Slashdot Mirror
EFF Has Outlived Its Usefulness?
An anonymous reader writes "An inflammatory article runs today on The Register, with the title EFF Volunteers to Lose Sony Rootkit Suit. The article argues that the EFF's track record in court is detrimental to everyone with an interest in digital and privacy rights." From the article: "This is a very good cause. Sony installed stealth spyware on many thousands of Windows computers (although calling it a rootkit is an exaggeration), and it's crucial that the company get its bottom spanked quite painfully as a deterrent to its sister cartels in the entertainment racket. This is, in fact, such an important matter that the worst possible development would be to find the EFF arguing the case. That's because EFF will do what it always does: lose, and set a legal precedent beneficial to the entertainment pigopolists. By the time these pale vegetarians get finished, spreading musical malware will be considered a spiritual work of mercy." What do you think? Isn't it better to fight the good fight?
A friend, with my cajoling, [The 'Cream Gang'] recently wrote an article similar to this recently, regarding attending an abortive and mostly useless launch of the UK's EFF equivalent, the Open Rights Group.
Our findings, here:
Open Rights Group Launch
Open Rights Shites
This evening, Coxall, Levine and I attended an open meeting of the Open Rights Group, a new UK organisation set in the mould of the EFF. I wasn't expecting the earth to move for me: we've attended too many of these little geek/numeeja run yack-shacks to hope for anything particularly productive to emerge. This evening did its least to confound me.
It was held in a basement in Soho named Zero-One. I say basement, but, naturally, one is encouraged to term it a "creative space". Said "creative space" was filled with geeks and numeedjas, as well as a scattering of lawyer-types and Earnest Young Men. Overwhelmingly men, of course, the few women who were there either freaks, sociologists or serving the free cheese and wine. Hey - don't shoot the messenger. A few chairs encircled the basement, but the main floor was bare, to encourage crouching and cross-legged encampment. Oh dear. This was all going to be "inclusive and discursive", wasn't it?
Oh dear, indeed: the manageress of the "creative space" started proceedings. Her introduction was little more than an ad for her basement. She then brought on an ex hack, who spouted some trivial nonsense or other, and was excited by the prospect of setting up ever more "wikis" and "blogs". She, in turn, brought on a jargon-clappy professional "meeting facilitator/consultant". This was going to be "fun".
The evening was to commence with a little talk from some Oxford chap or other, followed by a free-fall clustered discussion, in which each cluster was to be provided with its own sticky wall-covering on which to paste their mindstormingly written postcards.
The Oxford nonentity informed us that the Internet was somewhat marvellous, and, gosh, lots of interesting things might become of it soon, what ho, and it's not just paedophilia and terrorists. The poor fellow seemed trapped in 1994.
The Management Consultant Facilitator then spouted some jargon, and asked the floor for ideas for the discussion clusters. The Earnest Young Men pontificated their banalities. The geeks obsessed about some yawnful minutia. And Coxall suggested we discuss how to win over the "unhosed stupid masses". Yes, that is the phrase he used and, yes, the reaction from this righton bunch of whitebread nonces was predictable. "Maybe if you stopped patronising them like that..." was the immediate response from one of the Earnest Young Men on the floor.
Thence began the multiple clustering. Levine, Coxall and I have attended so many of these nascent talking shops now that we decided to skip with the usual niceties and begin some good old Trotskyite agitation. We argued that trying to interest people in the potential problems of overreaching anti-privacy legislation, or draconian Intellectual Property laws and the restrictive technologies therefor, was a lost cause. The "unhosed masses" wouldn't care about these philosophical crampings until they felt the constrictive banding themselves, in their every day lives. We argued for the inculcation of popular anger: to that end, a little DRM here, a little copyright overextension there wasn't enough. We decided that, rather than allow creative society to die the death by a thousand cuts that is its inevitable fate in a world dominated by multi-billion dollar "content" oligarchies, we should use these monoliths' huge power and budgets to subvert themselves from within, to the point where their overreaching hubris could lead to genuine polltax-riot intensity anger, and Berlin-wall-sized dismantlement.
Rather than fiddle with legislation to make it slightly less bad, then, or to try to temper corporate excesses with the few thrown crumbs of compromise, a smartly utilitarian organisati
I have been saying this for years, and each time I am flamed to a crisp for even daring to question the EEF. They are a very well-meaning group, and I commend their attempts to take on big corporations and touchy suits... but the fact remains that if precedents are being set here and against us due to young/inexperienced lawyers we are just shooting ourselves in the foot.
