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?
Thought this seemed familiar, I read it nearly three months ago in the print edition.
Still, he makes some very good points. Have a look at the news story below to read about the 5-year jailterm Champion Of The People Fritz 'they named an evil chip after me' Hollings and others are trying to get you if you dare to tinker. How do people who work against the interests of the people who elected them so continue to get elected?
Surprisingly enough, the EFF.org website has been blacklisted from my Company's firewall. This is a public administration which has *no* interest in preventing Free speech.
They use some (Open Source) Squid-based server to proxy us, so, my question (this is indeed a question, NOT a troll) is What's on eff.org that would bother a Swiss administration's proxy ?
pr0n ?
violence ?
extreme-right opinions ?
The above suggestions correspond to the server's black-listing criteria...
-- Trolling using another account since 2005.
META: Please be more descriptive
by
RobotWisdom
·
· Score: 2, Offtopic
Not everyone knows that Ed Felten is an anti-DMCA activist, so it would have been helpful to spell this out in the blurb.
For those who don't know who this is
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Knowing how to tune a car engine does not allow a tinkerer to build a competing product, whereas software that cracks a copy-protection system can easily be used to distribute millions of identical copies. Dr Felten agrees. But his aim is not to solve the problem of free-riding; it is to analyse the value of tinkering.
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies.
The way you choose your words incicates that either 1) You didn'y read the article, or 2) You read it but didn't understand it.
*Tinkering* per-ce doesn't damage anything (Well, except maybe your stereo or whatever thing you are tinkering with).
Let's say that the entertainment Mafia gets everything they want today. That is, tonight every thing they have ever requested will be written into law. Do you think they will stop demanding new things ?? No way !
And that is exactly why you have to protect your rights. If you don't you might wake up one morning and only be able to 'lease' certain things, that is, pay rent for using them.
Hmmmm,,... to late....
The way you choose your words incicates that either 1) You didn'y read the article, or 2) You read it but didn't understand it. *Tinkering* per-ce doesn't damage anything (Well, except maybe your stereo or whatever thing you are tinkering with).
I quess it's the 2) then. Tinkering per-ce does not damage anything - true, still there should be some common practise around it. Otherwise companies have to use silliness like DMCA as their protection: they have to kill "tinkering" because no-one knows better(or commonly acceptable by business) ways to unleash only the good things that come with it.
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
If your business model revolves around restricting others' freedom, and it's easier to change laws than to actually provide the public with a product worth buying, isn't that a sign that something is seriously fucked up? Obviously not... let's just work on improving the bars and chains, then.
Aww. Just the reaction I thought it would cause. We already know that something IS seriously fucked up. We also already know that everyone would be best of with "freedom to tinker". Now, we need to get a recipe for getting out of this. It is the existing state of things - the world around you - that is the problem. Companies resort to DMCA to protect their existing business that was based on grounds (which was fucked up, as you put it) that are to be changed. Now, someone should come up with a plan that secures both the freedom and the business. Maybe you can share your secret plan how to do that?
I'm not the best person to ask -- I'm probably pretty close to communitarian anarchy in my political beliefs, I don't believe in property rights beyond those necessary to immediate survival and I wouldn't drink down the pap the major media companies try to feed me if you paid me to. Go ask someone who already drank the Kool-Aid.
I'd argue that the companies, small and large, should change the way they do business, and concentrate on producing content of such quality that people are encouraged to pay for it to make sure its production is guaranteed. I'd imagine this would favour the smaller companies, because good work rarely comes from large, committee-style decisions.
Wake me up when this happens... but I won't be holding my breath.:)
The free-riding problem *cannot be solved* with digital information.
Companies only have their distribution mechanisms for digital information to compete with. If a CD distributor doesn't perform as well in the bandwith*convenience/price arena as your local ISP/telco, then it's a matter of *tough luck*, at least in a free market.
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another? *Tough luck*, unless you tell the secret and then rip out the other person's tongue and chop off his hands prevent him from further communicating with anybody else. The only way to make that happen digitally is to make every PC a read-only device. Oh, that's what you want then? But we already have that, you dumbf'ck, it's called TV. We don't want TV. We're sick of TV, and we won't allow our computers to be replaced by TVs just because some industry paid f'ck said so. Get over it.
RIAA, MPAA: the game is *over*. Cope. Please take your whining elsewhere, and please stop abusing society by buying f'cking laws.
When no good music gets recorded, no good books get written, no good movies get produced and no good paintings are being made anymore because the artists are starving, I'm sure society can come up with a *better* solution than simply handcuffing all its inhabitants, don't you think?
