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Open Letter By Eric S. Raymond To Chris Dodd
An anonymous reader writes "ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday, writes an open letter to U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd. ESR points out the concerns of 'the actual engineers who built the Internet and keep it running, who write the software you rely on every day of your life in the 21st century' about politicians attempts to lock down our Internet or our tools. A portion of the letter reads: 'I can best introduce you to our concerns by quoting another of our philosopher/elders, John Gilmore. He said: “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches, it’s also a sort of reactive social organism composed of the people who keep those wires humming and those switches clicking. John Gilmore is one of them. I’m another. And there are some things we will not stand having done to our network.'"
Politicians are always attempting to be experts at everything. This failure is magnified when they start talking about the Internet, because on the Internet, everyone's an expert.
Right?
How dare these self-righteous, misanthropic geeks dare tell us it's their network? Who bought and paid for this network? Why does this network exist in the first place? Because WE built it with our holy dollars. Someone get a muzzle on this dissident! A prime example of why we need control of our network!
” To understand that, you have to grasp that “the Internet” isn’t just a network of wires and switches"
Well of course not, as every (ex-) politician knows, it's a series of tubes.
What open source projects does ESR actively contribute to?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm sure Mr. Raymond is quite aware that Senator Dodd no longer holds public office. It is still appropriate to refer to public officials by the title of the last office they held; this is common among those who have served in the Senate, as state governors, etc.
Furthermore, Senator Dodd is now the CEO of the MPAA, an organization whose positions on electronic rights is quite well known, and cause for substantial concern.
Lastly, I think it's a good idea to continue to refer to Mr. Dodd as Senator Dodd, since he took an oath to represent the people and the constitution of this nation, and should be reminded of that at every opportunity.
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Hi. You're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group. Or... these guys are going to take your balls. They're going to send one to the New York Times, one to the LA Times press-release style. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
That guy hypes himself way too much.
This is my sig.
100% correct. Senators, in the United States, retain that title even after they leave office.
I thought the beauty of the Internet was that once you're online, nobody knows you're a dog.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dear Congress,
You are damage. We will route around you.
-- the Internet
Dear Senator Todd, You're a tool. Sincerely, Me
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This is an open letter, and its main point is not to convince the opposition but to rally its own supporters. For which purpose chest pounding works very well.
OSI vs FSF mudwresting match
Evoking images of sweaty, scantily clad nerds grappling with each other in the mud is a terrible thing to do to a man. Please pass the mental bleach.
Write failed: Broken pipe
The fact is that there is a serious choke point for the vast majority of users (in the U.S. at least). A handful of big name companies control almost all the broadband ISP's and trunk lines in the U.S. You can't very easily "route around it" if the few providers in your area are censored. In my area, you can choose from 1 cable ISP, 1 DSL ISP, and 3 major cell providers. All five of these are major companies who would bow to the government in an instant if asked. If they were all effectively censored, there would be nowhere to turn save a satellite provider.
There are always ways around censorship for the hardcore techies, of course. But it really wouldn't be that hard to censor the internet for 99% of the population if the government really wanted to.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In that case, it should be "Douchebag Dodd."
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
ESR is about to learn a likely painful lesson about how senators don't like to be talked down to. Senators are like judges on meth.
Get with the times. Cris Dodd isn't a senator anymore, he's been the chairman and CEO of the MPAA for almost a year now.
Speak for yourself! I'm a marmoset
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
I'm getting sick of hearing the propaganda terms "lockdown" and "crackdown" used in place of the correct term, oppression. Are we too afraid to say it? Not politically correct enough? Can't admit our own reality to ourselves? Fuck that.
Let's call a spade a spade here. The terms "crackdown" and "lockdown" imply that the victim was doing something wrong or immoral in the first place. THAT is exactly why government and the media use these terms. They are "self-justified". They are deliberately false depictions of reality. It's pure propaganda, but the amazing part is that some victims will actually repeat the terms themselves.
The correct term, oppression, implies that the victim is innocent, not guilty -- and that the oppressors are guilty, not merely "getting around to that crackdown". For christ's sake, use the correct term.
However, for purposes of clarity, the summary should point out both that he is a former Senator and that he is now CEO of the MPAA.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Writing the head of the MPAA to try and sway him about the internet (to misquote former MPAA head Jack Valenti speaking of VCRs in the eighties) -- "The internet is to movies what Jack the Ripper was to women."
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
Free Martian Whores!
