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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.
1. Code
2. Start your own company
3. Get rich
4. Buy your own Congressmen, Senators or even a President!
Does this mean watching more Star Trek or something? Geek Activism... I'm trying to equate this with Gay Rights or Pro Abortion, but it just isn't happening for some reason...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
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.
To be honest, when I first read the piece, my reaction was "What have they done with the REAL Declan"?
Declan, did you get bought out or something?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
A quick summary of the article: The politicians in Washington don't care what you think, they only care about what their campaign contributors tells them to care about. The sad part is, it's more or less true. Maybe some day the USA will join the free world and become a democracy, one can only hope.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What, exactly, is a cyberpunk? The very name sounds like "adolescent geeks" in my mind. Is there any way they can try to seem at least a little more legitamate?
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.
Dumbass!!! It was Clinton that signed the DMCA into existance. Get a fucking clue!!
"short version: spend your time coding, not lobbying."
Its easy to say sdo, but when those laws actually take away your right to code and create new technologies.. where do you go.
The current decade is like dark ages. Then you could be put do Jail for preaching that Earth is not center of universe, and now you are put to jail for preaching that Hollywood is not center of universe, isnt it ironic now history repeats itself...
What next... Newton?
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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.
Geek Activism?
How about Geektivism!
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
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.
Declan McCullagh spent several years on Essential Information's AM-Info (Appraising Microsoft) e-mail list basically just lurking and stirring up trouble he could use in news reports. He finally had to be banned from the list, to the great relief of most of us who live there. Beware the wolf in journalist's clothing.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
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.
He's a libertarian, of the Cato Institute variety. He expressed a through and through libertarian position.
We're in an election season. This a great time to help out with the campaigns of politicians you like. Often, tney need computer help. You'll meet their staff, and the candidate briefly. So you'll know who to talk to when the time comes.
Care to expand on that, my friend ? How about some links ?
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.
The sad part is that this isn't funny since its all too close to the truth. Look at the RIAA/MPAA flacks like Rep. Howard Berman who are willing to sell out any of our rights to get a campaign contribution from Hollyweird. What's the old maxim from the detective/police shows (appropriate quote)? In any crime, follow the money. Most politicians would gladly sell their own soul, their mother's, their grandmother's and yours and mine at the drop of a campaign contribution. They make all sorts of nice noises when there's a demonstration or a petition or something that seems to indicate that we, the public, have an opinion but they'll vote with the people who give them money.
The bottom line is the bottom line. The way to get things to change is to make enough money that the people who make the laws listen to you (and your money).
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The idea that a few setbacks spells everlasting defeat has to be the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Geeks aren't necessarily political animals. What we are, however, is a group of intelligent people with impressive earning potential and a widely-felt purpose.
Fuck this guy. Support the EFF.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Make yourself useful to someone who can kick butt and take names.
If this happened across the board we would be very orginized and dangerous. There are a few out there, and they are looking for your help. If you really look and find nobody to follow then you should lead. Don't just assume there is sombody better for the job, if you can't think of their name and can't drop them an email, it's you.
Sorry buddy, I didn't mean to make more work for you.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
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.
If you're too young to remember it, you probably won't believe it, but when those clock hands moved, the world noticed and attention was paid. It may be that by creating that symbol and using it to give voice to their concerns, those scientist may have helped to saved us all.
The bad patents and bad laws that have come out now aren't atom bombs, of course, but they should still be opposed for the good of us all. Like the atomic scientists, Geeks have the knowledge, authority, and responsibility to speak out - the trick is to come up with a good clock, if I may coin a phrase. Some mechanism to explain what's a risk - one that people can respect and understand.
And no, I don't know what that mechanism ought to be. :)
The real solution is for geeks to become better at getting their voices heard. How many geeks have sent out a polite clear e-mail explaining to their friends/family/colleagues what DRM, say, could do to them? And how many of those e-mails ended with a line like "If you found this message interesting, please forward it on."? If enough people eventually get the message, the political system will too.
To cut a long story short, the group wrote a submission to a parliamentary inquiry on broadband technologies, and then spoke to that submission. The politicians (from both major parties) asked reasonable questions, and once they got their answers their comments were highly positive, saying that they believed what the group is doing was legal, and they would support continued free access to the requisite spectrum.
