A permanent boycott has already been declared. The home page of this boycott is at 46's DVD News. Make you stand today; it doesn't matter if you don't live in the United States. If you are a potential customer of the MPAA, your voice is just as loud as any other.
I also can't stress enough how important it is that we GET AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD AND GET OUT INTO THE STREETS, particularly in the United States. We need to make some noise about this. Get flyers printed and distributed!
Let me know at findcss@usa.net if you plan a flyer drop or other public demonstration in the near future. I'm making a list of demonstrations and flyer drops. Please let me know - every voice counts right now.
With Napster your PC is a server, and "the server" is just a directory. Still possible to find out who distributes what, and issue an injunction. My idea is not letting "them" to find out who distributes what, and this is possible if nobody in particular really knows that.
As I said, I'm not knocking Freenet. But the reason Napster is such a headache for the recording industry is because it's generating one hell of a lot of traffic. My gnapster program currently is telling me that 2634 people are logged into this one Napster server right now. That's a lot of people per day through the network.
Freenet is a good idea, but it's also not an idea that is easy or quick to implement. From what I understand of the concept, there's a lot of technological overhead involved. A Napster-esque file transfer network can be implemented much quicker and, if it is made multi-platform, can generate a great deal of traffic quickly.
It's easy to sue three people. It's a bit harder to sue a hundred thousand people - the courts couldn't handle that kind of stress. They'd take decades sorting it out, even if they allowed it. The industry lawyers know this and know that suing half the Internet is not a solution.
Freenet is a good long-term solution. But projects such as the Open File Sharing Initiative, which is pursuing a Napster-esque file transfer system, is a better short-term solution. It'll generate the traffic that will act as a deterrent to lawsuits, while we develop distributed-storage technologies such as Freenet for long-term storage.
My point is that this isn't just a technical issue; it's a political one as well. While Freenet is a better technical solution, I feel Napster is a better political one.
I haven't check it closely but it seems like FreeNet has some potential. It should be possible to build a system that runs on top of FreeNet and ensures that no single server, or even all servers in the same jurisdiction, do not know what is stored where. The server itself would not know what is stored on it! It would be virtually impossible to remove information from such a system without shutting down the entire system. The downside is that it's hard to remove even genuinely objectionable content (kiddie porn, w4r3z etc).
Another possibility is taking the Napster route. Napster, really, is a brilliant concept and ultimately is probably more likely to succeed than Freenet. Don't get me wrong - Freenet is a good idea. I just feel that Napster is a more flexible way to go.
The Napster idea is that MP3's are never stored on any server, but on the individual's PC's. The server only acts as a negotiation point between transactions.
The same idea could be used to trade free software. Web sites such as Freshmeat could list new packages that are available, and then Napster-esque servers can negotiate between software holders. Package integrity can be verified by MD5 or some other method of checksum.
At that point, free software becomes as unregulatable as MP3's are now.
The act of _stealing_ something involves a party takes something from another party without the knowledge of that other party. But in the Net, most of the time, we the Netizens KNEW what is going on, but we CAN NOT DO A THING TO STOP IT.
Of course we can.
Turn off the goddamned cookies. Refuse to take them. If there's a website that you can't reach because it requires cookies to access (which are very few that I've seen), then sorry, you'll just have to decide which is more important.. the convenience of that service or your privacy and rights.
If you know what is going on, and take the attitude that you can't do anything about it because to do something would present an inconvenience (i.e., not being able to reach a website) then you're not being robbed - you're prostituting yourself. So unless you're willing to accept responsibility for the loss of those freedoms, stop whining about it.
Re:Most people are brainwashed to this stuff too.
on
Politics Follows Code
·
· Score: 1
The sad thing is that when you try to tell allot of people about this, they just say "your wasting your time" or "your not losing any rights".
I really wonder what has happened to the USA in the past 200 years to make people so blind to this kind of stuff.
They've stopped being citizens and they've become consumers. I've been getting the same thing from some people.. what I've heard is:
"If you Linux people would just buy the license like everyone else.."
"You Linux geeks are only a tiny fraction of the population, so shut up."
"When someone comes and takes my DVD away, then I'll care."
"There're much bigger issues to be fighting for than DVD players on Linux." (which is true, but seeing that this isn't a DVD player issue, not really, I don't see the point.)
"They can't stop me, so no rights are being taken away."
That last one is my personal favorite.
I'm getting a lot of this from Windows and Mac people. Frankly, I think it's because Linux has stolen so much of their thunder in the last year, it's an easy and cheap shot.
It's sad, because beyond the First Amendment people don't really know what their rights are. Or they think they have rights that they don't.
It comes down to "if you just play along, conform and obey the rules, then massah won't beat you". It's the attitude of a slave. That's what these people are, for the most part - slaves, no matter how much money they have or how many toys they own. Slavery doesn't need a master - ignorance is that.
United States Law Has Been Rewritten To Allow Corporations To Write Their Own Laws.
Make sense now?
This battle, at heart, really isn't about DVD players for Linux. It's about the fact that the MPAA pushed laws into place to cover their asses when CSS would be inevitably broken, which they knew for a fact would happen. They knew this in 1996.
Of course this happens all the time in the United States. But this one is just ugly. The rewritten Title 17 of the U.S. code gives a copyright owner the right to apply "access control methods" to their work. If you circumvent those methods to gain "unauthorized access" (which could be defined extremely widely) then you're in violation of federal law. You don't have to infringe the copyright to do it, either.
Let me draw you an analogy. Say I've made a CD-ROM with the neatest coolest package on it. It's copyrighted under the new Title 17. I put a paperclip (yes, I know, it would scratch the CD but work with me here) over the CD so that you can't use the CD without taking the paperclip off. You'd destroy your drive otherwise.
That paperclip is my "access control method". If you remove it without my permission, you are in violation of federal law (5 years jail, $500K fine first offense) even though you legally purchased the CD from me and now own it. Of course, I'll let you take the paperclip off - so long as I'm there watching, can keep a log of exactly what you do with the CD and other information for "marketing purposes". I can legally do this now, because when you add Chapter 12 to the rest of Title 17, Fair Use gets destroyed. Copyright owners have been given legal protection for circumventing it; the copyright user has no rights other than those given or sold to them by the copyright owner.
A general maxim is that opportunity is a byproduct of freedom. Technology grows at it's best in an environment where information is freely shared, not hoarded for profit. This set of laws is not good for the growth of technology, and anyone truly interested in the advancement of technology will oppose it. To think otherwise is the same mindset that says that chaos is bad for the economy and that the only way to a healthy economy is rigid central planning. It don't work.
The point that we have to get away from our keyboards and start "pounding the pavement" is a very good one. We have spent a lot of time incubating this tecnhology and culture and lifestyle, and it is now to the point where out "geek" culture is going to go head to head with the "establishment". And, like it or not, we have to play by their rules just as much as they have to play by ours. We're not going to win with code... though we'll certainly give them QUITE a scare.
I've been saying this for a while now. This war is going to be fought on three fronts:
Code. Fact is, the only way government can shut this down is by shutting down the Internet. It should be interesting to see whether the U.S. government is really more interested in free markets or law enforcement - by even beginning to impose the kind of restrictions that they could have to, would virtually kill the booming Internet economy. My point is, even if every last website is scoured of DeCSS, someone will put together a Napster-like program for normal software trade. As long as communication is free of government monitoring, and it's legal to own a programmable computer, code is still law.
Court. Let's get one myth out of the way. If we lose in court, DeCSS will not go away. The MPAA will not start throwing tens of thousands of people into jail. Not even close. What will happen is that it will be tied up in appellate, and if we lose there, then things get ugly. You and I both know that the Open Source community won't say "oh, judge said it's illegal, better stop it or I'll get spanked". What happens then is war - it's not smart to piss off millions of very smart technical people in an Internet world. Bad things could happen; people could get hurt. A court victory can help prevent this situation from happening.
