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.

Comments

not effective

[Drunken Coward]

This kind of civil disobedience is NOT going to be very effective.

With the civil rights movement of the 1960's, civil disobedience was very vocal and right in the public eye- this, on the other hand, will hardly be noticed by most people.

A more effective way to show your displeasure with the current legislation may be to protest in "real life" rather than in cyberspace.

Re:not effective

[zyklone]

Had you read the article you would have seen that a real-world protest is exactly what he is suggesting.

You are to violate the DMCA and immediately leave towards the closest police station, and demand a jury trial.

Re:not effective

[Amarok.Org]

A more effective way to show your displeasure with the current legislation may be to protest in "real life"

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)

Re:not effective

[Drunken Coward]

From the article:
Everyone who hates the DMCA has to illegally copy a movie or a song, and then tell both the Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office exactly what they did.

How exactly is doing something like this going to catch the public eye? Joe Public still won't have heard of what's going on, the only people that will know about it are Congress and the US Copyright Office. Now, something like what Bruce Perens planned to do (violate the DMCA in front of a crowd) on a larger scale would be more like it...

Re:not effective

[zyklone]

Joe Public doesn't make any laws.
Joe Public doesn't even vote (atleast not a very large part of them).

The people who don't care will never care and can be safely ignored.

Re:not effective

[wunderhorn1]

Yes, but George W. Officeholder still wants Joe Public to vote (for him), and he will do his best to get Joe out of his recliner and to the polls.

You see, Joe Public has a habit of getting excited at pretty much any old issue that is pitched to him in the correct manner (the usual combination of the right logical fallacies -- appeals to emotion, everyone knows the DMCA is bad.)

Granted, copyright law is probably pretty far down on old Joe's list of things to care about, but the group of Jim's and Jane's using the internet is large and constantly increasing, so I don't believe it's out of the relm of possibility to raise widespread public awareness of the subject.

Re:not effective

[Lumpy]

wow you know nothing about history do you..

I was at kent state. I saw kids the age of my older brother murdered by the government.

and I saw that what they were doing, what they DIED for succeeded.

It works, it works very well. and it takes people that care about it, and feel strong enough about it, and to have the BALLS to put their life on the line for it..

Unfortunately, today in 2002, the United States of America.... too many cowards wont do anything, the rest are lazy and cant be bothered to donate or protest.

the DMCA will survive... because YOU wont do anything as well as the rest of the population that bitches about it.

It does work, I saw it in action.. and anyone that says otherwise is pretty much blind.

Re:not effective

[imadork]

Cringely's technique will not be very effective, but it has nothing to with "this kind of civil disobedience". In fact, what Cringely is advocating is civil disobedience done right -- having lots of people break a stupid law openly, and accepting the consequences. Remember, just breaking the law from the comfort of your basement is not enough -- you need to let the Police break down your door and throw you in jail just for trying to play your "copy-protected" DVD or CD on your computer, all to show the public how absurd the law is.

The problem is that the absurdity will be lost on most people. This can't be compared to the Civil Rights movement, when the dignity of human beings was at stake. This is about bits, shiny things, and noise -- i.e., things that aren't really important when compared to human dignity. We all know what can happen in the future if laws like the DMCA don't get revisited in its current form. We know that the issue is more about property rights and control of information than about piracy. But since nothing important is at stake right now, anyone who participates in "civil disobedience" will be dismissed at best as a misguided geek, and at worst as an evil pirate hacker. After all, if you can watch a DVD on a DVD player, who cares if you can't watch it on a computer running Linux? We do, but noone else thinks it's important.

Let's face it, Our percieved right to download music or use media that we "own" on any device that has the technical ability to play it is not considered that important when there is so much else going on in the world.

Re:not effective

[Pig Hogger]

. This is about bits, shiny things, and noise -- i.e., things that aren't really important when compared to human dignity.

This isn't about bits, shiny things, and noise. It's about the bottom line of the *AA.

And that's far more important than human dignity.

Re:not effective

[strudeau]

How exactly is doing something like this going to catch the public eye? Joe Public still won't have heard of what's going on, the only people that will know about it are Congress and the US Copyright Office. Now, something like what Bruce Perens planned to do (violate the DMCA in front of a crowd) on a larger scale would be more like it...

Agreed. Perens' ploy as an individual act in front of a crowd would garner much more attention than Jimmy the Gamer copying mp3's in his basement -- even if they both subsequently turn themselves in. If what Cringley is suggesting is we all do this alone, go to local police stations and turn ourselves in, and there is no broader infrastructure to communicate to the media what is happening, it won't work. Also, I think the plan is flawed because it suffers from the collective action problem: it will work if X number of people do it (and get attention), but it won't work if less than X do it. So if I break the law, and the number ends up less than X, everyone loses and I lose more. However, if X people break the law, and I am X+1, I have (from my POV) paid the costs of action unecessarily.

What I propose is a national gathering (perhaps in 2-4 locations simaltaneously) where folks can come together en masse to explicitly violate terms of the DMCA collectively in a public manner. This will encourage people to act (reduces fear of being less than X) and will make it much easier to garner media attention to the event(s). We all show up in San Fran, New York or Chicago, violate the DMCA like mad, document it, and then march down to the local police station and turn ourselves in. That just might work...

Re:not effective

[PainKilleR-CE]

Here's a simple way to translate this to 'real life':

Download the top 20 singles on Billboard from whatever P2P program (I almost guarantee they'll all be easy to find), or if you feel like covering your ass a bit download 70 or so minutes worth of songs from bands that have spoken out saying they want people to download their music.

Decode them to CD Audio format and burn a stack of CDs with those songs in that format, so that people will be able to play them in their CD players (at least a decent percentage of them). Sure, they won't sound as good as the originals, but that's always been part of the point, right? Now, go down to your local 'chain' record store or WalMart (the largest retailer of CDs in the US) and hand the CDs out to people going into/out of the store.

Alternatively, download whatever the #1 box office draw is this week and burn it onto a stack of CDs. Bonus points for formats supported by common DVD players (VCD? MPEG?). Then go down to your local movie theater and hand them out to people in line.

Do it in groups if you must. It'll cost you a little time and money, but it's more visible than sharing files on your PC.

Re:not effective

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

When people break the speed limit, they don't go to the nearest police station and give them photographs of their spedometer as they passed a low speed limit. It doesn't have to be this big self-sacrificing submission to authority--just plain old breaking the law, such as Prohibition or speed-limits, is Civil Disobedience done the effective, fun, and American way.

Which is why shiny things will win. Everyone else is doing it--why don't I start? Downloading stuff for free is fun! The United States of America is a very powerful government, but when it challenges the fun of it's own people it always loses. Eventually the government will have to either cave in like with Prohibiton, limit enforcement to the biggest offenders as with speeding, or fight a perpetual losing war as with drug policy.

Re:not effective

[nanojath]

I've got a big problem with the extension of logic you're suggesting, however.

Protesting a war, or demonstrating against an injustice or the violation of a civil leberty, is one thing.

Even if you are effectively breaking the law, it is for the sake of a greater principle which should transcend that law.

Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism. It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.

I am neither a coward nor lazy. But I'm not going to bother turning myself into the cops unless I have a worthwhile crime to commit.

Re:not effective

[james_underscore]

I can imagine it:

100 geeks or more standing outside the Whitehouse offering floppy disks containing DeCSS to the public. That could even get a mention on international news (the protest against Dmitry Sklyarov's arrest did have a mention on British news at least).

Sweet!

Re:not effective

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

Yes, but George W. Officeholder still wants Joe Public to vote (for him), and he will do his best to get Joe out of his recliner and to the polls.

And of course, how dies he get Joe Public out? By running ads, paid for using contributions to George W. Officeholder that came from various lobbying groups like the MPAA and its members.

-asb

Re:not effective

[RealAlaskan]

Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism.

Protesting restraints on our rights to free speech, and on our rights to use the public domain, is exactly the same as ``... marching against institutionalized racism.''

It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.

Wrong. If you violate the DMCA by makeing a backup copy of copyrighted, encrypted content which you have legally purchased, your action is entirely moral. If you do it publicly, it is exactly like Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus.

Re:not effective

[Our Man In Redmond]

You forget the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie:

"You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement."

He's talking about fighting the draft but the logic applies to overthrowing the DCMA as well. If enough people got together (the more the merrier), copied a single file, and turned themselves in en masse at the local police station, people would start to notice. Especially if the protesters alerted the media beforehand.

Re:not effective

[mitheral]

It would be the third possibility I'd be concerned with. Imagine felony copyright violation charges[1] being coupled with those insane three strikes laws. It's not much of a stretch to imagine some (many) poor soul(s) spending the rest of his life in prision for swapping mp3s!

[1] I don't know where felony charges kick in under the DMCA but for sake of argument let's say $5000. At full suggested retail price of $20 you only have to download 250 songs, each off a different album, to break the $5000 barrier.

Re:not effective

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Well, in that case, your civil disobedience, or rather restricting oneself to your civil disobedience, is rather stupid. Prohibition would never have ended with just a few drunks getting themselves thrown symbolically into jail.

Note that I'm not accepting your definition of civil disobedience--I see no reason why it must be so restrictive. When I say civil disobedience, I refer to speakeasies and sit-ins alike. I take civil disobedience to refer to disregarding the authorities in a nonviolent manner. Deal with it.

Re:not effective

[nanojath]

"If you do it publicly, it is exactly like Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus."

Now that is SO full of shit.

"a backup copy of copyrighted, encrypted content which you have legally purchased"

I would agree this would be a far more justifiable action of protest and might do some good. It is not, however, the action Cringely proposes.

And let's just get real, Malcolm X. The reality is that there is a large contingency of individuals who's main goal in file sharing, encryption cracking and digital duplication is not merely time or format shifting. What these people are doing is violating legally defined copyrights on a massive scale. And as long as this illegal, and in my opinion immoral activity is the real center of the whole debate, legitimate free speech and user rights issues will get short shrift.

I bet, anyway, that you're not going to do a damn thing about any of it, are you? Did you write your representatives in Washington? Have you boycotted the major publishing companies' music? Do you support local self-publishers who produce unencumbered CDs? or do you just piss and moan on Slashdot (four out of four of the above list for me, Dr. King.) Let me know when you're headed for the police station to let them know you backed up your DVDs.

Re:not effective

[gmhowell]

If you do it publicly, it is exactly like Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of the bus.

To paraphrase "Barbershop", she just 'sat on her big black ass'.

I don't know what Jesse Jackson and the New York Pimp (Al Sharpton, paragon of truth and virtue) are all up in arms about.

(Blah, blah, offtopic, bite me.)

Re:not effective

[zurab]

the DMCA will survive... because YOU wont do anything as well as the rest of the population that bitches about it.

I disagree with this statement and with Mr Cringely. DMCA will survive because it is supported by the special interests who paid for the law. Period.

Now, Mr Cringely argues that if 10 million people downloaded a song or a movie off of a P2P and told their representatives about it, it would prompt those representatives to change the law. He goes on to give an example of the speed limit law.

First of all, as a point of order, there is no such thing as a "speed limit law". The posted speed limits on streets are *suggested* safe speeds on those streets. If you are caught exceeding the posted *speed limit*, and even if you admit you did, you still have a right to argue in front of the judge that the speed limit was set too low, and you were actually driving completely safe exceeding the speed limit. But, perhaps, he is talking about the law that sets the *maximum speed*; in CA, it's 70 mph right now (65 on most feeways); however, some states still don't have maximum speed legally defined.

On with the argument. Few years ago, maximum speed in CA was 60 (55 on most freeways); and most people were "speeding" on the freeway driving about 75-80 and above. Everybody knew this including the CHP. So, if you were simply breaking the law driving 60-65 (which is considered pretty slow) past a CHP car they wouldn't bother to pull you over because, with almost all certainty, there would be others driving by faster than you that would catch their eye. Now, they increased the maximum speed to 65 (on most freeways), but guess what - most people are still breaking the law driving 70 and above. Not all violators are caught or prosecuted. CHP knows and most of the times does nothing about this, nor do they have resources to prosecute majority (maybe 99.9%) of violators. In other words, this maximum speed law is just there to serve one purpose - help state agencies meet their budgets. Nobody changed, or even attempted to change the law just because "a lot of people were breaking or disobeying the law". And, somehow, I don't think writing to my representative and telling him/her about my speed violations will help that system either. The reason behind this is that if state is deprived of a significant source of funding such as speed violations, they would have to increase taxes, and no elected representative wants to run on - "hey! I will raise your taxes as soon as you elect me! But I will set your maximum speed at 80 mph!" Most people would take this person for nuts.

Now, when it comes to DMCA, there is more at stake, and that's money from special interests, or legal bribery as they call it. This is what wins elections, or at least contributes in a very significant manner. No representative will refuse money from the entertainment industry that's trying to enforce their copyrights. They may object to *how* the enforcement is done, but not that it should be done. As you've seen from various reports, DMCA was enacted in a way to strike a balance between the various special interests, between centralized control of the content and offering mass technology that controls the content; and, no, you the public were not a special or any other interest in this case.