Sometimes when I read
“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
which appears as a nice and cutesy rainbows and unicorns saying, I get the impression that it actually means
"Fuck off. You don't belong here and we'll subvert anything you try to do that impacts what we want to do"
In an angry, anti-establishment, "we know better than you" superior way.
Note that I do believe in a free Internet.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
Don't you you mean corrupt format Senators?
His claim to have written "software you use everyday" is giflib; he stopped maintaining it in 1994, but it's in lots of browsers and browsing devices.
I can see where you're coming from, but who do you think pushes those 100 corrupt senators to adopt restrictive internet laws? Hint: lobbies like the MPAA, where Dodd is now chief. Convince the MPAA, RIAA, UFIA, etc to back off and those 100 corrupt senators won't even pay attention to the issue, because the corruption comes from them taking bribes and kickbacks from said special interests to vote for the laws in question.
Ah, but as he has publicly stated, he owns senators.
Wasn't James Madison against this, and insisted that senators and presidents should be entitled "Mister", like everybody else, not to create a new nobility that would be against the constitution?
"...there are some things we will not stand having done to our network." (emphasis mine)
That is exactly how I feel. As a Network Engineer myself I share their frustration with old, grumpy, white men who sit on capital hill raining down laws that would effect my job and customers without understanding the technology itself, nor the gravity their actions would have on the Internet community at large. I've watched the hours long C-SPAN videos of the hearings with the SINGLE Google representative they invited as an "expert" only to see her get cut-off and publicly flogged and discredited, while old men who had to read basic networking terms such as "internet", "Internet" (they are not interchangeable), "IP Address" and "DNS" off a prepared piece of paper, listed the "merits" of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA. Especially from a security standpoint, the amount of negative repercussions to censoring the internet along the same lines as China could be catastrophic, and that is before even considering its' effect on free speech.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
This one I remember: ESR's goodbye note
This one I felt certain I would find: Ubuntu and GNOME jump the shark
(Failure to properly support Unicode in 2012? You're soaking in it.) ESR longs for the era when when the Unix ethos bound us together. It ends in another bail-out, this time with a less dramatic letter.
Maybe the Unix brotherhood has finally jumped the shark. I'm not sure I believe in the political force ESR claims to represent. It feels more like he's writing the letter to convince himself.
Jamie Zawinski was feeling the irritation back in 2003: Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers. Personally I blame SMS.
Well, I have a leather jacket and a USB fob with Mint 12 to get on with the exorcism before the April EOL on 10.10. I didn't know the open source movement would degenerate into a lifetime occupation of oasis hopping. That was not my original dream.
From the letter,
His description of "approved" operating systems is too broad. Signing code itself is not a problem, in fact it's a blessing when used properly. The key to proper use is deciding who holds the signing keys. The consumer who owns the device needs to be in charge of that device; he or she must be able to decide whether or not unsigned code is allowed to run. If the user chooses to run only signed code, I think it perfectly fine to let manufacturers implement this as they wish. This could be extended to several layers: the hardware, the boot OS, the user OS, etc. Each of these could be secured, with the user's permission, by the corresponding manufacturer/distributor.
This certainly wouldn't prevent developers from "cutting" any shape they wanted with their code. But they would have to participate in some share system of security. That doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to me, and fundamentally a good idea, to boot.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
ESR is no different in this case as he has his own agenda he is trying to push.
You are more right than you realize. ESR considers himself one of the Open Source greats despite that his largest contribution is that he maintained the termcap db and his is the first I've heard anything from him since Linus Torvalds refused his rewrite of the kernel config system. Not to mention his self proclaimed expertise in lovemaking.
His main function in life is to be what bloggers were before we called them bloggers and really isn't someone we need or want as a spokesman.
ESR, one of the finest engineers behind the open source movement and much of the software we use everyday
ESR is a shameless self publicist, who wrote a book once. If he's one of the finest engineers of the open source movement, then the movement is in serious trouble. As far as I can tell, he has never written any code that people actually use.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Who cares? Madison's dead and he's just one of the founders.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Besides having contributed to many project, you are talking about a guy that branded "open source", went out and sold it succesfully.
Then using your argument perhaps he should be referred to as the finest marketing and sales guy of the open source movement. The "Steve Jobs" of open source, not the "Steve Wozniak" of open source. Jobs did some engineering work in the early days too, however that is not where he stood out. Perhaps you are onto something with this marketing and sales argument.
Wasn't James Madison against this, and insisted that senators and presidents should be entitled "Mister", like everybody else, not to create a new nobility that would be against the constitution?
