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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?"
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.
...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.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
OSS will lose its appeal the the mass if they end up having to pay for opensource software as well
There is the difference between having to pay and choosing to pay
Also of course if you are a programmer you could give something back to the community by helping develop OSS. If you're not you could help with ideas, bug reports, etc. And if you're a lazy unskilled idealist you could donate
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
The problem here is how to bring that message to folks. An uncontrolled medium such as the Internet is very easy to at least publish and, to a lesser extent, promote. The sad part is the very media that would reach the masses are controlled by the other side - namely, television and radio. It's the lowest common denominator, yet how do you penetrate it when it is on the opposite side of the fence?
This needs to start with us, every day. With our secretaries, our neighbors, our grandmothers, everyone in every way. Word of mouth is powerful. But it can't just stop there, and I fear that it won't be enough in the end. With digital tv and DVD Audio just around the corner, and more severe copyright controls, you can bet that this problem will be even worse, and this message will sadly be further quelled. Nevertheless, it all starts with us...
If you *really* believe that these companies are doing wrong you shouldn't be spending your money on them in the first place. Believe it or not, you'll be able to live without seeing hobbits on the big screen or having 1.5Mbps into your bedroom. Giving money to the opposition after the fact may make you feel better, but doesn't change the fact that you've already compromised your morals!
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.
What's better--working for an hour to remove works from the tyranny of copyright, or working in a "regular job" for an hour and donating the proceeds to EFF?
ScienceSeeker.org
I'm not sure if I can totally approve of this type of activism, because it mirrors exactly what is wrong with the USA today. It shouldn't be just about "how much money". If you really care about something, get off your butt and do something about it. Get vocal - organise grassroots movements, write letters, explain the problems you see to your friends, family and community. But don't just expect to buy influence with money - that's what is currently ruining the democratic fabric of the USA.
if the EFF registered as a charity in the UK then the Government would topup any contributions I made.
Is the EFF a charity?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
'How many people have given to [the] EFF more money than they have given to their local telecom to give them shitty DSL service?
Well I have Cable but besides that I get good service. So that'd be $0 to a shitty ISP and $0 to the EFF.
How many people have given more money to [the] EFF than they give each year to support the monopoly--to support the other side?
Let's see, I haven't bought an MS product at retail value in a long time so again, $0 for MS and $0 for the EFF.
Do I win something now???
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I'd happily make donations to the EFF if I knew that they'd act for issues I'm faced with too (I live in England).
The last time I checked, I couldn't find any information about whether they would do this (please correct me if I'm wrong).
Of course, the rest of the world (Europe especially) do seem intent on matching American laws, so making American law sane would indirectly affect me, but that seems a very roundabout way to make my money effective.
How many people have given to [the] EFF more money than they have given to their local telecom to give them shitty DSL service?
Well, what kind of high speed access is EFF going to provide for me?
As soon as the EFF has the monopoly on freedom, they can send me a bill in the same amount as my cable bill (with modem). Until then, it's small donations. Sorry guys, but I'm just not going to send a "Microsoft Tax" to someone else who is trying to guilt me into it.
You're certainly right; it shouldn't be about how much money you raise. If you're a lawyer, by all means volunteer. If you're not, pony up so other people can pay for them.
It shouldn't JUST be about money, but money always helps.
I could say my DSL service is shitty. But to be honest in over two years there has been one "outage" and 2 slow-downs, none of which lasted for more than 30 minutes.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
To a degree, I completely agree with you. It seems like a waste of effort and resource to be fighting Microsoft. It would seem that many great things could be done with the time and money spent on something that appears to the 'outside world' as being obsessive about the rich kid on the block because of jealousy.
Ask yourself this, though. Does Microsoft think it's "all about total world domination for" Windows?
I suspect you're trolling, but I'm going to bite anyway.
This has nothing to do with pricing, competition, or even the quality of your service. Donating money to the EFF isn't going to lead to the fall of capitalism and the beginnings of a socialist empire.
Rather, by not donating to the EFF and helping to fight some of their free-speech causes, you might find that all of your beloved competing Internet providers won't provide you with certain sites or materials that the government deems offensive that day. Imagine having six or seven Internet providers to choose from, their prices kept low by competition, only to not be able to surf a large majority of the Web that has been silenced by government regulators.
So I guess you'd be happy to choose Acme DSL and pay only $12/mo but only get to surf AOLTimeWarnerViacomCBSNYT's media sites and those sites that haven't been censored by the government. Worth it?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
The DMCA will be implemented in different variants world-wide. This is a real issue: To play DVDs on Linux, you need to break the law, in America and soon elsewhere as well. That's why it's important to change the law instead of just passively ignoring what's going on and hoping that the problems will go away. If you do that, what's currently the case with DVDs will soon be the case with all commercial media, thereby defeating the whole point of open source.
Note that the copyright cartels have already successfully gone after people who distributed the DVD decryption software, and even those who linked to the tool that allows doing so. They love the additional control over content use that the DMCA gives them, and they'll fight to keep it and to extend it even further (which brings us to Microsoft's Palladium).
But, that's an interesting hair-trigger ya got there...
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
I tried to make a donation to a good cause. But I could not find out where to send the money. I couldn't track anyone down at all. So I guess SPEWS will have to do without my money and we'll all still have to deal with a growing spam problem.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
You shouldn't ask "how many gave more to the EFF than to the opposition". Most people didn't give anything to the opposition. Usually, those who do not favor freedom *take* what they want.