Now, I'm not saying that all the group's potential legal pitfalls were solved with one enquiry submission, but the basic point is that politicians will listen, if you talk to them the right way.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Blurting out "source code is free speech" to people who have no clue what source code is is totally ineffective.
And blurting that out to people who know what free speech is is counterproductive. They'll just start looking for your missing straight jacket.
Free Speech is a right of the speaker. But the rights attached to Free Software belong to the user, not the author! Furthermore, the right of Free Speech imposes no obligations, but the "right" of Free Software places obligations on the author (who must perform certain acts to grant those "rights" to the user).
It's not Free as in Speech, it's "Free as in Property." This copy of the software is my Property and you can't tell me what to do with it. If you don't like that state of affairs, you should never have sold or given it to me.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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
Don't give up on politicians, some of them - perhaps even most of them are good well-intentioned people, their flaw is often little-more than ignorance, and you can change that, provided you are good at explaining geeky issues to non-geeks (and, despite the stereotype portrayed in this article, I think many geeks are) in a clear and non-patronising way.
Right! And when we declared independance from Russia, we had to back up our claims with actions! Geeks everywhere have to get down to business. Just like the Mexicans did when declaring independance from Prussia.
We need to get to it. We've got our intelligence, and more importantly, our knowledge of history behind us. We're more prepared than the Canadians were when they broke off from the Klingon Empire.
Time to go do some good.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
"Dude, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. "
It saddens me to see our cultural heritage being lost. Get thee to a video store near you and rent "National Lampoon's Animal House."
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
This is the wrong outlook on politics, at least in my opinion. One should not refrain from lobbying, that's the only way to get opinions heard in the first place. Just because they might not fully understand the exact impact their policies may have, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to educate them.
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
~ Plato
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
Look, if the NRA or AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) were opposing us instead of Hollywood, we'd STILL be getting our asses kicked.
The NRA / AARP have lots of people ready to give money in $10 and $50 and $100 contributions, put in time, point and click their way to contacting their Congresscritters.
I'll let you figure out what the lesson is for us in terms of what it takes to get taken serious ly in DC.
Tech Public Policy stuff
As a former (!!) american citizen, I was suprised at how outraged I got reading this.
Point is: If there is anything that makes up the 'political' side of the US majority, it's the fact that a sense for liberty or even anarchy is burried deep into the still persitant 'pioneer' spirit of US citizens.
If political decisions are to be conducted by the people of the US, getting active is the only way for them (you) to get things moving back in the right direction.
To be percise: Were this guy a konservative citizen of Switzerland, I could cope with his opinion. Lot's of high educated people crammed in a tight, overculturized place ought to find out for themselves when they do things wrong. Overreacting and jumping to blind activisim could be somewhat counterproductive in such an enviroment
Or said otherwise: In larger parts of europe we've got the media for effective, in depth critical comments on politics. The US simply lacks a conform common level of education for political correction to work that way - kinda 'automatically', if you know what I mean. That's where it boils down to the real people and what they feel about their liberty.
Let's face it folks: The last thing we all want is an USA 'going Orwell' - which it actually is doing in leaps and bounds at the time. The foremost thing that makes me think we can avoid that isn't a common political sense in the US, mind you, but the all-american peoples utter lack of humor when it finally gets to them that the fate of their hard earned liberty is at their hands.
Bottom line: Don't listen to this 'wanna be' pseudo-european-cosmopolitan BS, get 'on the street' and tell John Doe what actually happening with this SSSCA, 'Patriot' and DMCA stuff, and kick some serious political butt before it's to late.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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
There will never be a peaceful resolution, no matter how much you yak about changing the system. The politicians, while most certainly a lower form of life, aren't exactly stupid; they'll simply outlaw any attempt to horn in on their power base. It's that simple.
Lobby all you like, for all the good it'll do you. And code all you like, in the naive belief that Congress won't just declare your code illegal if they perceive it as a threat. Either way you're fucked.
Innocence is for Catholic schoolgirls. Whether you think 'the code uber all' or 'lobbying works', it won't matter for shit in the real world. What it boils down to, and has always boiled down to, is: who has the power.
They do, and you don't. The only way to change anything is to change *that* equation. Until then you're just engaging in a simplistic act of mental masturbation to make yourself feel better about the shithole this country is becoming.