Who cares? Madison's dead and he's just one of the founders.
That's just the way he would have liked to have been referred to posthumously.
What a hell of a support ticket.
"Users are noticing high latency during certain times of the day. Tier 1 support has narrowed the time to between 11am and 3pm. Further investigation shows an unusually high amount of traffic with a source of 0:0:0123:9AB6:0:0:FDEB:F90A which is in the block used by the base station for the satellite TV feeds. The destination address is the loopback for the Emergent core. After decryption and packet sniffing, the traffic was identified as an MPEG4 stream. When this stream was demuxed and viewed, the content was TranStar West 2/30-34 which is soap operas in those time slots. The Emergent has been queried about this feed and responded that latency would continue until Michael regained his memory, Tiffany and Jacob made up and got back together, and Blake 4, 5, and 6 were finally accepted by their father as his rightful clones. Escalating ticket to Tier 4 Psychological Support."
If people dare to take connections back under fire, then running a service in peace time is a cakewalk. And ISP's like XS4ALL have shown that some dare to put their money where their mouth is. Any ISP offering USENET binary access is probably done by a geek admin as the top bosses at the bigger ISP's wouldn't even know what it is.
The blackout already showed just how far reaching support is. Oh the commercial net wasn't that affected but just how did Poland decide to not support ACTA after all? And why aren't the other European nations leaning hard on Poland to change its mind?
Nursie is just a coward and wants to think everyone is as afraid to make a stand as he, so that his cowardness doesn't seem so bad after all.
Sorry but some dare to make a stand and gosh... so far it is actually working pretty well. If everyone was a jelly livered as Nursie, we would long have had ACTA worldwide and Sopa and Pipa and much much worse.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I was with you, Eric, right up until you called the media industry execs "stupid" and "dimwits". Your arguments were clear and well stated right up to that point. However, when you call your audience dimwits, they stop listening and discount anything you've said up to that point. This is a great shame, because your letter was incredibly persuasive and non-ranty up to that moment.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
The phases that the "censorship" problem used to go through can be summarised thus:
Something is created ...
Someone tries to suppress its (free) distribution
Someone else finds a way to nullify that suppression
Other people start using the nullifying technique
The technique is "productionised" and rolled out to the masses
A new suppression scheme is developed
Now, the problem is that instead of the above being simply a technical "game" any more, the rules have changed. More and more frequently a legal solution is used to stamp out the nullification process - and its developers get jailed or bankrupted by the costs of engaging in a legal process. In fact, it's frequently no longer necessary to actually prosecute people, simply to make the intention known, and if the individuals who discovered how to avoid censorship don't roll over - then pretty much every entity in the chain that supplies them with internet connectivity will, instead.
So the problem has evolved from being merely: the internet is a technical medium, we can form a technical "routing" round the problem, to being one where the censors are playing on their home ground and can use force, size and legal might to get their own way. And as with all things legal, whether it's just and fair is irrelevant.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Which is stupid. Senator, Representative, President, are all job titles. No longer have the job? You don't get the honorific.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Referencing the Founding Fathers' individual beliefs and opinions is illogical. We have a democracy. We have voting and majority rule. Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others had many beliefs, and often ended up disagreeing with each other. That's why the Constitutional Convention took months to write a relatively short document. That's why the US Constitution is full of compromises.
The three brances of government create the current state of law and custom. Until they intervene, the differing opinions of individuals, even individual founders, does not matter.
"Smarmy marmoset", sounds like a good name for an Ubuntu release.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
George Washington in particular was against this - the reason he went by "Mr President" was that he wanted to have some sort of title that indicated that the President of the United States was on par with his counterparts in other countries (which were likely to be Kings, Dukes, or Princes), but he wanted to emphasize that the President is also just a regular citizen, so he started it with "Mister". One of the key reasons he was instrumental in creating American democracy is that after he won the American Revolutionary War he didn't take the army he'd just won with and try to take over the country, and then as President stepped down after 2 terms and peacefully transferred power to John Adams.
I am officially gone from
ESR ir right, but I think he sent his letter to the wrong Senator. It should have gone to the 100 corrupt Senators who actually legislate, rather than former corrupt Senators.
