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EFF Chairman Interviewed
mpawlo writes "I have just published an interview with Mr Brad Templeton, chairman of the board of the EFF, over at Greplaw. Mr Templeton presents, among other things, his view on spam and freedom of speech among. If that's not enough, there is also a rather unique tongue-in-cheek interview with Professor Lessig."
I donated about a $100 per year to EFF foundation before, but I will stop the practice this year. I am not sure what the goal of the foundation and how it helps the simple folk anymore.
A friend of mine lived in Germany and was harassed by the local hand of IFPI, which I guess would correspond to RIAA over here. All I wanted from EFF was a simple consultation on what should be done. Specifically since the German IFPI wanted a $300 fine not to take the matter to the court.
Two e-mails to EFF from their contact page and dead silence, as if you're e-mailing a black hole. If I had not donated $300 to EFF in years before but just gave the money to my friend to pay the fine, I'd be better off.
Well surprising it is especially to check out spammers to see if they have a history before they signup for account. Of course groups.google.com makes it all nice and easy to search
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
even though USENET has stagnated and not added much new since the 80s, it's still the best way to read an online conversation. None of the web message boards come even close to the speed and ease of use.
USENET has not stagnated. Not much has been added since the 80s because nothing more was needed. Even with all this p2p nonsense, USENET continues in its near-perfect simplicity and utility. If you're one of these puckered-rectum FAQ Nazis, USENET is chaos. If you're willing to do due diligence of your own filtering and scanning, USENET consistently delivers great text info and binaries.
"A friend of mine lived in Germany and was harassed by the local hand of IFPI,"
Is that something like Internet Fuhrer Polizei... ?
Among what? Among other things, his view... among. Makes a lot of fucking sense. Nice editing! You are really shining today slashdot.
# You were involved in the early days of Usenet. Today, Usenet news seems to me to be only slightly more useful than the average Nigerian scam letter. Are you disappointed?
Not at all. What's amazing is that even though USENET has stagnated and not added much new since the 80s, it's still the best way to read an online conversation.
I couldn't disagree more. While there are definitely groups that have unfortunately descended into the chaos of uncontrollable spam and retarded flame-wars, many are thriving with great information. Even the ones infested with crap can be useful by using Google Groups search to glean the content out.
Quote--
Most great things in the world are for girls. I'm happy to embrace as many as I can.
(Unless he's French. In this case, I forbid him to m'embrasser.)
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
Professor Lawrence Lessig says "Most great things in the world are for girls. I'm happy to embrace as many as I can." All your base are belong to the girls
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
It still amazes me how little they understood about the incentives for innovation, and how little their incorrect predictions mattered to their careers/credibility. Not too surprisingly, many of these same economists have argued that a private licensing of spectrum through auctions will increase efficiency, even as it kills innovation.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
http://www.algonet.se/~mpawlo/friends.html
The club of Rome's crucial mistake is that they use the same model used to study bacterial growth and apply it to people. They totally ignored the fact that people can react to changes in their environment through invention. They never saw the green revolution coming. And belive you me, if the world was really in danger of starving, nobody would listen to anyone whining about the dangers of genetically modified crops.
I wonder. On the one hand, there are 60 million Americans out there ending the old media cartels one download at a time, and that's a very good thing and it's revolutionary. But on the other hand, the online community seems utterly paralyzed in terms of taking real political action against those powers-that-be who are trying to take our rights away. Whether it be privacy or the DMCA or monopoly behavior, everytime they announce some new scheme to disenfranchize us, the answer from the online community is a deafening silence.
The EFF is a very good organization, and they're doing a lot of good work on our behalf. But they're more like the ACLU of cyberspace than, say, the Sierra Club or NRA. What we need is a membership organization that can carefully target politicians like Tauzin or Berman who do not vote our way. When millions of voters and campaign contributors speak, then, and only then, does the government listen.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
How about we respect the opinions of the US Supreme Court for a change, and not allow software patents at all?
There's something very ironic about Brad Templeton, who once proposed the banning of alt.binaries.pictures.* on copyright grounds, being the head of the EFF, when the greatest threat to "electronic freedom" is copyright.
Brad Templeton in 1993:
'The EFF is against copyright infringement on principle. Copyright infringement is, as of this time, illegal. Those who contribute to the EFF because they are 'for file sharing' and then share copyrighted music do a double disservice to the organization - first, they have a mistaken impression of what the EFF supports (which is the free distribution of information not bound by copyright or other restrictions), and two, they no doubt share this mistaken belief with others, giving the impression that the EFF by proxy supports copyright infringement over P2P networks to further a cause of limited copyright and limited copyright rights.'
This really is simple. 'Copyright infringement is wrong.' Period, end of press release. From all the posts I see on slashdot and the number of people I know who file trade (and their rationale), I have to wonder if that one sentence press release would completely blow them away.
I've come to the conclusion recently that the RIAA intends to use a squeeze and destroy tactic to accomplish their ends. Copyright infringement on P2P networks won't be tolerated. Period. If they can't use existing law to stop that, they'll get legislators to pass new ones. The only reason that some laws proposed haven't yet passed is because I believe many legislators are still doing a 'wait and see' to see if the problem goes away without further decreasing the rights of people to do it.
But if that doesn't happen, I have very little doubt that CBDTPA and the 'hack computers that are file trading' laws will pass with fanfare, because they will finally 'stop the stealing', assuming it goes on that long. At that point, all we have left to trust are the courts to overturn the law. We've seen how successful that's been with the DMCA.
I believe the EFF needs to make a firm stand about this issue, because if people are let to believe that if only they fileshare enough, if only enough people do it, that somehow, legislators will just conveniently forget that copyright infringement is still infringement and drop the whole thing. In fact, I believe that should it come to that, the U.S. government will pass a bill making copyright infringement in certain circumstances (like P2P sharing) a CRIMINAL offence, rather than a civil one. And there isn't a single infringement of anybody's basic rights if that happens - a lot of people will just find themselves in jail, and Congress has every right to do it.
I believe the EFF is obligated to, while supporting the principle of P2P file sharing technologies, also make crystal clear that every infringement that occurs on those networks hurts the very cause that the EFF is trying to underscore.
I won't give the EFF a single penny until something like this happens. As is, I believe the EFF is giving a bad message to file sharers: 'We're behind you.' That's not a good long term message. It should be, 'We're behind your using these services legally, and we will spit on you if you knowingly infringe people's copyrights - because that is not what we're about.' I'm sorry for the rant/flame, and it reads this way, but I am quite concerned about this trend. Taking care of egregious copyright length and bredth is NOT part of the same argument behind P2P sharing. Mixing them is creating an extremely dangerous mixed message.
I don't want to see laws passed to punish those that don't get the message fast enough - because that message isn't spelled out to them.
Copyright is not the threat to freedom. Indeed, copyright will be one of the utterly necessary tools to secure it, though it may not resemble its current form much. Copyright abuse is a threat to freedom, and the inability of the current system to correctly use copyright is a threat to freedom, but the answer is not to give up all copyright; that's tantamount to just giving up, because with no protection from the corporations, we lose, immediately.
" # Speaking of copyright - what would a Lessig balance of copyright look like? Would you regulate books and computer programs different? 14 year term, renewable to 28 for all but computer programs. Deposit requirement. Registration requirement. Vastly limited "derivative rights". 10 years for software max, if and only if, the source code is deposited. No copyright protection at all for any software whose source code is not deposited. "
The idea that you need to deposit a work to copyright it is ridiculous. It's a scam where "the public" tries to benefit unfairly from an individual by forcing him to turn over a work to the public in order to get protection from the public. In the US, if I write something, whether I release it to no one or sell to anyone, I still retain the exclusive copyright. This is particularly important in the case of software, since there is not necessarily a motive to sell the source to the public. Lessig wants to force every company into a BSD style coding license after 10 years, however, or receive no protection for written software (if you refuse to deposit). This is a direct attack on proprietary software, as well as GPLed software, since both lose copyright in a very short time, after which anyone is free to copy out of a public archive and do as they wish with it.
Vote for Pedro
That copyright length is a dream come true.
:).
However, isn't Lessig's ideas on copyright length against the Berne Convention(50+ years)?
Need to get everyone to withdraw from that treaty
-Quotes from Interview-
# Speaking of copyright - what would a Lessig balance of copyright look like? Would you regulate books and computer programs different?
14 year term, renewable to 28 for all but computer programs.
Deposit requirement.
Registration requirement.