But this balance is delicate. I am of the opinion that if what Mr Cringely suggests happens, that is 10 million people write to their elected reps about their activities on P2P, it will tilt that balance towards the entertainment industry even more. Then, congress will finally "see" the problem first-hand; they will determine that it is too easy to break the law and commit copyright violations with the current legislature; they will have strong numbers to support their claim; they will disregard the public (as they always do) in favor of special interests. They will feel more pressure from RIAA and MPAA to require the standard encryption scheme on every electronic device produced; and we will most definitely end up with something like SSSCA on our hands! Good job! That's what we're fighting for! And, guess what - most people won't give a damn - they will think or being marketed to as SSSCA guaranteeing security and privacy for them, encrypted to keep hackers away.

And, your next move, Mr Cringely?

Re:not effective

[wunderhorn1]

Hey, I'm just as cynical as the next guy, but I think you're being overly pessimistic about the state of our democracy.

You're right that there is a large number of people who think, "i'm a democrat, i've got to go vote for all the democrats so the bad guys won't get in office" (and vice versa), but this clearly isn't the entirety of voters.

Why would presidential candidates court the "swing states"? Why would candidates campaign on "hot-button" issues? Why would candidates campaign at all?
Clearly there are voters who do listen to candidates' appeals and can be swayed one way or the other, and it clearly is a working strategy (don't make me bring up the 2000 presidential election...)

You also might want to do a little research on other countries that have introduced mandatory voting... I'll give you a hint: it hasn't created the political utopias some people imagine it would.

Re:not effective

[bobdehnhardt]

Illegally duplicating and distributing a movie is not in the same arena as marching against institutionalized racism. It is a petty crime with no moral value whatsoever.

Sorta like weaving your own cloth, eh? Doing something like that would never get world attention, organize the masses, and eventually drive out an empire, would it? It's just a minor, petty crime, a man sitting in a hut with a small home-made spinner and loom. Nothing to worry about. People wouldn't pay attention to something like that, right?

You'd be surprised how a much a small, petty, insignificant act can do....

Re:not effective

[nanojath]

Hmmm, no, you are not wrong. We are on the wrong road and change is necessary. I was not kiddng above - I do frequently contact my legislators on these issues, I do support artists that choose a rational approach to copyright, and I do boycott the UMGs and Sonys of this world.

This being said, I think the very real issues you are discussing need to be separated in the political arena from the less-than-justifiable surge of illicit file-trading which is what entitites like the RIAA really care about. Unfortunately, things like Cringely's suggestions - that we all bootleg Debbie Does Dallas ten million times and trade it around to make a point (and clog up the judicial system) blurs the distinction between the reasonable objections to recent changes in copyright law (copyright extension and the DMCA) and unreasonable objections (I should be able to trade a hundred thousand copies of this hit CD single I bought if I want to!). We would be making a lot more progress if we stuck to defending the defensible.

Re:not effective

[Chris Johnson]

You're right about there being more important issues out there- but hey, you just hit on a great idea.

Have everybody specifically set out to play a DVD THEY OWN on Linux and then say 'arrest me!'. Have them give away copies of DeCSS too. Leave p2p out of it for now- not necessary.

Re:not effective

[mmmmbeer]

I'm willing to help organize a gathering in Columbus, OH. I'd like to see protests in all 50 state capitals (gov't seats, you know), but some of them probably couldn't get enough people to be very impressive, and we wouldn't want to draw away from other gatherings. Maybe we could start by organizing gatherings in a few big cities, then as enough people from one area sign up, break off into more local gatherings?

I would also like to suggest December 16 as a possible date for this. For those of you who don't know, that was the date of the Boston Tea Party. It seems like an appropriate date for Civil Disobedience Day.

How come

[Apreche]

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.

I'll do it.

[eexlebots]

I'm up for some civil disobedience. Who else is with me? I'm seriously gonna do it.

Re:I'll do it.

[schlach]

I'm in. I have another post above, in response to strudeau proposing that we organize large conventions in several cities coast-to-coast, to get some big media exposure. I also created a new yahoo groups account for collecting us slashdotters. I called it the Digital Mandate Consumer Advocacy Group ;)

If you guys are interested, Slashdotters Unite! Sub the list, join the Digital Mandate, and we'll figure out who we've got and what we're gonna do about it.

--schlach

This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[jeblucas]

I read this article, and I gotta tell ya, I feel like I just wasted a little chunk of time. This is basically a blog of some tech writer that thinks he's a lot smarter than everyone else (don't we all), and gets a chunk of pbs.org websapce to convince everyone. Maybe someone really likes his show, but please, his "insights" into emails is pretty tired by now.

I realize everyone in /. is crapping themselves over the DMCA, but does every two paragraph article about need to be front page material?

If you want to learn more about the real enforcement, read here.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[91degrees]

If you want to learn more about the real enforcement, read here [eff.org].

Congrats on reiterating his point. The link shows a total of 3 groups of people who have stood up to fight the DMCA. This is hardly going to persuade the world that the DMCA is wrong.

But what if everybody decided to breach the DMCA? This would mean that the DVD-CCA, Universal, and the DOJ would be obliged to prosecute all of them. The system would not cope, and it would prove that a very large minority of people oppose the law, and very few are in favour.

We're not going to of course, and Cringley knows this. We simply aren't organised enough. He simply wants to point out that since we're not willing to do this, complaining to uninterested parties is pointless.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[duffbeer703]

If everyone decided to breach the DMCA, the government would have no trouble continuing to enforce it and collect revenues from fines.

About 90% of drivers speed at least once a day. This does not stop the police from enforcing outrageously slow speed limits. In New York, some "school zones" have 15 mph limits which are universally ignored, even by school busses. There is still a sheriff sitting there with a radar gun though.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[schlach]

But what if everybody decided to breach the DMCA?

Let's do it. I've got another post in response to strudeau proposing that we organize large conventions in several cities coast-to-coast, to get some big media exposure. We've also created a new yahoo groups account for collecting us slashdotters. It's called the Digital Mandate Consumer Advocacy Group ;)

Come check us out. We need large numbers of people that are interested in helping to organize and pull off effective anti-DMCA demonstrations. It's fun to be an activist on slashdot, but it might be even more fun to be an activist in a forum where the insightful things you say could inspire people to large scale acts of civil disobedience =)

--schlach

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[Safety Cap]

And speeding tickets don't let you have a jury trial, anyway

What are you talking about? The Constitution guarantees trial by jury.

Article 3, section 2:

Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury;

6th Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed

7th Admendment:

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved

Obligatory bleeding-heart, civil liberties plug.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[anthony_dipierro]

The Constitution guarantees trial by jury.

For federal cases, not for state ones.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[duffbeer703]

No, you are wrong here.

80% or more of all felony cases are resolved by plea bargain. The entire justice system would collapse if half of all felony arrests went to trial.

Speeding tickets are not a criminal matter. However, you can plead not guilty and go on trial before a judge or magistrate. In most juristrictions there will be a representative from the DA's office, and you can hire a lawyer.

If speeding isn't good enough, try drugs.

In New York, possessing a tiny amount of cocaine will get you 5-10 years in prison. Your sentence is based on the quanity of narcotics in your posession.

Policement stand out on the street and watch drug transactions take place. When they choose too, they round up the buyers and sellers and arrest them.

In 95% of cases, the offenders plead guilty to a lower posession offense (2 yrs in prison, no parole). You can insist on a jury trial, but you will be convicted and will face 10 years in prison instead of two.

My wife was an assistant DA for awhile. She started to have trouble sleeping at night after she saw a few people get railroaded like this and hasn't practiced since.

Re:This just in! Random Blog gets front page news!

[ryanwright]

In all criminal prosecutions

Key words: criminal prosecutions. Speeding tickets are not criminal prosecutions, they're civil fines.

Changing things through use of the masses

[netphilter]

I posted comment yesterday about a totally unrelated topic. But in it I touch on something of what Cringely is talking about. If we actually mobilized in the way that we often talk about, we could really get something done. I really like the way that he thinks. If everyone hates the DMCA so much, why not actually try this?

Re:Changing things through use of the masses

[koh]

--If everyone hates the DMCA so much, why not actually try this?

Short answer : because noone will want to be the first.

That's a nice little thing with human beings. Group actions are always welcome and overhyped and you always find everybody is ready to do it... until someone _has_ to do it, of course, and then the first one to actually act suddenly finds himself all alone while the others are watching "so ? did it work ? is he in jail ?".

Cringely is clearly aware of that, just like he knows the first reaction of many ppl is to flamemail him instead of getting something done about the problem at hand. Maybe he's trying to give us some kind of electroshock...

I may seem overpessimistic, but in that kind of action people are usually just all talk. Of course, I we had a leader things would be different, but clearly as a community we would never agree on a leader (flamewars, yes, leadership, no ;)

Re:Changing things through use of the masses

[Odinson]

For some reason I picture one penguin sliding into 40 others at about 100 mph, tux racer style .

The fine line between geeks and nerds.

[Kenja]

Fear me oh evil corporations, watch as I share my full collection of Star Wars videos online. From my parents basement I stab at thee.

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.

Re:The fine line between geeks and nerds.

[Jaysyn]

Someone didn't read the article....

Jaysyn

Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[rot26]

This follows the simple principal that if you or I drive 100 miles-per-hour on the highway, we get a ticket, but if EVERYONE drives 100 miles-per-hour, they change the speed limit.

Everyone isn't going to do this. No way. I totally agree with his analysis of the problem, but unless some critical mass of lawbreakers were to be reached (chances being somewhere between fat and slim) you'd get the same result as you would if you were driving down the interstate in a pack of cars all going 100 mph: one guy would get nailed by the highway patrol and the rest would be ignored. The guy who pulled you over wouldn't care about the ones who got away... he got YOU, the rest are "job security".
But don't I WISH this would work!

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Sherloqq]

I partially agree with Cringley. A situation very similar to the speed limit scenario is already happening in Canada. Last month the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario started toying with the idea of raising the speed limit on the 401 highway from 100km/h (63mph) to 120km/h (75mph), because that is how fast people drive there nowadays. The Ministry says it's done some research with the help of the OPP (state troopers), and it's come to the conclusion that despite the higher average speed there are fewer accidents and fatalities, so the raising of the speed limit might be possible.

Naturally, there are some issues with this proposal (people will start driving even faster and more aggressively, accident rates will increase dramatically etc.), but those are not relevant here. What *is* relevant is that what Cringley describes is possible *if* EVERYONE does it. Truth is, almost everyone does. It's much easier to single out those who obey the official speed limit (most often American drivers passing through / visiting) than those who don't. Mind you, this didn't happen overnight, it took time -- first people averaged 105km/h, then 110 and so on. Kinda like what's happening with our constitutional rights right now (i.e. the first amendment, slowly being eroded by those with enough money). Right now, you can pretty much be sure you won't get pulled over unless you're going over 120, unless you stand out.

Personally, if everyone violated the DMCA on small scale (as in, don't copy 100 cds a day to make a profit from it), nobody would probably care. If Napster took longer to become the service that it was, it probably wouldn't have been as visible to the people at RIAA. But, it happened virtually 'overnight', made a big splash thanks to the media, got noticed relatively quickly, and viola! I betcha if someone started a nation-wide promotion of cheap, reliable radar detectors, those would become outlawed within weeks.

So, to recap, I think civil disobedience would be the way to defeat the monster, I'm just not sure about the proposed tempo.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Golias]

Actually, speed limits did change because everybody was driving faster.

During the Carter years, the Federal government declared that America had to conserve oil, so states who did not enforce a 55 MPH speed limit on the highways would not receive their usual federal funding for the interstates. (In terms of really asinine oil-saving measuers of the 70's, this actually came in second, behind President Carter's suggestion that we ramp up the use of coal.)

The law became a joke, as most traffic in most states moved at about 65 MPH on the highway, and there were even cases of police asking law-abiding drivers to "keep up with the flow of traffic." In one state, they would let you purchase pre-paid speeding ticket books, so if you got pulled over, you could just hand the cop on of your cupons, and drive on.

Letter-writing and lobbying never would have changed the nation-wide 55 if the overwhelming majority of people were not already ignoring the law entirely, making it unenforcable.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[rot26]

Actually, speed limits did change because everybody was driving faster.

Yep. And in Atlanta, a subset of everybody averages 85-90 MPH for several hours a day, and the speed limit remains 70. So I guess we agree.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[an_mo]

one guy would get nailed by the highway patrol and the rest would be ignored.

But then the solution would be to associate and have sort of mutual insurance that compensate the unlucky guy of the 10K fine. Why not do that?