I'd say if you want to publish something digitally, you'll just have to live with the initial payment. If that's not enough, convince more people to pay before publishing it. If not enough people want to do so, then *tough luck*. If they do, all the better. It's still a free market after all, only one where the public is a *single* customer. If that customer wants to buy something valuable, he may have to make some savings up front. The concept is not even new, it already works fine for public highways. Society wants them, because society as a whole benefits from them, so society decides to pay for them as a whole. What's so f'cking hard about that?
-- All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)
Re:Joining the EFF....
by
91degrees
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Felten v. RIAA - Dismissed by the courts Universal v. Reimerdes - A victory for Universal. U.S. v. Sklyarov - Still pending.
Freedom to Tinker talk @ Usenix
by
eludom
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Felton gave a version of this talk at the recent USENIX Security Symposium.
A few quotes/outline:
"The freedom to tinker is the freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify technological devices that you own."
Major points we (techies) need to communicate more clearly
1. Tinkering is socially important 2. Tinkering is economically efficient 3. Tinkering doesn't conflict with "Intellectual Property."
And of course "the DMCA should be repealed."
More complete summary to appear in the upcoming security issue of;login:
> It's really a complex equation of how best to encourage innovation
I don't know if it works, but this is a try to do it in a way that it could benefit everyone (individuals, non-profit organisations and companies) at the same time. Basicly, the same thing that open source in general does, but from a little different aproach.
I actually didn't clik on your link lest this would add to my company unauthorized access log record...
(or lest this'd lead to some goatse thing which is probably not the case;-)
Heh...well, it isn't...but I'm sure I could hunt up the Google cache for it if you want.;)
Anyway, you aren't missing much by not seeing the images. The top is just the EFF logo. Then, under "EFF Needs You", the first is kind of a funky looking shiny side of a CD, and the Second is Sen. Hollings on a cartoonish TV set. On the right is a small b&w of Larry Lessig and below that the Tinsel Town Club logo.
Cheers.:)
-- "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Check out Felton's Blog
by
jackjumper
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Thoughts on the subject
by
Diabolical
·
· 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.
Re:Thoughts on the subject
by
phriedom
·
· Score: 2
"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."
Some companies, I hope, will see that without tinkering, the technology that they own all the rights to will stagnate and be replaced more quickly. Some companies understand that it isn't always about getting the biggest piece of pie, sometimes it is about making the pie bigger.
Of course you are right that MOST of the target audience will have disregarded this arguement, but perhaps not all. And perhaps lawmakers will read it to. Lawmakers are usually pretty short-term planners, but perhaps some will see that the loss of tinkering would handcuff American technology. I tend to think that India, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, and Indonesia are not about to swallow the Palladium pill. Via may ship a crippled PC to the US, but they will have a full function version for everywhere else and there won't be anything the RIAA or DMCA can do about it. Dell and IBM and Oracle, etc. won't take that lying down.
-- Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
It's really a complex equation of how best to encourage innovation. If tinkerring had too many protections and were too easy (and IBM were smarter...), we might not have had a PC based on non-proprietary components[...]
IBM tried to be "smart" with PS/2 and proprietary hardware and see how far that got them.
Apple Mac has always had very closed hardware and this led to the Mac conquering a "large" chuck of the PC market. Right?
If IBM hadn't opened up the PC, someone else would have. The idea is just too good...
I was impressed with Felton's use of the word "tinker" when in the/. community, such activity would clearly be known as "hacking." It has the same meaning, but not the same negative connotation to the mainstream. This way he still manages to get the point across without distorting the original intent. If you go through the article and replace the word "tinker" with the word "hack," it doesn't alter the meaning of the article at all. And clearly The Economist is on the "tinkerers" side in going along with the change in terminology.
-- "No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Tinkering - not only copyright and not only soft
by
nickol
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Just look around - more and more things are above normal person's ability to "tinker" or repair it. There was RS-232. It was easy and convenient. Everyone could make an add-on for the PC to do some task, using RS-232. Search the net - there are hundreds of home built devices that use this simple interface. Now we have USB. Faster, more features. But it is very hard to implement. Was it really necessary to do it in such complicated way ? I don't think so. I think there was an intention to make the interface that only large companies would be able to use. Remember the story of PC. IBM made a very simple device, everybody could do the same. That device has been built using very strict and open standards. For example, there was a completely documented hardware CGA/EGA interface. Now we have dozens of different SVGAs and no standard at all. We should rely on vendor's device drivers. Linux suffered from such politics a lot. There was a word 'engineer' - someone who can invent or construct different things - machines, cars, devices, tools. The key point is that they are different things. Nowaday's 'engineers' can built something very special - typically one part of a machine. One particular kind of software. When there is not exist one human or small group of people who can observe and discuss the whole information in some area, the progress in that area stops. The classic idea of invention came to its end now. Corporation can not invent anything, but only human brain can.
