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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."
# 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.
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.
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.
What I mean is that USENET has stagnated, innovation wise. It's very difficult to do something new (both technologically, and socially) in USENET, and that's not because it's already perfect.
/. (Even though in total posting volume, /. is a tiny fraction of the size of USENET.)
:-)
The web is not this way. Anybody can build anything they can think of into a web site over a fairly broad range of possibles. It's their web site, there is nobody there to approve or disapprove. If people like it, they read the site, if not, they don't.
Proposing something new on USENET results in mostly flamewars. Imagine having to have a vote before you can put up a new website!
At the same time USENET retains some core functions not found on the web. In its true form -- reading news from a local or very nearby server at LAN speed -- it provides a response time that is unmatched. Instant response has a profound affect on UI. You can do things you would not tolerate doing with even a 500ms delay on your clicks as is typical even of fast web sites.
And it's aimed at conversation, with good thread support, fancy killfile facilities in many readers, and most importantly a basic understanding of what you have read and what you haven't. You can handle a much larger discussion group in USENET than you can with mailing lists, or web boards for example.
But, counter to this, web boards have had the ability to innovate. Slash was able to add the moderation point system because they wanted it to, and it's vital to a system as big as
USENET is not stagnant in terms of discussions, or the creation of alt groups, but go ahead and try to name the recent innovations there. DejaNews/Google is about the last thing to make a big difference, and that didn't even come from USENET.
I must say I wish I had seen this thread right away and then I could have done a "first post" and had the only such post to get modded up.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I can't think of a more critical time to support civil liberties and cyberliberties groups like the EFF in the face of the federal government's incursion into our privacy, corporations' surveillance of employees, and the entertainment industries' clampdown on our digital rights.
The EFF may not win every battle, but it's engaged and taking a leadership role in a number of legal struggles. I get two to three emails a week regarding bulletins, updates and legal developments. Not earthshaking, but at least they're in the trenches and on our side.