If you want that power, you'll have to *seize* it. Because they sure as hell aren't going to give it to you of their own free will.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
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
Predicated on the premise that
The House of Representatives voted 385-3 last month to approve life prison sentences for malicious computer hackers.
Declan presumes that the Congress ignores geek wisdom, concluding that resistance is futile:
Trust me, a few--even a few thousand--peeved e-mail messages won't change vote totals that lopsided.
His defeatism is misplaced.
First, he overstates the argument -- Congress required far more than malice to earn a life sentence, you have to take or seriously risk lives in the process of your hackery. Indeed, in the Slashdot debate, only a few obvious ideas were floated HOW one could actually do such a thing.
Second, I have found to the contrary that the legislative process can be worked to the benefit of hackers, and precisely because of techno-lobbying. Many horrific and just plain stupid bills were floated this year and just as quickly dumped precisely because of sound, intelligent and organized lobbying by geek activist organizations. Other bills were neutralized or rendered harmless.
Lobbying does not equate to whining through email -- which appears to be Declan's only, quite blunt and ineffective, tool. But it is a straw man for his rather simple-minded argument. Others, using traditional processes and traditional means, seem to be doing much better.
Hey, I'd love to code, but I'm not a programmer. I'm a geek just the same.
If I was a programmer, I'd probably be saying that I'd love to code, but I'm deeply afraid of being sent to prison for coding!
You can't code if the politicians make it illegal to code so many of the basic tools we take for granted. You need to secure and safeguard your right to do that now.
Actually, yesterday would have been better. There was a time of innocense when that wasn't necessary, but that time is sadly past us now.
Coding and being politically active aren't mutually exclusive, so choosing one OR the other is a false dichotomy. Both are important, and both need to be done right. Declan's point might make sense if we understand it as "ineffective lobbying is a waste" but the lesson to take from that is "don't bother lobbying", it's "Grok lobbying and do it right."
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Re: Geek Activism
I was moved to reply to your recent article on Geek Activism on CNET due to what I consider to be the dangerous political naivety of the piece. Advocating that people should step back from challenging the political and legal system in favour of computer programming is the most ignorant and ineffectual suggestion I can possibly imagine. Allowing the decisions of others to be made without debate or contestation in a political arena results in poor decisions being made, unrepresentative political systems and at worst the danger of a minority imposing their views on the rest of us. Do you really believe that people programming at computer keyboards can change the world? That is the simplistic utopian belief that technology can somehow free us without recourse to the political system. I would suggest you look carefully at the recent case of the prosecution of the Norwegian teenager Jon Johansen for his role in creating DeCSS software (and under the pressure of the US government no less), see digitalagora.com for more info.
Black Civil Rights activists, the Women's movement, Anti-war protesters, and even geeks have to actually get up (and well away from the computer keyboard) to force change and fight for a more equitable political system. I agree that email on its own may be ineffectual, but creating lobbying websites, educating people and writing to political leaders, lobbying companies, newspapers and magazines all contribute to a debate that can have profound effect on the decisions of politicians.
The ability of individuals to obtain and read facts free from licenses, coercive copyright restrictions, corporate censorship (maintained by the use of copyright law) and other attempts to control information, reduces people's ability to obtain information and make up their own mind. The space where people can read and communicate with others, which includes the Internet but is not limited to it, is a public sphere, a space of public deliberation, it is vital to the maintenance of a modern democratic state and this is being slowly eroded.
We should be encouraging people to take part in this political debate to set policy with regard to technology and fight to widen access to information and indeed to technology itself.
Regards
David Berry david@locarecords.com
Home Page
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BTW, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not calling McCullagh himself an idiot here. I don't know his larger body of work well enough to make that judgement. This is a boneheaded article, though.
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/
What's this talk about coders not being suitable for lobbying? Did I miss character generation where you had to pick either coding skills or social graces? Sorry, words like "cultural tendency" are just meaningless generalizations to me.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
If your job is working with computers, then the stuff coming out of Washington should terrify you. They could severely limit the amount of growth in the computer field with some of these proposals. Eventually, that means it will be likely that you will have to find a new career doing something other than coding. I mean, we all have to eat. Even if you don't love working with computers for their own sake, you should at least consider the monetary aspect. (I know, we are all supposed to live on our love of coding and manufacture things like food and clothes out of our good intentions.)
