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Declan McCullagh On Geek Activism
die_jack_die writes "Declan McCullagh, formerly of Wired News, lately at News.com, has written an insightful piece about the realities of geek activism. Short version: spend your time coding, not lobbying.
(You might also want to check out Politech , his mailing list for this sort of stuff.)" This in contrast to Lessigs call for more lobbying.
Pretty soon, there will be little room for innovation. We are already seeing chilling effects from DMCA. If we don't fight, we are just digging our own graves.
The main reason for this opinion is that marketing and public awareness are more powerful that coding; although coding is more important. Look at all the excellent products that have been coded and not marketed very well, which have died out because of a lack of market awareness (OS/2, BeOS, Amiga, and many others).
Microsoft is proof that lobbying is more important. Windows doesn't come close to the power, security and stability of nearly every other OS popular today; yet it remains solidly on top in marketshare.
Don't get me wrong, more coding is always a good thing, however, to do it at the detriment of lobbying is a sure fire plan to navigate your project into oblivion.
ye gods.
look, ever lived in a condo or worked in a union? the people who don't have lives gravitate to the elected positions. very few people with a homelife of any detail will contribute their extra time unless they feel immediately threatened. and the bit rot begins. the committees get controlled by the cranks and the con-men.
_do_ code like the man is suggesting, but then turn off your tv for part of your down time and do something about your social environment. yes, geeks make poor lobbyists. but they're good educators and agitators of other lobby groups and sectors of the population. you're not alone, regardless of how well you simulate that around your monitor. talk to people.
"hey, computer joe, what's that dmca shit they're talking about?"
"dude, i don't worry about it. making a way around it with my l33t skillz."
and dude goes off believing the archtype few honest men will protect him like hollywood says, and no longer worries about it himself either. great.
political activism doesn't work? man, jack. half of what we call history is records of revolutions, and political evolution.
sorry, this kid's feel-good nilhism may be hip, but it's a personal delusionism of someone who had to justify to himself wanting to say "don't put off today what you can put off tomorrow".
Declan seems to have fallen for the fallacy that politicians are dumb, and the hubris that geeks can outpace them.
Politicians are just as good at what they do as geeks are at what they do. If we ignore the politicians, they *will* win. They can shut down the things we love to all but those who are willing to break the law. Don't kid yourselves.
Geeks have to fight the lobbying fight to protect the technology fight.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
...to make our voices heard, then writing all the code in the world isn't going to make any difference; even assuming it will be legal to write (in the US, anyway) code without a license or certificate of some kind, there won't be any hardware that can run code not produced by a multi-billion-dollar company. We have to find some way to stop this BEFORE it happens, because after the fact it will just be too damn late. If lobbying isn't going to help, what will? And why aren't we doing it yet?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
longer form of the short version:
Spend your time coding, not lobbying. Stay in your place. Don't bother having an opinion on anything other than the design of your software- just leave it to the politicians to know what is good for you. Stay in your place- there's no way a coder could know anything about politics, nor should she be able to have an opinion.
Which is utter bullshit. I'm not going to listen to some schmuck tell me to hold back my ideas just because I'm paid to do something other than be a politician. Just because I get paid to code, it doesn't mean that's all I'm capable of. A lame attempt at putting these socially aware "geeks" "in their place." when you classify you divide.
I don't know about you, but I'm not eating the bullshit-burger with a side order of lies. RISE MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS, take back the freedoms which we have a birthright to uphold- the world would be better run by geeks than layers (the profesion from which most politicians come) anyway.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Sorry, this piece didn't phase me a whole lot. The DMCA may have won, but the SSSCA hasn't. I remember one comment along the lines of "we got tons and tons of messages expressing their disgust at the SSSCA, but not a single message in favor of it." Sitting quitely and 'writing code' is not the answer. If anything, what he's suggesting will cause bs like the SSSCA to make greater claims for the need to tightly control how computers work.
It wasn't that long ago that somebody mentioned that the best way to protect our rights was to do something like the NRA does. Gather our resources and blow away a single person. (I mean that metaphorically, I dont mean shoot anybody. Normally I wouldn't need to clarify this, but there's always one dumbshit...) We may not be able to gather enough money to sway political opinion, but it is possible to make one person in particular suffer some sort of consequences, whether it's financially or public opinion.
This doesn't seem like a big deal unless people like Senator Dis^H^H^H^HHollings realize that if they piss off a community like Slashdot, they could end up getting targetted. As I said, that's how the NRA's been able to hang around this long. If anything, we should be looking in their direction. They obviously have a better idea about how to go about maintaining rights than suggesting that people just stay home and clean their guns.
