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Kaspersky Quits BSA Over SOPA Support
First time accepted submitter Cmdrm writes with an article about Kaspersky Lab quitting the BSA over their (now lukewarm) support of SOPA. From the press release: "Kaspersky Lab would like to clarify that the company did not participate in the elaboration or discussion of the SOPA initiative and does not support it. Moreover, the company believes that the SOPA initiative might actually be counter-productive for the public interest, and decided to discontinue its membership in the BSA as of January 1, 2012.'"
Didn't know The Boy Scouts of America had a dog in this fight.
Kaspersky, not fanatic/evil enough to fit in the BSA.
Might be counterproductive to the public interest? Wow, way to soft-peddle it.
Kudos to Kaspersky for having a spine. SOPA is a sick, twisted power grab by big media, and their quitting the Business Software Alliance over it is a good thing IMO.
Posted anonymously because I don't want the BSA on me. The BSA is a pack of lawyers who exploit vague legal definitions to extort people out of money. They destroy small businesses reguardless of weather or not they actually bough the software and they run some of the dirtiest campaigns I've ever seen. Just look up "BSA Rat out your boss"... Seriously? Anybody who destroys some company because they have a chip on their shoulder and are greedy should be blacklisted - if you don't like where you work you should quit not destroy someones dream and leave all your coworkers jobless.
Fuck the BSA and anyone who ever took their side, Kapersky included.
So would that make this a Sopa-Opera?
Mostly because the scouts were raided by the Mormons to become a recruiting agency.
The Boy Scouts used to be a great organization. But recently it has became a utter mess pushing a religious agenda upon the kids.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Damn OSHA. We have so many problems with OSHA. Many of the buildings in my industry have standing orders that whenever OSHA shows up. They are to be stopped at the door until a manager can escort them where they want to go. In that time all work in the building ceases until OSHA has left. Years ago we had some new OSHA inspector tell us we had to put a safety rail on the front of a stage. WTF. suffice to say after we continually said no. Said inspector said if he had to call his supervisor we would be shutdown. Call your damn supervisor you idiot. In the end no rail and we got to teach an OSHA noob he was not god.
Boy Scouts of America is a private organization and as such has the right to set requirements for membership. The Scout Law explicitly states that a scout is reverent. The Scout Oath states that a scout will "do my duty to God and my country." You can see how an atheist could not recite the Scout Law or the Oath with a clear conscious. The only way atheists could participate in Scouting would be if BSA changed the Law and the Oath, but neither of those things have changed since their adoption in 1911. To change them would be to compromise the principles on which Scouting was founded.
As far as pushing Mormonism, this is the first I've ever heard of it. I am an Eagle Scout and have been very active in the Scouting community for the last 20 years or so. While Scouting makes a big deal about being reverent, they do not push any specific denomination. There are no religious requirements for advancement through the ranks. My troop was filled with a hodgepodge of Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a few others. Scout camp chapels were all non-denominational (though a few of the larger camps had chapels by denomination) and very general.
There was no religious agenda being pushed upon any of us.
As far as the gays issue, would you want your daughter going on an overnight girlscout trip led by a male leader? Its the same issue. I know most gays are good people who wouldn't harm anyone, but don't pretend they are all saints. There is, at the very least, a perception issue and at the worst there is a legitimate safety issue for the boys in the troop.
BSA is a great organization that does a lot for boys and for this country. Every Eagle Scout has to do a service project that benefits his community. These are no small things, they typically require a few hundred man hours and get the scout's whole troop involved. They can't be done for Scouts or on Scout owned land. Every boy, to advance in the higher ranks, must hold a leadership position in the troop for at least 3 months. They learn how to work together, how to plan a camping trip, how to prepare for emergencies, basic first aid. Many boys have found their vocation through merit badges such as Environmental Science, Radio, Emergency Preparedness, Music or even Computers.
You can disagree with BSA's morals or with their admissions requirements or whatever. But please, don't demonize an organization that has done so much good and that is well within its rights to determine these policies you find disagreeable.
penn/teller 'bullshit' show had an expo piece on the boy scouts.
mormons, sigh....
whatever religion touches, it ruins. so sad we still have to bow down to imaginary sky faeries. or, you get excluded!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No.
I worked summer camps for the scouts for 12 years, and a scout for 7 years before that. What you are both saying is stereotyping, just like the ideas that all gay men talk and act in an effeminate manner, or that all religious people are crackpots, or that anyone who knows computers is a socially inept virgin. I know the following from first-hand experience:
- Yes, the Mormons use the Boy Scouts as there boy's youth program, and sometimes it almost feels like they have their entire own different type of scouting. They are such a large amount of the enrollment of the program that councils avoid stepping on their toes, but at the same time, they are far from the majority of scouts registered in the program.
- Some churches, etc. are very particular about having their denominations views strongly represented with the troops that they charter. However, there is usually another unit nearby to join, or as the case with my old troop, you can always just move your charter to be with an organization that fits you better.
- I find that some of the units that fall under the categories above have the leaders who are most dedicated to what Boy Scouts should be, and that they are very good at being scouts first when they are meeting or camping, and not just being religious indoctrination machines like the above comments claim. Then there are the majority of units which are not focused on religion, in which case you still have some bad apples where the leaders don't care, but your claims again fall flat.
- Bigotry: the Boy Scouts do not, "loves them some hatin' on the Gays and Atheists" - they do have religion, they do not approve of gay leaders, but at the same time, your comments sound like I should expect the Boy Scouts to act like the KKK. Almost every one of the people I know/knew or worked with in the scouts are very indifferent to someone being gay or agnostic (again, there are always a few exceptions). And there are quite a few people who expect that the BSA will one day in our lifetime include girls, gays and whoever, but that know that it will take time - remember, religious institutions and especially the Mormon church do make up a pretty good size of the registered units and scouts (and consequently revenue), and what organization would so easily shed a quarter (just a guess) of themselves?
- There is some fear about gay men being leaders and what that might mean for incidents of child abuse, but as it was pointed out year after year in the state-required training to recognize signs of child abuse, there is no such correlation. This was at times also noted by the instructor of the Scout's own Youth Protection Training (required for every person over 18), which usually depended on the instructor's knowledge and drive to cover more than just the bare minimum. It is worth noting that YPT, when properly followed, will eliminate pretty much all opportunity for child abuse to occur (but the "properly followed" is the catch).
So what it comes down to for me, is that your comments are are malicious as anything I ever heard from anyone I respected in the scouts ever say. Like I said before, you are taking stereotypes and running with them. Which is to say, the three parents to this comment are behaving as badly or worse (if they are just joking) as pretty much anyone in the scouts ever does. Or, if you are not joking, then I feel like you are the kind of person where I will just nod my head politely and then tell you I disagree, while thinking to myself you are a moron who does not know what they are talking about but who will gladly spout off about it anyways, and that kind of behavior is one of the worst problems in this world. (might be offensive, but so are the above posts if they are not jokes)
Calling someone a name very rarely helps, and you'll find that most people who are labelled "homophobes" simply have never known or interacted with publicly gay people for an extended period of time.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
You know you've taken your censorship too far when the Russians are telling you to dial it down.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Then again, if people were to go around saying 2 + 2 = 5, or that the world is flat, and if acknowledgment of these positions was taught to children and practically required by politicians running for office, and historically used to enforce dogma on others and hold back science...
Then wouldn't people be justified in speaking out? For fuck's sake, it's 2011, and we've got people killing and enslaving each other over mythology. I say it's about time that we grow up and kill and enslave each other over legitimate reasons.