Lessig's Challenge: Are You Up To It?

Eloquence writes "At the 2002 Open Source Conference, law professor and cyberactivist Larry Lessig, last prominently featured here because of the Eldred case, asked some poignant questions: 'How many people have given to [the] EFF more money than they have given to their local telecom to give them shitty DSL service? How many people have given more money to [the] EFF than they give each year to support the monopoly--to support the other side?' Luke Francl has interpreted these questions as a challenge, and decided to chronicle both his donations to good causes and his less voluntary payments to 'the media oligarchy' on this page: Lessig's Challenge. This is a good idea if others imitate it: If these pages become interlinked with each other, not only can they motivate us and let us track our progress, they may also help us to keep each other up to date about 'good causes' -- there's more than the EFF, after all. With Harry Potter in theatres and Lord of the Rings before us, should 'nerds' also be thinking about supporting those who fight for our rights to, say, play DVDs on an open-source OS?"

Comments

Exploding Dog?

[dietz]

Uhm, this is sorta weird.

He bought a print of a small artist and counted that? He donated to a radio station and counted that? I buy lots of things from small companies. But small companies don't lobby. They don't actively undo the damage that giving to your local telecom does. That's why Lessig mentioned the EFF.

I mean, I'm a hypocrite by posting this I guess, since I have never given to the EFF, but if I just get to count purchasing things from small companies/artists, I'll clobber my telecom bill every month, guaranteed.

The problem with this, though...

[InterruptDescriptorT]

...is that while the EFF does good works, and I am a member in good standard having given nearly $500 in the past year, the problem is one of motivation.

While regular folks and even a lot of techies realize that not paying their DSL/cable modem/satellite Internet bills is going to get their service cut off, the same cannot be said for the EFF. Yes, I totally agree that there may very well come a day where we cannot do anything due to companies strong-arming governments to pass legislation to reduce what we can do with the Internet, but unless and until the majority of folks get this message and understand its severity and urgency, Lessig's challenge will be unsuccessful.

I would also like to point out that many people take issue at some of the causes that the EFF fights. Please don't let one or two court challenges that the EFF helps with deter you from becoming a member if you already haven't. The fact is that the majority of the EFF's aid is of critical importance to my and your free speech rights and they need every cent of help we can offer.

Do we get our money's worth with the EFF?

[91degrees]

Lets be honest - just how much success have they had? They've managed to get the word out about open source, but they failed to stop the DMCA, and none of their legal fights against it have been particularly succesful.

And lets be honest - it was RedHat's lobbying that reduced the effect of UCITA. The only thing that stopped the CBDTPA and that P2P protection bill was the noise made by people on discussion forums writing in protest.

Re:Do we get our money's worth with the EFF?

[Eloquence]

I don't know if the EFF is the answer either. Generally speaking, the ACLU seems to be more effective, but they cover a larger scope and not everyone agrees with their politics. I hated the EFF's "Tinsel Town Club" cartoon -- it may sound like a good idea to produce a cartoon to convey complex ideas, but it was a Flash video, not even a particularly good one, which makes it unsuitable for anything but web use. They probably spent big bucks on hiring designers to do these cartoons -- bucks that came from the people who donated to them. I would have preferred it if they had asked their membership before doing this.

I also think the EFF should have built a more weblog/community style website long ago. Their current site still looks very 1997-ish to me, without much potential for interaction. People aren't really given many incentives to visit eff.org regularly, which makes it less effective to issue calls for action. That's what they should spend money on. Projects like Indymedia, love them or hate them, need good software to run on, and this software would be developed faster with some help, while benefitting EFF's own site at the same time. And then they could also have spent money to fund interesting peer-to-peer-projects that are related to free speech.

Generally speaking, too few people at the EFF have a real clue about how to use the Internet to coordinate grassroots activity, and they are definitely not spending their money as effectively as they could. They're acting more like a traditional lobbying organization, with their impact more or less proportional to the amount of money behind them. The RIAA and MPAA, of course, will always be able to outspend them, so better strategies are needed.

I don't know any alternatives, though. I always thought Slashdot would be in the best position to organize effective grassroots protests (a real Slashdot effect, not just a server-related one), but the editors seem more concerned about movies and anime -- no offense intended.

Registered Charity?

[oliverthered]

if the EFF registered as a charity in the UK then the Government would topup any contributions I made.
Is the EFF a charity?

Re: Counter-Challenge to Prof. Lessig

[raresilk]

I am so 100% with you, quistas, on the spam thing. Supporting spammers allows the forces of evil to paint EFF as knee-jerk opposed to any form of internet regulation, rather than standing for a sensible, even-handed and realistic vision of the digital commons. Which is what I thought Prof. Lessig was advocating. So I have a counter-challenge for him:

Professor, I understand that you urge people to donate to the EFF an amount equal to what they spend on products from the MPAA, RIAA, and other cartels pushing for abusive laws and DRM schemes to further their Mafia-like control over information and culture. But the EFF has demonstrated that it will spend donations, not only for that purpose, but also on unconscionable lobbying against well-respected legislative and community tools to control spammers -- the hands-down worst abusers in the internet culture. I have read your book "The Future of Ideas" and was impressed by what you had to say. But I cannot for the life of me imagine how the ubiquitous spamming of unwilling net users could be regarded as a positive component of the "digital commons" you described.

So this is my challenge to you, Dr. Lessing:
Respond to this post with a persuasive defense of the EFF's pro-spam lobbying, which convinces me that my freedom as an internet user is enhanced by forcing me to continue being bombarded with emails for porn, fraud, and garbage products. If you persuade me, I will immediately donate $500 (the estimated amount I spent this year on cartel-controlled media) to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.