It's important to keep writing the software that forces changes in the culture. But it's equally vital to educate people about those changes, to help ensure that the changes that come are positive. McCullagh's argument reads far too much like "Gee, this politics thing is hard. Let's go back to coding and pizza. I'm sure it will all work out" (or, for the more cynical, "Nothing I do will matter anyway.")
If these issues matter to you, then get out there and educate the less tech-savvy. That includes Congresscritters. It also includes family members, coworkers, etc. Don't surrender just because it looks hard. Or to put it another way: Yes, geeks organizing politically might fail to stop this headlong rush into technological totalitatianism. Even if we speak up, the worst might happen. But if we don't speak up, then the worst is guaranteed to happen.
I applaud people creating the disruptive technologies, but they aren't enough. It's interesting to offer up Shawn Fanning (Napster) as a shining example. How, exactly, is Napster doing right now? Yes, he helped usher in an era of peer-to-peer filesharing (ironically through the failure of the Napster model). But now we face increasingly aggressive legal attempts to legislate away computer security, privacy, and fair use rights to counter the things he's unleashed. Maybe unleashing it needed to be done -- but don't you think that maybe, just maybe, things would be in a better state if someone had clearly and forcefully articulated why these things are good, instead of leaving the field uncontested, to be defined by the PR flacks of the *AA groups?
The DMCA passed unamiously because the geeks were silent, by and large. Congresscritters had no white hats telling them what was at stake; and there wasn't even a nascent organized lobbying effort. And of course Rep. Coble would say the law is "performing the way we hoped." -- he helped write and pass the thing! Why not a quote from, say, Rep. Boucher:
We as geeks have failed to make clear to Joe Sixpack and Jane Q. Public why they care. If we do that, then we're halfway to a victory. Anyone who says that Congress votes for their corporate sponsors over the vocal deamnds of their constituents must have been under a rock in July, when senators and representatives were falling over each other trying to be the first to fix the issues of corporate responsibility that they were shocked -- shocked! -- to discover in American capitalism.
The big lobbiess don't win because Senator Bob votes against his constituents and ignores their please. The big lobbies win because no one else is speaking
So go ahead. Code the next generation of encryption software. Write the next secure anonymous emailer. Protect privacy at the router level. But, while you saving the world in codepsace, take a minute or two to write your senator or explain to your mom what's going wrong, why we're on the wrong track.
Only a multi-pronged approach holds any chance of success.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Sadly, I think he is right about the ineffectiveness, but I don't think the author is right about our ability to out pace new legislation. What happens when controls are embedded in the hardware, legally required to be there, and you can't make your computer run 'unauthorized' software like PGP (unauthorized, or forced into key escarow by the gov.) and DeCSS? This isn't that far fetched, I'd call it a step or two away from the CBDTPA. How do you hack that? It has to be stopped before it gets to that point.One can't do much once computers are legislated into glorified DVD players.
there is only one answer to the question of corrupt or immoral politicians: EDUCATION
Politicians can get away with what they do because no one is watching. not enough people to make a difference, anyway. few people care, because few people pay attention. few people pay attention because few people understand what's really happening.
If you want to stop (or at least curb) this crazy behavior, you need to educate yourself and others about what is going on. Find facts, and spread them to everyone you know. Education such as this will help people make up their own minds (don't do their thinking for them, you may be wrong).
EDUCATION is the ONLY way you'll ever get the numbers you need to get people moving in the right direction.
Educate yourself on every aspect of politics, and you'll soon see that it is the only way to get people to move. People go into fits when their favorite ball player is traded because they understand what's going on. Do the world a favor. Be a political reference for your friends. Make things known to people who otherwise would not know about these things. It will help more than you expect.
The moral of the story is, knee-jerk voting for any political party isn't the solution.
You have to pay attention, do research, get involved, vote intelligently.
I don't know about Deacon, but I sure as hell hope some of those geeks whose "efforts are mostly a waste of time" are there to help all the productive, coding geeks who create such egregious attacks on capitalism like DeCSS (and me, who has probably commited several million dollars in DMCA violations this month, none of which have lead to piracy of any sort). We need to work on both aspects, coding and "activism", otherwise, the the coders activities will become (more) illegal without the efforts of those, like the EFF, who combat a corrupt legal/congressional system and suffocating laws. Geeks have many varied strengths, and we should all fight this battle in the best way we can. With no code, there's nothing to fight for, with no one fighting, there will be no code.
BTW, Mr. Declan, that was a voice vote for the DMCA. It doesn't mean the bill had 100% support, only that the actual tally wasn't enumerated. Maybe you should pay closer attention.