To ask how many people give to the EFF, you are asking, how many people give to the EFF from their disposable income. A person's disposable income is usually a lot smaller than the nominal income, from which the oligarchy "takes" the lion's share.
Now, there is some grey here. I would contend that some amount of music is a necessity for basic human life, especially living in the techno world that we live in. However, you do have some choice about where you get your music. As long as you have some choice, you should probably be selecting non-RIAA sources. But people also require some continuity; and if your business plays Debbie Gibson all day long (showing my age there...), then you're going to want to have some Debbie Gibson stuff at home, which is why the RIAA pays radio stations to play their music.
But when you think about it like that, you realize that America's freedom isn't all that great. In fact, in a lot of ways America is not free at all. It is an oligarchy, and its citizens are considered posessions.
Just something to think about. I don't advocate revolution. I advocate walking away. As Ken Hamblin, the Black Avenger says in the title to his book, "Find a Better Country!" It's not that hard to do.
No, because this way of taking it into action is absurd. If your point is to fight against the monopolies, then the answer is to give zero $ to monopolies and a penny for EFF. If you understand it like this, then the Lessig challenge makes sense...
'How many people have given to [the] EFF more money than they have given to their local telecom to give them shitty DSL service?'
We shouldn't have to pay as much for a just legal environment as we pay for goods and services. If the current legal environment is pay-to-play instead of a representative democracy (I believe it is), then shouldn't your lobbying contributions be going towards campaign finance reform?
The proposal that we must give as much to the EFF as we pay for goods and services seems like suggesting that it would be good financial policy to max out your credit cards and then put all of your disposable income into savings bonds instead of paying down the debt.
If the only course of action is to continue to play the game of having to buy laws; if fixing the process that makes the laws is not feasible, then it seems to me that it's already too late. It's time to forget reform and switch to either revolution or abandonment.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are some organisations over here such as eurorights and there is someone claiming to be the eff-europe but there doesn't seem to be the same momentum as in the USA. Hopefully things will pick up here before the laws get passed, rather than after.
Stick Men
Of course I don't give as much money to the EFF as I would to my ISP or to the movie theaters. Although I agree with just about everything the EFF does, and although I disagree with just about everything the movie and music industry do, there is the basic fact that I'm paying for real services.
A more balanced question would be along the lines of "How much are you shoring up private interests with your money?". I'll just take a completely random guess that, say, 5% of what you spend on stuff is profit for the Big Guys. So, do you spend THAT much on countering what their money buys them?
On the other side: yes, the EFF does a hell of a lot for us. No, I don't think I can credit the EFF with any direct wins, but they can be credited with stopping some big problems. Having an effecitve oppostion is important in any democratic system. Since parties to not provide the correct context in the US, this is an effictive (if poor) backup.
Here's my question though: I do not live in the states. I'm a Canadian citizen living in the UK. I care deeply about information privacy and freedom issues in a worldwide sense. I know the US tends to drive some of these issues, but I really don't know: where should my money go for the most efficitive worldwide advocacy?
I believe you are confused.
Ducat n.
A piece of money.
vs.
Ducket n.
You can do what you please with your ducats, but please be careful with your duckets. Ducklings can break.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
the first "F" stands for frontier as in the "electronic frontier foundation". did you think it stood for "free"? dont be confused any longer. visit their website and see for youself.
http://www.eff.org/
-- john
And if you're a lazy unskilled idealist you could donate
If you're a "lazy unskilled idealist" you probably have no money.
1)Send Me a bill
2)Credit Card
3)EGold/EDinar
4)Network for Good
5)PayPal
6)Stock
6-12 Months of Anonymizer Private Surfing is included with a minimum of $25 donation. Your gift is 100% tax-deductable.
A visit to the Action Center at the EFF would be useful as well. Do your part or watch your rights slip away! Direct others to help you in the fight.
There is the difference between having to pay and choosing to pay
My latest statistics on this issue show that about 95% of people having to pay will pay, but a much smaller percentage of people choose to pay.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
If you want to help break the entertainment industry monopoly, just keeping your money out of their hands isn't enough - for every well-informed person who boycotts them, there are ten morons who are waiting with baited breath for the next XXX movie. We need to use our dollar votes against them.
That doesn't mean abstaining, and it doesn't mean giving away your money - it means supporting small, independent film studios and small, independent recording studios; it means that when you save thousands of dollars moving from MS software to free software, you donate some of your money back into the open source movement. Note that you're going to be getting higher quality entertainment and software anyway.
You can't just support organizations against these big evil corporations - you have to put your money into the alternatives.
Does illegally downloading RIAA and MPAA proteced mp3's and divx movies count? According to the RIAA and MPAA that is equivalent to stealing from them. So instead of funding the opposition, might I attack the media conglomerates by depriving them of their income? I sure think it would be easier to motivate people to contribute this way.
You can use the Combined Federal Campaign to contribute. EFF is #2229.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Do not forget about the ACLU which also does a great deal to ensure your liberties cyber or not. ACLU Cyber-liberties page.
I suspect if you were to allow "real" charities that do such useless things as provide food, cloting, or shelter to those Less Fortunate, you'd find a LOT of people giving more to such Charities than we give to Micro$oft, Verizon, or AOHell.
Most folks, admitedly not all, would reduce their contribution to other charities were they to donate to EFF.