Technology and politics always go together. New technology always shakes things up and creates chaos. In authoritarian societies, this chaos can lead to revolution and counter revolution, to bloodshed and mayhem. In democratic societies, the change is still unpleasant. Politics is never easy, it's never quick. What this article is saying is, "let's just stay in our ivory towers and wait for the storm to blow over?" Maybe he believs that technological revolutions can't be stifled by a concerted effort of politicians. How many time do I have to cite this article, UNNATURAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BELL SYSTEM MONOPOLY, on the telephone monopoly before people like Declan McCullough get it?
Recently I have been reading a great book about politics. It's called Means of Ascent and it is about a ruthless, brilliant politician named Lyndon Baines Johnson (and to a lesser extent, to his opponent in the first Senate race LBJ ever won, Coke Stevenson).
Johnson was brilliant at using money and technology to get his message out to the voters (his message mostly being about destroying Coke Stevenson's reputation in the State of Texas). How did Johnson use technology? Well, he used the radio much more effectively than previous Texas politicians. He also used the helicopter to go from speech to speech. The book makes a point that this kind of campaigning was extremely effective. (Of course, Johnson still had to turn to what I will euphemistically call "machine politics" in the end, but even that wouldn't have been effective without using the gains he had gotten with his effective use of technology. Even with the machine politics, wiretaps were very helpful to the Johnson campaign.)
However, the main thing that the story of Johnson and Stevenson impressed on me was that Stevenson's problem was that he refused to "sink to Johnson's level." He refused to defend himself against Johnson's charges (some of which, like suggesting Stevenson was a Commie stooge, were clearly absurd if people thought about them), and point out problems with Johnson's own record himself. He felt he was above all that.
Well, in the end Johnson went to the Senate and Stevenson didn't. That's what happens when you give up a political fight before you've really lost it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
No, some people can do both, but to be honest most people can do one or the other and will self select. There are plenty of people who can't code their way out of a paper bag who can be pretty effective politicians and there are plenty of geeks whose political interfaces are well negligible.
Declan's piece is really about him having personally failled to get anywhere as a political operator, he wants to reinvent himself as a Larry Lessig or Eric Raymond, someone who speaks for the geek community.
Thing is that if we are not careful he will get away with it. I am none too happy about Lessig's blatant self promotion, Declan is a complete weasel.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I think it would be a big step forward if the Congressional Record really was a record. As it stands, any senator or representative can "amend" the record post facto and insert or delete things at will. Make Congress publish an exact transcript of all its proceedings, and much could be done to wrest power back. Or at least to educate the sheep as to how their reps really work.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Trying out the very latest CVS versions and entering meaningful bug reports and writing "howto" and other types of documentation are really valuable efforts. These are the places where hard-core coders deeply involved in their projects won't see bugs because they "know" how to use their programs, and of course don't write newbie oriented documentation.
Failing that, I rather see interested geeks lobbying that doing nothing constructive at all. Even writing one email or fax is better than going to watch TV or play the latest massively multiplayer game.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
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It just isn't clear what he's trying to encourage here.
Most sensible geeks, I think, are all in favour of copyright as long as it's in moderation. In other words, people should indeed get paid for their work. But we shouldn't get the loss of fair use, the loss of the right to create on an equal footing, and the sledgehammer DMCA.
So how are we supposed to code enabling technologies? Coding things that break existing copy protection is illegal, isn't achieving what we want, and is in fact making it worse - by driving in the perception that tools allowing fair use will inevitably be used illegally. File sharing apps like Napster are known about by now, and all those have done are - yet again - earned a bad reputation and brought consumer broadband into question.
The point is simple. We are NOT going to be able to do this by civil disobedience or any illegitimate means. We don't have enough sympathy in it; the one illegitimate act that IS popular amongst average folks (plain ol' piracy) is the one we DON'T want to encourage, and the one that is WORST for our cause; and we depend on too much. We depend on content producers, ISPs, phone companies, power companies, software makers, hardware makers, etc., none of whom need to care enough about our issues that they'd risk being associated with illegitimate activity for our sake.
