EFF Chairman Interviewed

Maybe he could explain what they actually do by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-31 06:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:Maybe he could explain what they actually do by nomadic · 2003-07-31 06:44 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

The simple folk don't have computers, though. They live quiet, simple lives in their little simple huts, and their only entertainment comes from their simple folk dances.
Re:Maybe he could explain what they actually do by btempleton · 2003-07-31 07:51 · Score: 4, Informative

What E-mail address did you mail? While we can't help everybody who needs our help, particularly overseas -- wish we could -- if you mailed into a black hole something wrong happened, and I would like to find the cause and fix it.

We try to respond to all mail (though we get a fair bit of nutcase mail, you would be amazed, that we don't respond to) and we definitely should have given some answer to a plea for help.

If nothing else we would point somebody to the web sites we have built to deal with threats like these, including
Chilling Effects and Subpoena Defense.

--
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Re:Maybe he could explain what they actually do by aaronsorkin · 2003-07-31 19:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Usenet Useful by rf0 · 2003-07-31 06:34 · Score: 3, Informative

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

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Cheap UK and US VPS

USENET not stagnant by Anonymous Coward · 2003-07-31 06:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:USENET not stagnant by btempleton · 2003-07-31 07:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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 /. (Even though in total posting volume, /. is a tiny fraction of the size of USENET.)

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

Usenet not Useful? by IcebergSlim · 2003-07-31 06:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

# 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.

Lawrence Lessig owes me a hug! by otter42 · 2003-07-31 06:43 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

Most great things in the world are for girls? by civilengineer · 2003-07-31 06:48 · Score: 3, Funny

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

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New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year

Re:Most great things in the world are for girls? by jeffy124 · 2003-07-31 06:54 · Score: 3, Funny

All your base are belong to the girls

are you just figuring that out for the first time?

--
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.

spam and copyright laws by Trelane,+the+Squire · 2003-07-31 06:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:spam and copyright laws by RevMike · 2003-07-31 07:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

>>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.
I agree as well, although the 10 years might be a little steep for software. Patents should probably be thrown into the mix as well, with a graduated expiration based on the area of knowledge. Business Process patents would be very short - 3 years. Software patents would run about 7, perhaps. Things like pharmacueticals, with tremendous R&D costs, would still get protection for about 20 years.
The other issue with copyright I'd like to see addressed is "continuous use". My idea is that certain types of copyrighted work would continue to be protected provided that it was in continual use. For instance, since Disney continues to use the Mickey Mouse character on an ongoing basis, Mickey Mouse works continue to be covered by copyright. Ian Flemming's James Bond character also would be covered since every few years a new movie is released. Once a work is "abandoned" - not used for perhaps 5 years, however, a clock starts ticking for a copyright expiration in, say, 15 years rather than 75.
Taking a traditional Locke property view of copyrights: As long as a farmer is continuing to till his soil every season, there is no reson to take the farm away from him. Once he abandons his farm, perhaps because he can't till it profitably, others should have a chance to give it a try.
Re:spam and copyright laws by Trelane,+the+Squire · 2003-07-31 07:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

The other issue with copyright I'd like to see addressed is "continuous use". My idea is that certain types of copyrighted work would continue to be protected provided that it was in continual use. For instance, since Disney continues to use the Mickey Mouse character on an ongoing basis, Mickey Mouse works continue to be covered by copyright. Ian Flemming's James Bond character also would be covered since every few years a new movie is released. Once a work is "abandoned" - not used for perhaps 5 years, however, a clock starts ticking for a copyright expiration in, say, 15 years rather than 75
That sounds very reasonable. The only thing I might add would be the 'abandoned work timer' should be cumulative, imo. As in, a this work has a certain total amount of time it can be abandoned, so as to keep companies from doing somehting small every so often just to keep it alive.
Re:spam and copyright laws by Steve+B · 2003-07-31 07:22 · Score: 3, Insightful

This struck me as reasonable. Either I trust the government to keep my stuff safe, or I try to keep it safe myself.
Note that this is precisely the legal regime that applies to physical products -- you can either have a patent, or a trade secret, but not both.