Potential Best of Both Worlds: donate time to a charity helping them set up and manage (yes, long term) an accounting system that does not require sending a lot of money to Bill Gates.
'Just a thought, a mere wrinkle.
Mark
This sounds like a fund raising guilt trip to me. If you contribute money to EFF, then good, but don't be appalled when I fail to contribute $39.95 every month.
I give money (and time) to charitable groups when I'm able to, and feel like it. I'm not required to give anything. If everyone gave money to every person/group that had a "worth while cause", then we'd all be flat broke. This is typical liberal bullshit.
Before you start flaming me for "not caring", let me say this: I *do* contribute to various groups. I contribute money, I contribute my time, I contribute my own belongings, and last but not least, I contribute my opinions and ideas.
Lessig does have a point, but there "evil groups" out there than just the telecom and entertainment industry. By owning and operating a car, you contribute to pollution, middle eastern oil barons (that's how osama bin laden got his money to train people to kill us, which is funny, since that's how GW made his money too), and at least a dozen other industries of ill repute. By living in a home with electricity, you once again contribute to pollution by way of traditional "dirty" power generating plants and nuclear generating plants which outputs nuclear waste material that remains hazardous for thousands of years. By buying that computer you contributed to substandard labor practices in china. By moving out of the city to be closer to nature you contribute to suburban sprawl further reducing natural habitats for endangered animals. For meat eaters, you contribute to wasteful practices in raising the animals, not to mention the slaughter. But even vegans aren't safe here: Hundreds of small animals are killed by farming equipment when processing crops. Let's not forget the substandard of living once again imposed on those poor chinese people when you eat your rice or cheap 10/$1 packages of ramen noodles. Think buying American helps? Your still contributing to some large corporation with interests only in greedy profit. But oh... let's boycot that greedy corporation you say? Great, now you've contributed to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people losing their jobs.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
It had never occured to me in the past that EFF might be on their big list but they are! So this year, my donation has gone to the EFF conveniently via payroll deduction and the CFC
For those of you wishing to do the same, the CFC code is 2229
Many people who read slashdot are very interested in "open" software and would like to see it prosper. While the EFF does not exist to promote open software, the issues it tackles almost always also benefit open software. How many of you would be insufferably proud if you could submit a tiny patch to the Linux kernel? Or a new feature to one of your favorite projects? (I'd be)
Many of us would be, but either we don't program, don't have the time, or don't have the legal ability. So, stop sitting on the fence and do something. It doesn't have to be a ton. $500 USD is a lot to most people. $15 isn't. If you can give 500, do it... If you can give 15, then do that, and I can assure you that you have done more for something you beleive in than 90% of the other geeks you know. And that's something to be proud of.
Writing a check is sometimes more valuable than writing code.
Extremists are almost always idealistic in some way. In this case, we have MS at one side of an extreme and RMS at the other. MS wants all your money, RMS wants no one to have any. I'm much in thinking to the RMS way, but even he has spent his energy (and thus part of the money which has been given to him) in ways that I think are insane.
Lets take an example: The legal paperwork required to submit code to any Emacs related project. In principal, it's a good idea, but I strongly doubt that the energy to maintain that ideal is worth the end gain. I suspect that if it came to a trial, you'd find that they couldn't prove they had assignment rights for everyone that has submitted code. (In fact, the guidelines for accepting a patch is something like "well, if it has less than 6 lines of code changed then we can accept it without paperwork", which alone will cause problems). So, in the end I suspect this whole policy has actually just slowed down the progress of their coding force rather than really helped "get things done".
Any idealist is likely to actually impeed progress in some way. Certainly M$ is doing an excellent job shooting other people's feet, and we can all agree on that. But, I suggest that RMS is actually doing similar things some of the time as well.
So my rule of thumb: Don't support the idealists. I don't give M$ any money, and I'm not sure I want RMS to spend all my money barking up a tree just because he thinks a dog might some day be up there.
Ok, it's 6:00 and I haven't had any coffee yet. For the moderators out there: this really wasn't intended to be flamebait. I wonder if it'll hold.
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
And this is not the right to copy Harry potter. This is about freedom. Freedom to use something I bought the way I bought it. Yes, If I buy a CD and then copy it and sell it, put me in jail... thats the law and it is correct. what is wrong is that I have paid 500 Rs(10 $$) for a CD and I cannot listen it on my PC, or I cannot listen it on my favorite car CD player. As for the madness of iraq ..... its a legacy bush inherited from his father and I dont think slashdotters can do anything
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Is this the same Lessig that is totally clueless about spam, and proposes silly ideas like this?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
'How many people have given to [the] EFF...
Do you also write "the NASA?" This same rule can be applied to correct references to "the UML."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
An email I just sent to Luke:
Hey Luke...I decided to take up Lessig's challenge as well. I am kicking it off by cancelling my AOL account, and I will donate the amount of money I would have spent on that account for one year to the EFF. That comes out to 19.95 x 12 = $293.40.
I'll give AOL a call, let them know why I'm cancelling the account and where the money will be going, and then post my notes on that call in my journal!
The web page for my slashdot journal is "A HREF="http://slashdot.org/~Locke!Erasmus/journal/" >here . Please do not list my email address, just the link to my slashdot journal.
Thanks!
I should have picked out the nickname Demosthenes!Tecumseh.