Street. You're right. We need to get away from the keyboard. I've just printed up 500 flyers, plan to pass some of them out at the Linux users group meeting tonight. Hope to get the rest out to general public within the next week. The text of the flyer will soon be up on my site, and I'm trying to put together a list of flyer drops around the U.S. If you've done a flyer drop recently or are planning one, let me know at findcss@usa.net. It'll be advertised.
Okay, the list is up. A lot of it is probably wrong and it's almost certainly incomplete, so if people could please look it over that'd be great. If we work together on this we could build a central information repository of what company owns what.
Slashdot Mirror
A permanent boycott has already been declared. The home page of this boycott is at 46's DVD News. Make you stand today; it doesn't matter if you don't live in the United States. If you are a potential customer of the MPAA, your voice is just as loud as any other.
I also can't stress enough how important it is that we GET AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD AND GET OUT INTO THE STREETS, particularly in the United States. We need to make some noise about this. Get flyers printed and distributed!
Let me know at findcss@usa.net if you plan a flyer drop or other public demonstration in the near future. I'm making a list of demonstrations and flyer drops. Please let me know - every voice counts right now.
46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
With Napster your PC is a server, and "the server" is just a directory. Still possible to find out who distributes what, and issue an injunction. My idea is not letting "them" to find out who distributes what, and this is possible if nobody in particular really knows that.
As I said, I'm not knocking Freenet. But the reason Napster is such a headache for the recording industry is because it's generating one hell of a lot of traffic. My gnapster program currently is telling me that 2634 people are logged into this one Napster server right now. That's a lot of people per day through the network.
Freenet is a good idea, but it's also not an idea that is easy or quick to implement. From what I understand of the concept, there's a lot of technological overhead involved. A Napster-esque file transfer network can be implemented much quicker and, if it is made multi-platform, can generate a great deal of traffic quickly.
It's easy to sue three people. It's a bit harder to sue a hundred thousand people - the courts couldn't handle that kind of stress. They'd take decades sorting it out, even if they allowed it. The industry lawyers know this and know that suing half the Internet is not a solution.
Freenet is a good long-term solution. But projects such as the Open File Sharing Initiative, which is pursuing a Napster-esque file transfer system, is a better short-term solution. It'll generate the traffic that will act as a deterrent to lawsuits, while we develop distributed-storage technologies such as Freenet for long-term storage.
My point is that this isn't just a technical issue; it's a political one as well. While Freenet is a better technical solution, I feel Napster is a better political one.
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
I haven't check it closely but it seems like FreeNet has some potential. It should be possible to build a system that runs on top of FreeNet and ensures that no single server, or even all servers in the same jurisdiction, do not know what is stored where. The server itself would not know what is stored on it! It would be virtually impossible to remove information from such a system without shutting down the entire system. The downside is that it's hard to remove even genuinely objectionable content (kiddie porn, w4r3z etc).
Another possibility is taking the Napster route. Napster, really, is a brilliant concept and ultimately is probably more likely to succeed than Freenet. Don't get me wrong - Freenet is a good idea. I just feel that Napster is a more flexible way to go.
The Napster idea is that MP3's are never stored on any server, but on the individual's PC's. The server only acts as a negotiation point between transactions.
The same idea could be used to trade free software. Web sites such as Freshmeat could list new packages that are available, and then Napster-esque servers can negotiate between software holders. Package integrity can be verified by MD5 or some other method of checksum.
At that point, free software becomes as unregulatable as MP3's are now.
Anyone up for some fun? :)
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
The act of _stealing_ something involves a party takes something from another party without the knowledge of that other party. But in the Net, most of the time, we the Netizens KNEW what is going on, but we CAN NOT DO A THING TO STOP IT.
Of course we can.
Turn off the goddamned cookies. Refuse to take them. If there's a website that you can't reach because it requires cookies to access (which are very few that I've seen), then sorry, you'll just have to decide which is more important.. the convenience of that service or your privacy and rights.