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[duffbeer703]

Actually, studies have repeatedly found that changing speed limits on rural highways has little or no statistical correlation to average speed.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[hal200]

Based on your discussion of Ontario politics, I am taken to assume you're a Canadian citizen. (If you're not, feel free to disregard the rest of this reply. ;)

As such, you might want to consider familiarizing yourself with our system of rights and freedoms, including The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Technically speaking, we don't have any "first amendment" rights TO be eroded.

We do, however, have the right to, "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication," under section 2(b) of the Charter.

Also, being Canadian citizens, we are not bound by the DMCA. We are bound by The Criminal Code of Canada, and, as relates to copyright infringement, The Copyright Act.

As such, civil disobedience against the DMCA would (sadly) be a wasted effort for those of us north of the US-Canada border. About the best we can do from up here is to donate to the EFF, and hope they make a difference.

Anyway, despite my being anal about the differences between US and Canadian law, it was a good post. =)

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Squirrel Killer]

I totally agree with his analysis of the problem, but unless some critical mass of lawbreakers were to be reached (chances being somewhere between fat and slim) you'd get the same result...

I wonder if we haven't already reached the critical mass of lawbreakers. Honestly, how many of the infringers on the various P2P networks can the court system handle? If everyone sharing illegally on Kazaa, eDonkey, Usenet, IRC, etc... were "brought to justice" tommorrow, the court system would be so clogged that Texas wouldn't have anyone to execute.

What's happening now is just like speed limit enforcement. The authorities go after the blantant infringers hoping to show the badge enough that the less blatant infringer curtial their activities. Cringely is actually a bit behind in his anaylsis. We don't need to get more people to infringe more often, we just need to turn those who are infringing into activists.

-sk

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Golias]

The speed limit in Atlanta, for all practical purposes, is effectively 90, because the cops are not really pulling people over for driving over 70 in that particular town. Also, if you keep it up like that, 90 may eventually become the actual speed limit.

In Minnesota, the speed limit was begrudgingly raised to 65 when the federal law was relaxed, but people in rural areas were still driving faster than that, so it was raised to 70 out in rural areas... a perfect example of what Cringely was talking about. Since the limits were adjusted, you don't see the kind of rampant speeding Atlanta has up in Minneapolis. Most people are now content with the limits we have, and generally stay within 5 MPH of them.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[pogen]

one guy would get nailed by the highway patrol and the rest would be ignored.

Clearly, you didn't read the article. Cringely is suggesting not only breaking the law, but TURNING YOURSELF IN.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[flynt]

Officer: You realize how fast you were going?

Guy: Yah, but everyone was going that fast, why'd you bust me?

Officer: You were the only one stupid enough to pull over.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[drinkypoo]

Everybody on a small scale = a large amount of so-called piracy. (Arr, walk the plank ya scurvy dog.)

The entertainment industry is blaming piracy for weak sales when we know that they're actually just releasing crap. But they can't admit that because to do that would be to admit to a media conspiracy that's kept talent off the radio for at least the last decade or so, which is when I stopped giving a fuck about new music coming out.

So they are concerned about each individual act of piracy or at least they have to act like they are.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Baki]

Not always the law is changed when massively broken: In Holland they introduce measuring your average speed on a certain trajectory (so shortly breaking for a camera won't help), everything detected fully automatically, even sending out the bill to pay the fine. If you don't pay, the fine is raised.

This works very well (it would not work if everybody would refuse to pay the fine). Which only shows that with very well organized law enforcement and heavy penalties you can make it very hard to reach the critical mass.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[duffbeer703]

A 0.0134 second google search revealed this:

The impact of speed limits on highway speed:
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/a-slmatr.html

The impact of speed limits on safety:
http://www.hwysafety.com/hwy_montana_2001 .htm
http://www.nj.npri.org/nj99/03/fedagency.htm

Summary of findings by the US Dep't of Transportation study:

* Based on the free-flow speed data collected for a 24-h period at the experimental and comparison sites in 22 States, posted speed limits were set, on the average, at the 45th percentile speed or below the average speed of traffic

* Speed limits were posted, on average, between 5 and 16 mi/h (8 and 26 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed.

* Lowering speed limits by 5, 10, 15, or 20 mi/h (8, 16, 24, or 26 km/h) at the study sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. Posting lower speed limits does not decrease motorist's speeds.

* Raising speed limits by 5, 10, or 15 mi/h (8, 16, or 25 km/h) at the rural and urban sites had a minor effect on vehicle speeds. In other words, an increase in the posted speed limit did not create a corresponding increase in vehicle speeds.

* The average change in any of the percentile speeds at the experimental sites was less than 1.5 mi/h (2.4 m/h), regardless of whether the speed limit was raised or lowered.

* Where speed limits were lowered, an examination of speed distribution indicated the slowest drivers (1st percentile) increased their speed approximately 1 mi/h (1/6 km/h). There were no changes on the high-speed drivers (99th percentile)

* At sites where speed limits were raised, there was an increase of less than 1.5 mi/h (2.4 km/h) for drivers traveling at and below the 75th percentile speed. When the posted limits were raised by 10 and 15 mi/h (16 and 24 km/h), there was a small decrease in the 99th percentile speed.

* Raising speed limits in the region of the 85th percentile speed has an extremely beneficial effect on drivers complying with the posted speed limits.

* Lowering speed limits in the 33rd percentile speed (the average percentile that speed were posted in this study) provides a noncompliance rate of approximately 67 percent.

* After speed limits were altered at the experimental sites, less than one-half of the drivers complied with the new posed limits.

* Only minor changes in vehicles following as headways less than 2s were found at the experimental sites.

* Accidents at the 58 experimental sites where speed limits were lowered increased by 5.4 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate is 44 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 11 percent to an increase of 26 percent.

* Accidents at the 41 experimental sites where speed limits were raised decreased by 6.7 percent. The level of confidence of this estimate in 59 percent. The 95 percent confidence limits for this estimate ranges from a reduction in accidents of 21 percent to an increase of 10 percent.

* Lowering speed limits more than 5 mi/h (8 km/h) below the 85th percentile speed of traffic did not reduce accidents.

* The indirect effects of speed limit changes on a sample of contiguous and adjacent roadways was found to be very small and insignificant.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[Daniel]

What's happening now is just like speed limit enforcement.

Hm, I think that what's happening (or at least being proposed) now is a lot more like the government requiring a device in every car which would physically prevent you (by taking over the brakes/acceleration) from exceeding the locally posted speed limit..

The point is that while they can't go after all the people who are actually breaking the law, they can make it illegal to manufacture a widget which does not act as a proxy for the government (ie, enforce the law itself). Then they go after the widget manufacturers.

Since widget manufacturers (think GM or Intel) are less numerous and easier to find, the theory is that this is a more attainable goal.

Daniel

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[rot26]

I have to ask: Where in Atlanta is there a 70 mile an hour speed limit?

I thought 285 had a 70 MPH limit? I guess I never paid that much attention to the signs. I have a picture someplace of my speedometer as I was tooling through there one Friday morning about 9am. It's showing just under 100 and you can see I'm right in the middle of very heavy traffic. (Point being that I wasn't passing anybody.) It's a rush.

Re:Critical Mass of Lawbreakers

[blibbleblobble]

"Personally, if everyone violated the DMCA on small scale"

Important point: copying movies won't work; it need to be something that people can relate to.

A good example would be using Sklyarov's e-book reader to copy the digitally-protected ebook of Paradise Lost to text. People will ask why we're being arrested for copying something which is public-domain.

Copying CDs onto an MP3 player, or watching rented DVDs on a non-approved player would all be 'good' methods of protest, but if you can make it something which is clearly and obviously morally-right (such as copying Paradise Lost from its ebook) then you stand a greater chance of support than simply ripping star-wars.

easier said than done.

[colin_n]

What cringely suggests is great. I am a huge proponent of organizing to oppose certain laws that adversely affect me. How do you organize people to do something like that? If one was to become a leader in an organization that takes non-violent action against these laws, isnt it likely that our government would start to watch our every move and make our life hell? Couldnt anti-DMCA activity be perceived by some as terrorist activity. I would be reluctant to pro-actively speak my mind on this issue for fear of repercussions. There is a lot of money out there that wants these laws in place. Im sure they have some clout to ruin my life if I speak out.

Re:easier said than done.

[Tranvisor]

They do have the power to ruin your life. But if the cause is just, then it is worth it. People who take a stand for civil rights generally get the shit kicked out of them. It happens.

But if you made $500,000 a year from out-moded buisness practices, wouldn't you get protective about it? Most people fear and dislike change. Some downright hate it. If you don't have the courage to stand up to them, then this article isn't for you.

Personally, and this will be quite the unpopular opinion, I figure that this kind of stuff will not get thrown down soon. Why? Prohibition failed because everybody drank beer. Not enough people are online right now to make the difference. The citical mass is not there.

Patience is important in a thing like this. The people's mood must be red-hot to propagate action. Actions made while the people's mood is indiferent, are at best, small at changing things.

So til then keep the hope alive by donating to the ACLU and the EFF, they are the Flagbarers, they will eventually lead the fight.

Re:easier said than done.

[Pig Hogger]

Personally, and this will be quite the unpopular opinion, I figure that this kind of stuff will not get thrown down soon. Why? Prohibition failed because everybody drank beer. Not enough people are online right now to make the difference. The citical mass is not there.

Just wait till everyone gets their Congress-mandated HDTV. And let them find out they can't record that "HDTV-Digitally-Interpolated" Seinfield rerun because of that nasty "can't copy" bit.

You'll have your critical mass.

Re:easier said than done.

[N3WBI3]

As much as I hate to say this let get the 'cause heads' involved they have an attention span of about a month that should be long enough and if theyll get pepper spary in the eye for $GroupStudies they will definatly go to jail to piss off corporate america.

Let us use them as pawns ;)

Re:easier said than done.

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

According to download.com, there have been more than 124 million downloads of KaZaA Media Desktop 2.0. And that's just one of the p2p programs. (One that I don't use). Admittedly there are some multiple downloads and international downloads. And merely the newest version of that program. But it's still a damn big number. Make no mistake--the efforts of te ACLU and the EFF on this issue (wait, has the ACLU done anything about this issue?) would be completely meaningless were it not for these multitudes.

Re:easier said than done.

[Reziac]

It's also easier said than done when you have kids to support, who'll wind up in the poorhouse when the family breadwinner goes to jail.

Re:easier said than done.

[schlach]

What cringely suggests is great. I am a huge proponent of organizing to oppose certain laws that adversely affect me. How do you organize people to do something like that?

Come join us, we're trying to figure out the same thing. ;)

I've got another post in response to strudeau proposing that we organize large conventions in several cities coast-to-coast, to get some big media exposure. We've also created a new yahoo groups account for collecting us slashdotters. It's called the Digital Mandate Consumer Advocacy Group ;)

If you're interested, sub the list and help us figure out what we should be doing with our collective civil disobedience. Our only hope is to get enough people in one place to be effective, and that means WE NEED YOU! =)

Money

[laetus]

Money got this law passed and money will make it go away.

Counter the RIAA's dollars by making a contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and earmark the donation for fighting the DMCA.

Take some of that money you're saving by not buying CD's and poney it up to those than can help.

Should be considered, but...

[Noryungi]

I think this DMCA craziness will stop with one "scapegoat": take a cute, innocent and doe-eyed teenager. Let's name her Jane Doe.Imagine said teenager has downloaded her very first MP3 Britney Spears song (shudder) from Kaazaa.

Have 20 armed-to-the-teeth RIAA goons kick down the door of her bedroom, drag her to court and prosecute her for 20 years for music piracy. If some high-powered RIAA lawyer claims US$ 20 Mil. for IP theft, from her hapless parents, that's even better. Lock Jane Doe in prison. Cut to Jane's parents crying over both the tragic destiny of their daughters and over the lawyer's bill.

Then, plaster her (cute, innocent, doe-eyed) face all over the net and all over CNN and every other TV network in the world and have Linus Torvalds himself explain that "this terrible injustice could happen to your teenager! And all this just for downloading a music file!!".

Then stand back, relax, and watch the public outrage, roused by the suffering of poor cute little Jane Doe, sweep away the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA and whatever else is bothering you.

This is very effective. But not very nice for the poor "Jane Doe"...

Re:Should be considered, but...

[Iamthefallen]

No, watch the public rage against the fact that the Evil Internet was able to lure an innocent teen into it's grasp and corrupt her, then they will demand even stronger laws to protect their kids since the DMCA et al weren't enough...

Re:Should be considered, but...

[Erasmus Darwin]

"Imagine said teenager has downloaded her very first MP3 Britney Spears song (shudder) from Kaazaa."

This is where your hypothetical breaks down. Prosecution is expensive. The RIAA isn't going to bother with someone downloading a single song when they can spend a similar amount of effort nailing someone who is sharing multiple gigs of works that RIAA members hold the copyright on.