I'm a UK citizen, and I support the EFF. I don't meet Larry's exacting standards, but agree with the OP about the profit issue. I was going to post the same point if no-one else had. The reason I keep a close eye on US legal issues and support the EFF is that we usually get the same problems a few years after the US. Nip it in the bud, so to speak.
While waiting for your cracked copy of Eminem to finish burning, how many of you have done anything to alert your representatives about the madness of a unilateral attack by the US on Iraq?
What people can't complain both about both? Indeed most of the world has made it clear exactly what they think of Bush...
The US (and UK) havn't stopped attacking Iraq since 1991. There are also reports that Israel has sent commandos into Iraq recently.
It's not users that come up with products; it's developers. OK, now that we are past your misuse of the word, let's move on to understanding why it is the majority of people buy Microsoft Windows. The answer to that is simple; that's what the PC comes with. The issue about whether Microsoft Windows is better or Linux is better or whatever is all moot. Clearly Microsoft itself knows that what it sells is crap, since they force PC makers to put Windows on every PC in exchange for the right to even put it on one. If in fact Windows was better, then they wouldn't need to do that, and they'd have the same share of the market based on actual choice (assuming the PC makers pass the choice on to the consumer).
Show me a store where you can walk in and buy any PC or laptop and have it with your choice of Microsoft Windows or a major distribution of Linux (e.g. Mandrake, Redhat, SuSE, or Xandros). Once you find it, now lets examine what choices people actually make. And to measure this more accurately, let's narrow it down to just those customers who have experience in using both systems. Keep tabs and see how many choose Windows and how many choose Linux. I think you'll be surprised that Linux, while not necessarily the winner, will give a damned good showing of around 40%.
But what about the rest of the people who buy computers? Well, they aren't really making a choice. They may stick with what they got on the PC. Or they may only have heard of Microsoft (remember, these are not geeks we are talking about, but just ordinary people like your grandmother). And some people simply don't know enough to make choices. If you want to know about what people do choose, then don't bother with these people who aren't even making choices.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
A large scale attack by whom? I thought the 9/11 was done by Al Qaeda not Iraq.
Since there is not much in the way of actual evidence as to who was behind the attack it's a case of pick the conspiracy theory of your choice. The US government initially endorsed "OBL did it", but then tried to change to "SH did it".
As long as EFF is supporting the rights of spammers, I will not be making donations of any amount to EFF.
Examples of this include John Gilmore's infamous toad.com mail server, Brad Templeton's boneheaded statements about spam as free speech and EFF's objections to anti-spam filtering.
It is time EFF to stop the support of this cancer of the net.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I disgaree.
"NASA" is an acronym. EFF is not.
Pronounced like this:
"NASA", not "the N.A.S.A"
"the EFF", not "Efffff"
-Dave
I'm a little more concerned about my freedom to choose, freedom of speech, and freedom (from) of religion under our current regime.
But I am probably just messed in the head.
--mandi
our rights to, say, play DVDs on an open-source OS?
This argument makes me ill. Arguably you have rights to play DVDs that you bought before the whole DVD brouhaha on an open-source OS. But now that it's clear what the license holders are demanding, I find it crazy to demand that you have a "right" to play, say, next-year's DVDs on a given OS.
To me, it's like smoking. ARGUABLY, tobacco companies should be liable for smoking-related deaths that happened due to smoking in an era when the health-risks of tobacco were not widely disseminated, and when people could plausibly have misinformed about them. But now that EVERYONE knows (and has known, for the last 2 decades or so) that cigarettes can cause a host of problems, I shed no tears for people who do fall ill due to their smoking now, and I don't think the tobacco companies should be liable for THESE deaths.
Similarly, I shed no tears for people who "demand" their "rights" to play the latest DVD on platform X. If you don't like the conditions that are being attached to a product - say the latest Star Wars DVD, or the latest Metallica CD - don't buy it, don't go to the theater, don't listen to their songs on the radio, and don't hype it on your website. That is the surest, best, and most honest way to get the MPAA, RIAA, etc. to listen to your demands.
Another anology: I might not like the terms of some GPL'ed product, thinking it "really" should be under a BSD license. Does that give me the RIGHT to use it under a BSD license ?
I made it a point to use DirecTV's DSL service ( it's still regular DSL ) instead of Bellsouth's DSL service so can in some way support the underdog.
The competitors to the telcos do lobby and the more customers they have the better. Please think about switching from the 'baby bells' to one of the upstarts eg. DirecTV or Speakeasy.
Some competitors offer great deals as well. For instance, bellsouth would charge me $120/month for a static IP, while a static IP is free with my DirecTV DSL service, and they don't mind me running any servers.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I never pay a dime for muzak and I pirate all my w4r3z off of P2P networks, so beating my investments in those two with EFF donations is a slam dunk *smile*
So where do I sign up?
Yes, the possible war is important. But we can't allow it to blind us.
Congress is going to remain in session no matter what happens, and even the most violent war possible still will not take up all of their time. Which is to say, non-war laws will be passed as well, and those laws will be just as legally valid as any other.
The Content Cartel isn't going to take a break from lobbying Congress during the war, and if we do, then their laws will get passed without resistance. When the war is over, their laws will be hard to get off the books.
WARNING: Do not leave Congress unattended.
Playing DVDs on an open source OS is not a right, in any sense of the word. Please don't cheapen the Constitution by equating that with, for example, the right to free speech.
> How many people have given to [the] EFF more
> money than they have given to their local telecom
> to give them shitty DSL service?