Felton and spam
by
wowbagger
·
· 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.
"rest assured that an article from the Economist is worth your time"
Geez, you're not half-pompous, are you?
Actually, in this case I think that Roland is just plain right about the Economist being the best English-language news magazine around today. But then, I've only been writing non-fiction technical articles professionally since 1984, so I doubt that you will give my opinion much credence.
Consider that the Economist articles have far fewer misspelled words and grammer abortions than SlashDot by a wide margin. Never mind the reporting is top-notch.
It's the essence of clear writing, intelligent but not pompous (to use what appears to be your favorite word). Can you do as well?
"Actually, in this case I think that Roland is just plain right about the Economist being the best English-language news magazine around today."
And do you also agree with him that anytime anyone sees a link to an Economist article they should read it without question? (If so, I think you have a screw loose.)
"But then, I've only been writing non-fiction technical articles professionally since 1984, so I
doubt that you will give my opinion much credence."
Quite right. Tech writers rank pretty low on my scale of values.
"Consider that the Economist articles have far fewer misspelled words and grammer abortions than SlashDot by a wide margin."
Heh. Love that 'grammer'.
"It's the essence of clear writing, intelligent but not pompous (to use what appears to be your favorite word)."
I'd say you're a tad hasty in that deduction, given the miniscule sample size.
publishing and secrets
by
solferino
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another?
i like how you link publishing / not publishing to asking someone to keep a 'secret'.
in my personal life i have recently realised that it is wrong to tell someone something and ask them to keep it a secret, or to ask them to keep the information hidden from certain other ppl - it is entirely their perogative once they have received that information as to what to do with it. if you want to keep some information unknown then the only way to do that is to tell nobody - if you tell even one person then you should accept that potentially the whole world can know, and that there are no grounds for you to be upset if this happens as you are the person who originally released the information
this situation is exactly the same with publishing - once you release something to the world by publishing it, then potentially the whole world now has accesss to it and it is morally wrong for you to try to limit the access.
perhaps it is ok for you to request acknowledgement for the work, but it is not ok to try to create artificial barriers (society based laws) to force 'payment' for your work. ppl who license their software under the gpl accept this. i see no difference for 'creative' artists
the only right you have to control access to your 'creative' work is the right to not release or publish it in the first place - either everyone has access to it or no-one does. any concerns for 'payment' are entirely subservient to the moral right of free information transmission
While I'm glad that Senator Allen withdrew his support for the bill, his reasoning is dismaying. A bunch of big corporations didn't like the revised bill because it could open them to liability. Maybe a clause should be inserted exempting ISP's - that would address the concerns of these corporations. Allen does not seem at all interested in the impact of this law on citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
Thought this seemed familiar, I read it nearly three months ago in the print edition.
t op
Still, he makes some very good points. Have a look at the news story below to read about the 5-year jailterm Champion Of The People Fritz 'they named an evil chip after me' Hollings and others are trying to get you if you dare to tinker. How do people who work against the interests of the people who elected them so continue to get elected?
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956811.html?tag=fd_
This is a public administration which has *no* interest in preventing Free speech.
They use some (Open Source) Squid-based server to proxy us, so, my question (this is indeed a question, NOT a troll) is What's on eff.org that would bother a Swiss administration's proxy ?
The above suggestions correspond to the server's black-listing criteria...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Not everyone knows that Ed Felten is an
anti-DMCA activist, so it would have been
helpful to spell this out in the blurb.
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...
I think that the majority already agrees on the benefits on the "freedom to tinker". What companies currently cannot solve, is the free-riding problem. It does not matter how much you preach about tinkering, as long as it damages existing business, it is freedom stinker for many companies. Dr Felten is clearly a clever man, maybe he could put his energy in solving that instead.
Felten v. RIAA - Dismissed by the courts
Universal v. Reimerdes - A victory for Universal.
U.S. v. Sklyarov - Still pending.
Felton gave a version of this talk at the recent
;login:
USENIX Security Symposium.
A few quotes/outline:
"The freedom to tinker is the freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify technological devices that you own."
Major points we (techies) need to communicate
more clearly
1. Tinkering is socially important
2. Tinkering is economically efficient
3. Tinkering doesn't conflict with "Intellectual Property."
And of course "the DMCA should be repealed."
More complete summary to appear in the upcoming
security issue of
I don't know if it works, but this is a try to do it in a way that it could benefit everyone (individuals, non-profit organisations and companies) at the same time. Basicly, the same thing that open source in general does, but from a little different aproach.
Google Cache of the EFF main page
Hope this helps. Cheers. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
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.
IBM tried to be "smart" with PS/2 and proprietary hardware and see how far that got them.
Apple Mac has always had very closed hardware and this led to the Mac conquering a "large" chuck of the PC market. Right?
If IBM hadn't opened up the PC, someone else would have. The idea is just too good...
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I was impressed with Felton's use of the word "tinker" when in the /. community, such activity would clearly be known as "hacking." It has the same meaning, but not the same negative connotation to the mainstream. This way he still manages to get the point across without distorting the original intent. If you go through the article and replace the word "tinker" with the word "hack," it doesn't alter the meaning of the article at all. And clearly The Economist is on the "tinkerers" side in going along with the change in terminology.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Just look around - more and more things
are above normal person's ability to "tinker"
or repair it. There was RS-232. It was easy
and convenient. Everyone could make an add-on
for the PC to do some task, using RS-232.
Search the net - there are hundreds of home
built devices that use this simple interface.
Now we have USB. Faster, more features. But it
is very hard to implement. Was it really
necessary to do it in such complicated way ?
I don't think so. I think there was an intention
to make the interface that only large companies
would be able to use.
Remember the story of PC. IBM made a very simple
device, everybody could do the same. That device
has been built using very strict and open standards.
For example, there was a completely documented
hardware CGA/EGA interface. Now we have dozens
of different SVGAs and no standard at all.
We should rely on vendor's device drivers.
Linux suffered from such politics a lot.
There was a word 'engineer' - someone who can
invent or construct different things -
machines, cars, devices, tools. The key point is that they are different things. Nowaday's 'engineers'
can built something very special - typically one
part of a machine. One particular kind of software.
When there is not exist one human or small group
of people who can observe and discuss the whole
information in some area, the progress in that
area stops. The classic idea of invention came to its end now. Corporation can not invent anything, but only human brain can.
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
"rest assured that an article from the Economist is worth your time" Geez, you're not half-pompous, are you?
Actually, in this case I think that Roland is just plain right about the Economist being the best English-language news magazine around today. But then, I've only been writing non-fiction technical articles professionally since 1984, so I doubt that you will give my opinion much credence.
Consider that the Economist articles have far fewer misspelled words and grammer abortions than SlashDot by a wide margin. Never mind the reporting is top-notch.
It's the essence of clear writing, intelligent but not pompous (to use what appears to be your favorite word). Can you do as well?
And do you also agree with him that anytime anyone sees a link to an Economist article they should read it without question? (If so, I think you have a screw loose.)
"But then, I've only been writing non-fiction technical articles professionally since 1984, so I doubt that you will give my opinion much credence."
Quite right. Tech writers rank pretty low on my scale of values.
"Consider that the Economist articles have far fewer misspelled words and grammer abortions than SlashDot by a wide margin."
Heh. Love that 'grammer'.
"It's the essence of clear writing, intelligent but not pompous (to use what appears to be your favorite word)."
I'd say you're a tad hasty in that deduction, given the miniscule sample size.
"Can you do as well?"
'Click' on my 'link' for 'prose' 'samples'.
Who's Randi?
Don't read this!
i like how you link publishing / not publishing to asking someone to keep a 'secret'.
in my personal life i have recently realised that it is wrong to tell someone something and ask them to keep it a secret, or to ask them to keep the information hidden from certain other ppl - it is entirely their perogative once they have received that information as to what to do with it. if you want to keep some information unknown then the only way to do that is to tell nobody - if you tell even one person then you should accept that potentially the whole world can know, and that there are no grounds for you to be upset if this happens as you are the person who originally released the information
this situation is exactly the same with publishing - once you release something to the world by publishing it, then potentially the whole world now has accesss to it and it is morally wrong for you to try to limit the access.
perhaps it is ok for you to request acknowledgement for the work, but it is not ok to try to create artificial barriers (society based laws) to force 'payment' for your work. ppl who license their software under the gpl accept this. i see no difference for 'creative' artists
the only right you have to control access to your 'creative' work is the right to not release or publish it in the first place - either everyone has access to it or no-one does. any concerns for 'payment' are entirely subservient to the moral right of free information transmission
While I'm glad that Senator Allen withdrew his support for the bill, his reasoning is dismaying. A bunch of big corporations didn't like the revised bill because it could open them to liability. Maybe a clause should be inserted exempting ISP's - that would address the concerns of these corporations. Allen does not seem at all interested in the impact of this law on citizens.