You're trying to create this case where the law is being disproportionately enforced against the smallest offenders. Trying to do this in a case where the law is being unenforced anyway is just absurd -- the majority of file sharing copyright infringement cases are getting ignored, so it's silly to imagine that the RIAA would be desperate enough to go after the small fish with so many larger fish swimming around.

Re:Should be considered, but...

[Lumpy]

you are pretty damned close to correct with this..

but it needs to be 30 second commercial spots.
and it needs to be aired on EVERY network during prime time..

a series of RIAA, MPAA and DMCA is the true Satan and evil commercial spots are ean for a 3-6 month span in a high rotation you will get public outrage and outcry.

so who's going to spot the 20 million for the airtime and production costs?

Ahhh thought so....

There is a way, and you have to play their game.

Re:Should be considered, but...

[ch-chuck]

Like someone pointed out, if a child shoplifts a CD from the record store and gets caught, the parents are agast and (if they care) teach them otherwise. But let the same child download a CD from Kaazaa the parents are clueless. I'm sure it'll all come to a head and then there'll be school education programs, like DARE or something, to instill some sense of copyright morality in the little tykes and their guardians, Office Jones will show up in 3rd grade classrooms and PTA meetings to talk about breaking the law with your Internet computer and CD writer. There'll be 'good' little children who always pay for their entertainment and the 'bad' ones who try to get away with it. Just like the war on drugs and the fact that illegal flowers are less harmful to one's health than the legal distillates of fermentation, the DMCA will probably sit there, many will ignore it, some will get impaled on it and rot in jail, no justice, just random chance, but that's crime and punishment in the brave new world. The EFF will soldier on like NORML, a small office of lawyers, largely impotent, but getting their monthly donations and standing up for a lost cause.

Re:Should be considered, but...

[jgerman]

I'm sorry but WTF does Linus Torvalds have to do with any of this?

Re:Should be considered, but...

[ryanwright]

I'm sorry but WTF does Linus Torvalds have to do with any of this?

Dude, this is Slashdot. Linus Torvalds has something to do with everything.

I was reunited with my long lost sister last week. Thanks, Linus!

Landed a great new job with lucrative stock options. Thanks, Linus!

Got a great blow job last night. Thanks, Lin.. err, nevermind...

Do Something

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are someone that WISHES that his suggestion could work, but isn't going to perform civil disobediance for one reason or another, then try this:

Think of the time it would take to find and download this movie, and instead spend half that time writting a letter to your representative.

If you've already written your representative, then write somebody else.

About hiding behind a Post Office box

[StJohnsWort]

In the article it talks about the company hiding behind a PO box because of 'death threats'. Well, I wonder if they know that you can walk into the post office in question and tell them that the PO is being used for business and ask them for the forwarding address. They will give it to you. Ive done it before when trying to get an answer about a product that was being advertised thru a PO in my local city.

Money 2

[laetus]

I just joine and put my money where my mouth, err, keyboard is. EFF now has an additional $65 to help fight this crap.

It's a movement!

[Paul Lamere]

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.

Re:It's a movement!

[n8ur]

This -- this is the funniest and most apropos post on Slashdot this year.

Re:It's a movement!

[NMerriam]

So there I was sitting on the group W bench...

(kudos to the great post)

Re:It's a movement!

[Reziac]

What'd I GET? I didn't GET nothin'. I had to PAY fifty dollars and clean out the Trash folder!

Re:It's a movement!

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

So how about if we distribute a 'Free Alice' copy of DeCSS for the DVD version of Alice's Restaurant. Or if and when there's DVD-Audio version we distrubute the crack for that.

I think this would really be poinent. It would provide a bridge for those who have no idea what this battle is about, but know all about Alice's Restaurant, to support the cause. If we were loud enough about it, we could have everyone thinking about the DMCA next Thanksgiving when they play Alice's Restaurant on every radio station in the country. Maybe Alro Guthrie could do a special version? After all, we wouldn't have folk music if Intellectual Property had always been in the current state, and we sure as hell won't have any new folk music. Saving folk music would be good PR, after all, what's more wholesome than folk music?

Of course I think RXC should take the lead ;-) Or maybe now that Perens is free from his master's he could do it. We really need someone high profile enough to lead the attack. I'll gladly take my place on the bench with the 'mother-rapers and father-killers' to support this one.

You do have to wonder about the effectiveness of this. Could we also bring reason to the war on drugs if we all sparked up joints outside the DEA offices in DC?

You can get, all the freedom you want, at Alice's Restaurant.

Re:It's a movement!

[ethereal]

"...And creating a nuisance."

And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.

http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml

Re:It's a movement!

[Rader]

....and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there.

Mother rapers.

Father stabbers.

Father rapers!

Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said,

"Kid, whad'ya get?"

I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and delete my mp3's."

He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"

And I said, "Trading Mp3's".

And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said,

"And creating a nuisance."

And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.

Re:It's a movement!

[Suppafly]

hahah.. someone should seriously update that song for modern times..

Re:It's a movement!

[gmhowell]

Search for it on Gnucleus (or whatever network it uses). You'll find at least one copy, ripped with EAC and encoded with Lame v3.92 (?) in VBR level 8 (or 2. Whichever is one step from highest quality).

You will also find a copy of 'The Motorcycle Song' and other Arlo Guthrie favorites.

BTW, I have NO idea who the scumsucker is who would do something like that. None at all.

Slashdot in a nutshell

[h00pla]

We can write things we would probably never say in person

In a way I agree....

[haplo21112]

Civil disobience has its place, however his suggestion doesn't reall work in the long run...
all one will really accomplish here is get fined, possibly have their equipment conficated...
and end up with a criminal record, this will not change anything...!
The Question becomes what will change things...?

What I think...give this issue about another year or so and its going to start to divide people....
Digital Rights are going to end up being an issue like Abortion rights, what I would like to see is it reach the level of slavery. We all know what happened then, and while I don't advocate that kind of outcome, not by a long shot...I think it needs to reach that kind of level of awareness in peoples minds.

The corporations need a wake up call....

Organize a strike against the offices of big music/movie studios...block the entrances so they can't go to work, and produce thier wares then they will start to listen...you have to impact the bottom line in ways that have a public eye showing. No Vilolence people...I can't stress that enough, just protest.

You can't win through boycott either, because little suzy's parents are always going to buy her the next Disney DVD no mater what the issues...

Re:In a way I agree....

[schlach]

Civil disobedience is a coordination problem, doing little good if only one person practices it, so it requires advance agreement and commitment. Maybe we need an organization and web site to coordinate CD movements...

Come check us out. We just started the group this morning, but if we roll big enough, maybe we can get some heads to turn. We're calling ourselves the Digital Mandate.

Here's the rest of the story --

I've got another post in response to strudeau proposing that we organize large conventions in several cities coast-to-coast, to get some big media exposure. We've also created a new yahoo groups account for collecting us slashdotters. It's called the Digital Mandate Consumer Advocacy Group ;)

Re:In a way I agree....

[Sloppy]

The Question becomes what will change things...?

Maybe dragging everyone into it.

Produce a CSS-encrypted DVD, then sue some random non-techie innocent Joe Blow for selling a used DVD player at his garage sale, which is able to play your DVD without authorization. Or sell him your DVD, and then sue him for playing it without authorization.

Make people realize that this law unintuitively made a potential criminal out of everyone, even people who aren't don't "pirate" stuff.

MOD PARENT DOWN!!!

[FyRE666]

Trying to advocate civil disobedience! ;-)

Is Cringely trying to get arrested?

[Stavr0]

Personally, I read RXC's column with a huge grain of salt and tongue firmly in cheek with several ;-) thrown in for good measure.

Unfortunately, law enforcement officials don't have a sense of humor. IANAL, but I believe he is inciting to commit a crime, and incitement to (food) riot too. OTOH, it would be a great publicity stunt to get arrested.

There is a good chance his next column will be entitled:

Knock Knock
A friendly visit from the nice folks at the FBI

or even

Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200
Robert X. Cringely goes to jail

Selective Enforcment

[DustMagnet]

This follows the simple principal that if you or I drive 100 miles-per-hour on the highway, we get a ticket, but if EVERYONE drives 100 miles-per-hour, they change the speed limit.

No, when the speed limit was 55 and everyone drove 70, the police could pull over anyone they disliked. They didn't try to pull over everyone all at once. But speed limits are very different than copyright laws. When some of us started driving 55 (I kept right), the road became dangerous and they had to raise the limit.

The DMCA is only selectively enforced already. We can't make them enforce it.

Re:Selective Enforcment

[io333]

Look I don't want to be political, but I cannot let this go by.

The reason we finally got rid of the silly speed limits is because in 1994, after 40 freakin' years, folks were fed up enough about a few things to toss the Democrats out of congress on their on their collective deaf ear.

One of the very first thing the freshman Republicans did was present the pres with a bill removing federal speed limits & at the time the pres was so intimidated (completely freaked really) by what had happened in in the elections that he signed it.

I have no great love of either party, but that is what happened.

It'll never happen this way...

[debest]

Just like with Dmitry, the "target" will always be a publicly unsympathetic, unsavoury hacker-type.

The precident that the RIAA/MPAA chooses to permit to proceed to the Supreme Court will only be the one that they have the maximum chance of success with. Until then, they are satisfied with the chilling effect and scare tactics, and in the case where there are civil/criminal charges laid, they will be dropped if they figure out halfway through that this is not the *right* case to go to the wall with.

That's the frustrating part: the Constitutionality of the DMCA will not be determined until a case regarding it is heard by the Supreme Court, but the case on which it is presented is one that the court will be loathe to find in favour of free speech. But, we can hope.

This is not Civil Disobedience

[lkaos]

The term civil disobedience was made popular through a speech by Henry David Thoreau which later influence MLK and Gandhi. Gandhi took a slightly different approach which he also gave a separate name.

The best way to explain civil disobedience is with the words of Thoreau himself:

"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth. Certainly, the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring or a pulley or a rope or a crank exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy is worse than the evil. But if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another then I say break the law . Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I must do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn."

Obviously, not being able to copy movies surely doesn't constistute as making you "the agent of injustice to another." Instead of breaking the law, go out and vote for god's sake. How many of everyone hear complaining has 1) voted in the previous presidental and congressional elections and 2) attempted to educate fellow voters about the evils of laws like this?

If you really care, do something about it. Don't try to pretend that you are doing something about it by breaking the law.

Re:This is not Civil Disobedience

[Sloppy]

Obviously, not being able to copy movies surely doesn't constistute as making you "the agent of injustice to another."

What about not being able to "traffic" in players?

What about pulling the plug on someone else's network connection because you received a threatening "DMCA notification" letter that says that if you don't pull the plug, then you're liable for something that someone else may or may not have done? What about if you know that the person who sent the notification faces no consequences for being wrong, but the person who you're cutting off, surely does faces consequences of being cut off?

DMCA is about a hell of a lot more than copying movies.

Re:This is not Civil Disobedience

[lkaos]

So I think you are taking his quote on voting out of context (and I question the accuracy of the quote anyway as I cannot find it).

At any rate, this all breaks down to natural rights and the idea of individual preference as discussed by Mill. In society, the role of government is to protect individuals natural rights. That is the social contract. One obeys laws (regardless of personal opinion) because it is assumed that these laws will never be so bad that they violate natural rights. In the case they do, the social contract is broken and one is no longer obliged to follow the laws.

In Thoreau's case, he no longer considered the social contract intact because the natural rights of his fellow man were being violated.

The law is flawed, but government is also imperfect. We agree to follow imperfect laws to maintain order as long as these laws do not violate a self's natural rights.

If you read the quote I referenced more closely, you would notice the part referring to "the necessary friction of the machine of government." This is merely an example of the necessary friction of the machine of government.

Re:This is not Civil Disobedience

[lkaos]

"If you don't extend civil disobedience further then what the quote says, you also don't justify Martin Luther King's boycott of segregated busses."

Since when does boycotting a private industry have any relationship to breaking a law? I have no agreement or obligation with a busing company that I would be breaking by not partaking in their service.

What MLK did was a simple exercise in capitalism. It had nothing to do with civil disobedience.

Re:This is not Civil Disobedience

[lkaos]

To support your point you will need to show that NO portion of the DMCA is making you "the agent of injustice to another".

To be the agent of injustice to another, one must take part in voliating that individuals natural rights. Natural rights include life, liberty, and the security in possession. To break a particular law, I would need to establish that by me _not_ breaking the law, I would have took away one of these things from another.

Security in possession is along the lines of search and seisure; not fair use.

Principles at work here

[naasking]

What Cringley suggests:

"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

A fine idea, but not necessarily the moral one:

"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

Something the **AA and all artists should keep in mind, for it is a battle we are losing ground to on many fronts:

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

~ Thomas Jefferson ~

With my luck...

[BlackBolt]

I'd download "Debbie Does Dallas", turn myself in, and be the only one there, forever a laughing stock and the brunt of Cringely's cruel joke.

BlackBolt

Don't break the law.