This is pretty easy to do when your local (independent) telco offers no DSL service, shitty or otherwise (not that I could afford it anyway).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I don't think so. The mass of open source advocates I know are advocates not because of the dollar cost but because of the merits of open source itself. The source is open, and is modifiable and redistributable. This means that a developer with a good idea can apply it to an existing tool without reinventing the entire tool, assuming you preserve the license on your new product. This allows many great minds to contribute to a project rather than a closed group.
I do contribute money to a few of my favorite projects because I want to do my small part to ensure their future development.
Think free as in speech, not free as in beer - I'm sure you've heard that one before.
James Bond movie from Kazaa $20.
Copy of Windows XP from my last visit to Russia $200.
Brittney Spears latest copied from a friend $15
See, I'm doing my part. Using their arguments I'm costing them a fortune!
knock knock
Oh shit!
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
;-)
Good to know I'm not the only one who actually judge people by their mail client...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Pronounced like this:
"NASA", not "the N.A.S.A"
"the EFF", not "Efffff"
Hrm, and the FBI and the CIA too. I stand corrected. Thanks!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
the moment their spending rises significantly over their governmental salary, launch a small investigation and find where the money came from. if it came from any lobby, throw that person in jail and backfill his government seat.
:-(
Unfortunately, first it would be necessary to delegalize form of bribery called "lobbying". Fat chance that those who get money this way would pass any law thay would stop it
The only way appears to be "raise more money and buy them back".
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
I strongly believe that the battles that are coming will require that FSF (where I work) and EFF both be as strong as possible. I pay $107.40 annually for my home Internet service (a cheap 56K dialup). I am today renewing my annual donation to EFF, increasing my usual amount from $65 to $107.40. I just yesterday pledged $120 to FSF for 2003. (Eben Moglen, BTW, recently gave substantially more than that). I hope that you will choose to support both organizations at the same level as your ISP charges (or split the amount of your annual ISP charges equally between FSF and EFF).
Sincerely,
Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director, Free Software Foundation
Microsoft products and revenue channels are for joe six-pack. If you disagree with this, YOU ARE joe six-pack.
An incisive argument indeed! How can we argue with such breathtaking sophistry :)
As an ex military tech, I am disgusted that a Navy ship was put in a position so that it could be disabled, dead in the water, by a single instance of a Microsoft product.
I just researched this (via the incredibly in-depth and accurate research tool known as Google), and it seems that much quoted story has been embellished a bit, i.e.:
Not quite as good a story as "Windows NT kills battleship", but life is often a disappointment.
Of course, I can find no hard reports of this incident, so the above could be just as made up as the opposing viewpoint. Shrug :)
Tim
so i've donated. not that there's anything wrong with lazy unskilled idealists.
but, what about the ultimate irony--setting up an account on amazon and other services through which we can buy our cd's (if we choose to do so any longer), dvd's (getting less and less likely), and books (i do know there are libraries, damn them for making me buy books, more books, lovely books...)! this would be like automatic donations.
Hi, I'm the guy who made the Lessig's Challenge website. I'd like to address some of the concerns which have been raised with the idea.
To my doubters: This isn't about a fundraising drive for the EFF (though I think you should join. Did you know the EFF only has 7,000 members? You can make your voice heard in the way the EFF operates if you join). It isn't about me buying cool stuff and writing it off as hurting the MPAA.
It's about supporting a different way to do things than the MPAA and RIAA. They want to lock up content and charge you every time you view it. They want to prevent you from viewing DVDs on Linux. And we help them do it. Every time you buy a CD, every time you go to a movie, you help them take away your freedom.
It's time to fight back. We can fight back not only by giving money to the EFF and the ACLU and the Free Software Foundation and Digital Consumer -- orgainizations which will fight against the media oligarchy -- but also by helping those artists and programmers who are outside the system. If they can make a living without turning to the RIAA or MPAA, the media oligarchy will not survive for long.
I'm not asking you to boycott these orgainizations entirely because it's not really plausable. Everyone likes to go see a movie now and then, everyone likes to listen to the radio or buy a few CDs. What I'm challenging you to do is to keep track of how much you're giving to the oligarchy (to take away your freedom) and counter that with a donation to people who will fight against that.
Here are a few suggestions:
The list goes on and on.
I get my DSL not from a monopoly, nor a company that sells content, and certainly not one that tries to restrict what services I can run. Covad might be a couple more bucks a month, but if more people would sign up with such businesses, we'd have fewer worries about AOL/TimeWarner/BabyBells.
While I'd argue that a phone line is probably a necessity, high-speed access is not. Nor are CDs, DVDs, or video rentals. These are all choices people make on a daily basis, by those who are either oblivious to the onslaught of legislation that is eating away at their rights as consumers, or who simply don't care enough.
Simple self-discipline will go a long way...give up some short-term convenience in order to accomplish a long-term objective. If consumers stop paying the RIAA and MPAA to lobby for both the rediculous laws and the arcane technology 'solutions' they're proposing, chances are, they'll stop doing it.
I saw this in a recent issue of Wired magazine:
Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation--
Analog to digital converters. For years, the tech savvy have laughed at digital rights management on the theory that no potection could stop you from putting a microphone in front of a speaker. Well, what if every A/D converter incorporated lockware that prevents unauthorized digital recording? The MPAA has proosed this as their preferred fix for the "analog hole." It's the next stoin th emarch to Senator Hollings' Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Acts dystopic, where all digital technology is redisigned by the Feds to Hollywood's specs.