ESR does much more damage when he opens his mouth than he's ever helped by opening it. And I'm really, really tired of the whole tribal meme with regards to the Internet. There WAS an "Internet Culture" when the Internet was new and shiny and very few people were on it. But the Internet has been ubiquitous for years now, and it's just another communications service. Grandma uses it now. It's a technology. That's it. Not a movement, not a clan, and not a religion. Whenever ESR speaks of things like "our elders", I get flashbacks of all those people that saw the first Matrix movie and thought it was the beginning a deep religious movement or something. Unless you're a living parody right of the the Big Bang TV show, most people read this kind of stuff and just roll their eyes.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You actually wondered? Who else would have written that lime. I suppose it could be his mother, but really. It is either him or someone very close to him.
...with those who one one. Ultimately, control of the internet resides with those who operate it.
Like the internet? Fond of electricity? And phone? And petroleum products? And a functioning natural gas pipelines? High frequency stock trading? Best not to fuck with those who run these things. This extends to any critical, high-tech, specialized activity. Up to this point, politicians have left the operators of these things alone. Should they become sufficiently annoying, it wouldn't surprise me if the technically competent started flexing some muscle.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Once a Senator, always a Senator. After your term is over, you keep both your title and your full salary and benefits. Nice work if you can get it.
The clarity I am looking for is that he is no longer an elected member of the U.S. government and is now being openly paid by the MPAA (as opposed to when he was an elected member of the U.S. government and was being not-so-secretly paid by big bankers to write banking laws).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yet most Americans will weigh Madison's opinion more heavily than yours. Why is that?
There is a difference between the people who use it, the people who own it, the people who run it. And most of the people who run the core stuff are on the same page.
Well one of his more valuable contributions is GPSD which the maritime industry not only uses every day, but hourly. Every time we put to sea the GPS talks to GPSD which in turn drives the chart software that displays our position at the helm. For that code alone I would nominate Raymond for a MacArthur Fellowship.
and now, he's on the No Fly List and DHS Watch lists as a Potential Terrorist. Maybe the gubbermint will pick him up and send him to g'tmo for some reeducation.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
You may be a user, but that doesn't make you part of the culture that ESR is referring to . He's talking about the culture of the people who actually work on and in the Internet. The people who would of course care about how it is used, as opposed to the people who use it and have no idea of how it works, or how it could be damaged and what the damage may do to the Internet as a whole.
Uh he also wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which as far as I know was the first article of any sort that could explain how Open Source worked, and why it worked so well. Surely that's got to count for something.
You kids and your love of stuff we did in the 90s -- it's ADORABLE!
Listening to ESR is like logging into myspace, friendster or orkut for new messages.
I may agree with quite a few of his basic arguments, but he flipped the bozo bit a long, long time ago.
You'll excuse me. I have an Old School Roleplaying game to DM...
We have a republic. We have voting for representatives and representative, judicial and executive rule. We have a constitution that specifies these things, and instructs the government that each state government must also conform to this structure.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeah, he's with those guys.
OTOH he's entitled to his opinion as much as anyone else, and at least he bothered to write a letter to Dodd, unlike 99% of the people here on Slashdot. I'm not saying he's better than me because he got off his ass, but rather, he's better than me because he lifted a finger. You might say the bar is low, but he's over it.
No matter who is making "a statement" most of the general public "read this kind of stuff and just roll their eyes."
That's because the general public neither knows nor cares about the "political battles" of life, much less the technological challenges. They don't care if Apple is a walled garden, they don't care if the MPAA "censors" the internet", they don't care if the US is hated for interfering in foreign nations, ...
Are you beginning to catch the key pattern of "most people" yet?
They don't care.
Just make it work. If it stops working, then the people will care -- once it's too late.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Mr Madison to you...
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
While I respect your point of view, you're starting from a flawed perception of the true state of affairs.
First off, "legitimately" and "legally" are not synonyms. Copyright law has been extended unjustly (IMNSHO) on at least three separate occasions in the past 60 years. Therefore, while copyright holders have a LEGAL right to limit what citizens may do with their material, they do not necessarily have a LEGITIMATE right to enforce them.
Personally, my opinion is that we should roll back copyright terms to the original constitutional limits and patents for software should be non-existent. Software is already more than adequately covered under copyright law as it is.
Second, you're using the misleading term, "IP rights", which conflates three completely separate legal domains; trademark law, patent law, and copyright law. Since each domain is treated very differently in virtually all jurisdictions, they should each be treated separately in any discussion.
Third, you're also conflating copyright infringement, generally a civil matter, with stealing, a criminal offense. While in my view they are both illegal and unethical, they are by no means the same from a legal standpoint and should not be treated as such.
To sum up, your conclusion is wrong because it's based on a faulty understanding of the law.
Sigh. Where's NYCL when you need him? He can explain this much more cogently than I can.