I think an organization LIKE the EEF is a good thing but needs to be structured in a different way, with more specialized and successful lawyers backing it.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
If not the EFF, who else is willing to take up the fight?
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
No, what's crucial is that companies get the message that what Sony did was *ILLEGAL*.
There should be prison time for whoever decided it was a good idea to install a rootkit on their customers' computers. The company should be deemed criminally negligent and be forced to pay all reasonable costs (IT expenses, consultant fees, etc.) as well as punitive damages to all individuals who bought a CD and own a computer.
Make it stick so that other companies won't be tempted to do the same thing.
People go to jail for lesser crimes, Sony execs should be held accountable.
I guess you didn't RTFA? Or the URL? for example, did you notice the URL says, /eff_needs_to_die/?
Perhaps you didn't read the big that says, "the worst possible development would be to find the EFF arguing the case"? Second page, the EFF's credited with blowing a case that "only an EFF principal could blow" despite the fact that the article even says directly above that the case isn't closed yet.
Then it gets into just plain meaningless slamming of Gilmore, suggesting that the EFF is only fighting to protect the rights of air travelers because Gilmore, "doesn't like to be searched, and thinks only about himself," obliquely accuses him of intentionally submarining efforts of rights advocates, page one even suggests that he sides with porkbarrel politicians.
Just to round it all off, the writer, who just finished writing the most arrogant article I've read outside of my local "news" has his little description of himself. I would have left that off, myself, it's in very poor representation of him after the article: "He did poorly in school but his family is rich and well connected, so he's served as CEO of numerous... ventures that...no longer exist," and, "his mission is to bring honor and dignity to the IT profession" after just indulging in unabashed ad hominem attacks on the end of an otherwise passable article, and finally, "His keen insight as a global techno-visionary is matched only by his Christian humility."
Judging by his unrepentent lack of humlity, I guess he's not that great of a visionary either.
Wow. Good catch. I think that's exactly what they were going for.
Um...
Knowing that I often get fired up by articles like this, I followed the link to the EFF Legal Victories page, to give them a fair chance. While I'm not saying that the cases they've won aren't important, it would be hard to characterize them as anything but slam dunks. I can't give them a whole lot of credit for successfully arguing things like:
Intel vs. Hamidi -- Intel claims Hamidi's emails 'trespassed on their systems', causing harm.
Felten vs. RIAA -- RIAA tries to stop scientists publishing a paper.
DirectTV vs. Treworgy -- DirectTV sued Treworgy for merely purchasing technology capable of intercepting their signals.
I'm sure anyone who's bothering to read the comments as opposed to just the front page of Slashdot remembers each of these cases. And again, it's not like they're not important, and IANAL (yet) but the cases EFF is trumpeting all seem like they could have been won by someone who had taken a decent civics class in high school. The cases cited as evidence AGAINST EFF were all much more complicated, but many were no less clear-cut... and we lost anyway.
So the real question is, what do we do?
The DeCSS case: Why did nobody anywhere think to point out that encrypting a file does not prevent it from ebing copied.
The Sonny Bone law challenge: This was just naive. Of course the court isn't going to make a decision that will make the entire media industry's assets worthless. Lessig should have included the argument that 99% of media profits would not be affected if copyright was rolled back to 14 years.
The EFF, on the other hand, stands for essentially one limited set of issues, so it's easier to make a distinction between those issues and others they may or may not agree with.
Well, if you read farther in the article, he suggests that incongito travellers *should* be searched thouroughly (and their baggage) to ensure they aren't a threat. As long as you know they aren't a threat, the reasoning goes, why do you care who they are?
This is one of those things that I, personally, could go either way on. Does it really hurt public safety if unidentified passengers are on a flight? Maybe - I don't know, I'm not an expert in this kind of thing. But it does seem like, if someone is willing to go through a more thourough and invasive check, in order to remain anonymous, that they should be allowed.
I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember the Cold War rhetoric about how the Soviet Union restricted travel throughout it's territories/member states, with many border checkpoints and things, and how the USA was so much better because you could freely travel, without having to always stop and identify yourself, and how this was an example of American Freedom. How the Soviet Union was an invasive Police State. Well, while you can still travel by car relatively freely, any time you get on a plane, you MUST identify yourself.
