Think about some back country voting booth in Louisiana where they dont know jack about computers, it would be hard to get a computer out there and tell people to use it to vote.
Gotta watch those stereotypes -- in Louisiana, we use electronic voting machines.
(Around here, voting confusion takes the form of "Let's word the amendment in such a weird way that people will be voting for it when they thought they were voting against it...")
"Design For Evil" Any innocent product which becomes suddenly genocidal in the hands of a tyrant has been designed by a dangerous naif. Every design process is incomplete unless it takes into careful consideration what could be done with the product by a dictatorial megalomaniac in command of a national economy, a secret police, and a large army.
Sounds good in theory, but in practice, any technology can be abused by those with evil intent. Simple brush pruning tools have been used for wholesale massacre of members of minority opposition parties (cf. Rwanda, South Africa). Historically, whole peoples have been exterminated with nothing more complicated than a sword blade. How then, does one evaluate the supposed "dangerousness" of one's design?
Who decides? Ultimately, you do. You don't live in a bubble. If you're smart enough to build the thing, you're smart enough to anticipate how it'll be abused. If you're ethical enough to worry about Jon Katz indiscriminately handing out legal coercive tools, you're also ethical enough to worry about yourself indiscriminately handing out technological coercive tools.
We are more-or-less in agreement. Everyone is responsible for his *own* actions-- BUT not those of every evil person to come after you.
Here's a set of bad examples: I am responsible if I design a virus and set it loose in the wild, and I have indirect moral responsibility if I hand a virus-construction kit (or a complete virus program) to a person that I have good reason (like he told me quite seriously) to believe that he plans to set a virus loose in the wild. BUT.. if I publish a paper on the theory of viral computer programs, I am NOT ethically responsible for every virus-hacker that decides to inflict WORD macro viruses on the world 20 years later. Nor am I responsible if Evil Government X's Special Ops hackers write a virus that takes down Nation Y's defense communications system or something like that 30 years later.
However.. certain actions are simply Not Wise, but that is a matter for individual evaluation and decision. There are few hard-and-fast rules--one of them is the "accessory-before-the-fact" rule: if you could be charged as one, don't do it. (That covers handing virus programs to juvenile delinquents who've told you they intend to cause trouble, or handing loaded guns to someone who says he wants to kill someone.) The rest depends on your conscience, education, and experience to evaluate--rather like the rest of Life.
Does this article actually define a problem and propose a solution, or does it merely pose a serious of intriguingly vague questions?
Answer: no, there is no problem actually defined here, though the tenor of the questions implies that the reader is supposed to believe there is one--though not exactly what it is. The imagery and emotional hot-buttons pushed through Katz's choice of phrases have a vague neo-Luddite, Naderite ring to them, which floats away in the swamp of unanswered questions.
The answer to the questions is: Yes, and Maybe.
At the bottom we have a nice "perhaps":
"Perhaps we should require that before new technologies are licensed, deployed or sold, we need a technological impact statement. Like the environmental statements designed to make people aware that their surroundings could be affected by construction or research projects, a TIS would mean that before projects like the gene map are sold and distributed, ordinary people are aware of the technology and its possible impact on their lives and those of their children."
Translated:
"Perhaps we should have more government paperwork required before any innovative business is allowed to do anything, so that more bureaucrats can make a living, getting a power trip from saying "no", holding their hands out for bribes--er, campaign contributions--, and so that established business have yet another legal roadblock they can use to squash competition, and so that any fringe group that doesn't approve of your politics can use the process to shut you down regardless of the actual merits of your product or business."
Reality check: the problem with your "perhaps" is the same old one: WHO DECIDES? Who decides whether my product or business is permissable? Do you really want to hand over to a government body or political group or ANYONE AT ALL the power to FORBID you to research or invent something new?
(Dragoness hands Jon Katz a copy of "Atlas Shrugged", and crawls back into her lair.)
1) Lobby your congress-critters to repeal the law.
2) Force test cases to the Supreme Court -- this requires violating the law. HOWEVER.. if a law is ruled unconstitutional, it is null and void and no crime has been committed and you CANNOT be punished. You just have to have the guts to be the guy to get sued or go to jail in the first place to prove the point--and make sure you've got a GOOD civil rights lawyer.