I'm not a fan of the Senator, however I think that in deference to the position there should be some semblance of decorum when referring to individual members of Congress or the President. There's far too little civility shown to the holders of the latter office for the current and previous occupants. The fault of that rests squarely on the two main political parties, their congressional attack dogs, and various political organizations masquerading as news outlets, charitable groups or think tanks. Not much thinking or charity as far as I can see.
Hence, I will have to disagree with you. Regardless of my feelings for the Senator, that's still his title.
Referencing the Founding Fathers' individual beliefs and opinions is illogical.
Wrong. It's quite logical as they were the ones who created the document that (in theory) governs us to this day. Therefore it is logical that we understand their beliefs and opinions in order to understand the constitution they wrote.
We have a democracy...
Wrong again. We have a representative republic...at least in theory. In practice we are nearing an elected dictatorship.
We have voting and majority rule...
Wrong a third time. We do have voting...but majority rule rarely decides anything in congress where anyone can "filibuster" or stop a bill from a vote simply by putting their name down on paper as such.
Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and others had many beliefs, and often ended up disagreeing with each other. That's why the Constitutional Convention took months to write a relatively short document. That's why the US Constitution is full of compromises.
3 strikes and yet you aren't out. This statement is very insightful. It helps to explain a great many things in the constitution and it directly contradicts your statement that it is illogical to reference the beliefs and opinions of the founders. Half the stuff they put in there is because the smaller states were scared spitless that the larger ones would use their majority to impose their will on the minority. Sound familiar?
Interestingly enough, as originally designed, the federal government had only one part that was democratically elected. The US House of Representatives. That was the body that was supposed to be the direct voice of the general population. The Senate was the voice of the state governments (which in turn answered to the people of those states). The President was elected via Electors who answered to the states and the Vice President was the person who had the 2nd most electoral votes, regardless of party and the Supreme Court was provided as a means to balance power between Congress and the President.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Yeah, but then he wrote one of the stupidest, most self-aggrandizing things ever to grace slashdot: http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/12/10/0821224/esr-writes-on-surprised-by-wealth
6 months later, when his stock was worth a tiny fraction of what it was at IPO time (and who knows how long/how far down he held it past the obligatory 6 months for IPO beneficiaries) we all chuckled and ESR faded into obsolescence.
Frist off, I didn't say they were, lol. However, in the case of copyright and patent law, as applied to the issues I was talking about, they do in fact coincide -- because the laws in place are entirely allowable and within the limits and conditions set upon the legislature by the constitution. Therefore, legitimacy on the part of any entity under US law in this regard requires compliance with the relevant laws. No matter what you think of them.
In our system of government, the limits -- if any -- are set first by the constitution, and second by the legislature(s.) This is the precise path that has been followed; I have never heard an argument that revealed any failure to comply with these limits. As long as those limits are complied with, then the legislation is, by definition, legitimate -- because that's how the system works and was designed to work. "Just" action here is a matter of the legislatures doing what it is they are allowed to do by the system. Which they are doing. You can choose to work to change the system, and if you succeed, you can redefine what all that means -- but in the meantime, things are as they are, and it's legal, legitimate, constitutional, and entirely proper. It simply may not be optimum (and I'd immediately agree that it isn't, if that were simply the argument you were making.)
I agree with you that these periods could be shorter and still comply with the constitutional requirements, but the legislature, the constitution, and the judiciary are not required to make minimum compliance the law. So the only legitimate paths here, and I use the word "legitimate" very carefully, is to either get the constitution changed (ideal, but very difficult), or get the legislation changed (still difficult.) Either one will be a pitched battle against established interests and during which any violation of the law will directly create an adversary out of the enforcement arms of the government, which I would advise against, for as we know, they have all the power in such cases.
There are no "original constitutional limits." You're under a false impression here. Perhaps you mean "earlier legislative limits."
I'm inclined to wish this were the case, but (a) creating original software is definitely invention, and (b) that makes it fair game if the legislature so decides.
No. The use is entirely appropriate in this context. IP rights precisely incorporate the root issues at hand when copying IP is the subject matter. Doesn't matter if IP rights also apply to other things, which of course they do.
You've not demonstrated anything of the sort, or even hinted at it. I invite you to do so, if in fact you can identify anything about IP law -- or other parts of my position -- that I misunderstand. I should warn you, though, that as an author, an owner of a literary agency and consequently an almost daily auditor of author's and publisher's contracts for many years, and as a rather dedicated fan and student of the constitution... you're not too likely to find any chinks in my position. But feel free to try. I welcome any improvement in my understanding that might result.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Look, I think the US government - particularly Congress - are a bunch of supercilious idiots, prone to trying to make comprehensive rules about things they totally don't understand and (importantly) don't care that they don't.