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/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.

triumph of the commons by urbazewski · 2003-07-31 06:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.

Balance of copyright by Magic+Thread · 2003-07-31 07:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

From the Lessig interview:

# Speaking of copyright - what would a Lessig balance of copyright look like? Would you regulate books and computer programs different?

Deposit requirement.
Registration requirement.

Anyone else think these two are unreasonable? They deal no harm to huge corporations of the kind that now own our culture, but they would be a major obstacle to people who just want to make stuff. If I had to go fill out forms and spend money every time I wrote an article or composed a song, I would do much less of those things.

Re:Balance of copyright by RevMike · 2003-07-31 07:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

>>Deposit requirement.
>>Registration requirement.
Anyone else think these two are unreasonable? They deal no harm to huge corporations of the kind that now own our culture, but they would be a major obstacle to people who just want to make stuff. If I had to go fill out forms and spend money every time I wrote an article or composed a song, I would do much less of those things.
It depends alot on how difficult it is to register your work. If it was a simple and free web form/ftp to the library of congress, probably not big deal (to us - there would need to be methods for the non-computer literate as well).
If you needed to spend $10, you probably wouldn't bother with some things.
If you needed to spend $1000, well, that would really suck and would stifle creativity.
As a major side benefit, all the works would automatically be freely available from a set of libraries as soon as the copyrights expired.
Re:Balance of copyright by Elwood+P+Dowd · 2003-07-31 08:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

The whole point is that he doesn't want things like Slashdot comments to have automatic, near-infinite copyrights.

He wants most things (emails, notes, blogs) to be free of copyright. Copyright would only apply to things that actually had some cost in their production, and would not get produced without copyright.

That means that instead of having a giant WWW full of copyrighted material, you'd have a giant WWW full of the public domain.

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There are no trails. There are no trees out here.

Is it a revolution? by Phoenix666 · 2003-07-31 07:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

software patents by brlewis · 2003-07-31 07:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

How about we respect the opinions of the US Supreme Court for a change, and not allow software patents at all?

Re:Templeton as head of EFF is ironic by Sloppy · 2003-07-31 08:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

Copyright is hardly a serious threat to electronic freedom.

The things that are threatening electronic freedom are the perversions of copyright: access controls, enforced access controls (DMCA), ever-increasing retroactive term extensions, etc. Copyright all on its own, is a fair deal.

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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:Templeton as head of EFF is ironic by btempleton · 2003-07-31 08:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

So migration in your views is ironic?

It's the folks who hold exactly the same views as they did 10 years ago that I wouldn't trust.

The questions about the role of intellectual property on the net have been among the most new in cyberlaw. I've made a number of thoughts and predictions about how they will pan out or how they should. Some right, some wrong.

And I still defend copyright and disagree with those (inside the EFF or out) who want to simply dismantle it. But everybody at the EFF is bothered by the collateral damage caused by copyright holders attacking not infringement, but the underlying technologies which are being used for it.

--
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Re:Lessig's ideas are unconstitutional by ocelotbob · 2003-07-31 08:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

I disagree. How much software is commercially viable after 10 years? Besides, any law such as the one Lessig proposes would be consitutional as the constitution states:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Thus, as long as it could be proven that their requirements promotes progress, they can change the copyright laws, as long as it's for a limited time. Copyright's an unnatural right, designed soley to help society as a whole by promoting people to get out and market their works. If it's decided to put additional burdens on someone before they receive the benefits of copyright protection, then so be it.

Besides, most software is not commercially viable after a decade, so I fail to see how Lessig's proposal is unreasonable. Care to enlighten me?

--

Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses

The EFF doesn't find cute baby harp seal cases by geekotourist · 2003-07-31 09:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a side note, the EFF as a non-profit has strict rules about what it can do politically. Non-profits cannot support or fight against particular candidates, so another organization needs to do this. At the same time you still need the EFF's work to prevent the "Because the internet scares me I'll weaken it" attempts by politicians and the law in the first place.

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:

" ...if you agree with us 75% of the time you should donate some money. If you agree with us 50% of the time you should be on the board.

The issues the EFF deals with are novel and contentious, and we are rarely all of one view..."

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