Interview with EFF's Fred Von Lohmann

scubacuda writes "Tech Focus has an --> interview with EFF's Fred Von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Covered in the interview: Kazaa, commercial skipping, DMCA, 802.11b networks, congressmen friendly to the idea of "fair use", and how to "make a difference"." Update: 01/08 17:42 GMT by M : Link changed to reduce the load on Techfocus.

Comments

How you can *really* make a difference...

[Bonker]

"Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty."

"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul."

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

"Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man"

- Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi

Nonviolent disobedience people. Download the music, rip the DVD's, skip the commericials, encrypt the email. Don't buy the X-Box or the PS2. Don't go to see Disney movies. Don't give in. Don't give up.

Re:How you can *really* make a difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great points, but most people here want to have their cake and eat it too. Giving up what they feel they are entitled to (in this case, free music/movies) simply isn't a feasable option.

Re:How you can *really* make a difference...

[aborchers]

My first impulse is to flame you for conflating MKG with a bunch of hooligans and thieves, but the vaguery of your language makes your position unclear so can you clarify something for me?

By "Download the music, rip the DVDs" are you suggesting that one download copies of music that have been posted without the copyright owner's permission and rip the DVDs for purposes of sharing? Or are you suggesting that people download music that has been made freely available by its producers and rip the DVDs for their own personal use in ways that the entertainment cartel doesn't necessarily approve of (e.g. making it available on your home LAN).

This distinction is the deciding factor between whether you are a conscientous protestor or just another criminal trying to justify your theft with the trappings of civil disobedience.

Bad Writing on TechFocus

[goldspider]

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an membership organization that has spearheaded many..."

I hate to play the role of Grammar Police, but it's discouraging to see that TechFocus writers haven't even grasped the basics of proper English grammar.

It's supposed to be "a membership organization", not "an membership"!!

In the Real World, such poor use of the English language reflects very poorly on the organization.

Re:Optimism: The Media Monsters Will Lose

[BigBadBri]

When myself or my 8 year old cousin (who teaches his Mom how to use the computer) are in a senate office or a courtroom as judge, the media companies won't fair so well.

The trouble is, it's not likely to be you or your 8yr old cousin in the Senate or the judges office - it's likely to be the same sort of venal bastards as are there now.
Unless you radicalise your peers who are going into the law or politics, and impress on them the need to protect fair use, to take a balanced view of IP rights, etc. etc., they'll blithely take the **AA dollar and sing their tune.
Remember, there are very few Jeffersons and Lincolns around these days, and if they were, they'd be unlikely to put up with all the shit involved in getting into office.

Still, at least you haven't got idiots of Tony Blair's calibre in charge - Dubya's at least got the excuse of moderate intellect to justify his actions...

This issue is more important and far ranging than

[dpilot]

simple matters of P2P and copyright.

It really amounts to the beginning of the Decline of Western Civilization.

Go back to around the tenth century, for a moment. Islamic civilization was supreme. Science was seen as learning about God and his works, rather than being in conflict with religion. Eventually the Islamic dominance came under seige for other reasons, but they lost that attitude toward science. European civilization picked it up, and the era of Western dominance began.

Nor do I mean to hold up Science as a religion. For my working definition, Science is the mindset that we can study and attempt to understand the Universe and its contents. For the religious, this really is learning about God and his works, essentially the old Muslim belief.

But now for the decline of the West... We have apparently decided that the current business models of the entertainment industry are more important than digital innovation. Both the legislation *and the attitude under which we crafted that legislation* are significant. Recently there was a blurb about the Bush Administration wanting science to have a "conservative tilt." Science has always been used and tilted, but AFAIK never as a piece of public policy. New Age pseudoscience is on the rise - creation "science", crystals, magnets, copper bracelets, etc.

Essentially, the West is beginning to turn its collective back on science and progress - to remain comfortable in what is known or at least doesn't require really hard work. (like math) Most of what I mention happens in the US, but those same things have analogs around the rest of the Western world, so don't pretend non-US shouldn't worry.

Obviously this isn't universal. There are people fighting these trends, there are people still studying science, math, etc. Presumably the trend is still reversible, I hope. But it's there, it's growing, and it lends another chunk of urgency to the FSF's fight.

Re:Killing the market

[phorm]

But it's not up to the government to tax the consumer for big-business. In fact that is very, very wrong.

It's also stupid for government to attempt (or succeed in) passing legislation that allows said companies to attack individuals, whether legally or via the previous RIAA-will-hack-you. P2P has an increasing amount of legal uses (distributed computing etc) and not everyone who trades music/video-clips or burns a CD is doing so illegally, as not all content is RIAA copyrighted.

Can I go around killing stupid people because I feel in the long run the human gene pool will benefit by having less of a chance of propgating stupidity within the human species?

Should I go around sueing people just because their product or other's use of said product conflicts with my business model? Should I be able to attack anyone who uses said product, based on the slightest evidence that it is used against me - even if this might not be the case. The RIAA seems to think so.

Re:I agree with the EFF on spam

[Jay Maynard]

The problem with your approach is that it doesn't scale. If only 1% of US businesses sent one unsolicited commercial email a year, there would be over 7000 messages a day to delete and/or opt out of. I've got a lot better things to do with my time than unsubscribing from things I never subscribed to.

Electronic mail is not an advertising medium. It's a one-to-one communications medium. Allowing anyone, commercial or not, to hijack it is what will destroy it...and that's happening today.

Re:You miss the point

[catman]

Uh - my point is that 100% of spam is just plain
criminal. That is, according to the laws where I live. If the 23 states of the US that have outlawed spam actually enforced those laws, maybe a small dent in the flow could be seen. Then again, spammers would just move their operations elsewhere. Ralsky is mostly spamming from .cn these days, isn't he?

Free speech? Okay - let them have an ISP that lets them spam all they want. Exellent - everyone
can block that ISP off and forget them. Free speech does not compel anyone to listen, does it?

I do shovel snow outside my house, actually, I just take exception to the neighbour dumping his snow on my property. Especially when the temperature is below -15 C :-)