[Lonath]

Just stop giving money to the copyright industry forever. Tell everyone you know to stop giving money to the copyright industry forever. They'll never learn and they'll never stop no matter what you do so just take away the only thing that they care about: money.

The real problem

[Kefaa]

I believe he hit the nail on the head with:
"But don't blame me for it. Most readers had never heard of BayTSP and had no idea how the DMCA was enforced until last week's column, "

We talk about the DMCA just about weekly here and in other forums, never seen by mainstream Americans. When /. does get mentioned it is usually with the word "hacker" or that some site was "slash dotted" like it had been subject to DOS on purpose. [and please let's not even start about the difference between "hacker", "cracker", "Blackhat", "Whitehat and "Grayhat"]

If we want to change the DMCA, we need to start talking to mom, dad and the neighbors. They need to understand that shortly they will be buying a CD of their favorite music that will only play on registered devices. That these devices will require replacement on a regular basis and they will will be paying for it. That the DVD they bought their grand-daughter forces her to watch more commericals before she can seen her movie, than a network Saturday morning. That the networks consider video taping programs theft and are working on making it illegal to fast forward through commericals and the device will prevent it and keeping the current vcr will not be an option.

They are soon going to hear Britney Spears tell them that downloading songs is a crime. They are going to hear it on TV and they are going to believe it is a crime (the distinction of ownership, and fair use is not going to be made by RIAA or MPAA).

We need Americans to start looking at the DMCA, the RIAA and the MPAA with the same eye they used when the tabacco companies told us "Smoking is not addictive." We need to do just as much to show them that if they are not concerned, their representatives will go to the mine and leave them with the shaft.

I'll Start (Unless Somebody Has Beat Me To It)

[blazerw11]

I have every single episode of Firefly up through last week's episode downloaded on my PC.

Also, I have upwards of 10 illegal mp3s. (However, they're mixed in with all the legal ones and I don't know if I could find them again.)

Arrest Me! I want my trial! I want my one phone call!

Valuation

[GMontag]

I don't know what 10 million pirated copies of "Debbie does Dallas" would be worth either Bob.

Ahem, the definitive answer is: Priceless

Image is everything

[LittleGuy]

Let me be blunt. It is 2002. Post 9/11.

You cannot and will not get the PR and imagery of the 60's with the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Protestors. Accept it and move on.

Today, DC was scheduled to be 'shut down' by IMF protestors. In the preceeding week, thanks to the media's constant drumming the the Chief's press conferences, John and Jane Public consider the protestors to be a big annoyance while driving to work, and thanks to the police for keeping those nasty people from disrupting my work routine.

If Cringley's so-called mass protest is pulled off, I suspect that the authorities will use the media to pass along the mantra: "These are hackers. These are thieves. These are bad people. We put bad people away."

Illegal Laws

[batgimp]

IANAL and more importantly, I am not an American, but aren't there rules about passing frivolous laws that will be broken by the majority of "ordinary" people ? Such laws make "ordinary" people lawbreakers and desensitise them to criminality, causing them to lose respect for other, more worthy, laws.

So it seems to me that Cringely is suggesting thay you demonstrate to your legal system that the DMCA is just such a frivolous law.

Sounds like a good idea, but difficult to co-ordinate...

Re:Just Don't Buy

[analog_line]

While I completely agree (and am already following my own boycott) the problem is that any drop in earnings is immediately pointed to by the record labels and held up as ample evidence that file sharing is killing them, and their paid-for politicians believe them.

Boycotts rarely serve anything aside from addressing people's own moral qualms about whatever they are boycotting. The fact is that most people in America don't believe that file sharing should be legal for anyone but themselves. They have no concept of the implications of copyright law down the road, they just want themselves to get music/movies/whatever without having to pay for it. Simple as that. There are some who have reasoned arguments about why the laws are asinine, but we are in the minority.

I have nothing against boycotts, but people seem to believe that they are more powerful tools than they really are in most cases. You're not going to get enough people to sign on to this to make it effective.

What will really help is to spend your time seeking out the non-RIAA labels and small artists releasing their own works. Places like ampcast.com, where the artists make more of the rules for themselves. Look for indie filmmakers in your area and go to a showing at the local arthouse theater. See some foreign movies. That will move your dollars in a visible way away from a distribution method you are opposed to, to one you believe in, and help out your struggling artist for the day.

Re:Just Don't Buy

[haplo21112]

It will have no effect...see my comments above...but in brief...the egneral American public has no idea whats going, on and even if they did they wouldn't care...

Little Suzy, wants the latest Disney Video, and her parents are going to buy it for her no matter what...

The only way to stop the problem is at the root, protect the company's themselves, block the entrances and don't let them go to work so they can't produce the video in the first place....

Re:Just Don't Buy

[sdjunky]

"if we got others to boycott the music and film industries, they may lose just a little more money and take notice. " No... they'd just blame Piracy for their losses and further push legislation through congress to shift more power to them.

Copying a movie is not a violation of DMCA

[mike449]

It is a copyright infringement under the "traditional" copyright laws.

Sending all your friends a copy of DeCSS would be such violation. Or giving people on the street floppies with DeCSS - this one would be more public and likely to get some media and authorities' attention, which is the goal.

Someone please post

[jann]

a link to debbie does dallas. I want every assistance to start my civil disobiedance

Honest-P2P

[Jeppe Salvesen]

We should figure out some way to make our P2P apps notify the law enforcement whenever we've downloaded a copyrighted clip. I am thinking about some kind of plugin into Kazaa and gnucleus et al.

It would be such a massive wave of honesty that their mail server would probably collapse.

Re:Honest-P2P

[Sloppy]

We should figure out some way to make our P2P apps notify the law enforcement whenever we've downloaded a copyrighted clip.

If that were possible to do, then it would also be possible to make a P2P app that can only be used for non-infringing use, and not for infringing use.

But it's not possible, because we don't have strong AI yet. When we have strong AI and after you've sent your AI to law school for a few years, then maybe your idea will become possible.

Until then, the tools themselves will remain ignorant and blind.

We're going to jail! Any volunteers??

[tommck]

So, I hear this, and, like a good citizen, I just sit there (I don't want to go to jail).
Meanwhile, the rest of you bastards would take one step back!
Shit! I fell for the oldest trick in the book!
Well, better start practicing my Kung Fu so that I can "pitch" instead of "catch" in prison :-)

T

T

Finally! and thank GOD

[argoff]

I can't believe how many half crazed lunatics I've herd saying that if you don't like the law - vote and write your congressman. What a crock (thank God Rosa Parks didn't listen to that crap). Finally there is someone suggesting a workable solution, civil disobedience. This hits them right where it counts and gets straight to the core issue - it is wrong to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others.

I can't believe how many people actually try to treat copyrights like some kind of enlightened incentive property right. What a bunch of garbage - what if I came along and said "There is no incentive to grow cotton without slave properties, c'mon - don't you care about the farmers? If you free them, you're a dirty little thief!

You're presuming enlightened self interest...

[marlowe]

motivates them, rather than cement-headed greed.

If their sales go down, for any reason, they'll blame file sharing. The notion that people just don't want their crap will never occur to them.

What we need is for artists and consumers to bypass the IP oligarchs entirely. Don't sign that contract! Give away free samples over the Internet, of low fidelity. Sell tickets for live performances. Works for the Dead.

Disobedienceware?

[davie]

Perhaps someone should write a Windows trojan that pops up a dialog box explaining the situation (and consequences) with "click Ok to engage in civil disobedience". The application would download some unauthorized digital content, then print the "Turning Yourself in to The Authorities" HOWTO.

Cringely is no random blogger

[avdi]

He's been doing it, in print and online, many years longer than the word "blog" has existed.

Re: You do sound like a terrorist .

[guybarr]

some one needs to take out BayTSP, or at least a couple people over there. Take one for the rest of us

Man, are you mad ? You are soliciting for a murder ! even if this was not a major felony (and rightly so !), Do you really think the DMCA is worth taking a man's life in cold blood ?

These guys at BayTSP, snivelling little moral wretches that they are, have families, parents, wives you suggest to widdow, children you wish to orphan. Think about the consequences of what you say !

You do sound like a terrorist. The real, fanatic, psichopathic kind. I hope it's because you wrote w/o thinking, not because you really are. Humanity has far too many of those.

Excellent! Get those donations in!

[laetus]

It be great if more /.ers would join in and earmark the donations!

Protesting DMCA vs protesting copyright

[Sloppy]

Here is the plan. Everyone who hates the DMCA has to illegally copy a movie or a song, and then tell both the Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office exactly what they did.

Making illegal copies of things is something to do if you want to protest copyright in general. If you really want to protest DMCA specifically, then illegally copying a movie or song isn't the way to go. That just makes you look like a "pirate." Instead, circumvent protection. Play your DVDs with mplayer or xine and tell people that you did. Tell people that you broke the law by watching a movie that you bought. What could be more damning for the DMCA?

No, Votes will make this go away

[egarland]

There is no way the EFF is going to compete against the RIAA's finantial resources. Find out if your local Senator/House Rep voted for this bill. Then find out if they took some money from the RIAA. If they did put a nice add in your local paper with those pieces of information. Use the words "sold our freedom" "Corrupt" and "Don't Re-ellect"

Polititions care about money but only in so far as it can get them more votes. If taking money from the RIAA for a bad law costs them more votes than it buys them, they won't do it next time.

-Eric

Do this as an Infomercial or PSA

[Reziac]

Sounds like good fodder for an afternoon-broadcast infomercial -- which is relatively cheap to get aired. Better yet, see if you can get it defined as a PSA, which stations are obligated to broadcast a certain number of for free.

That way Jane Doe-eyes needs only be acted, not real life. And it reaches the same audience now seeing Britney preaching the evils of music piracy.

The only difference being that "ours" needs to point out that tossing poor Jane in the slammer for 20 years is LEGAL, thanks to the DMCA.

Correct, but...

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

...sit-ins tended to violate more than the law in question as well. Not too mention that a lot of us object to draconian enforcement of traditional copyright, anyway. I see this battle as a test run--if two people want to exchange information that the government disapproves of, can the government stop them? Can they stop 10 million? 100 million? Whatever course this battle takes will likely be the same course censorship of information online in China takes in the future.

Reaching Joe Public -- try a PSA or infomercial

[Reziac]

What it needs is a series of PSAs (Public Service Announcements) or similar ads that reach the general public, where the plotline revolves around all the things you CAN'T legally say/print/whatever under the DMCA, even tho they were formerly protected as free speech. Maybe show the public children with duct tape over their mouths and a big "DMCA-safe" label on the duct tape, and the parent explaining why they had to do this "for your own protection" or whatever. You get the idea.

Most of the general public doesn't even know the DMCA *exists*, let alone what it stifles.

Seriously, any budding video producers here who want to tackle this??

Re:Reaching Joe Public -- try a PSA or infomercial

[Sylver Dragon]

What it needs is a series of PSAs (Public Service Announcements) or similar ads that reach the general public...

And how, exactly, do you expect to get the to the public? Buy airtime on TV networks? I'm sure Ted Turner would be all giddy to run your ads.
The problem with fighting the people that control the media in the US, is that they can keep you from getting your message out. And don't be fooled for a second that the news organizations will do much to help your cause. That's the one flaw in this whole protest the DMCA idea, the news people covering it. They are going to spin it right into the dirt. I can hear it now, "Today, 300 people were arrested for illegal hacking. They were protesting laws that were enacted to protect computer systems from the threat of cyberterrorism." at this point they roll the interview with the geekiest looking 16 year old they could find, who, of course, is missing half his brain that day and says, "We're fighting the Man! They're trying to keep us down! Hacking Rulez!" Back to the reporter, "This just goes to show how widespread this problem really is. The children of today belive that stealing and trespassing are ok, and its all being done on the internet." Camera pans protest area, "The protest was held here, and was largly a forum for trading illegally coppied CDs and movies. Just about anything you want could be had here, and of course, in the spirit of this hacking fest, it was all free." Roll film of someone handing out burned DVDs "Any film you wanted could be had either free or very cheap. We even found videos of movies that are still in theaters, like this summers blockbuster (insert big movie here)." Back to reporter, "in all this was less a protest and more a meeting place of pirates and hackers."
Back to the studio "Wow. Thank you Jan, amazing how so many young people can be so misguided. And in other news..."
I wish people luck, but, other than Alan Greespan, they are fighting one of the most powerful forces in the US today.

Re:Reaching Joe Public -- try a PSA or infomercial

[ryanwright]

And how, exactly, do you expect to get the to the public?

Well, considering the theme here, I'd say: Pirate radio station!! Might as well get the FCC all riled up while we're at it, right?

Re:Reaching Joe Public -- try a PSA or infomercial

[Reziac]

Actually, I got the idea because at that very moment, my TV was tuned to a small local independent broadcast channel that keeps an audience by running the occasional popular syndicated show, but also runs a great many infomercials. THAT can reach Joe Sixpack, just because it's in his living room at least once in a while, and private infomercials are the life's blood of small independent stations.