1) They have more money than we do. In Washington, money buys access, and money buys influence. Unless Bill Gates suddenly sees the light on the issues that are important to the average /. geek, this will continue to be the case. The new campaign finance law will not change this fundamental truth of Washington.
2) Geeks and hackers are Bad, and there are no White Hats. Technologically savvy people have been demonized in the press and in the political system as "hackers." While we would apply the term "cracker" to the people our politicans are really talking about, the average American isn't capable of understanding the difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker." Until Joe Average is able to tell the difference, we will remain outsiders.
3) People like Shawn Fanning, Kevin Mitnick, and the publishers of 2600 give us a bad name. It doesn't matter that Fanning or Mitnick or 2600 have or haven't broken the law. As an old math teacher once told me on a totally unrelated issue, "It is not only impropriety we must avoid, but also the appearance of impropriety." Fanning and Mitnick look, to Joe Average, like criminals. See Fact #2.
4) They are better organized than we are. This is closely related to Fact #1, because money brings organization. The EFF, as well as we respect it here on /., doesn't have the organization to be an effective grass roots organization (Christian Coalition) or enough money to be a monied interest (RIAA). That won't change until enough people get interested enough to either do the grass roots education or spend the money. I for one do't have the time to do the former, or the money to do the latter. I'm sure I'm not alone.
5) Joe Average doesn't care about civil liberties. Joe Average cares about a fuel-loaded MD-11 flying into [insert large building he works in here]. Joe Average sees in his little mind, and is frightened of, millions of towelheads screaming "Allah akbar!" and shooting their Kalashnikov's and Uzi's into the air. He agrees with Trent Lott that questioning the government is unpatriotic; he believes that by giving up his freedom, the government can catch all the towelheads before they fly those planes. He also believes that "hackers" (see Fact #2) are at least partly responsible for the government's failures, and that restricting their ability to hack things is essential to stopping the towelheads. Since it's not him secretly locked up with the towelheads without access to an attorney or a court, he doesn't care. [Editorial comment: "... And when they came for me, there was no one left to complain."]
6) Joe Average wouldn't know what to do with the ability to copy something if it jumped up and bit him. He sees no need to copy CDs, and wouldn't understand what to do with a ripped DVD if someone told him. He doesn't understand the point of backing up software, and doesn't reinstall his operating system or upgrade his machine (if he even owns one) frequently, so antipiracy codes like the one in WinXP doesn't make any difference to him. He's not blind, so using a screen reader on an Acrobat file is something that would never enter his mind. DRM technology isn't even a buzzword for him; entering that screen of data to get the program to work is just like filling out a form at the local bank -- you do it because they won't do their thing if you don't. "Fair use" is a foreign concept, and since he's so busy trying to hang onto his job, pay for his kids' education and food, keep a roof over his and his family's head, make the car payment, and worrying about the towelheads, he doesn't care to be educated about fair use and why it's good for him. He also doesn't care who looks up his library records because he doesn't even have a library card and hasn't been to a library since he was in grade school.
These are the facts. Whining on /. about it will not change it. We here on /. are not normal people. We are above Joe Average in intelligence and education on these kinds of issues, because we pay attention to them and they are important to us. They are not important to Joe Average, and they will not become important to Joe Average until he can see them directly affecting his pocketbook or his job. And we can not change that, at least not now.
It may in fact be that the only way we can change the law and influence the system is to obsolete it. It sure wouldn't be the first time that's happened.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
I think it was quite canny of chrisd to contrast Declan w/ Lessig, it brings out a crucial idealogical theme that runs through the tech community.
Declan is a libertarian, as such, he is in favor of small government and on priniple doesn't like using the government as an agent in shaping society. Lessig on the other hand is a democrat (note the small "d"). As such he holds out hope that masses of people can express a collective set of values that does not cede rights or nonmaterial values to corporate interests.
Generally I dislike libertarianism as it is often used as what I perceive as cover for the rich to get richer at everyone else's expense. I read the WSJ, the Economist and Cato stuff pretty regularly and find that that doesn't generally get addressed. I think the reaction so far here points to the lack of that in Declan's piece.
The story that we get taught in school is that democracy is supposed to be this thing that "the people" participate in, Declan says don't bother. Is this story a myth or not? History tells us that its very hard for democracy to work like in that story, ie, the civil rights struggle or the pitched battles for the 8 hour day early in 1900's.
A more modern example that we can look at is the environmental movement. Environmentalism has made politcal headway because of hard work by millions working hard over decades. It hasn't "won" by any means, but it does have impact.
