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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
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?
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