're still losing money, and their stock is down from a high of around $20 to $1.71 today. The free services that compete with them, including mine, are doing fine.
The article mentions a service that charges for online access to baseball game audio feeds. If that thing makes money, I'd be surprised. If it has more than a few thousand paying customers, I'd be surprised. Major League Baseball as an organization has been in financial trouble recently. This sounds like a "maybe we can make some extra cash on the Internet" thing.
Charging for marginal content on the Internet seems to just be a phase companies go through right before they go bankrupt.
You're thinking too small. Yes, payment mechanisms are one thing we should be developing, because it will fix one of the problems Mr. Ellis mentions. But he mentioned several problems. We need solutions for them all.
Payment mechanisms would help fix the advertising model. But we also need to solve the last mile problem. And Copyright issues.
Once we have easy solutions for these problems, companies will have to implement them or be driven out of business by those competitors who do. We can't give them a choice to implement or stall -- we need to invent solutions that are so simple that the big guys could be beaten out by small business unless they come around to a new way of thinking.
Fortunately, time and the ongoing march of progress are on our side.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
No, 4. If Hollywood had a large rock on it, SoCal would go through a moderate recession.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY IF SILICON VALLEY GOES OUT OF BUSINESS?
The difference... the entertainment industry knows that their only hope of preserving their business model is via buttering up Congress.
Now try explaining this to Jerry Sanders of AMD, for instance.
The high-tech industries have only started to figure out that what happens in DC affects all of us, and they're hoping they can spend a little money on conventional lobbying to straighten this all out.
Perhaps, say, Apple will get the idea when they suddenly realize that the only way they can legally manufacture computers the rest of the world will buy will be to move to anywhere but the USA... as they start scouting real estate in Canada and Ireland.
What's needed is a mass movement backed by serious corporate money from the people CBDTPA will hit hardest. Though in fact, if such a mass movement is to be effective, we're going to have to match the corporate donations out of our own pockets AND actually get off our butts and participate... when the mail from the mailing lists gets to us, click the URLs and send the faxes to Congress... when we're asked to volunteer to work in campaigns of people we despise who vote right on Hollywood control of technology, get out from in front of our computers and GO.
Your choices?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I love big brother....
WELCOME TO 1984 PPL!
==========
Sincerely,
Locke
Your senator's focus on corn means that he might actually listen to you about DRM, because to him it's a side issue. In contrast, Diane Feinstein or Fritz Hollings are deeply committed to their cause and will not be easily swayed by voters or contributions.
Unfortunately, Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was fiction based on an idealistic world, and real engineers get paid too well to risk their livelihoods and families for moral principles. While I firmly believe that the intelligent and moral people of the world should easily topple the corrupt dipshits who work the system for their own gains, it is realistically impossible for this kind of techie rebellion to happen. In the real world, without these big corporations we'd all be out of work. The most successful grassroots movement in history was the environmentalist movement, and that took about 25 years of hippies (who had a valid point) bitching and moaning before it was universally accepted and written into corporate strategy. Technology doesn't progress without the resources of large corporations, but groups like the EFF are integral in making sure that the immediate interests of these companies do not conflict with the progress of technology. The best that any individual can do is to seek out and support movements in which they believe, and to hope that enough support can be rallied to publicize a rational argument. ...Then wait around for a quarter of a century and see if your employer has you sign a "progress of technology" awareness agreement. That's when you'll know you've made a difference.
That was a very concise summary of most of the attacks made on the Libertarian Party.
Was that what you intended to do? I'm a little confused because I don't know why you bothered parroting so much of what's already been said.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
Unfortunately, Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was fiction based on an idealistic world, and real engineers get paid too well to risk their livelihoods and families for moral principles.
/something/ happens soon before it becomes to late. . . .
I just hope
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
- Search for free software using all the tools and techniques a geek would use. Security through obscurity won't help here.
- Download it and make sure it really is Free Software and not a prank. Note the IP address.
- Get a warrant and make the ISP identify the user.
- Arrest and charge the user.
Variations:- Before arresting, sniff the user's traffic for a few months. You'll get tons of downloaders (who may or may not be worth prosecuting) and possibly find the source.
- After arrest, offer the user a deal: reduced sentence if he helps nab three more distributors. Or total immunity if he helps catch the software author.
Governments have been attacking clandestine networks since the dawn of time. The techniques are obvious. This type of law enforcement is shooting fish in a barrel. Why isn't DeCSS already hosted in such a place? Because there is no such place. US influence reaches more places than the internet does.Great choice of words. Amen.