This is serious business. How much more of this are people going to tolerate? The point is that we don't have to buy this stuff. All we as consumers have to do is tell the RIAA/MPAA to keep their 'content', and we'll look/wait for an alternative.
The problem is that it is NOT clear.
When I buy a DVD, I am not presented with a contract from the license holders that I have to sign.
It has never been illegal to use DeCSS or libdvdcss to play DVDs in most of Europe or Australia or indeed anywhere in the world except the United States. Until that changes, I think people in the United States have a legitimate gripe.
If you don't want me to use free software to play DVDs, then say so in a contract and give me the choice of whether or not to sign it. Buying a special-interest law like the DMCA is, frankly, more sickening than anything that anyone on the free software side has ever done.
Joining an organization like the EFF is great--really. I'm a member, and you should be too. But if you really want to be effective in changing the policies that effect you, there are cheaper and better things you can do. The refrain here on /. is that Big Evil Corporations do whatever they want. As a political scientists, I can tell you that's only half true. In general, big corporations and special interests only win on issues that are out of the public eye. In other words, issues members of congress don't get bothered about.
Forget all this stuff about emailing your representative--most (though not all!) members of congress ignore email, because they get so much of it. Snail mail is the traditional way to go here. However, academic studies have shown that faxes and phone calls to congressional members' Washington office are the most effective in influencing policy. A few short phone calls are a lot cheaper than a membership in the EFF. And what sort of a geek are you if you can't get your computer to send a fax?
So what the fuck are you waiting for? Find out who your Senators and Rep is, and pick up the phone.
Say, "My name is Joe Hacker, a I'm a constituent and regular Slashdot reader. I use the Linux operating system on my computer and I'm a member of the open source software community. I'm deeply concerned about digital rights issues. I want to know where Senator X / Rep. Y stands on these issues."
Force them to articulate an opinion, and ask them to send you a packet outlining the member's positions on digital rights issues, the Microsoft Anti-Trust action, online privacy, the DMCA, etc. I guarantee you that if only 10% of Slashdot readers had called up their elected representatives, 80% of the crappy legislation we have to deal with wouldn't have been passed in the first place.
The EFF is a non-profit and forbidden to spend a single dollar on political campaigning. Even with a billion dollars, they can't get rid of Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings and the rest of our enemies.
Without somebody making sure the firehose of bad law gets turned off in DC, all EFF can do is give some of us who make good test cases a bit of shelter from the flood, and when they occasionally win, the rest of us will get help. At least those of us who can afford legal counsel when the C&Ds show up will. Also remember not all the laws that threaten our rights and our jobs are actually unconstitutional, just dangerously stupid, and that no matter how good the Constitutional arguments are at the Supreme Court level, the Supremes are not especially friendly towards the rights of individuals against that of either the government or major corporations.
The people including Lessig who think non-profit traditional geek activism has the slightest chance of protecting us against what's coming down are living in a fantasy world.
A political action committee (PAC) created by credible people (credible means they're raised $1M before announcing their public existence) is the only solution that will get us permanent relief from bad law. We have to punish our enemies and reward our friends. That's the only thing that'll make this problem stop.
Tech Public Policy stuff
If you want to support EFF or other nonprofit organizations, you may be better off donating directly than going through the Combined Federal Campaign, which is administered by the local (D.C.) United Way.
The United Way in D.C. has been dogged by scandal because of improper financial management.
An article last week in the Washington Post reports "A new audit of the local United Way's handling of federal employee donations shows that the group held onto about $1.3 million it should have distributed to charities, took an unexplained $3 million short-term loan from the contributions and ran up more than $120,000 in questionable or unsupported expenses."
The article also notes "A federal grand jury began investigating the Washington area United Way this summer after revelations that the organization had withheld donations from charities, inflated its donation totals and allowed a former executive to take a retirement payment that was not authorized by the pension's rules."
Automated charitable payroll deductions through CFC may be convenient, but at what cost?
Why didn't the grammar police notice the use of "poignant" where "pointed" was meant? Eloquence's ineloquence brought a tear to my eye.
I used to give the EFF money, and now I don't, for precisely the reason you cite -- I disagree with them whole-heartedly on a couple issues they're totally, utterly wrong about (particularly, their constant, wrong-headed attacks on spam-lists as being anti-free-speech, as if my decision to use the SBL somehow gags an activist, or is not a personal decision like chosing which newspaper to buy).
I won't give money to support an organization that makes such awful decisions and is unwilling to listen to reasonable arguments.
If you're like me, pick your fights more specifically -- donate to individual legal funds, find smaller, more issue-oriented causes.
-- q
To play DVDs on Linux, you need to break the law, in America and soon elsewhere as well.
That's not true. To play DVDs on Linux FOR FREE, you need to break the law. There'd be nothing illegal against someone creating a closed-source DVD player that actually went through the trouble of licensing the DVD decoder, like every other software entity has to do.
If it was important enough to enough people who would drop $20 on it, you'd see a commercial Linux DVD player overnight.
Sad isn't it? It would be great to expect my elected officials to spend their time keeping us safe, improving health care and education, rebuilding highways and bridges - and what is happening to our environment and ozone lately? But unfortunately while we are all preoccupied with a potential WWIII, a few greedy corporate cartels are taking advantage and whittling away at our fundamental rights and freedoms.
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.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.
This seems like "If you're not 100% for us, you must be against us."
The EFF does not in any way support spammers, any more than the ACLU is a Nazi-supporting organization because they defended their right to march in Skokie. The EFF defends principles, and thinks that government regulation of E-mail and vigilante justice are not the best answers to spam. I get 230 spams a day personally. Trust me, I hate it even more than you do.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Because we aren't privy to the internal accounting data of a movie studio, and we probably wouldn't have the time to wade through it if we were, we can't accurately answer the following very important question:
When I pay $7.50 to watch Lord of the Rings, how much of that is funding the MPAA's legal efforts?
I might enjoy the movie enough to see it several times. While I might be fully in favor of rewarding New Line Cinema for bankrolling this risky project, and I might be fully in favor of Peter Jackson raking in the royalties on his excellent work, I can't tell whether or not I'm *matching* funding to the EFF unless I know how much of that ticket price went to "the enemy" the EFF fights. I could just do matching funds and say for each $7.50 I spend on any movie I'll donate $7.50 to the EFF, but that gets a bit excessive very fast.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So as long as 1% of the money spent on a product goes to something you don't like, you shouldn't spend the other 99% on the product either, even though it goes to the things you *do* like and want to support? The frustration with using the free market power to vote with your wallet is that most purchase prices include a heck of a lot of "riders" you are also voting for, just like a bill before Congress. And, just like a congressman you are stuck where the only way to vote against those riders you don't like is to simultaneously vote against the rest of the bill that you would otherwise have supported. When you support the making of good high fantasy movies, like LOTR and want to see hollywood make more, the only way to "vote for" that is to also "vote for" the DMCA as a small rider tacked on to your ticket price.
Asking people to never support these riders EVER isn't a practical solution unless you plan to move up into the mountains and live as a hermit. The solution of making sure you give more money (votes) to the opposition than you do via incedental riders on your ticket prices, CD-R prices, and so on, is certainly sub-optimal. But it's the only practical way short of not being a participant in the modern marketplace at all.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
As long as they are opposed to CAUCE, I am opposed to the EFF. Under no circumstances will I support an organisation that is determined to see that we don't get a law banning spam.
It really doesn't matter how much other good they might do, their support of spammers (including Hamidi <spit>) more than cancels out the good stuff
The majority of people don't know a damned thing about Linux. They hardly know anything about Windows. Now I won't say they aren't better off with Windows as they probably are. But the fact is that they (customers) are just plain and simple not making that choice on the basis of knowing anything about either one.
Your argument about why MS wants Windows on every PC shipped is also bogus. Thats what the PR department wants you to believe. The real reason it started was because of a competitor called DR-DOS. Some manufacturers were starting to ship PCs with DR-DOS instead of MS-DOS. Machines without an OS were not the issue, nor was Linux. And you can see further evidence that this is the case because this contract with Microsoft doesn't even allow a machine to be shipped with an alternate operating system if the customer does ask for it. Try calling up one of the big PC makers (e.g. the ones that would hurt bad if Microsoft yanked it's contract) and ask for some desktop machine or even a Laptop to be shipped with Linux instead of Windows (and without paying Microsoft for something you don't get).
I was using someone else's Windows 2000 and Word 2000 the other day because I needed to convert an HTML file to Word DOC format. Should be simple! It wasn't. I brought a floppy with the original file (read only), and a new blank formatted floppy. I started up Word and loaded the HTML file from the first floppy. Then I changed floppies and had Word store the document in Word format. The failed because it has the original file still "open" from the first floppy, and this being a different floppy, it got a error from the underlying I/O system while trying to write (maybe because it remembered the original floppy was read only). What I ended up having to do was have Word save the document on disk, then close Word and restart it, load the document back now from the hard disk, and then save it to the 2nd floppy. Maybe I should have just done this on Linux with OpenOffice or something and saved the hassle.
I've installed Linux and Windows both many hundreds of times. The former generally to upgrade or repurpose a machine. The latter usually because it just plained needed it with the very same version again after a few months of "software degrade". And you're trying to tell me that my experiences with Windows that convince me it's crap is elitist? Hardly. Linux may not be easy like Windows is, and certainly confuses most non-geek users, especially if they are installing it. But it's just not in the crappy league Windows is. Of course I'll still recommend Windows for the naive users of computers. And it's sad that they are better off with crap. But they don't have to ask because that's the default, anyway.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
that large portions of the movies mentioned in the blurb were created using OSS/Free Software. No doubt, they will be available on DVD, requiring some illegal activity to view them on my Linux-powered PC, if I choose to view them at all. (No, I don't have a stand-alone DVD player)
So, guess where my money goes?
C|N>K
If you're a "lazy unskilled idealist" you probably have no money.
Unless Daddy left it to you. Where do you think most "foundation money" comes from? What got RMS so much attention? Foundation money.
And while I'm at it, why should I donate money to the EFF when I don't support every cause they believe in? What's their administrative overhead anyway?
If there were a defense fund for a particular case that I thought was important, and I had the money, I'd consider donating to that particular defense fund. I have no desire to join a broad "movement" that takes in far too many ideas with which I disagree.
In other words, Larry can take his challenge and stick it. What next? The Larry Lessig 700 Club?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
No. An acronym is an abbreviation you pronounce.
No doubt this new meaning (the first letter of some words) will creap into acceptance by sheer repetition, but not yet.
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
http://d
-Dave
I totally understand your point; it's just that you're saying two different things.
