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.

Comments

don't underestimate the politicos

[m0nkyman]

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.

Re:don't underestimate the politicos

[chorder]

I completely agree with the above post, but I also see the point of Declan's article. As an aside I'm sure that Lessig, contrary to what chrisd may believe, would definately see Declan's point as well.

I am not a coder, and if anything I'm more suited to politics than science. But through my associations with coders, and through reading books by Lessig and Stephenson and following discussions on /. and beyond (not to mention seeing Tron during my formative years), I've come to be very concerned with digital and cultural freedom. Its these facts that would make me better suited to do lobbying than any of /.'s coder majority.

Basically what Declan was saying was that it comes down to specialization. Coder's don't sew their own clothes because there are people and machines that do that for them better than they could. Same goes for lobbying and public influence of any kind. Coders have more power in the creation of subversive and revolutionary technologies than they do in their socio-polical skills.

And here I agree with Declan, but he also should have pointed out the need for a greater link between coders and skilled lobbyists and culturally minded individuals. The most active and revolutionary figures on the digital rights boat may not be coders, but they wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for Coders telling them what was up. Its that communication between people of differing skill sets, but similar value systems, that causes communal change.

In summary, the greatest challenges that coders can meet are those of coding (as Lessig himself would say) an architecture that is more free than Washington (or Hollywood) would want, and at the same time making sure that the people they converse with outside the tech community understand the battles that are being waged over the internet and technology (and the stakes that are involved). Its up to everyone, coders and everyone else, to talk about the things that are most important to them at all times, and to forge an understanding between those that are most affected by these new laws, and those that are most effective at fighting them in every arena.

We need more coders speaking up about their rights to a wider audience, but more than that we need more coders wispering into the ears of those who already have an audience. Lessig is such an important asset to the community precisely because he is outside of it. He is the voice of the coder (not to mention musician, user, free thinking individual) in the world of the law, because he devoted his life to law and legal discourse. If he had gotten a BS and a .com job instead, he wouldn't be as eloquent, well thought, or influential for the movement as he is. But by the same token, if it weren't for coders that hadn't gone to law school telling him of the importance of the issues affecting them, he would be working for Jack Valenti at this point, and not us.

Therein lies the ultimate goal. Accessing the greatest potential of your abilities in the name of freedom, while understanding the need of other individuals of different abilities in the same name. Helping those individuals do their jobs with a greater understanding of the dilemmas that face your specific community.

Pretty weak.

[Anonvmous Coward]

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.

Yes and No

[gilroy]

I'm not sure why this is presented as an either/or thing. Lots of people are politically active who also hold down regular jobs and (gasp) have lives. Why should geeks be the only class that can only focus on one task at a time? I rather expect we multitask pretty well.

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:

But in the end, Congress agreed to a fundamentally flawed bill... To counter this emerging threat to traditionally accepted fair-use values, Congress must rewrite the law.

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 sad facts

[RWarrior(fobw)]

There are some sad facts that technogeeks either need to grok and live with, or grok and change. And we can't change all of them. Here are some of these facts:

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.

How do we educate people?

[zaffir]

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?

Declan and Lessig-both right,both wrong

[alizard]

Declan is RIGHT in that the traditional educational approach is not working and it isn't going to.

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?

• They collect money from members and contribute to the politicians who are their friends and to the opponents of their enemies.
• They have a full time lobbyist staff in DC to keep track of the issues connected to their members and disburse campaign money and give advice to politicians which gets listened to.
• When quiet words in back rooms don't make the point, they contact their membership, tell them that they need to contact their Congressperson and why, and make it easy for their members to contact Congress via Web > fax gateway servers (snailmail to Congresspeople is obsolete) and by other means.
• When they really want to make a point, they target politicians and not only support their opponents, but actively campaign, i.e. buy their own ads, make their own commercials, and put their own people into precincts to rid the world of the presence of their political enemy.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

   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?

3. 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.

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?