3) Do unto the DMCA as was done to the 55-mph speed limit and to Prohibition--if everyone violates it, AND everyone thinks it is a contemptible law (and thus do not help lawyers & law enforcement), it will become unenforceable (except where there's a cop or IP lawyer around).
Enforcement will become selective, thus unfair, and probably heavy-handed (since it will be used to go after 'enemies'), thus making the law more and more unpopular, thus causing people to put more pressure on the legislature...
4) Congress will pay attention faster if some industry (people with money) can show that they are being hurt by DMCA.. Export controls went away as much because the big boys couldn't compete overseas with them in place, as because of 1st Amendment issues coming to a head. As long as the public impression of opposition to DMCA is that it consists of a bunch of teenagers who want to download pirated music from Napster, and warez d00ds who want to share cracked copies of HalfLife and Office 2000, you will find little sympathy or support in Congress.
I know and you know that's not who is hurt--basic innovation and freedom is hurt, here, but THAT must be shown in unequivocable terms that can be understood by people who think in terms of money and votes.
The Senate has to ratify any treaties before they mean jack in the U.S., so we can use the usual democratic process to influence our senators. I imagine each European country has its own procedures and laws for making treaties the equivalent of local law--or stopping them from taking effect. You who live there, do what you can.
In any case, if the U.S. does not sign or ratify this hypothetical treaty, it won't have much force even in tne rest of the world--unless Europe is going to start real-time censorship of network packets from overseas...
Well, I'm still using my mother's Model 1947 Singer sewing machine. Works fine, lasts long time.. It was a professional dressmaker's model (i.e., industrial ruggedized) and they built things a bit more sturdily back then--steel and Bakelite, not modern plastics that get brittle and break. (Hey, I'm still using my 1985 rotary-dial AT&T phone--another "Bakelite not cheap plastic" item. It's outlasted several $10 K-Mart phones of more recent vintage.)
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Think about some back country voting booth in Louisiana where they dont know jack about computers, it would be hard to get a computer out there and tell people to use it to vote.
Gotta watch those stereotypes -- in Louisiana, we use electronic voting machines.
(Around here, voting confusion takes the form of "Let's word the amendment in such a weird way that people will be voting for it when they thought they were voting against it...")
"Design For Evil" Any innocent product which becomes suddenly genocidal in the hands of a tyrant has been designed by a dangerous naif. Every design process is incomplete unless it takes into careful consideration what could be done with the product by a dictatorial megalomaniac in command of a national economy, a secret police, and a large army.
Sounds good in theory, but in practice, any technology can be abused by those with evil intent. Simple brush pruning tools have been used for wholesale massacre of members of minority opposition parties (cf. Rwanda, South Africa). Historically, whole peoples have been exterminated with nothing more complicated than a sword blade. How then, does one evaluate the supposed "dangerousness" of one's design?
Who decides? Ultimately, you do. You don't live in a bubble. If you're smart enough to build the thing, you're smart enough to anticipate how it'll be abused. If you're ethical enough to worry about Jon Katz indiscriminately handing out legal coercive tools, you're also ethical enough to worry about yourself indiscriminately handing out technological coercive tools.
We are more-or-less in agreement. Everyone is responsible for his *own* actions-- BUT not those of every evil person to come after you.
Here's a set of bad examples: I am responsible if I design a virus and set it loose in the wild, and I have indirect moral responsibility if I hand a virus-construction kit (or a complete virus program) to a person that I have good reason (like he told me quite seriously) to believe that he plans to set a virus loose in the wild. BUT.. if I publish a paper on the theory of viral computer programs, I am NOT ethically responsible for every virus-hacker that decides to inflict WORD macro viruses on the world 20 years later. Nor am I responsible if Evil Government X's Special Ops hackers write a virus that takes down Nation Y's defense communications system or something like that 30 years later.