Are geektivists up to this kind of organization and campaigning? Well we have the ability to be far more organized that any political movement ever. This can't be underestimated. Anyway, I think Declan has thrown down the gauntlet.
I think that sites like anti-dmca.org are a step in the right direction, but (and i'm just gonna pick on anti-dmca.org right now) it's pretty difficult to figure out what is so bad about the DMCA. I think the home page needs a very clear message about HOW the DMCA is squashing innovation, and exactly what is BAD about it. Hell, i searched the site for half an hour and couldn't find a real reason for it! Sure, it's illegal to crack encryption (doesn't the DMCA allow for fair use, though? I'm no lawyer so anyone care to interpret the legalize for me?) and it's illegal to publicly report security holes. I don't see how that relates directly to innovation. Concerning the latter, there are free speech issues, and it just hurts security in general, but innovation? I don't see it.
If someone asks me why they should care about the DMCA, i want to be able to give them some basic facts, or point them in the right direction. But to someone with only a casual interest, activism sites that don't come out and say, in plain english, what's bad about the bill will just get overlooked.
Yeah, it's late, mod me for stupidity or whatever you want. That's what karma's for, right?
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Think it through even farther..
If Delta stopped flying, would demand for flights lower? Hardly. Which means one of two things would happen, one of the other companies would expand to take up the slack, or a number of other smaller companies would rise to fill the niche.
Since all the larger companies are having enough trouble on their own, my bet is on the number of smaller companies.
Now, what if part of the money given to Delta was instead placed in a fund to help out small start-ups? Instead of a few CEO's of a poorly run company being able to claim bonus stock options, you'd have multiple people working to compete with each other, lowering the price of airline service for everybody, while simultaneously putting pressure on to better the service.
The only time a failing company should be bailed out is when that company is governmentally owned to begin with - and the only reason a company should be governmentally owned is to provide a basic service to people that private enterprise wouldn't bother with because it's a losing money option (such as telephone/power service into the boonies - or medical service for people too poor to afford insurance)
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
His analysis of the current political situation is right, but only as far as it goes. What he's missed is that o1ur jobs are at stake. High tech R&D will have to move out of the USA if Hollywood gets everything it wants and at the moment, MPAA/RIAA have NO meaningful opposition.
He is WRONG about the options being to keep doing futile educational attempts or go home.
Lessig is RIGHT in that we have to stay engaged in the political process. He is WRONG in saying we have to do the same old things, only bigger and better.
BOTH are wrong in thinking there are no other options.
The third choice is ORGANIZE in a clueful way.
Is the average member of the National Rifle Association a major record label suit making $1M a year?
Is the average retiree member of the American Association of Retired Persons a VP of Universal making $2M a year?
I think you know that the answer to both questions are NO.
Does Congress listen to the NRA or the AARP? Not always, not all the time, but in general, the answer is "YES!". The "not always" simply means that nobody gets everything they want all the time.
Is the income of the average member of either group that much greater than ours? Of course not, our average incomes are far higher than theirs. Is the average intelligence or wisdom of the average member of each group so much greater than that of the average "geek" that they deserve political influence and we don't?
What does the NRA/AARP do?
The high-tech part of the US economy is $500B, the entertainment sector about $50B. They are the tail, WE are the dog. Who's getting wagged?
There seems to be an assumption that just because we work with computers, there's a collective cluelessness that will make it impossible for us to combine as a whole to save our own asses, that we are too stupid to understand what our own self-interest is and too selfish to give our own money and time to do anything about it.
Declan has offended us because he's the first geek public figure to make the assumptions that our opposition makes about is explicit.
Our options are:
- Do what the NRA/AARP does. Band together, open our wallets, donate our own time to make sure our friends get elected and our enemies get retired. One $100 contribution to a Congresscritter can be ignored. 100,000 such contributions aggregated by a "geek" organization means that when the Department of Commerce sets up a DRM conference, our people will be invited VIP guests and maybe Hollywood doesn't get invited.
- watch corporate high-tech R&D move to places where Hollywood doesn't 0wn the government to escape the drastically increased costs of compliance and slower development cycles with the legislation passed or in progress will mandate.
- bet on every government in the world adopting the same shackles on its own high-tech that the US entertainment industry wants. I think this a sucker bet.
Get ready to open your checkbooks to buy insurance against having to move out of the USA to practice any high-tech profession via the political process. Or start saving up for relocation and startup money in a new country. Or see what kind of fast-food uniforms you look best in.The individual geek option in this case is to move out of the US when this happens to wherever the most interesting companies are going or learn how to love flipping burgers. Do you want to say "Would you like fries with that?" on the job?
