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."

Comments

Usenet not Useful?

[IcebergSlim]

# 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.

spam and copyright laws

[Trelane, the Squire]

Already, I notice more and more of my phone solicitations are done by cheaper labour in India. Telephony has become as global and cheap as E-mail, but some people don't know that yet.

and I'll bet when companies do realize this, and the calls start flowing as frequently as email spam, the backlash will be severe enough to take care of both problems. I just hope it doesn't destroy my freedoms with its severity.

Lessig on copyrights:

No copyright protection at all for any software whose source code is not deposited.

This struck me as reasonable. Either I trust the government to keep my stuff safe, or I try to keep it safe myself. It's when I try to keep it safe myself, yet task the government with going after anyone I say is using my stuff, that things get sticky... I could use the government to try to stop competition.

triumph of the commons

[urbazewski]

Not a lot, other than if that spectrum were made unlicenced, there would be an internet-like explosion of communications tech in wireless.

In fact, that's already going on, with just a few tiny bands opened up.

Oddly, a reverse of that tragedy of the commons I spoke about above, because spectrum allows sharing very nicely with everybody doing their own thing.

In the 90's a whole bunch of economists, led by Hal Varian at Berkeley and J. MacKie-Mason (still at Michigan I think), churned out a whole bunch of papers about the impending and inevitable "tragedy of the commons" on the Internet --- the whole enterprise was going to come to a grinding halt if one of their pricing schemes wasn't implemented soon.

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.

Is it a revolution?

[Phoenix666]

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.