Posted by
chrisd
on from the taking-your-toys-apart-to-see-how-they-work dept.
shaikeiro writes "A fine
article in the Economist about Ed Felten and what he is up to now. Also a good summary of what "freedom to tinker" means. From the article: "Thus, the freedom to tinker ends up being about the freedom of culture."" Are you a member of the EFF yet?
Re:Joining the EFF....
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Informative
Key cases handled by the EFF of interest to/. are Felten v. RIAA, focusing on the danger to scientific freedom posed by the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, Universal v. Reimerdes (2600) focusing on the danger to news reporting posed by the same laws. The EFF has also advised the criminal defense attorneys in U.S. v. Sklyarov, focusing on the criminal application of those same provisions to creators of format conversion software.
For those who don't know who this is
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 3, Informative
Thoughts on the subject
by
Diabolical
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· Score: 5, Informative
All of the arguments given in the article is well known by many of the audience targeted by this article. However, most of them allready discarded the idea. A company isn't interested in someone improving on their products. They want to be the only one owning all rights to that device or software because that's how they make their money. They aren't concerned with cultural or social implications. That's not their issue. They want to secure as much marketshare as possible before some new technology becomes available that could replace their product.
What would be an issue though is that increasingly, corporations seek out the help of their paid representatives to get their agenda legalised. And that's where law should stop. It should not be a responsibility of lawmakers to protect large corporations. They should invent or create other ways, within legal boundaries of course, to protect their income. Laws should be made to protect the individual as much as possible against not only other individuals as well as against organisations who are just planning to seperate ones money from ones wallet.
It is not just the US who has these issues at hand. The European Union as well, is facing these same problems. Lots of/. people who aren't US based believe these issues are only a problem in the US. Well.. it's not. The EU has shown time after time they are very capable of making the same mistakes as the US government does. Wether it is because they so fondly want to shape another worldpower or that they are too lazy to come up with decent laws and rules i'll leave in the eye of the beholder.
Fact is we must react quickly on these kind of issues before even that right has been removed from us. Not just in the US but in the entire world.
Felton and spam
by
wowbagger
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you go over to the Spamcop newgroups (www.spamcop.net and search for Felton, you will see that he is not always on the side of the angels.
He started a silly rant about how Spamcop "shut down his web site" because they assert he is a spammer. Which is completely false. Rather than repeating it all here, I suggest you go read it yourself - Here's the relevant archive month on Spamcop - unfortunately their search system sucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Key cases handled by the EFF of interest to /. are Felten v. RIAA, focusing on the danger to scientific freedom posed by the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, Universal v. Reimerdes (2600) focusing on the danger to news reporting posed by the same laws. The EFF has also advised the criminal defense attorneys in U.S. v. Sklyarov, focusing on the criminal application of those same provisions to creators of format conversion software.
For those who don't know who this is:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/Felten_v_RIAA/
Posted anonymously so as to not karma whore...
Felten v. RIAA - Dismissed by the courts
Universal v. Reimerdes - A victory for Universal.
U.S. v. Sklyarov - Still pending.
at Freedom to Tinker. Lots of interesting stuff...
All of the arguments given in the article is well known by many of the audience targeted by this article. However, most of them allready discarded the idea. A company isn't interested in someone improving on their products. They want to be the only one owning all rights to that device or software because that's how they make their money. They aren't concerned with cultural or social implications. That's not their issue. They want to secure as much marketshare as possible before some new technology becomes available that could replace their product.
/. people who aren't US based believe these issues are only a problem in the US. Well.. it's not. The EU has shown time after time they are very capable of making the same mistakes as the US government does. Wether it is because they so fondly want to shape another worldpower or that they are too lazy to come up with decent laws and rules i'll leave in the eye of the beholder.
What would be an issue though is that increasingly, corporations seek out the help of their paid representatives to get their agenda legalised. And that's where law should stop. It should not be a responsibility of lawmakers to protect large corporations. They should invent or create other ways, within legal boundaries of course, to protect their income. Laws should be made to protect the individual as much as possible against not only other individuals as well as against organisations who are just planning to seperate ones money from ones wallet.
It is not just the US who has these issues at hand. The European Union as well, is facing these same problems. Lots of
Fact is we must react quickly on these kind of issues before even that right has been removed from us. Not just in the US but in the entire world.
If you go over to the Spamcop newgroups (www.spamcop.net and search for Felton, you will see that he is not always on the side of the angels.
He started a silly rant about how Spamcop "shut down his web site" because they assert he is a spammer. Which is completely false. Rather than repeating it all here, I suggest you go read it yourself - Here's the relevant archive month on Spamcop - unfortunately their search system sucks.
www.eFax.com are spammers