However.. certain actions are simply Not Wise, but that is a matter for individual evaluation and decision. There are few hard-and-fast rules--one of them is the "accessory-before-the-fact" rule: if you could be charged as one, don't do it. (That covers handing virus programs to juvenile delinquents who've told you they intend to cause trouble, or handing loaded guns to someone who says he wants to kill someone.) The rest depends on your conscience, education, and experience to evaluate--rather like the rest of Life.
Does this article actually define a problem and propose a solution, or does it merely pose a serious of intriguingly vague questions?
Answer: no, there is no problem actually defined here, though the tenor of the questions implies that the reader is supposed to believe there is one--though not exactly what it is. The imagery and emotional hot-buttons pushed through Katz's choice of phrases have a vague neo-Luddite, Naderite ring to them, which floats away in the swamp of unanswered questions.
The answer to the questions is: Yes, and Maybe.
At the bottom we have a nice "perhaps":
"Perhaps we should require that before new technologies are licensed, deployed or sold, we need a technological impact statement. Like the environmental statements designed to make people aware that their surroundings could be affected by construction or research projects, a TIS would mean that before projects like the gene map are sold and distributed, ordinary people are aware of the technology and its possible impact on their lives and those of their children."
Translated:
"Perhaps we should have more government paperwork required before any innovative business is allowed to do anything, so that more bureaucrats can make a living, getting a power trip from saying "no", holding their hands out for bribes--er, campaign contributions--, and so that established business have yet another legal roadblock they can use to squash competition, and so that any fringe group that doesn't approve of your politics can use the process to shut you down regardless of the actual merits of your product or business."
Reality check: the problem with your "perhaps" is the same old one: WHO DECIDES? Who decides whether my product or business is permissable? Do you really want to hand over to a government body or political group or ANYONE AT ALL the power to FORBID you to research or invent something new?
(Dragoness hands Jon Katz a copy of "Atlas Shrugged", and crawls back into her lair.)
1) Lobby your congress-critters to repeal the law.
2) Force test cases to the Supreme Court -- this requires violating the law. HOWEVER.. if a law is ruled unconstitutional, it is null and void and no crime has been committed and you CANNOT be punished. You just have to have the guts to be the guy to get sued or go to jail in the first place to prove the point--and make sure you've got a GOOD civil rights lawyer.
3) Do unto the DMCA as was done to the 55-mph speed limit and to Prohibition--if everyone violates it, AND everyone thinks it is a contemptible law (and thus do not help lawyers & law enforcement), it will become unenforceable (except where there's a cop or IP lawyer around).
Enforcement will become selective, thus unfair, and probably heavy-handed (since it will be used to go after 'enemies'), thus making the law more and more unpopular, thus causing people to put more pressure on the legislature...
4) Congress will pay attention faster if some industry (people with money) can show that they are being hurt by DMCA.. Export controls went away as much because the big boys couldn't compete overseas with them in place, as because of 1st Amendment issues coming to a head. As long as the public impression of opposition to DMCA is that it consists of a bunch of teenagers who want to download pirated music from Napster, and warez d00ds who want to share cracked copies of HalfLife and Office 2000, you will find little sympathy or support in Congress.
I know and you know that's not who is hurt--basic innovation and freedom is hurt, here, but THAT must be shown in unequivocable terms that can be understood by people who think in terms of money and votes.
The Senate has to ratify any treaties before they mean jack in the U.S., so we can use the usual democratic process to influence our senators. I imagine each European country has its own procedures and laws for making treaties the equivalent of local law--or stopping them from taking effect. You who live there, do what you can.
In any case, if the U.S. does not sign or ratify this hypothetical treaty, it won't have much force even in tne rest of the world--unless Europe is going to start real-time censorship of network packets from overseas...
Well, I'm still using my mother's Model 1947 Singer sewing machine. Works fine, lasts long time.. It was a professional dressmaker's model (i.e., industrial ruggedized) and they built things a bit more sturdily back then--steel and Bakelite, not modern plastics that get brittle and break. (Hey, I'm still using my 1985 rotary-dial AT&T phone--another "Bakelite not cheap plastic" item. It's outlasted several $10 K-Mart phones of more recent vintage.)