To say that it's illegal to play DVDs on Linux is untrue -- you just have to go through the same process every other company does and pay the DVD decoder license.
To your second point, yes, the product couldn't be freely distributed, but that a different issue! If it's important to you, why wouldn't you pay a company a couple bucks to develop it (and the DVD decoder license)? I don't see how it's that different from any of the good closed-source Linux packages that people see fit to pay for (admittedly there are few, but if this is something you really want, why not just pay for it?).
This is not a case of Linux being picked on; it's a case of Linux having to play by the rules of the rest of the world. If Linux users were willing to pay for it, they'd get it.
It may not be nessesary, but the question you need to ask is "are you willing to give it up?"
Are you (and I am refering to you the poster) willing to give up highspeed internet access and go back to 56k? Are you willing to use a no name local ISP (assuming you can find one) to avoid funding the giants? Are you willing to stop watching all TV (not that hard) stop watching movies and stop listening to the radio or buying CDs? Are you willing (assuming you haven't already) to go 100% opensource? That means no commercial software whatsoever. Are you willing to stop buying from corporations period in order to prove your point? Can you?
The problem is not nessesarily that people aren't seeing what they need to protest, it's that they aren't willing to give up what they have. The crisis is not to the point where people feel they are better off without. And untill that point is reached, resistance will be minimal.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
So I can either choose to pay for open source software, or I can choose to pay for commercial software. Just like right now I can choose to pay for one vendor's software or I can choose to pay for another.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Not that you really care, but an attack on Iraq would simply be finishing what we started long ago. What the "make love not war" hippies fail to realize is that if you get into a conflict where the enemy want's you dead, there is no such thing as negotations. They want you dead. Period. There are only 2 ways to solve such a conflict. Obliterate and destroy your enemy or beat the living shit out of them so that they whole heartedly surrender. These may seem very harsh and evil tactics, but america has this little thing about cleaning up after it's messes. Case in point Japan and Germany after WWII. IN germany, we obliterated the Nazi party and it's army. Completely destroyed. Those who were not killed were captured and tried and scentenced to appropriate punishments. Germany itself was devistated, and we came back and helped clean up. In japan, we beat the shit out of them with the bomb. It scared them, it proved to them beyond a resonable doubt that we could destroy them instantly. They surrendered whole heartedly. We came back and helped clean up. Notice in both cases, we have had no problems since.
Now take a look at conflicts where we did not finish what we started. Vietnam & Korea. In both of those cases we fought, went to the "peace tables" talked, reached an agreement, left, and watched in disbelief as the people we had just had peace talks with turned arround and started all over again. If you do not stop the enemy completely, you can not win.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
That's utter and complete nonsense. It's a case of Linux/Open Source being picked on because it would be completely legal to develop an open source, freely distributed DVD player if it wasn't made illegal by the DMCA. To say that Linux should play "by the rules of the rest of the world" is to say "OK, so they criminalized open source, deal with it, use closed source software".
The problem is not nessesarily that people aren't seeing what they need to protest, it's that they aren't willing to give up what they have.
This has been my point all along - you've just stated it more succinctly. This is also exactly what I find so mind-boggling, because when people fail to act, they're only delaying the inevitable.
There isn't just one bad experience. I only gave one out of many, simply because it was very recent and fresh in my memory. And in Unix you don't have to close down the application to be able to release the floppy. The directory is not in use once the application closes the file, as long as you didn't do something stupid like change the current directory to that floppy. And automounting and autounmounting can be done. I've done it before (I just happen to avoid floppies lately because they are so lame).
But you do seem to be one of those people who, when someone else gives one example, jumps to the conclusion that one example is all there is. Not true. But based on my experience with people, those who make such assumptions are generally not open minded. I am, but you have years and years of frustrations with Microsoft Windows to overcome. No, Linux isn't perfect, but it's openness at least makes it easy to accomplish most anything you need to. Windows is a royal PITA in that department.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Nope. Attacking the opponent because he can't even defend his own position. Attacking the opponent who makes the false assumption that because one example problem is given that there is only one problem. I do enjoy a good debate, and it is even more enjoyable when I have a good opponent who knows his material well, and also doesn't use faulty logic. It's a shame this one just degraded into flaws in the arguments themselves, and not the subjects being debated about. This didn't fit the description of either enjoyable or debate. I'll be looking for other threads for someone more qualified who can defend Microsoft Windows. I do know there are plenty because I have debated them before (and no, I don't always win, and often I do learn things I didn't know). I won't be back to this thread because it's a waste of time. If you want to have the last word, then post a reply.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
As for Harry Potter, I doubt I will bring the family to see that, as it kind of glosses over just which fate will befall those who practice witchcraft and necromancy. Perhaps the seventh film will tie it all together, Harry Potter and the Abyss of Eternal Torment and Damnation.
::sighs::Such ignorance. So sad. Point one, it's freaking fiction man, get over it. Two, do not damn those who you know nothing about. I happen to know quite a few Wiccans, and they lead very good lives. I've never seen one of them lay a hand on another person. I can't say the same for Catholics, whose fanatics have historically spilled more innocent blood than Islamic terrorists can hope to achieve any time soon.
Posting with religious irrationality will always get you modded down. Other Catholics have posted successfully and have been well received here, I suggest you try searching for their example. And yes, I like to respond to your hopelessly misguided religious postings, if you haven't noticed already. Any retort?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?