-B...
A second post I agree with whole-heartedly. Thanks, "The Cat"!
-B...
"They are doing so in Washington, DC and in state capitols, where
the technology crowd is weakest and most clueless."
So far,
he's right.
Let's fix that.
See http://www.stand.org.uk/weblog/archive/2002/06/ind ex.php for details of how a UK group successfully mobilised over a thousand people to fax their MPs (members of parliament). This was in response to an extension of the government's surveillance powers (including who you are calling, faxing, emailing, and which URLs you visit) to a huge range of agencies include local government, the food standards agency, etc. The government tried to do this without debate or new legislation, which is possible through the RIP Act - however, that was made law with much discussion of the need to track criminals and terrorists, which is not exactly something that local government and food standards people are concerned with...
This mobilisation took just one week, and was incredibly effective - the use of fax means that the MPs treat it like a letter. My MP has sent me two letters in reply and followup, including the weasel words sent out by the government after they completely backed down.
See also www.faxyourmp.com, which makes faxing your MP as easy as sending an email - very, very smart idea to bypass the way that email is sometimes perceived by MPs as 'too easy to send, so not worth reading'. And every MP reads faxes even if they don't have an email address...
(1) The Telco really are the right people to offer DSL. Remember the Northpoint Fiasco? When DSL is offered by other DSP's, there are three different companies conspiring to give you a service that one company can. No wonder it took some people six months or more to get DSL.
(2) I don't care if Hollywood starts hiring jackbooted thugs to kill movie pirates. I haven't seen one of their movies in two years. I have no interest in their toxic culture. If they want to put a bunch of flaky electronics and unreliable cryptographic gear between themselves and consumers, I think they'll just find they shipped a generation of TV sets and DVD players that don't work reliably and people will decide to do something else like go for a walk or play with their children or something. We'll all be better off.
(3) As for the transition from fee to free -- I don't think that's political at all. It costs money to develop content, and if a content provider wants to charge for content, that's up to them. If anything, this is a boon for non-commercial culture on the net, which won't be charging anything.
If anybody is interested in pulling something like this together in this area, let me know. I can get some people together who would at least be willing to hand out flyers, etc.
1.Provide (a lot) more financial support for organizations working to ensure a free Internet
2. Do NOT cast this as an exclusively open source effort.Everyone one using the Internet is at risk.
3. U.S. residents: Learn, understand and publicize the impact of current and potential U.S. legislation on the rest of the world. The Internet does not belong to one country.
4. U.S. residents: Ensure that candidates running against Hollings, etc., take the right positions -- organize, be visible and noisy. Let Congress know the cost of voting wrong. Don't waste sparse resurces: Organize and focus on a single candidate with the best chance of unseating the incumbent.
5. Don't buy products and services from the wrong companies. Again, be visible and noisy. Tell people about it -- put it on your website, in your email sig, box those CD's up and take them back to the shop where you purchased them, etc.
6. Try a targetted boycott: Demonstrate clout by killing sales of a particular product.
7. Stop watching commercial television. If you have cable, cut back to the minimum package.
8 Get the right perspective. This is about free speech, not about making infinite copies of commercial CD's.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
But it's not all doom and gloom. As the medicine goes down, people WILL react. Alternet networks will be built to avoid the suck of Micky$soft. Why? Because the new unregulated oligarchy of Baby Bells, M$ (Mickey$oft), etc will be intollerable, even when compared with the former Ma Bell that would not let you do so much as hook up a modem. I got cable but it's mostly good for sucking down banner ads. This is stupid, and people will realize it.
Set up your DIY wireless or light based backbones TODAY. The other mediums are quickly being closed and that's why this lament is true: ... you might think that Silicon Valley would be organizing itself to fight back on the political front. But they're late to the game. And remarkably, they still haven't appealed to the public for support. There is no widespread public campaign to defeat Tauzin-Dingell. There is no widespread campaign to defeat the Hollings bill. And there are no grassroots efforts on the Web. The Internet army, which is enormous, hasn't been engaged or conscripted.
What do you expect to see, TV adverts on cable TV? What am I going to do, post bills up next to the local rock and roll concert advert? I suppose Sun/Apple/HP could run full page adverts in print magazines, kinda like the ONE BILLION dollars M$ spent promoting XP, but I'm not looking to comercial companies to protect my rights, are you?