Coders could, I suppose, try and work out a new kind of copy protection that would allow fair use but disallow illegal copying. But that would require the cooperation of the content owners; and as long as they're able to use protection methods that block fair use, they have no motivation to offer that cooperation. As long as the courts won't make those methods unusable - either by ruling that they cannot be used at base or ruling that it is legal to break them for fair use purposes in a way that's viable for Joe Average - nothing will move them from that stance. Distributing 'fair use' breakers that are deemed illegal will harm the cause.
The only people we could get on our side are small content creators - little bands, etc. - who are feeling the negative pinch on their side (horrible contracts that force them to abandon copyright, inability to get the technology allowing them to copy protect their works because they lack reputation, etc). But even that doesn't matter much, because the public won't be swayed by anyone who hasn't gone through the big publishers' publicity machines.
Other than that, about the only thing to do is to try and set up a truly enormous distributed machine to count up to 2^650000000, store every number and GPL it (this is equivalent to GPLing every possible CD image). If you're prepared to wait more than a hundred years and store terabytes squared of data, things could get very interesting. Otherwise, zip.
It's quite possible to get rich at somebody else's expense: by stealing from them. Or you can get rich by redistributing their income in a "more fair" fashion. For example, let's help the poor farmer with farm subsidies. Problem is that most of the subsidies go to people who don't need them.
You neglected to say: "In a free market, if I get rich, it's not at your expense." People who think libertarianism is a cover for the rich and powerful often forget that those people don't like the free market either.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
People who think libertarianism is a cover for the rich and powerful often forget that those people don't like the free market either.
Its true, I have great difficulty telling the difference between a market fundamentalist (in the sense that George Soros means it) and a libertarian, the rhetoric that gets used is so similar. I'm still not sure which the poster to whom you replied is.
Don't kid yourself for a second that Phil Zimmerman would be irrelevant if the legislature and law enforcement decreed that encryption was banned. It would go away, as would those who use it.
Remember, too, that
>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
Yes, yes, YES.
Elections are decided by votes. Money only counts because it can buy TV ads to influence voters who haven't heard any other information.
When voters get mad, things change. MADD got drunk driving laws changed. Perot's minority of the vote suddenly made everyone else care about the deficit.
As long as we still have the right to vote, playing politics matters. Imagine you're a Congressman. One side sends you letters from thousands of voters in your district. The other side offers you enough money for one TV ad. Who wins? I don't know but at least it's a fight.
The problem with relying on technology is that law has tools at its disposal that coders don't have. You can write the next anonymous remailer. An oppressive government can send a team of big tough men to drag you to a windowless room. Then they can do the same to everyone who runs your code. Who wins?
>Only a multi-pronged approach holds any chance of success.
The truth of that extends far beyond this topic.
And Congressmen you should support.
/.
Read about 'em here. Previously covered on
Anyway, there is progress being made. We learn fast. And the Net makes it that much faster.
+&x
So he is saying Your rights are vanishing, you can't even build new technology and also Go ahead and make new technology so they will have to change. Sure, if you really wanted to push it to the extreme we could try to get every programmer in trouble with the law, but that's not what I want.
Note that Phil Zimmerman was almost jailed for PGP for writing a potential criminal tool. Look at what happened to Napster, and all the negative fallout and political garbage from it, and note what the IETF has become.
While the columnist is right that our congresscritters don't seem to care about us, IGNORING THE PROBLEM WON'T MAKE IT GO AWAY.
So run for congress and local government, make frends with your congresscritter, and continue to make the apethtic public aware of the erosion that is going on.
frob.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The simple fact is that we keep trying to attack the branches and not the vine at the root. Civil disobedience of copyrights is the only way to go. It is easy to do, impossible to enforce, at attacks them at the core. They're core is a lot more vulnerable than ours is, and even if we just counter some of their cheezy guilt trips about stealing food from the mouths of artists, that alone could have a huge difference.
I find it troublesome that Declan puts Phil Zimmerman as an example of the technologist enforcing a greater change through software than the politicians through law.
He's right, but he makes the assumption that every geek, or at least a significant number of geeks, are going to be Phil Zimmermans.
He seems to forget that Phil Zimmerman put himself at legal risk, had to face legal consequences, and was technically considered a criminal by the government.
Not every geek has the courage to become a criminal for the sake of ideology, nor should they.
He also seems to forget that the change in the use and legal status of encryption was not brought by PGP alone. It took time, a lot of effort, and pressure from more social factors than Phil Zimmerman alone.
Very big and very important factors helping Zimmerman on that task were lobbying groups by business sectors who considered international strong encryption necessary to protect American Business (TM).
A big and important factor was that the opposition was mostly government bureaucracy. As far as I remember there was no Big Money group lobbying group OPPOSING relaxation of encryption legislation.
Without the lobbying, PGP and actually any unrestricted use of strong encryption would have stayed underground. Your legal international online transactions would have remained relatively unprotected.
No citizen, geek or not, should have to go "underground" and engage in "illegal activities" just to use technology for a legal purpose.
This has serious implications, not the least being that it makes every user a criminal and a target for extortion and government harassment.
That's why "just coding" is not the solution. Coding is necessary, it's the proof of concept that demonstrates which side is in touch with reality, but it is not sufficient. It never was, and I'm surprised Mr. McCullagh forgets that.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Anyway, he said that when he was getting started, he thought that Libertarianism would most appeal to business people and the wealthy. He found out that they simply weren't interested--because often their wealth stemmed from government regulations, or at least government regulations today protected their wealth/livelyhoods from competition.
I think this is spot on, and an ugly truth behind much of government's paternal regulation. BUT, having said that, there is a very, very large blindspot in the Libertarian philosophy in my opinion, and that is:
the ability of companies, of corporations, of organizations, to wield power, influence, and authority as great or even greater than that of any government, and such organizations are not constrained by constitutional law.
This is a problem, and right now the only solution is the imperfect, and often abused, use of government regulation of industry. At least the government is democratically elected, Florida election shinnannigans notwithstanding. Corporations are not democratic in the least, and if a citizen is to be under the heel of one or the other, far better to be under the heel of a government you can remove from office in a few years.
That having been said, the best solution is to have constitutional guarantees that protect individual rights from centers of authority apply equally, irrespective of whether those centers of authority stem from civil government, corporate governance, religious or political affiliation.
In other words, it shouldn't just be Congress that is prohibited from making a law restricting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, etc., it should be any organization whatsoever. Ditto with every other protected right and liberty.
Individual rights, freedoms, and liberties must take precidence over everything else, including the society's choice of economic systems and even system of governance itself.
Until that fundamental problem is addressed, Libertarianism, by taking what controls there are off of corporate America, is proposing a cure many times worse than the problem.
Address that issue effectively, and Libertariansim may well be on to something. But as long as libertarianism elevates the capitalist economic system to the same level of importance as the consitutional republic ("democratic" in today's parlacce) political systems and the human rights and liberties it is designed to protect, the entire philosophy will effectively have a poison pill included with it.
Individual freedom, liberty, and constitutional democracy is orthogonal to economic systems, and mixing the two together undermines the far more important stance the Libertarian's could be taking: that of defending and protecting individual liberty and constitutional law from both the politicians and the large, multinational corporations, both of whome seek to subvert it.
Until and unless that ever changes, I will respectfully continue to decline becoming a Libertarian.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It is and will be illegal to program apps that do things like copy files unless we do something about it.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
We need lobbyists armed with position papers and CHECKBOOKS ready to write multi-kilobuck checks... who can say "we've got XX thousand members in your district. Who would you like them to vote for?"
We need lobbyists who can say "Remember what happened to former Congressman XXXXXX who backed the RIAA?"
Tech Public Policy stuff
Files *I* create are IP too. They're MY IP. And I have a right to copy them. I'd like to be able to make a living, too. The RI|MPAA don't want you to have access to anything but crippled playback devices. If they got together with book publishers, they'd want to take everyone's Office suite away and replace it with Acrobat Reader and Word Viewer.
I also maintain that I have a right to copy other people's IP that I've legitimately purchased. I have the right to do this for purposes of making backup copies, to excerpt quotes for criticism or review, time and space shifting, etc. I have a right to go to a friend's house and watch a pay-per-view program that I didn't pay for. I have a right to borrow someone else's music CD or video game. If I bought it, I have the right to sell it.
Go read the UCITA, the DMCA, the SSSCA bill, a few EULAs, and some speeches made by Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti going back over the past few years. Then try and tell me I'm a chicken little.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!