So yes, the networks can and will keep such material off the air. But there are two things they can't fight:

IIRC how the regulations read, every PSA can be countered by a PSA from an opposing viewpoint, and if a station runs PSAs espousing one viewpoint, they are legally obligated to run PSAs for the opposing viewpoint, should anyone care to produce them. I don't know what the cost is now but I vaguely recall that broadcast stations are required to run a certain volume of PSAs either for free or for a much reduced ad rate. (This explains why you see both anti-smoking PSAs and cigarette industry PSAs on the same channel. It's also a nifty trick for end-arounding the tobacco advertising ban.)

So by running the RIAA PSAs (and assuming the regs re PSAs haven't changed without my noticing it), the networks have already left themselves open to PSAs from an opposing viewpoint.

Small local stations are already flying under the network radar (they aren't really "competition" per se to the major broadcast and cable networks), but they reach a LOT of housewives who have the TV running for background noise while they do the ironing or clean the kids' room, and getting the subject into the local gossip circles is a good way to spread the word among the masses. And it's really Joe and Jane Sixpack who we need to reach. Here at slashdot, we're preaching to the choir.

I don't know what the rates are now, and presumably it varies by market size, but a couple decades ago, infomercials were REALLY cheap (under $100 per half hour!!) Considering what these programs hawk now, they can't be too prohibitively priced.

Anyway, LIS in one post or another, it's a thought for any budding video producers who want to help strike down the DMCA and its kin.

Cringely is correct - fight for your freedoms

[Ubernutter]

For all those /.er's who believe that civil disobedience doesn't work - check out what happened to the Poll Tax in the UK during the 1980's. Hundreds of thousands of people refused to pay, they all insisted on their day in court, it cost millions, there were at least two major riots, all the money hasn't been collected, even now, oh yes and we got rid of a Prime Minister even more disliked than GWB. I was a press officer for my local anti-poll tax campaign and we were harassed, arrested, intimidated but really, really pissed off and eventually successful. So go for it my US comrades...

D'oh!

[Rader]

I guess I shouldn't have been the first one to turn myself in.

My trial is next week....

NRA vs. EFF

[laetus]

Why would I directly contribute to a guy/gal that likely voted for this crap act anyway?

No, I think the EFF's lobbying efforts are much more effective.

Did you ever notice how the NRA gets its point across very nicely? Because hunters pool their dollars and go through a single voice. Let's let the EFF rival the NRA in clout.

Wanna go first?

[Wansu]

Be my guest. The first ones to do what Cringly has described will go to jail. The rest will see that and chicken out. We have 2 million people in jail in the US and we're building jails as fast as we can. There will be plenty of room.

I'm in

[schlach]

What I propose is a national gathering (perhaps in 2-4 locations simaltaneously) where folks can come together en masse to explicitly violate terms of the DMCA collectively in a public manner.

Would have modded you up, but then couldn't give you my email address =)

schlachtavius _at_ yahoo.com

Are you proposing it, or are you "proposing" it? Because if you're indeed proposing it, I'm in if it's well done, and I'll help organize. I'd probably be in for a California location. Perhaps we should throw up a site to direct people in this conversation to...

Okay, done. Check out the new Digital Mandate Consumer Advocacy group, at yahoo groups. We can start there as a place to gauge interest in a national act of civil disobedience.

If you're an armchair activist for tech issues, consider subbing our new group. The first thing we're gonna do is figure out who we've got, what issues we want to focus on, and how we might stage a massive protest. So sign up! We need you! I'll bring the Hi-C and rice krispy treats.

--schlach

Re:I'm in

[bob_jenkins]

Would Mrs. Field's cookies (using the chain-mail recipe) be more appropriate?

Re:proud of porn

[Rader]

that's hilarious

You can help other ways...

[Frobnicator]

As such, civil disobedience against the DMCA would (sadly) be a wasted effort for those of us north of the US-Canada border. About the best we can do from up here is to donate to the EFF, and hope they make a difference.

Not quite. Because the US and Canada politics have some close relationships, you could do things that are against the DMCA. It is sort-of like the crypto export issues, and other stupid problems with the US. Unlike crypto export, copyright issues affect everyone.

If the US is the only place that makes it illigal, and everyone all over the world (including the US) is doing it, then it makes the law pointless. If everyone were exporting strong crypto (it wouldn't make a difference) then the laws preventing it in the US would be (eventually) overturned by some reasonable judge.

So while donating to the EFF is a good thing (I'm not discouraging it), establishing a status-quo of violation of another country's laws would help get the law changed, or at least get people to move to your country.

frob.

Well

[sulli]

The difference is that Cringely isn't asking people to smash Citibank windows and throw smoke bombs at the cops. Playing a DVD on Linux (say) doesn't piss off the neighbors quite in the same way, surprisingly enough.

Re: You do sound like a terrorist .

[Grishnakh]

I'm not trying to equate BayTSP employees with anyone here, but Hitler had a wife, and I imagine Stalin had a family too. Osama bin Laden has many wives. Should we have avoided acting against him because all those poor women would be widowed?

The problem of stupid laws is lack of democracy

[evbergen]

Cringely's may be right in his suggestion that we may need mass protests in order to get rid of a totally absurd law that tilts the balance of power between producer and consumer completely in favour of the former. But if you think about it, it's also quite alarming that mass protests are needed to remind the government to work in the public interest and to consider one of the most important principles of democracy--freedom of communication--before writing a law.

A democracy should be a government of the people, by the people, for the people, as Lincoln put it. The US have gone quite a long way since then. It has gotten a government of the people, by the industry, for the economy.

Of course, the economy is very important. The primary needs of people are food and shelter. If those can be most efficiently provided by a healthy economy, and if a healthy economy can best be established by private companies that only need to act in the monetary interests of their shareholders, then humanity has found a nice trick to profit from greed instead of suffering from it, and it can be said that it is indeed in the best interest of the people to create a legal system that supports those institutions of canalized greed.

But greed in itself only respects the law of the jungle, and does not value democracy's principle of every citizen's vote being equally important. Instead of 'one man, one vote', private enterprise works according to the principle of 'one dollar, one vote', and where the dollar comes from, it really matters not.

Therefore, a democracy cannot work by allowing the economy's fuel, greed, to flow unchecked, because the even distribution of power among all people would merely become an even distribution of power among all people of equal wealth. And if democracy does not choose to distribute wealth evenly, its only other choice is to minimize the power of the wealthy over the poor.

To stay a democracy, I think that a government must at least respect these two laws: 1. guard the freedom and the vote of all citizens against the concentrations of (economic) power in society, and 2. serve the (economic) interests of the people, but only where that doesn't conflict with the first law.

The ordering principles of the economy do not lead toward democracy, they lead away from it. Democracy and economy can co-exist, but only if the former is in charge. It kills itself if the economy becomes more than means to an end.

The USA is definitely heading away from democracy, and it's not hard to see why. People who haven't heard from you won't vote for you. Reaching people through mass media costs money, even for politicians, so the politicians with the most money can reach the most people. In the US, that money may come from donations by private entities, making politicians susceptible to the obligations that tend to come with gifts. Of course, the bigger the gifts, the bigger the obligations.

Therefore, the system already leans towards 'one dollar, one vote', instead of actively working against it, as a democracy should, in order to maintain itself. Every law that favours existing economic interests at the cost of the freedom of the individual citizen is evidence of that. We know the DMCA and the CBDTPA as particularly painful examples, but they may not be the only ones.

The only way to defend our freedom is to fight for real democracy, the 'one man, one vote' type, and against its perverted brother, the 'one dollar, one vote' type. We can only do that only if we take every step necessary to remove the influence of money from the government.

Power alone already corrupts enough. Let's not add money to it!

Civil disobedience

[anthony_dipierro]

Set up mirrors of Alterslash, cause that's breaking the DMCA and shit, right?

Be sure to upload this to your P2P networks

[anthony_dipierro]

If you look at Mark Ishikawa's business card, you'll notice that it lists no street address for his company, BayTSP, just a post office box. This is for good reason, since Ishikawa is one of the few Silicon Valley CEOs who regularly receives death threats. Uninvited visitors are not welcome at BayTSP, which has a post office box in Los Gatos, CA, but could really be anywhere in the Bay Area.

I certainly have no idea where the company lives, but I know why Ishikawa has so many enemies. It is because BayTSP acts as the primary enforcer for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a law that is widely reviled in the technical community.

The DMCA, which was put in effect in 2000, was an attempt by the U.S. Government to bring copyright law into the cyber age. But many people -- including, oddly, Mark Ishikawa -- think the DMCA goes too far by making it illegal for me to even tell you how to circumvent encryption or copy protection technologies. It makes the very passing of knowledge against the law whether or not that knowledge is ever used.

"It's a very flawed piece of legislation," says Ishikawa, who predicts that the government will rewrite the copyright law again "in eight or nine years" to correct the mistakes in the DMCA. But until then, the DMCA is the law of the land, and Mark Ishikawa is the Internet's top cop.

BayTSP is paid anywhere from $200 to $50,000 per month by owners of intellectual property -- primarily software companies, movie studios, and record companies -- to find who is illegally copying, distributing, or helping to distribute without permission their intellectual property. For example: Adobe Systems arranged to have Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov arrested at the 2001 DefCon security conference in Las Vegas for violating the DMCA by showing how to circumvent copy protection in Adobe's eBook software. The arrest was made on information supplied by BayTSP.

Now I am not in any way a fan of the DMCA. The purpose of this column this week is not to examine the DMCA, but rather, to gain some understanding of how it is enforced. BayTSP is an interesting company, and coming to understand how it does what it does can be very useful as you will shortly see. So please don't write to me complaining about the DMCA. Write to your Congressional representatives.

Mark Ishikawa came to the data security business from the Dark Side, having been busted years ago for breaking into the network at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Preferring employment to jail time, he became a security consultant for the Lab and a lot of other places. Eventually, Ishikawa started a large ISP and web hosting company that he sold at a profit. Now he runs BayTSP.

BayTSP's business falls into two areas -- law enforcement and anti-piracy -- and it uses the same tools for both businesses. These tools are spider programs that scour the most traveled parts of the Internet looking for users who are offering to others files that are either illegal to even own or at least illegal to share. An example of the former is child pornography. BayTSP tracks for the FBI the global carriage of kiddy porn. When a big child pornography bust takes place, it is generally on the basis of evidence gathered by BayTSP.

"There seems to be an increase in child abductions and murders in the U.S.," says Ishikawa, "and when the abductors are caught and you look on their home computers, you inevitably find kiddy porn. So it is a precursor to this bad behavior, and just as the Internet makes it easy to distribute child pornography, it effectively encourages these criminals. We are working to end that."

BayTSP's spider programs use patented algorithms to scour public web sites looking for pictures, video, and music files. "Our algorithms are adaptive," claims Ishikawa. "You can cut a picture in half and we'll still find it, matching the cut-down version against a database of originals, effectively matching the electronic DNA of the target."

One thing BayTSP's spider programs don't do is sit at the Internet peering points sniffing all packets as they go by. "That would be wiretapping, which is illegal," he says. "All we do is go to the same places any user could go, look at the same files anyone else could look at, and we only probe the ports on your computer that you have made public."

Now we get to the part I find especially interesting, and where I think there is a lot of confusion among users. This has to do with how BayTSP finds out who is distributing kiddy porn or pirated music files. If you think your activities on the Internet are anonymous, you are wrong. When BayTSP finds an IP address that appears to be the source of child pornography or pirated music or video files, under the DMCA, it can subpoena ISP logs. These logs can directly connect even dynamic IP addresses to user accounts, making it clear very quickly who owns the offending account. Every ISP keeps these http logs, and even products for so-called anonymous surfing aren't effective in circumventing the technique.

"We have 100 percent coverage of peer-to-peer file sharing," Ishikawa claims. "If you are illegally sharing copyrighted materials, we know who you are."

Then why aren't there more arrests? In part, this is because the intellectual property holder who is paying BayTSP gets to set its own comfort threshold for exactly how much file sharing is too much, and how BayTSP should deal with offenders. "Adobe only wants to send out cease and desist orders, while some movie studios want to put people in jail," Ishikawa says. "There are people on the Net offering 50,000 to 60,000 files at a time for sharing. These people will get busted for sure."

For lesser offenders, under the DMCA an intellectual property holder can make your ISP remove the offending content from its servers. So while you may not go to jail, you might find that your Gnutella songs are no longer available. Repeat offenders lose their accounts completely. One issue is how quickly ISPs remove the offending material. "Sony wants it gone in an hour, but Uunet takes two weeks," says Ishikawa.

According to Ishikawa, we'll see major arrests in October of people who have been illegally (and flagrantly) sharing movies. With the evidence already gathered, the game is afoot, meaning this week is too late to stop sharing those movies and expect to get away with it. This might be a good time to get a lawyer.