People, it's "Join or Die" time.
We can find something to join or invent something, but we WILL stand up and be counted or we WILL be rolled over.
You have run out of time to decide. What's it going to be?
Tech Public Policy stuff
As much as I believe persons exists that fit into your broad description, I don't think the majority of people are like this. That you are intelligent does not mean everyone else is dumb.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
It's our jobs, or what's left of them.
Or if you aren't working, whether there will ever again be a wave of high-tech company expansion that'll get you a job.
CDTBPA, BPWG recommendations, and we don't know what next mean that the cost of US high-tech R&D go through the roof, and the brain-damaged technology Hollywood is likely to approve will reduce the functionality of hardware, software, the Internet itself in a way even or especially noticeable by Joe Sixpack *and* his PHM. What does this economy look like for a high-tech worker?
The example for us to follow is the NRA, not the Federation of Atomic Scientists. We have to learn how to play hardball politics in the big leagues. NOW.
This isn't about taking a noble stand. It's about kicking asses and taking names. It's about raising enough money to tell politicians "Our way or the highway. Your choice." Our chunk of the economy is 10x that of the entertainment industry. If we can't figure out a way enough money given this to make guys like Hollings go away, we deserve what we are getting.
This is also about the future of whether there is going to be any human freedom or not in this part of the 20th century.
However, I think the motivation that's going to get us to open our wallets and checkbooks and get up early some morning to walk a precinct for a candidate our organization's political analysts say is our friend is or point-and-click faxes to our elected officials every other week is... a few rich, greedy assholes want to protect a dying business model that is publically denounced by their own employees in a manner which will probably end the IT or other high tech careers of a whole lot of us.
So they can inflict a few more boy bands or Britney Spears soundalike on us before they retire.
Tech Public Policy stuff
What he did was he published a piece in wired on Gore's CNN interview, then he got a comment on that piece from his girlfriend at the Cato institute. Then he reported on the comment from the Cato institute and the article was circulated by Newt Gingrich's office. Of course the smear would have died instantly if the media ever bothered to check sources.
Declan also has a pretty sordid history.
After the election Declan was real pissed that the Bushies didn't even invite him to the inauguration and published nasty stories about their Web site. So now he is persona-non-grata in both the Republican and Democrat camps.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I can only guess that you wrote the article "Geeks in government: A good idea?" to stir up anger and controversy. It worked. For about a minute.
I agree that politics is primarily driven by lobbyists paying politicians money. However, your article essentially states that public opinion makes no difference to politicians. This is patently false. Do you really believe that no law was ever changed due to public opinion? I doubt it.
The original USA Patriot Act had language that would have made computer hacking an act of terrorism, punishable by life in federal prison. This WAS NOT limited to hacking that lead to someone's death. The law was changed before it went through Congress.
The Justice Department's Operation TIPS program was killed in large part because of public outcry. Dmitry Skylarov was released and the company who asked him to be prosecuted, Adobe, changed their stance because of public opinion.
And you're here telling people to give up? You might as well be telling people, after the closest
Presidential election in history, that their vote
doesn't count, so they shouldn't bother.
If you think political activism is "mostly waste of time," you might also want to pull out a history book and read about the American Civil Rights movement and a guy named Mahatma Gandhi.
I often believe that my Congressman doesn't listen to me and doesn't care. Regardless, I have an obligation to stand up and fight for what I believe in. It's called integrity. Try writing an article about that, because this one was mostly a waste of time.
-The NRA (National Rifle Assosiation) is all about the peoples rights I'll bet they would fight with us on this violation of our first ammendment rights to free speach, and most of their support base comes from people who believe in individual liberties!
-The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is a HUGE base of politically educated, moneyed (having money) people, most of whom have fought in wars for our freedom and right to complain about it on just such a forum as this, to say that they do not care/can't learn what we are talking ablout is to not give enough credit to the generations that invented the Computer, A-Bomb, Fought for integration of minority races, and to this day can effect the outcome of elections (do you really think the elderly in Broward county didn't know who they were voting for? how many times have they voted using those same ballots?)
-The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Loves a good fight they love to fight for the constitutionally protected rights of others, and have a long and glorious history of being patriotic beyond reproach!
We need to get these groups informed about our side of these issues. forget about forming our own groups, we need established, respected, informed activists working on these issues with us because otherwise, all congress is going to see is a bunch of criminal hackers or some geek with Spock ears... I know this isn't truly what there is, but that's all they'll see
Of course, if all else fails, we can alwaus move to Rio De Janeiro to do our geek thing in peace... they know english, they throw great parties, and they have a great climate... why aren't we there already?
Moo.