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EFF Creates Endangered Gizmos List
linuxwrangler writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week announced the creation of the Endangered Gizmos List. According to their press release, this project highlights 'the way misguided laws and lawsuits can pollute the environment for technological innovation.' The site categorizes technologies ranging from the Betamax to the Advanced eBook Processor as 'Saved', 'Endangered' or 'Extinct'."
- A/D and D/A converters aren't "endangered" anymore than vacuum tubes are. They are fundamental electronic components.
- DVD X Copy is gone because it wasn't a DVD "backup" utility, it was a "copy rented movies" utility and a "lemme borrow your DVD and copy it" utility. Tech support for the product was very conflicted over this because the owner couldn't help talking out of both sides of his face - "We don't help pirates" and "Why is there anything wrong with that". If you sell heroin on the street you will make lots of money, but eventually you will get busted. They got busted. End of story.
- When someone can actually show that Morpheus and WinMX are more useful than FTP for moving files around, they might have a case. When these two in particular have searches that return something besides music and porn, we can talk about how useful existing P2P search and download facilities are. Note I am not saying that P2P has any attributes whatsoever - just that current search tools seem to return a lot of stuff that is under copyright.
- The Replay PVR decided to push the envelope and allow "sharing" over the Internet. This is essentially redistributing content and the Replay folks knew this would cause problems. There have been several court cases recently about exactly that - redistributing broadcast content. There was never a doubt that this would be settled by removing the capability and likely costing the company a great deal of money.
- ElcomSoft is a password-cracking software company. They sell password cracking tools to forensic professionals. If you think your "protected" document or EFS file system is safe, think again - ElcomSoft makes a product for cracking it in a short period of time, and your local police certainly have access to it. I can imagine lots of people not having a lot of sympathy for ElcomSoft. They also use misspelled domain names to "advertise" - if you misspell their competition's name you get their web site. Scum, no matter how nice a face you put on it.
- Linksys - come on, these guys put it on the list to scare people and then never mentioned it in their scary paragraph. Why? Because it is completely off-topic.
All in all, this entire web page is just a lot of scare-mongering with the idea that they can stir people up by trying to convince them that something terrible is about to happen. For donations? For more membership? I have to question any organization that uses as many distortions, untruths and outright lies to make a point....and as soon as you try to use a laptop, it's a pain in the arse. No way I'm carrying a mouse around all the time. That's the main reason I bought a ThinkPad instead.
United we stand, divided we fall.
"We?" What's this "we" stuff, AC? Who are you? My guess is you're the EFF paid intern/astroturfer sent to pump up this quarter's fund-raising drive at "key, major friendly sites/web communities."
What makes them an anachronism? How could they change to become relevant again? Be specific.
Wow! "Academic Background," much? Wait, lemme get out my Number Two Pencil here so I can answer.
OK.
Ummmm, hey, here's an idea:
Move the hell back to DC! You're a Lobbying Organization, ferchrissake!! Why in a hundred years would I give a donation to a lobbying organization based on the West Coast?
Here read this, consult with your bosses, and get back to us.
Or not.