Not even Osama bin Laden can escape the gaze of BayTSP. According to Ishikawa, the FBI thinks terrorists are sharing information by hiding it in images posted on eBay using a process called steganography. Doesn't that sound a little too sophisticated for al-Qaida? Can that picture of a dented Ford F-150 pickup with a For Sale sign really be saying, "Bomb the infidel Cringely's house?" Maybe, maybe not.

"The FBI has us looking for certain specific things," says Ishikawa, "but we haven't found anything yet."

Slashdot Posts Mirror Email Behavior

[reallocate]

Cringley says:
Sociologists tell us that e-mail does a kind of social leveling that makes people bolder... Sending a flame message...embrutes us, making us less sensitive to our own harsh words...(as a result) we just don't have any energy left to actually do something about the real issue at hand..

Very true, and it happens on Slashdot all the time. No one knows who you are, so posters, including myself, often turn off our brains and resort to intemperate language and ad hominem attacks. Then we walk away from the field of battle, our ego boosted.

If we cut out the ranting and started using our heads, the /. crowd might actually start addressing their issues.

Is this needed?

[ShooterNeo]

Has anyone considered that for MOST of America, in fact most of the world people are still using VHS tapes. The mass market does not adopt new technologies quickly, and many new media formats and such have failed because of this (how come it took 15 years for something better than vhs tape to come along to the mass market?) Then consider what will be required to make these secure, registered devices that probably have to be connected to a network to be used. The most likely outcome is that people just won't buy them, and will stick with their old cds.

Cringely Forgot: Soomeone Needs to be Arrested.

[reallocate]

The effectiveness of civil disobedience often relies on the disobedient deliberately getting arrested so a court challenge to legislation can be launched. Absent those legal challenges, you face the much more daunting task of altering the political landscape in your favor.

Re:Cringely Forgot: Soomeone Needs to be Arrested.

[reallocate]

I read it, which proves something about my memory.

I can't take Cringely's proposed tactic seriously, though. The local police probably never heard of the DMCA, but they might arrest you as a public nuisance.

Better yet, re-write DeCSS 100 times

[GroundBounce]

DeCSS is just one program that cracks CSS and hence violates the DMCA. But what if 100 different programmers were to take the basic keys and write a hundred different programs which all do the same thing (decrypt DVDs "illegally"), but are each distinct, separate programs, all starting from scratch. If it's coordinated well, these programs can all be released on the same day as a civil disobediance action.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine these programs would all qualify as separate contraband devices under the DMCA, and each would have to be prosecuted separately. Imagine 100 or even 1000 Skylarov cases clogging the justice system! Would the Justice department even have the bandwidth for so many cases? Even if they did, it would take years to get to them all. Now that might get some attention.

A better idea for a mass DMCA violation

[alispguru]

Someone a little higher-profile than me should take up a collection to publish full-page ads in the big newspapers containing:

The code for DeCSS

Web links for downloading the code

The names of everyone who paid for the ad

Granted, this has been done to death on the Web, but remember that as far as the Government is concerned, nothing is real until it appears in the New York Times or Washington Post...

Digital Freedom Day

[Anonymous Coward]

I would recommend having a day (say, the anniversary of DMCA implementation) where people protest every year. Digital Freedom day or something. You can organize events like distributing DeCSS, wear Digital Freedom t-shirts, and generally advocate Digital Freedoms. Do this until there's enough momentum behind it to start with the civil disobedience (I'd guess about 4 years). Then, have RXC's massive civil disobedience on the next Digital Freedom Day...perhaps to conincide with HDTV implementation.

Cringley Wants You To Risk Being Raped

[Baldrson]

Cringley didn't mention that in addition to the $10,000 fine and jail time you could, prior to conviction and with only one night in prison, also be subjected to repeated rape and infected with HIV or Hepatitis C. He knows this is a risk. He can't have written the column about civil disobedience without knowing it.

It's been all over the news lately.

Lonely Mission Stephen Donaldson Wants to Stop the Sexual Abuse of Inmates by Inmates

Chicago Tribune (CT) - FRIDAY, June 23, 1995

In a comfortable downtown Chicago restaurant, Stephen Donaldson is suddenly silent, his face turning a deep red, his eyes staring at nothing. Donaldson is trying to describe something so horrible, so sickening, so painful that it almost destroyed him.

It is very difficult for me to talk about it, Donaldson says, taking a deep breath and pushing away his plate. This is a good way to lose an appetite.

It began Aug. 9, 1973, when Donaldson--by then a college graduate, Navy veteran, journalist and Quaker pacifist--participated in a pray-in at the White House on the 28th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.

Donaldson was arrested for trespassing and sent to the Washington, D.C., jail, where he refused on moral grounds to post a $10 bond. Donaldson believed the bail system discriminated against poor people and minorities.

At first, Donaldson was housed in a section of the jail reserved for older and non-violent detainess. He spent an uneventful week playing chess and talking with other inmates.

But Donaldson said jail officials began pressuring him to pay his bail and get out. I refused, Donaldson recalled. I said I was going to stay until trial.

Soon after, Donaldson was transferred into the jail's general population--something officials evidently hoped would force Donaldson to pay the bail. Almost immediately, a young inmate who introduced himself only as Baseball approached Donaldson and said a group of inmates wanted to talk to him about his politics.

Not suspecting any threat, Donaldson followed Baseball into the inmate's cell. Eight men were waiting for him.

They blocked the exit and told me to take my pants off, Donaldson recounted. I said, 'Like hell.' They picked me up and began ramming my head against the iron railing of the top bunk. They sat me down on the toliet seat and Baseball stood in front of me.

Baseball ordered Donaldson to perform oral sex. Donaldson refused. He started punching me, Donaldson said. There just wasn't any way out. I was totally surrounded. I was terrified. They said if I said anything about it, they would kill me. At that point I gave in.

Donaldson was forced to have oral sex with Baseball. A second inmate demanded anal intercourse. When Donaldson refused, the inmate tore off Donaldson's pants, shoved a pillow over his head so that he couldn't scream and raped him. It was excruciatingly painful, said Donaldson.

For the next four hours, several dozen inmates dragged Donaldson from cell to cell raping him.

Baseball collected two packs of cigarettes from each inmate who raped Donaldson. That was the price of sex in the D.C. jail. This is just the way we welcome new kids on the first night, one of the rapists told Donaldson.

You won't have to go through all this again. The inmate lied. The next night Donaldson was gang-raped again. It was devastating psychologically, says Donaldson, his voice almost inaudible. It seemed like I was going to spend the rest of my life . It was like the end of all hope.

Donaldson managed to escape his attackers and run to the nearest guard post, where he collapsed. The next day, after posting bail and being released, Donaldson held a press conference to tell the world about what had happened to him.

Since then, Donaldson hasn't stopped talking about the problem of prison rape, which he estimates affects more than 300,000 inmates each year at juvenile centers, adult jails and prisons nationwide.

As president of the New York City-based Stop Prisoner Rape--the nation's only advocacy group dedicated to the problem--Donaldson speaks to state legislators, law school students, psychologists, private attorneys, correctional officials, talk show hosts and just about anyone else who will listen.

Working out of his New York apartment on a shoestring budget, Donaldson corresponds with about 300 inmate victims of sexual assault and wrote a friend of the court brief in a landmark 1994 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that holds correctional officials liable if they fail to protect inmates against sexual assault. Donaldson also helped put together two groundbreaking audio tapes and manuals used in prisons to educate inmates and correctional officers about prison rape.

Hitting rock bottom

For Donaldson, it's been a lonely, difficult and bitter personal struggle. Donaldson, 48, has been imprisoned four times since his first jailing and raped repeatedly during each incarceration.

He dropped out of two graduate schools, bagged a promising journalism career and drifted from one job to another. He was briefly homeless, arrested twice for drug possession, started carrying a gun, and suffered through alternative bouts of rage, paranoia, helplessness and depression.

For years, Donaldson said his whole body would shake uncontrollably for no apparent reason. He suffered panic attacks when there were a lot of men around. He has suffered chronic insomnia and he attempted suicide in 1977.

Donaldson hit rock bottom in 1980 when he fired a handgun in the emergency room of a New York City hospital after he was denied treatment for a cut on his hand. Nobody was hurt, but Donaldson was convicted of assault with intent to commit murder and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

He was released after serving four years, started therapy for rape trauma syndrome and eventually became a rape counselor. Donaldson also intensified his efforts to publicize the problem of prison rape--something he describes as his mission in life.

But that, too, has been a difficult and frustrating experience.

Despite the publicity his case initially generated--hearings were held in the District of Columbia City Council in the early 1970s--Donaldson says his words have fallen mostly on deaf ears. The D.C. jail guards, who he alleges allowed him to be raped, were never punished. And Donaldson can't remember how many letters he's written about prison rape to politicians and prison officials that were never answered.

The public also hasn't been too interested in inmates being sexually abused behind bars. And correctional officials nationwide tend to downplay sexual assault in prison, saying that sex behind bars is rare and more often than not consensual.

I don't want to minimize the problem, but I think that the number is relatively low, says Tom Metzger, speaking for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs 81 institutions with about 97,000 inmates. There are a number of individuals who suggest that this is a much greater problem than we think it is.

But research tends to support Donaldson's contention that prison sexual assaults are not infrequent. A 1982 study found a 14 percent sexual assault rate in one California prison, while a 1984 study reported that 28 percent of the inmates in six New York state prisons had been the target of sexual aggression at least once.

A 1994 study found that 22 percent of male inmates at three Nebraska prisons reported they had been pressured or forced into sexual contact ranging from grabbing the genitals to oral or anal sex. Only 29 percent of the Nebraska inmates who had been sexually assaulted said they reported the incident to prison staff, the study found.

This problem needs to be addressed, said Donaldson, who held a series of meetings in Chicago in May. Even those members of the public who don't care about the humane treatment of prisoners need to understand that prison rape is a serious public safety issue.

The rape system is an assembly line which takes young, non-violent newcomers and efficiently fills them with rage and a desire for revenge and then deposits them on our doorsteps, Donaldson added. If they've also been infected with HIV, we've given them a death sentence which they in turn will spread. That will come back to haunt us all.

---

Criminiologists say prison rape has been around as long as there have been prisons. It has nothing to do with sex. It's an act of aggression, power and control.

The whole idea is to force someone--to take away someone's manhood, said Wayne Wooden, who co-authored the California study and is coordinator of the Criminal Justice and Corrections program at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, Calif.

Wooden said that new inmates usually are targeted by sexual predators within three days of the newcomers' arrival in prison. The predators, called jockers or studs, primarily go after young, attractive, heterosexual men.

Most of the victims are non-violent offenders who are unfamiliar with the Darwinian rules that govern life behind bars, criminologists say. And most of the targeted inmates are not affiliated with powerful street gangs that dominate life inside many prisons.

Wooden says that unless the targeted inmate fights back and wards off the attack, he will get a reputation that he can be taken and he will be victimized. Predators also use a variety of tricks to lure weaker inmates into sexual relationships.

As soon as a fish walks into prison, all the normal issues of survival come to the forefront, said Michael Mahoney, president of the John Howard Association, a Chicago-based prison watchdog group. Weaker inmates have to hook up with stronger inmates or with a gang and part of that may be for sex. In other situations, they just decide they are going to rip you off for sex.

The perfect target

In many ways, Donaldson was the perfect target. A middle class kid born into a military family in Norfolk, Va., Donaldson was valedictorian of his high school class in Long Branch, N.J., and a graduate of Columbia University.

Before he was jailed in D.C., Donaldson had had only one brush with the law: He had been jailed for one night in 1968 after being arrested for trespassing during an anti-war protest at Columbia. Donaldson was also very spiritual, placing his trust in God to protect him.

I was very naive. I wasn't prepared for anything monstrous like that, said Donaldson, referring to his jailhouse rape. I knew that there were fights in jail, but I had never heard about gang rape.

Inmate Michael Blucker also says he wasn't prepared for what happened to him at Illinois' maximum-security Menard Correctional Center. Blucker, who filed a lawsuit last month in federal court against the Illinois Department of Corrections, alleges he was repeatedly raped by gang members between May, 1993, and April, 1994.

Blucker says he contracted the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, after being sexually assaulted--and that corrections officers failed to protect him even after he reported the attacks. A former resident of Crystal Lake, Blucker is incarcerated at the Dixon Correctional Center and is serving a 10-year sentence for residential burglary and automobile theft.

I became a gang slut, said Blucker, 25, in a telephone interview. I became my cellie's sex slave. He sold me for cigarettes, coffee, sometimes for nothing. You can't get over something like this. Everyday I think about it. Everyday I dream about it.

Blucker, a non-gang member, said the first rape occurred several days after his arrival at Menard when three gang members cornered Blucker in his cell, brandished homemade knives and wrapped an electrical cord around his neck. In another incident, several inmates beat Blucker over the head with bricks before gang-raping him in the shower room.