Nevertheless, probably the worst possible way to get these people to react in the way you want them to* is not to try to look like an even more supercilious tool than they are. "(John Gilmore)...one of our philosophers/elders..." OK, you're really not going to impress anyone with trying to clothe network design/maintenance with some quasi-religious overtones. Philosophers? Elders? Really? As intelligent as ESR may be, I wouldn't necessarily credit him or John Gilmore with the intellectual chops to debate angels and pins with, say, Voltaire or Kant. They're no more Philosophers than anyone whose long service at a task gives them insight into how it works. Sorry Eric, that doesn't rate you the title "Philosopher". "Elder" might carry a touch more credence as "an elder person with some special dignity or authority in a tribe or community" but still, it still sounds as silly as calling him a rabbi or 'network buddha' which might even be more accurate.
*of course, this assumes you're actually trying to solve the problem, not grandstand to the crowd or stroke your epeen.
"...(the internet is)...also a sort of reactive social organism..." Now we're into some sort of sophomoric psychosocial commentary. If you want to be specific, the internet really is just a bunch of wires and protocols, within which reside a number of different creatures - your 'reactive social organism' (which, sadly, isn't the sort of higher consciousness that you imply; the huge majority is about a sort of hedonistic narcissism that would have made Caligula blush) being one, the Greater Internet Dickwad being another example. I'm part of this network, and I'll tell you that while I agree with most of your logical premises (minus the ego), and I find Chris Dodd a repellent archetype of Congresspeople as a subspecies, I find your note itself so off-putting that it's impossible to support you.
It IS fair to say that the protocols are designed to see any interruption in information flow - ie censorship - as damage. But then to say "...And there are some things we will not stand having done to our network...." - I can PROMISE you that the last way you're going to get cooperative, constructive help from a US government official is to THREATEN them.
In fact "ESR", they're about the only people on this planet who have as inflated a sense of self importance as, well, you seem to.
-Styopa
Nope. It's a constitutionally authorized republic with democratically elected representatives. Which is not at all what you said. It starts with the constitution, which defines a republic form of government (federally explicit, step-by-step, and state-wise by power-backed guarantee), and then further provides for democratic selection of the representatives themselves by the citizens -- but not of the laws.
Well, no, again. The constitution is the top of the implication chain. It then specifies the republic. And the separation of powers. And what small portions of the process are democratic, and the large ones that are not. It isn't democracy that implies anything -- democracy is a low level consequence, where and when it is constitutionally defined within the bounds of the republic.
I see that. Luckily, it isn't beyond "some Americans" who actually understand how the system was designed and specified, and it wasn't beyond the founders, either... Article IV, section 4:
Irrelevant to our situation or my comments.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
An "open letter" isn't really written to it's recipient, but rather is a way of explaining a position to an audience - the intent is to convince the audience, not the recipient.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
nobody knows you're a dog.
Facebook knows you're a dog. It also knows what breed, how old you are, your preference in bitches (or other dogs as it may be), your favorite brand of dogfood, and how often you play fetch.
If you think it's me vs. Madison, you've missed the point. Saying "Wasn't James Madison against this" conveniently leaves out that there were a number of his peers who were all for it. Ben Franklin was one such. Madison succeeded to the extent that the President isn't "His Royal Highness", but he lost to the extent that the President, Senators, and others do have titles that clearly differentiate them from regular citizens -- as Ben Franklin wanted. Madison's side lost to Franklin's side. If you want to reopen the issue, that's fine, but presenting just one side of the argument is misleading. Our Founders were not unified on this topic.
Seriously? How about basic civics class? What do YOU think authorizes the government to exist?
It depends on the government in question, but the most broad answer would be consent of its citizens, aka "public contract".
dude, go find a high school and sit in on a civics class, seriously.
If they teach that US is "republic not a democracy" in civics classes in US, that's really sad. In civics I did in my school, we actually learned what all those things mean, and we've learned them from examples of many different countries, not just our own; nor did we get stuck on archaic 250-year-old definitions.
The United States is a Constitutional Republic. Period.
References:
CIA World Fact Book
Wikipedia
And of course the Constitution itself.
Words mean something. If your school taught you that the US is a "democracy" then I'm sorry but your school taught you wrong.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"