Vastly limited "derivative rights".
10 years for software max, if and only if, the source code is deposited.
No copyright protection at all for any software whose source code is not deposited.
Heh..
Didn't knew "ombudsman" was an english word... cool
Must be a fairly "new" word right?
Ombudsman, It's scandinavian.
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
That copyrights are not a right, and aren't as great as they're cracked up to be, and infact they're outright immoral. That they riun peoples lives who are most often creative people and artists (look at the crap in hollywood culture), and they stagnate the entire economey except for the infinitesimal few (whoopie, I can get a 100$ copyright monopoly, but loose out on over a trillion $ worth of info that's out there - thanks)
Finally, as our society enters into the information age - there can be no middle ground. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate that you'll either half to controll all of it - or copyrights become unenforcable and minus well not exist. The big media industries know that and so should the EFF and the rest of us.
Oh and one more thing, I wish they would promote more civil disobedience, or defiance. When they always insist on working thru the system, they are just making us like cows going to the slaughter. Our strengths are technology, and we should use that in defiance - not be ashamed of it.
The EFF's major 'problem' is that they attempt to work on major issues long before most people would recognize that the issue exists. Back in 1989, how many people would know what a BBS is, let along why it isn't constitutional to seize an entire email server to check out one person's email? The EFF is fighting the equivalent of Physical and Link layer issues, while most people can only really get worked up about Application layer issues. The EFF's fights are the "why we need to protect plankton and krill" issues of the online world- critically important but doesn't have big-eyed sympathetic megafauna that photographs well symbols.
Nor does the EFF get to choose sympathetic posterboy cases. Much as the EFF would love to take on a "RIAA threatens to eat babies at the widows and orphans facility" case, the XXAA is never going to give them one. They get 2600, not the NYTimes. They get Hamadi, not the girl scouts.
But by fighting the one case early on, however obscure or unsympathetic, the EFF is preventing a whole timeline of worse court cases later on. So donate! with this quote from the interview in mind:
It is seriously morally wrong, always, for the economic or political benefit of one individual or group over one's peers, to prevent, regulate, or stifle the copying of information, expressions, and ideas by telling and enforcing the lie that those things which can be freely distributed, can not be.
You have an obligation to your brothers and sisters of this world to foster physical well being and to encourage and see to their intellectual and moral advancement, especially to do these things even when were you to negelect your obligations you could horde these common goods for yourself to raise yourself above your peers.
Put off the chains of your capitalist masters!
Workers of the world unite!
That said, the statement 'Copyright infringement is wrong.' is an very complicated set of concepts and assumptions boxed up in a seemingly simple set of 4 words. I think the EFF should and does focus on better statements like "Protecting free speech is right" and "Protecting technological innovation is right" and "Collateral damage from new laws is wrong."
A nowhere near good enough analogy is asking the AAA (American auto association) to state "Speeding is Wrong." Is it? Speeding as defined by who? Morally, legally or ethically wrong? How about when there are speed-traps? How about if the Congress made going 1 mile over the speed limit a felony offense? It is too complicated a set of issues to try to wrap up in a simple statement. The AAA is better off focusing on "Safe traffic speeds are right" and "well-designed highways are right."
I looked around the website recently, and even Googled about for it, but I've not seen a recent count on the number of people who are EFF members. If it's possible to disclose or at least approximate, I'd love to know how many of us exist.
The 2600 case came down to a legitimate business versus a couple pirates trying to weasel their way out of a lawsuit. The court didn't seem to realize how the DMCA could allow a single organization to regulate speech (it isn't just about code, it is also about movies, etc). The court was oblivious to the way the DMCA outlaws competition. The court didn't even address the argument that section 1201 is really a patent grant.
The EFF needs to do a better job educating the masses. They should put together educational material that articulates the effect various legal precedents will have. Joe Average should be able to go to the EFF's website, click one or two links, and have a good understanding of why the EFF opposes section 1201.
While I'm ranting, the EFF really needs to teach people a thing or two about spam. Recent proposals for authenticated email allow a single organization (the Certificate Authority) to sell the right to send spam, or even to censor ordinary people for arbitrary reasons. Recent proposals put forth patented standards that will block out open source, and even small ISPs. Microsoft, Yahoo, et al have been pushing spam proposals, not to eliminate spam, but to eliminate competition.