If you know what is going on, and take the attitude that you can't do anything about it because to do something would present an inconvenience (i.e., not being able to reach a website) then you're not being robbed - you're prostituting yourself. So unless you're willing to accept responsibility for the loss of those freedoms, stop whining about it.
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
The sad thing is that when you try to tell allot of people about this, they just say "your wasting your time" or "your not losing any rights".
I really wonder what has happened to the USA in the past 200 years to make people so blind to this kind of stuff.
They've stopped being citizens and they've become consumers. I've been getting the same thing from some people.. what I've heard is:
"If you Linux people would just buy the license like everyone else.."
"You Linux geeks are only a tiny fraction of the population, so shut up."
"When someone comes and takes my DVD away, then I'll care."
"There're much bigger issues to be fighting for than DVD players on Linux."
(which is true, but seeing that this isn't a DVD player issue, not really, I don't see the point.)
"They can't stop me, so no rights are being taken away."
That last one is my personal favorite.
I'm getting a lot of this from Windows and Mac people. Frankly, I think it's because Linux has stolen so much of their thunder in the last year, it's an easy and cheap shot.
It's sad, because beyond the First Amendment people don't really know what their rights are. Or they think they have rights that they don't.
It comes down to "if you just play along, conform and obey the rules, then massah won't beat you". It's the attitude of a slave. That's what these people are, for the most part - slaves, no matter how much money they have or how many toys they own. Slavery doesn't need a master - ignorance is that.
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
Okay. Let me spell it out for you.
United States Law Has Been Rewritten To Allow Corporations To Write Their Own Laws.
Make sense now?
This battle, at heart, really isn't about DVD players for Linux. It's about the fact that the MPAA pushed laws into place to cover their asses when CSS would be inevitably broken, which they knew for a fact would happen. They knew this in 1996.
Of course this happens all the time in the United States. But this one is just ugly. The rewritten Title 17 of the U.S. code gives a copyright owner the right to apply "access control methods" to their work. If you circumvent those methods to gain "unauthorized access" (which could be defined extremely widely) then you're in violation of federal law. You don't have to infringe the copyright to do it, either.
Let me draw you an analogy. Say I've made a CD-ROM with the neatest coolest package on it. It's copyrighted under the new Title 17. I put a paperclip (yes, I know, it would scratch the CD but work with me here) over the CD so that you can't use the CD without taking the paperclip off. You'd destroy your drive otherwise.
That paperclip is my "access control method". If you remove it without my permission, you are in violation of federal law (5 years jail, $500K fine first offense) even though you legally purchased the CD from me and now own it. Of course, I'll let you take the paperclip off - so long as I'm there watching, can keep a log of exactly what you do with the CD and other information for "marketing purposes". I can legally do this now, because when you add Chapter 12 to the rest of Title 17, Fair Use gets destroyed. Copyright owners have been given legal protection for circumventing it; the copyright user has no rights other than those given or sold to them by the copyright owner.
A general maxim is that opportunity is a byproduct of freedom. Technology grows at it's best in an environment where information is freely shared, not hoarded for profit. This set of laws is not good for the growth of technology, and anyone truly interested in the advancement of technology will oppose it. To think otherwise is the same mindset that says that chaos is bad for the economy and that the only way to a healthy economy is rigid central planning. It don't work.
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
The point that we have to get away from our keyboards and start "pounding the pavement" is a very good one. We have spent a lot of time incubating this tecnhology and culture and lifestyle, and it is now to the point where out "geek" culture is going to go head to head with the "establishment". And, like it or not, we have to play by their rules just as much as they have to play by ours. We're not going to win with code... though we'll certainly give them QUITE a scare.
I've been saying this for a while now. This war is going to be fought on three fronts:
Defendent 46
findcss@usa.net
46's DVD News
Okay, the list is up. A lot of it is probably wrong and it's almost certainly incomplete, so if people could please look it over that'd be great. If we work together on this we could build a central information repository of what company owns what.
Defendent #46
www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Po rt/3224