As long as it can be demonstrated that you have no weapons/exlplosives/biological weapons, etc, and are just a normal, harmless traveller, why should you have to identify yourself as a matter of Federal Law? Now, the argument also could go that as long as the airlines want you to identify yourself, since the airplane is their private property, you have to do so, or else forfeit the privelege of flying on that plane. I would be more comfortable with airlines that require identification, than having it mandated by Federal Law, and more comfortable if the airlines had to protect my identity unless due process (subpeonas/warrants) was followed to get that info from them.
With all due respect to the EFF, though, they are fighting a legal rearguard action. The problem is that the legislation they're opposing is meant to be crooked. The courts will ony go so far in opposing the will of Congress and the executive branch. The end goal needs to be repeal of the idiotic laws and regulations that throw away the fundamental rights of the majority in order to keep a dying revenue stream alive a little bit longer.
And by the way, Snoutintrough is a satirical column.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
From the article: "Finally, EFF co-founder and board member John Gilmore has independently taken up one of the more important civil-liberties causes of recent years, attempting to sue for the right to travel by air within the USA without having to show identification. This is a very important case, and it's up for appeal later this week, so let's dwell on it a bit.
Indeed, there is no good reason why anyone should not be permitted to travel incognito, and many good reasons why one should. This is a case that can, and should, be won. Surely, only an EFF principal could blow this one, yet blow it he did. The combination of Gilmore's preposterous and inflammatory libertarian rhetoric and his unreasonable demand that he not be subject to any security measures, like a bag search and a pat down, mean that his appeal, scheduled for 8 December, will almost certainly go down the tubes with his original attempt."
I'm grateful that the man is willing to volunteer his time to defend citizens' rights in the courts, but deliberately lumping elements that will surely be defeated into a winnable case makes you wonder who's side he's really on.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
The ACLU also have a tendency to screw things up, and have been accused of malice a lot longer than the EFF and with more evidence.
/ 301105aclushysters.htm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005
I don't think the problem is that they're losing cases they ought to be winning, but rather that they're taking (too many?) cases that they are going to lose.
The ACLU has the same problem. Maybe they want to be seen as filers of frivolous baseless suits, but to many of us, many of the suits both groups pursue seem to have this flavor - pie in the sky...
If they just took a few less unrealistic positions, I think they'd convince a lot more people that they're trying to do the right thing rather than just the 'left' thing.
I don't know if anyone's noticed, but a LOT of American television is being produced out of Canada these days. Personally, that doesn't concern me in the slightest. As long as Canada keeps producing such great shows as Stargate and Red Green, I'll be happy to let them take the lead for all of North America. :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
IANAL
The judiciary is SUPPOSED to meddle and interfere in the shenanigans of the other two branches of the government. That's WHY IT'S THERE. It was all specificially designed that way.
As I see it, they are there to decide cases and controversies. As a byproduct of this role, they must also resolve conflicts between laws (federal vs. state, constitution vs. state and federal, etc). In other words, their meddling role is a byproduct of their function, not the core of it.
My point about Iran was largely missed, and few people seem to know anything about Iranian gov't. But Iran has 3 branches too-- a legislative, parliamentary body, an executive branch headed by the President of Iran, and a judicial branch headed by the Council of Guardians and the Supreme Ayatolla. In essence, structurally, Iran looks a lot like France or the US.
However, this is where the similarity ends. In Iran, the Judiciary plays an active role in running the day to day events in the country. They have final veto power over any law when it is passed, and over foreign policy decisions. They can order members of parliament jailed for activities involving pure speech (like saying that the Council of Guardians has too much power). They even have their own army. In essence what Iran has done is take the idea of Western Democracy and merge it with an Islamist structure where the clerics are the final judges and arbiters of power.
I don't want our courts to make public policy decisions. I want them to make legal decisions. Sometimes legal decisions have public policy consequences, but one should not decide these cases on the basis of public policy concerns (as is the case in Iran). So in our system, the courts should get involved when one of the other branches oversteps its Constitutional mandate. They should get involved when there are serious questions about what the state of the law is. But I don't want a Mr-Fix-it court system which decides cases on the basis of making everything turn out OK. The loyalty instead should be to legal principles rigorously enforced (I don't usually like Scalia because I question the consistancy of his application of legal principles).
Our courts are based on the principle of least change (i.e. that things should be changed as little as possible to satisfy the law) and that is vitally important to our democracy.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP