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Cringely On Civil Disobedience
Sauron23 writes "Robert Cringely over at PBS has his usual weekly Pulpit out. This weeks it's a follow up to last weeks discussion of one of the enforcers of the DMCA, BayTSP. He clarifies some of the issues surrounding a planned bust in October for P2P users sharing movies and makes perhaps an unusual request for civil disobediance from P2P users. I don't know what 10 million pirated copies of "Debbie does Dallas" would be worth either Bob. Probably more than the courts would want to handle. Worth the read." Some of the stronger parts of the column, IMHO, is the commentary on the e-mails people sent in.
when I call for civil disobedience in posts on slashdot I get modded down to all crap. Yet when some other guy writes an article about it, he gets a news post.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Wait... and leave the warm, safe confines of our parent's basements? Are ye daft, lad?
It's much more fun to rail against the injustices of the world instead of actually doing anything about it. Geeze. Some people.
(For the humor impaired moderators out there, move along - these aren't the droids you're looking for)
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"
Some how I dont think anyone is really going to be impressed by a bunch of nerds holding a virtual "sit in" on a P2P network.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in with an MP3 of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.
And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-DMCA Movement, and all you got to do to join is rip it the next time it come's around on the guitar.
BlackBolt
a link to debbie does dallas. I want every assistance to start my civil disobiedance
Seriously. Won't work. I tried it.
... I wonder if he even knows what a DVD is ...
... eventually she'll want to watch a DVD while she surfs the web or something ... and then ... oh yes ... then she'll be one of us ...
I have a friend of a friend who's a city cop here (Tallahassee, FL -- state capital). After reading the article, it occurred to me: so what would an everyday cop walking the beat (she actually has a cruiser, but that's beside the point) actually say if something like this came up.
Anyway, I e-mailed the friend and asked whether or not the cop was online. I don't know her well enough to just "barge in" (odd that I felt the need to confess POLITELY to a federal crime, but I digress). Turns out she is, so I left my e-mail addy and screen name with the friend. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until later tonight when a message window opened. To make a long story short, my confession went something like:
"I recently used my laptop to watch The Matrix. Since I run Linux, I was forced to use an illegal decryption algorithm in order to watch it. It's my DVD, though. I bought it when it first came out. Anyway, if you guys want to arrest me I can give you my address."
I really think she thought I was some kind of nutcase. But she was polite. "Why was that illegal," she asked, "if you own the movie?"
I explained, briefly, and gave the spiel about "circumventing protection schemes".
She said, "You bought the movie. Watch it however you want, just don't copy it and sell it outside the mall." Kind of an inside joke, since a modest-sized music-pirating ring was busted here a while back. They were burning illegal CDs and selling them openly at swap meets and the like. Why? Because, for months, the cops apparently had NO CLUE they had an obligation to do anything about it. Or maybe they just didn't care until someone lit a fire under them. Who knows.
I finally asked: "Aren't you going to arrest me? I'm guilty of, I dunno, dozens of violations of federal law. I wouldn't even know how to guess how many times I've gotten bored and thrown a DVD onto my laptop."
She gave me an LOL and said, "I don't know what would be more stupid. You trying to get arrested for something like that, me for being willing to do the paperwork over something like that, or any prosecutor who'd stop doing his job to go after you for it."
I guess the city cops haven't been briefed properly on the finer points of cybercrime, so people like me could happily watch The Matrix illegally on the courthouse steps and the Powers That Be would just smile and keep on walking.
In the tiny little town where I grew up, my uncle was the sheriff
Interestingly enough, the conversation went on for quite a while after that. Seems she was intrigued by Linux. She's currently using Windows ME,that steaming piece of crap someone at Microsoft decided, for whatever reason, to call an operating system. How the same company that created Windows2000 could create THAT is beyond me. Anyway, as converts go, ME users are generally an easy sell. It's not like things can get any worse, right? Maybe I can get her to convert