And that brings up the cardinal point here: It's not about getting music or baseball games for zero cost, it's about freedom! I'm happy to pay the piper, as opposed to his publisher. I don't really care to listen to baseball, though I expect true freedom to have anyone able to broadcast a live stream from the stadium. What's most important to realize is that the aim of this legislation is to make someone else the owner of your computer. That is the only way to extract money from you in the end - to own the network from transmision to reception.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No one disputes that. If it costs, one should pay.
But what people are lamenting is not the oft-repeated TANSTAAFL, but the fact that marketroids are trying to suck dry a cow they didn't invent. They are looking around: "Look! An opportunity for profit! Let's take it!"
I would gladly pay for bandwidth, if the spammers paid proportionately to the bandwidth they use. I wouldn't mind as much paying for CD's, if they still cost the $7 or so the cost in 1992, instead of the $25 they may cost today. Has the cost of producing music grown so much in the last ten years?
In the end, it's us consumers being squeezed for the last penny, while the CEO's in the media and communications industry get their nine-digit bonuses, like the one at HP who got $157 million for the Compaq merger, and the one at WorldCom who got $340 million for nothing at all.
No, I don't mind so much it no longer being free, but I do care about being made a fool.
It should be noted that every time the US has tried to regulate essentially free code -- DeCSS or encryption, for example -- it has failed miserably. Despite the US Courts stomping their feet and pouting constantly, DeCSS hasn't been stopped from being distributed. There are many countries with good internet servers which are not influenced by archane US laws. Also, note, that your technique completely fails when people post anonymously from public terminals.
Furthermore, any attempt to ban OSS / FS would surely be ruled unconstitutional; as would the government's bans on encryption had they gotten to the supreme court. The DMCA will also be ruled unconstitutional if a case gets to the supreme court.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Devalue Apple? Sure the macintosh is a mad h4x0r tool, but, really, it would affect all platforms the same. Joe Sixpack is hardly platform specific when he feels the urge to download pirated movies or music. If the Mac was the ONLY platform for doing this, the copyright landscape would be quite a bit differant. -milo >The point is that legislation that would effectively >devalue Apple Computer ( whose new iMacs are >capable of copying music and video and sharing t >hose copies over the Internet ) may well pass both >houses of Congress.
Okay, I guess I could stand to lose some karma, so here goes:
The problem with "free" is that it doesn't scale well. Communism is a great idea for communes, with maybe 20 members. But sized up to the state level it fails.
Free works best in conjunction with fee. So, have a web site with free content on it, but sell subscriptions for "added value" or use it to promote offline services. Or if you're a bricks and mortar company like REI, put the catalog online for free and use it to drive customers to your physical locations.
I predict the pendulum will swing too far to the fee side, companies will lose customers, then swing back to the free side until they lose money, and so on until an optimum middle ground is found.
The U.S. is not yet enforcing the DMCA in a serious way. Don't confuse that lack of interest with lack of enforcement capability. I don't know exactly how a US Attorney thinks, but I guess he looks for cases that are easy to try and could result in long sentences. If every DMCA case is going to be tried like 2600, they may not be worth prosecuting. But eventually some smart prosecutor will come up with an efficient MO for busting DMCA violations and it will ripple through the law enforcement community.
They do not need 100% effectiveness to be effective. When a certain number of (DeCSS|Free Software) folks have gone to prison, the rest will not feel so invincible. At this point, the vast majority of us will give up - and it's childish bragging to pretend otherwise.
Public terminals are no problem. At the least, the government can seize all the equipment at the location under two different theories: evidence, and civil asset forfeiture. If they want to go a step further, they could arrest the owner(s) of the establishment and charge them under a variety of statutes. The net effect of these actions (which would never actually need to be taken) would be to convince public terminal providers to keep a clear record of who used what machine when.
But wait - I shouldn't have answered you so specifically. Rather, I'd like to convince you that if enforcing the Hollings Bill becomes a national priority, and violators are hiding behind X, whatever X is, the investigators will find a way to crush/remove/penetrate X.
As for non-US countries, there will be rough uniformity of law throughout the developed world. DMCA is coming to Canada and the EU, and probably all other developed countries via globalization. If the Hollings Bill is accepted by the globalization community (WTO) it will become effectively worldwide. If it is rejected, it will eventually have to be repealed in the US.
I agree, though, that if Free Software is legal in Europe and illegal in the U.S., which might be true for several years of transition period, it will be relatively easy and risk-free to obtain it in the U.S.
FWIW, I guess that something like the Hollings Bill will eventually pass, but will probably exempt Free Software and possibly all software. DRM is most effectively done in hardware.
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/07/21/1941202.sh tml?tid=4
Yep, I can see some filled white space around this article right now...
ballknocker