I didn't do nothing unless my gang member told me to, Blucker said. I feared for my life. I'd seen what they had done to other gang members. I wanted to come home alive, not in a box.

Howell of the Illinois Department of Corrections refused to comment on Blucker's lawsuit. But Richard Ahmad, executive director of the Prison Action Committee, a Chicago-based group that aides ex-cons, said it is highly likely that Blucker could have been sexually assaulted.

The officers often leave the cellhouses totally unattended, said Ahmad, who served 17 years in six state prisons--including Menard--for murder. The guards really don't have control over the cellhouses now.

A. Nicholas Groth, a Florida psychologist who has worked in the Massachusetts and Connecticut prison systems counseling victims of sexual assault, said the most traumatized rape victims are inmates like Donaldson.

In Donaldson's case, he was not a hardened criminal who had adopted that value system and lifestyle, Groth explained. To him, it would have been much more devastating psychologically than someone whose life has been marked by abuse, neglect, mistreatment, and institutionalization.

---

Donaldson is walking down Michigan Avenue and people are staring at him. With his Lincolnesque beard, thick glasses and white baseball hat that reads, Stop Prisoner Rape, Donaldson does not fit into the crowd. He looks and acts like an outsider. Rape does that to a person, Donaldson explains.

You feel alienated from everybody around you, said Donaldson. I became extremely alienated from all power structures. Rape is ultimately a power issue. I started feeling like an outlaw--being outside the shelter and protection of the law.

In recent years, Donaldson has sought spiritual solace in the Buddist and Hindu religions. And he has found an outlet for his anger and rage in the punk scene, where Donaldson spends most weekends listening to jarring music and slam-dancing. He writes for several alternative music magazines under the byline Donny The Punk.

But like many survivors, it is Donaldson's cause--stopping prison rape--that has given him a reason to continue living in a world that has brought him so much pain and suffering. With an IQ of 180 and boundless energy, Donaldson has become a walking encyclopedia on the issue on sexual assault.

I don't know anybody who is more knowledgeable about this issue both intellectually and through experience, said Fay Honey Knopp, former director of the Safer Society, a Vermont-based group that hired Donaldson to produce the audio tapes and manual about sexual assault in prisons.

During his two-day Chicago visit, Donaldson was in perpetual motion. He spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times' and Chicago Tribune's editorial boards, held a press conference with Michael Blucker's mother and the mother of another alleged Illinois prison rape victim and talked to psychologists at the Midwestern Psychological Association meeting.

He also met with a dozen private attorneys, American Civil Liberties Union officials, Mahoney of the John Howard Association, and State Rep. Cal Skinner (R-Crystal Lake), who is sponsoring legislation requiring state prison officials to inform new inmates how to avoid and prevent sexual assault, provide literature and tapes to inmates on rape and rape trauma and allow access by rape crisis counselors to inmate victims.

The bill, which Skinner says has little chance of being approved by legislature this year, also would require all prison officials to receive training on how to identify and prevent prison rape, and require guards notify the warden when they recieve a report about an actual or threatened sexual assault.

Donaldson supports the legislation, though he doesn't believe it goes far enough.

He is encouraging lawyers in Illinois and nationwide to file class action suits against correctional officials to force them to house weaker inmates away from sexual predators. Donaldson also wants prisons and jails to distribute condoms to inmates to slow the spread of AIDS behind bars.

It's an ambitious agenda. Donaldson is doing most of the heavy lifting himself. But Donaldson feels optimistic.

I feel like I am finally able to get something done, said Donaldson. To feel that somebody is listening to me, that gives me self-confidence. I don't feel as vulnerable as I used to.

CAPTION: PHOTO: Stephen Donaldson, president of Stop Prisoner Rape, estimates that more than 300,000 inmates are abused each year. Tribune photo by Walter Kale.

Re:I want my pirated copy

[AntiNorm]

of Debbie does Dallas. Anyone know where I can get it? I promise to turn myself in before I watch it.

If you go to prison for violating the DMCA, you will get to play the role of Debbie.

I know! Let's have *meetings*!

[Interrobang]

Personally, I think Cringely's idea is pretty good. Unfortunately, I don't think most people are brave enough to try it. I also think a lot of people aren't principled enough to put their money where their mouths are, but that's another story.

Reminds me of Jello Biafra talking about "conservatives on the farty old left" and un-fun protests: "You know what we're going to do? We're going to have *meetings,* dammit!"

Sigh. (Otherwise, click the sig link and check out my rant on the mechanics of dollar voting!)

Backfiring....

[LittleGuy]

Then, plaster her (cute, innocent, doe-eyed) face all over the net and all over CNN and every other TV network in the world and... ... have John Ashcroft and the DoJ use her as a warning to other cute, innocent, doe-eyed kids (and their parents) and this can happen to YOU as well.

And the media will nod their head in concurrance.

presidential?

[cascadingstylesheet]

How many of everyone hear complaining has 1) voted in the previous presidental and congressional elections

Um, presidential? What difference would that have made?

Ralph Nader: Unsafe at any Download Speed? Did he even have a position on copyright and the DMCA?

Al Gore: I took the initiative in creating Napster. How are you enjoying your Clipper Chip?

WTF?

Prison Sex

[wytcld]

This must be a big part of the reason why HIV rates among black women are way up. With more black men going to prison than college - usually for violating drug prohibition (for which mostly blacks, not whites are arrested, despite drug use being fairly constant across populations) - and then getting involved in prison sex either willingly or not - and then going back to heterosexuality when they're out, and not telling their wives and girlfriends about the shame of prison ... we have a government which is damn close to conducting genocide against the black population. This is cleverer than giving blankets with smallpox to the Indians.

But massive public displays of pot smoking in the 60s didn't do much for reforming the laws. Civil disobedience may be overrated. All that happens is the cops make their quota going after the minorities and the poor - those without the political connections to give them trouble over it.

The problem with Cringley's idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is that it is illegal. The DMCA is a bad law, but downloading music and movies you don't own is illegal, should be illegal, and always will be illegal. Instead, download music and movies you actually own, so when/if push comes to shove about your downloads, you can whip out your original CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. Use your rights to format shift, time shift, and make back-ups. The right to reverse engineer. Challenge the silly parts of the law, but I don't see the community making much headway by illegal copying.

Re: Not every conflict is a war .

[guybarr]

... yes I do belive that if there were NO OTHER fesiable alternative (I admitt many of the posts that score 5 suggest much bettet alternitives), I would take a mans life ...

So, as you say, there are other options. These other options are the very essence of democracy. You use the term "war". The democratic way can be summarized by the understanding that not every conflict is a war, and that there are usually better, less extreme (and more effective) ways of setteling most differences than murdering your neighbour. Even if he really pisses you off.

To be more general, use of power, by the state AND internal entities (including citizens) is not evil by itself, but it needs to be smart, careful, and roughly proportional to the wrong you are trying to fix. Taking a life is the ultimate use of force, and is to be taken only when life or health itself is threatened. Even so, unless in immediate self-defense, this ultimate force should be moderated by the democratic processes, so that the state will not degenerate into either a pile of cancerous gangsters, or a homicidal dictatorship.

This is what I answer to grishnakh, as well. Yes, Nazi soldiers and their leaders had loved ones, Bin Laden and his death-worshipping followers have loved ones, but they are people who threatened (and actually executed) life itself. Against such actions, use of lethal force is not only justified, it is compulsory.
The DMCA, and even it's worse successors, SSCCA or whatever the acronym is today, does not directly threaten life. So resist it democratically, learn from the great Gandhi. If Gandhi would have fought the Nazis or Bin-Laden, he probably would not have been successful, but against the british, he was. Because they had the integrity to be ashamed. Because they had the moral framework I still belive most of the americans possess. You americans have a democracy, and a generally democratic people. It is a great, rare gift: use it appropriately, change it carefully and efficiently, don't destroy it for the purpose of protecting it.

Democracy is not an end, but a means

[argoff]

I hate the DMCA, and a lot of the stuff that large corporations are pulling, BUT Democracy is not an end in itself, but a tool for protecting individual liberties. Like any tool it can be abused as well as beneficial. All too often people have justified taking away massive amounts of other peoples hard earned money bcause it is accepted by a majority vote. It is only natural that people (esp rich people) would try to defend themselves, and that money would eventually become an important part of the process. And now that it has - it is being abused, forcing us to the only other option - civil disobedience.

Just protecting deomcracy will not work, society will not let it work because democracy can also be unjust in the form of mob rule, which like gang-rape can be the worst type of injustice.

You half to protect freedom, especially the freedom to own your property and earnings without excessive taxation, but also the freedom to copy things without being criminalized, both of these are freedoms that must exist inspite of the mob.

We have a tool to: Technology. And it's time to use it to protect our liquid assets, and our rights to copy without being criminalized. With technology, we have a median of exchanging value and information even if 99.99% of the population wants to beat us into oblivion for it. The sooner we use this tool, the better it will be for everyone.

Re:No, no!

[Lendrick]

Right, right. Offtopic. Certainly not, say, an on-topic joke that went over your head.

It really won't work ...

[pantropik]

Seriously. Won't work. I tried it.

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 ... I wonder if he even knows what a DVD is ...

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 ... 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 ...

Re:cowering

[Chris Johnson]

I feel sorry for anybody who is only capable of sitting in a La-Z-Boy. Our society has produced such people- quite a few such people. They would have to work and learn to be capable of anything else. Even to march they would have to go outside, and be able to walk for an extended period of time. In our wonderful best-of-all-worlds society not everybody is even capable of that. I know people so essentially unhealthy that they'd be endangering their lives just being around tear gas, which is typical crowd control tech.

You can't speak for me, however, because the very war you're talking about is what forced me back into the studio- I'm a musician and maybe I'm not good for much but it's the only weapon I got, and I cut the hardest rock tune I could around the hook, 'How much for a barrel... of blood on the sand?'. Got it right here. Ampcast, which I'm using, would allow me to try and charge a buck for a full download- maybe some of you, maybe YOU, would understand why that's the last thing I'd want to do. Currently I have absolutely no way for people to 'reward' me for this work- yes, I did have 'blisters on me fingers', especially after the bass part- I just want the ideas out there. It's painting a picture of where the Bush cronies are coming from, as if briefing some diplomat who's being sent to the Middle East only to pillage it and declare war on it.

I also cut a 'radio edit', both to bring it under three minutes and to experiment with 'modern major label style' loudness maximizing- that one is also free download and likewise there's not a thing you can do to pay for it- later I'll get a CD out, full resolution, couldn't wait that long to get this track out there. It says what I needed to say about the whole "Let's have a war so the 'axis of evil' can all die" mindset that really makes me sick at heart. Question the ethics? Let's talk 'get horribly stressed and feel helpless and powerless to freaking stop it'.

That said-

You should note that this my only weapon against this insanity, is taking place through the distribution of mp3s- and if I should happen to write something SO compelling that it seriously made me a problem (I wish- will keep working tho) and the government came and took me away and ordered my ISP and Ampcast to not distribute material that aided terrorists (WHICH! IS! HAPPENING! And it could happen to me as well), then p2p services, notably Gnutella, could continue to circulate my ideas if they were worthy.

This is nothing more than samizdat as practiced in other repressive regimes that marked off whole positions or areas of discourse as forbidden.

Now that the United States is openly one of them and will repress words that are challenging enough to the government's aims, all this 'sheltered' fuss over the DMCA is not as irrelevant as you think. It's the copyright industry wanting to stamp out uncontrolled copying. However, uncontrolled copying can be the last refuge of the patriotic dissident.

It all ties together- we all have to shovel the shit on OUR doorstep. For some people, DMCA weighs more heavily on them than a thousand dead Arabs, all of whom have names and mothers, none of whom you know. Rather than condemning someone like that, how about letting them fight their own battles? I can tell you right now that from my point of view as a musician and songwriter, it matters that people fight DMCA- theoretically defending my copyright values is a piss-poor bargain for losing the ability to have a global communications network that can take suppressed music and art and still get it to where people can think about it. The RIAA/MPAA dreamworld is also a tool for political control rivalling the Cold War USSR, and that matters, especially now.

Dissident Stallmanist musician slashdotter #580, signing off.

NG troops, not "the government"

[coyote-san]

One small point - the deaths were at the hands of National Guards troops about the same age as the protesters, and just as scared. The ROTC (iirc) building was burned down just days earlier, and crowd could have turned ugly very fast.

This is a subtle point that is often overlooked. The students at Kent State were not killed by an official organ of the US Government dedicated to eradicating dissent, the equivalence of the Nazi Gestapo or the East German Stazi. They were killed by young men who were scared shitless by a situation they were unprepared for, and a bad situation rapidly got far, far worse.

The government still screwed the pooch, but I don't think you could identify even one individual in the government who thought that it would be a good idea to gun down a bunch of students at an anti-war rally. It was much more a sin of omission (they should have sent in professionals who could handle the stress) than commission.