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?
After reading this 'article' (and I use the term loosely), one is left wondering if this "Bonhomie Snoutintroff" has an axe to grind against EFF specifically, or if EFF was simply unfortunate enough to present an accessable target for one of "Bonhomie's" mindless rants.
One thing is for sure...even if "Bonhomie" went by a less ludicrous pen name (honestly..."Bonhomie Snoutintroff"???), and refrained from such pejorative terms as 'pigopolists' and 'pale vegetarians', he still couldn't be taken seriously, due to his gross misrepresentation of the facts. Bonhomie cited six losses by the EFF...visit the EFF's legal victories page, and you'll see several wins that Bonhomie conveniently failed to mention.
This kind of vapid tripe is pathetic even for the Register's admittedly lax standards. In case there remains any doubt, I leave you with the short bio of "Bonhomie Snoutintroff", which was appended to the 'article' in question:
Why the hell isn't this in the 'humor' section....of either site?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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've worked with EFF's legal folks and they are very, very good.
And when we went to court, we won.
Cultures not dominated by humorless prigs and literalists don't require flags to signal humor.
This particular form is called satire and is widely used to call attention to self-importance or arrogance.
illegitimii non ingravare
...but the fact remains that if precedents are being set here...
You mean Precidents like These? Or lobbying efforts like getting rid of the broadcast flag?
Should any organization be required to win 100% of its legal battles (on behalf of the public I might add) in order to gain support? I don't think setting an impossible standard is a helpful guide for deciding what organizations to support.
The EFF has been fairly effective in legal matters, and even more effective in educational areas like lobbying. AS that is the key to a better future (better to never have a bad law passed than to fight it latre through the courts) it is important to support the EFF as they are pretty much the ONLY group that understands the deep technological chasms laws can veer into. Are you honestly going to trust the ACLU to handle stuff like P2P?
For those who see the value in having an organization fighting for technical rights, you can donate to the EFF here. I donate every year and really all of us in the technical field should feel ashamed if we are not supporting the people that brought down things like the broadcast flag.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I won't try to argue here, but I will suggest, in the interest of balance, that you check out EFF's list of legal victories.
For the most part, the EFF argues policy when they go before the judge. It is very difficult to take the stance that EFF does and say, to this effect: "Even though Eric Corley/Grokster/etc violated the statute, it does not stand to reason that this party should be at fault because the very nature of the statute is wrong." Or something to that effect.
The EFF takes the most difficult side and tries to prevail. Even if they are not successful in the courts, they are certainly successful at raising awareness. Furthermore, there is no "public defender" for copyright cases. If you violate someone's copyright, you are paying for your own lawyer. The ACLU is not going to jump in, so your only chance at a defense is to spend out-of-pocket, or get an organization like the EFF to back you up. Even if you do pay money for a lawyer, much of his work has been done by the EFF, which results in lower fees for the client
I do not think the EFF has outlived its usefulness.
In Vino Veritas
IANAL, so take this with an appropriate amount of salt.
Often the battles for our rights are far more subtle than they appear. These center around what evidence is admissable before the court, on what basis one can be found guilty for violating laws, and on what basis one can be found liable for damages. It is in these areas that the meat and substance of a precident lie.
For example, in the Betamax case, the court ruled that it was insufficient to argue that because Sony knew that the Betamax VCR's could be used to violate copyrights when arguing that Sony should be held liable for damages caused by users of the product. This isn't really surprising. Just because a hardware company knows that, say, a hammer could be used for various types of illegal activity up to and including murder, one would not really consider holding them liable for wrongful death damages on that basis alone (and appeals courts have releatedly upheld the same standard for gun manufacturers too). In essence, the court said in Betamax that if a product has substantive legal uses, then knowledge of potential or actual illegal uses is insufficient to hold the manufacturer responsible.
In Grokster, the court looked at whether a manufacturer (under Betamax) could be held liable on grounds other than those covered in Betamax. I.e. if Betamax created a shield that would allow for activities conducted in bad faith to be legally protected. SCOTUS concluded that Betamax only protected the acts of engineering, manufacturing, and distributing the technology, and that arguments could be made about whether the purpose of the company or the product was specifically to facilitate copyright infringement regardless or substantive legal uses. In other words, if you make P2P software, that doesn't make you liable, but if you advertise it saying "Download any songs you want" then that advertisement itself might make one liable. This distinction is a critical one and, in many ways, it upholds the substantive protections we have had under the Sony/Betamax precident (Breyer's concurring opinion is probably most eloquent in this regard).
Lets take another example that is not in the domain of the EFF: Jose Padilla. This is a man who was (arguably illegally) imprisoned without trial, access to a lawyer, etc. for three years and has finally been indicted on charges that are fairly minor compared to what he has been accused of doing by our government. Now, I don't really care whether he wins or loses his case. Indeed I hope that in the end justice is served. However, I think that the Supreme Court needs to rule on the legality of Padilla's imprisonment for a number of reasons including what evidence might be allowable at trial and whether the government might have an incentive to undertake similar steps against others in the future. In essence the danger posed by someone like Padilla is far less than the danger posed by an Executive that has freed itself from judicial oversight. In other words, whether Padilla wins or loses, the rules decided in this case may be around for a while, so it is important that we reinforce the protections that we have against arbitrary imprisonment.
In essence, I don't believe that the EFF is doing a bad job. There are a few cases that have gone badly (most notably the 2600 case) but in general, they seem to be doing a good job. I say, "Keep up the good work!"
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP