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GNU is Not Unix

FSF General Counsel Eben Moglen Talks On Upside 86

Posted by Hemos from the interesting-guy dept.
ContinuousPark writes, "From an Upside article based on conversations with Eben Moglen, FSF general counsel and author of Anarchism Triumphant: 'In such a context, Moglen says, distribution of a software tool that lets European movie watchers watch American films on DVD before they hit the local theaters or lets Web surfers break through their employer's site censorship policies are about as politically expressive as dumping a boatload of tea into Boston Harbor. Granted, it may not be legal under the current framework. But legal frameworks change. How long before today's encryption crackers become the next generation's heroes? In the face of such potential changes, Moglen says the only mistake for an attorney in his position is standing idly by while new history is in the making.' "
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FSF General Counsel Eben Moglen Talks On Upside More

FSF General Counsel Eben Moglen Talks On Upside

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  • Re:Alright asshole... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree, filtering software at work is not censorship.

    What about filtering software in libraries, where it may be the person's only access? Not everyone has a computer or internet access you know...

    The problem is that the filtering software doesn't filter on the reasons it says it does. It is being used for political reasons, and that should NEVER be forced on anyone

  • is actually not too complicated:

    Libertarians don't want laws because it'll take away everything that makes them better than others, like their guns and excess money. They just want everybody unable to survive in their world-without-rules to die. The concept is that everybody should be responsible for himself. The fact that people become Libertarian once they've secured their future shows their cowardice.

    Anarchists are actually totally different. The true anarchist respects all forms of life and is disciplined enough to be a responsible person without rules and laws. Applying moral values instead of rules makes the world a much more efficient and pleasant place.

  • This sort of... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    nonsense just shows that Stallman and his cult members are out of the mainstream. Anarchy is good unless you violate his viral license. What a phony.

  • No, criminal not "moral" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Not only is it not wrong to break unjust laws; it is every man's moral responsibility.

    No, you are an egotistical fool if you think this. Who are you to decide what laws are unjust and which are just? I mean, we don't let 16 year 31337 h4X0rs make the laws do we, and for a good reason - they are prejudiced and hold different views from the rest of society. Just because you think a law in unjust because it makes it harder for you to pirate music and download pr0n, doesn't mean the average American agrees with you.

    So by breaking a so-called "unjust" law you are just assuming that your opinion is better than the people which Americans elect to make these laws, which I would call arrogance of the worst kind. Your opinion is no more valid than any others, although in light of your inability to deal with other people's viewpoints I would perhaps say it is *less* valid than most.

  • Re:Just like MP3s... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I personally believe people are inherently good, and if you make it easy enough for them to do the right thing (pay rather than steal), they will do it.
    Well, I think you can look at all the survival mechanisms in the plant/animal world and find analogues in human relationships. Predatory, parasitic, symbiotic, take your pick. I prefer the last, but I see the others.

    It is pitiful for a human to exist as a parasite, or by preying on the weak. And it's a pitiful society that depends on parasitic institutions for essential services (and it's an endangered society that depends on predatory institutions).

    These things have evolved, more than been chosen. Can we understand what is happening well enough to guide social evolution to something better? Can improvements be proposed without scaring those now enjoying privileges, engaging them to focus on their humanity so they will want to play a constructive role in changing the institutions that afford them their privileges? Tough, eh? But they don't live by bread alone, either.

    What we all need (IMHO) is to have a real choice as to what we want to be a part of. But we also need a vision and hope, otherwise the choices will be petty and defensive at best.

    To enhance the possibilities, it's good to remember that democracy is about who gets to choose, and how, not about what is chosen.

  • I always have to bracket that term anarchism, since it refers to no actually existent thing or quality.

    No. Anarchism refers to a particular political theory.

    One of the most thorough net resources on anarchism is An Anarchist FAQ Webpage [geocities.com].

  • The moderators function like net nannies for the /. readership. *I* can browse at -1, but most people rely on the ratings, seeing only a pre-digested view of the discussion as deemed valuable by some 14 year old zit-faced zealots. The whole system is severely broken, that's why I feel obliged to side with the trolls.

    Well, I used to browse at -1, and sneer at people who complained about the crap and browsed at 0. But guess what? The disruption has just become TOO MUCH. Once upon a time, it was just short "first post" messages, and short dumb "me too" posts that were easy to ignore.

    Nowadays, it's 20 page long contentless postings by someone who has a fixation with the paste function of their browser, and a clear intent of _disrupting_ communication. It just has become too much. Now I browse at 0, and sneer at people who browse at 1.

  • Moderation is completely out of control. It is almost entirely based on "do I agree or disagree with the sentiments in this post?" now.

    The trollers are indeed serving a purpose in trying to point this out. Unfortunately, I don't think it's having much of an effect on most moderators, who seem to have no conscience.

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • Where is that from?
    I couln't find it in the article it's self or in the anarchy essay!?!?

    where is it man?
  • I posted this in the wrong page. Sorry.
  • Washington and company were hardly outcasts. Saying he was an outcast is sort of like saying Bill Gates is an outcast- Washington was the richest man in the country at the time of the Revolution, and Franklin was the second wealthiest. These men were all members of an extremely wealthy aristocracy who were opinion leaders- their voices were widely heard and respected. Yes, there were certainly rabble-rousers involved (Tom Paine comes to mind immediately) but without Washington, Jefferson, and the like convincing the wealthy and powerful to support the revolution (remember, they all bought tons of war bonds) then we wouldn't have gotten anywhere.
    As far as your claim that most common people merely wanted to remain British subjects, I'll just suggest that if that was the case, it would have been difficult to raise armies. This is far from the case- there were tons of volunteers who suffered through ridiculous conditions and most of whom were never paid for their efforts. While there were many supporters of the crown, if their numbers were as large as you suggest, then I'd think they would have helped the Brits out more- the record would indicate that they were largely ineffective and never tried to organize in any meaningful way.
    As far as the corporations... well, wealthy farmers and traders controlled the government long before there was any notion of the modern "corporation." Remember, they held the bonds that financed the government and if they withdrew them they could bring down the whole show. So, they had a lot of say pretty much from day one.
    Just a handy history lesson...
    ~luge(4? informative? please...)
  • <I>Come on, many of the people who started the revolution were rabble-rousers. They enjoyed conflict. Hmm, kinda sound like Slashdotters. But just because they were extreme doesn't mean their views are wrong.</I>

    You seem to misinterpret his point. This whole point was that these people were miscreants of their time and extreme, but that we treat them as heros now. He AGREES with you. No need to argue! :)
  • It's something that worries the hell out of me. The types of society that I think would be nice all involve the principle of people being able to make their own informed decisions. For a society to be able to invest the resources so that everyone has a reasonable picture of the world which is clouded only by their own personality, temperament and individuality requires a fair deal of wealth. There are some that argue that the ancient Greek "democracies" couldn't have existed without slaves : in order to provide the small number of citizens with enough time to devote to intense political wrangling and philosophical debate. All that should have changed with the introduction of machinery (it's interesting to look at predictions from the turn of the century which assumed that mechanization would yield leisure - G.B.Shaw for one thought that we would be able to get by on a 4-hour work day!), but if we keep insisting on increasing production of possibly non-important consumer items and allow the accumulation of leisure and wealth and power in the hands of a few as a _fundamental_ part of the system then it's hard to see how we can have a functioning democracy. Bleargh! I feel distraught thinking about this sort of thing.
  • If I had the points I'd give them to ya!
    However, the revolution wasn't just the big names that we're all taught to revere. First, as you yourself point out there must have been enough popular support to raise armies. Second, it seems that most revolutions do have a nucleus which is needed to get things going. Great post.

  • The general public is not yet well aware of the direction in which forces like DMCA, UCITA, et. al. are going.

    True.

    Americans have a high tolerance for civil disobedience and mischief-makers if it appears they are working for some general good.

    Not necessarily true. I think that there is not a hell of a lot of evidence to support this. I think this is a pretty conservative country. This is because of the point that you make about public not being aware of the issues. A widespread ignorance about governance, history and sociology means that people have no mental tools to evaluate these problems. A society without educated citizens is a society that is manipulable by those that run the media. And, like you say it is more important that we get the word out to the common man. Without him, we lose the fight. But we have to get the word out to him about all the other issues that lead us to the conclusion that censorship is bad. That's a relatively large ideological background that has to be communicated. Meanwhile a lot of people are just struggling to live.

  • In my meta moderation, I've only had to mark one post labelled as "troll" as unfair. Most of the time it seems fine. When moderating, I don't see many trolls that are incorrectly labelled. I think you need to come back with some statistics before claiming this. Also, FWIW, this is off-topic. (but it's not like there's a self analysis section here)
  • Keep thinking a little while before you post. Check my user info for some answers to you objections.

    --
  • Many (small l) libertarians are anarchists, believing that no government whatsoever would be better than the force and violence perpetrated on humanity by current and historical governments. If you pooh-pooh that idea, consider the nearly 100 million people killed by governments in this 20th century, the bloodiest of all centuries so far.

    The reason to "pooh-pooh that idea" is that without a government of some sort there's no one able to prevent a erm.. government emerging.

    Getting rid of government, as opposed to trying to limit and control it, just means that whichever group can wield sufficient power locally is the new (local) government. That's what a government is, the group that are strong enough to enforce their will. The only way of creating counterbalances to ensure that nobody can get strong enough to enforce their will is to erm.. have a government enforcing those balances.

    What you'd get is a plethora of would-be governments acting on various levels, and more bloodshed as they fight it out amongst themselves or further enforce thier power within their own spheres of influence. Just like those current and historic governments you were talking about.

    Unless you can explain how to prevent governments arising (well, I guess killing everyone on the planet would do it...) the idea deserves all the "pooh-poohing" it gets.
  • i disagree. i only moderate posts that i feel could use added attention. i dont bother with tolls, there is too meny. well the sex storys i DO moderate down, while most are of good (as far as sex storys go... ) they are in bad tast and this isnt the form for them.

    but you are right in that moderation is not really helping. ie, a person will miss alot just reading at +4 or +5.

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • He simply said the design wasn't a good one to start a whole new OS upon. His points were for if Linux became mainstream, and Linus countered as saying that his OS is not meant as mainstream, as just something to toy with. He agreed that the design isn't the one to use for a modern OS, but was a logical choice since he expected it to go nowhere. The Hurd would come and everyone would be happy.

    Instead, the Hurd hasn't, and Linux has been pushed and prodded to get past growing pains. Tannebaum's point was that these pains could be bypassed using a modern design.

    Now, whether he was right or not doesn't matter. That was his point. The success of Linux doesn't make him wrong, as it might even show his point.
  • It would be nice if a major studio/record label would actually TRY THIS before unleashing their lawyers...unfortunately, they usually SUE furst, ASK QUESTIONS later.
  • Well, if the recent DDOS attacks show us anything, it shows the kind of "civil disobedience" an organized group of crackers could bring to bear.

    The Geeks _really do_ run the internet, and it would be wise for some of these lawyer-wielding corporations to understand what that means.

    Given the right motivation, an organized group of people could attack and cripple these companies in ways the script kiddies never thought of.

    Personally, I think the Boston Tea Party is a very good example of the kind of thing we could see if politically motivated crackers decided to launch a directed and coordinated attack.

  • You can't be much of a moral relativist if you really believe you can objectively criticize the Indonesian government's ways of knowing and doing.

    I don't. I am subjectively criticising them. Values don't exist objectively as properties of actions or situations.

  • If they are not threatened, why are they so keen to squash illegal copying - and DeCSS software?

    If they were not threatened, we would not even be having this discussion.

  • Fully agreed. The Copyright Extention act of 1995 (?) is one of the most odiferous acts of Congress ever. An egregious case of Congress selling out to corporate IP holders, especially Disney who was going to have Mickey Mouse come off copyright.

    IMHO, copyright and patent terms should be shortened not lengthened. Modern society changes much faster than historically, works become dated and no longer commercially viable much quicker, and copying and distribution of works takes much less time. The only exception might be patented drugs, which deserve compensation for the lengthy FDA testing period.

    Furthermore, I would propose that copyright lapse restorably when new sales are halted. Out-of-print books/disks should lose copyright, but perhaps the copyright holder should be able to reinstate their copyright by restarting publication. Maybe this would lead to a small industry of micropublishers who would maintain copyrights by publishing on demand. But at least the works would be available.

    Private works never sold wouldn't have copyright lapse.

  • Carrying on a bit further, you can see that the fundamental basis of all law to to protect those who build things (originally clearing land, growing crops and domesticating cattle) against those who would simply take it. This is necessary for human development because it encourages creation.

    You've touched on the problem of extending this to intellectual property: free duplication. What does the copyright owner lose when a copy is made? Not the work itself at all, but a potential sale.
    A sales contract is not property, it is a mutual agreement. So the seller doesn't own it any more than the buyer. If the buyer rejects the sellers terms there is no sale, so no potential to lose. Prohibiting copying then is merely spite, but may be necessary to avoid losing others who _would_ pay.
  • In my meta moderation, I often express no opinion on trolls. It seems that quite often, I can see that a given troll is both a valid comment and a troll. In other words, I can see both sides of it and in those cases I express neither fair nor unfair.

    I guess the problem is that I feel that often trolling is justified and makes a point. Must we be limited to discussion that is not heated, that is not insulting, that doesn't raise anyone's anger?

    When I moderate I only mark something as a troll if it's clearly a troll AND it's clearly off-topic. Maybe I should mark it as off-topic instead of troll or flamebait. I guess without the troll and flamebait Moderations there are those who would fill up the threads with nothing but nasty insults that are only very marginally on-topic.

    This whole thread is off-topic, in a way. I wish there was a place here for an ongoing discussion of Moderation and Meta-Moderation. These things should be discussed. This thread is on-topic in that it's in the discussion of an article on which people seem to have a hard time being "objective" with their Moderation.

    Objectivity in Moderation is unrealizable. The "Insightful" Moderation implies subjectivity, for example. I do feel that there are many who use Moderation where a reply would be more appropriate. If you don't agree with something, reply, don't Moderate down.


    -Jordan Henderson

  • Ahh.. (Score:1)

    by Zach ( 79700 )
    "We're going to go through at least a year of this," Moglen warns. "That's because this is the year in which a whole range of intellectual property owners -- everybody from software developers to movie studios to book publishers -- realize that free software is the problem."

    Yes, we must exterminate free software, the root of all evil in the world.

    </endgatesmindset>

  • I am a Christan with a scientific background (read "I took some science in school"). The big difference between religious and scientific world-views is their base. Religious world-views are based in faith, whereas the scientific world-view is based in experimental verification. This is a huge distinction. Science makes predictions that can be tested. Let me state that again.

    Science makes predictions that can be tested.

    Religion is a wonderful thing, and faith certainly still has a place in the world, but science has supplanted religion and philosophy as a description of the world. (The Bible even admits that religion alone can't accurately describe the world. Read the book of Job for a much more eloquent discussion than I could possibly manage.)

    Because of this distinction, many of the more vocal members of Slashdot make the argument that religion must therefore be worthless. I feel that this is an uncharacteristically narrow-minded approach. Religion and science can very happily coexist. It is truly unfortunate that the most vocal members of either viewpoint also thend to be the least tolerant.

  • >And so are the statist assholes who moderated
    >you up. Not only is it not wrong to break unjust
    >laws; it is every man's moral responsibility.
    agreed. "if your not part of the solution your the problem", thats like saying well i know my world sucks but maybe it'll get better some day. ho hum. stand up for yourself. damn ppl are boneless and stupid.
  • I wish there was a place here for an ongoing discussion of Moderation and Meta-Moderation

    There is... It's in one of the 'hidden' discussion areas. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=mo deration [slashdot.org]

    I often get the opportunity to moderate, and I never moderate down. I've also moderated up an opinion that I don't necessarily agree with - if it made me stop and think, then I believe it deserves attention.

    Unlike most of /. I am not primarily a *NIX user - I work in a very Microsoft-centric environment, and all the programming that I do is in a Win32 capacity. I come to slashdot for interesting discussion on a wide variety of topics, and I enjoy the disparity of viewpoints. Take that away, and slashdot will be reduced to the equivilant of an AOL chatroom echoing with "ME TOO!"s.

    jerdenn

  • Of course i remember you Mikey! Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Cafe too :) We had some great times...

    Perl programming is BY FAR best in Unix... learning it in windows must suck. I'm going to add a snooze option next, i personally need it! It will play another song (or the same song) 10 minutes after the first alarm, or whatever. See ya!

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

  • Hey Sgt! I can easily see some of those huge companies making some troublemakers "disappear".

    As far as porting wakeup to win32.. why? Win95/98 have Task Scheduler, just make sure that mp3's are associated to a player, set task scheduler to run an mp3 file in the morning, and it should all go. That's what i did in windows, works fine.

    For those who don't know what's going on, wakeup is my easy to use mp3 alarm program so you don't have to use at or cron anymore :)
    It's at soul.apk.net/wakeup [apk.net]

    Back to the subject... in the wake of civil disobedience, many power mongers cannot control themselves and resort to irrational measures. It happened after the Boston Tea Party. It can happen anywhere. Irrationality is everywhere.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

  • The Boston Tea Party (among the other tea parties that get no attention like Boston's) directly led to the deaths of many soon-be Americans. How far is this dispute going to go?

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

  • Actually you are the one that needs to do some reading. Libertarian is a word the european anarchists adopted for themselves after the agents provacateurs and the bomb throwing idiots managed to co-opt the name in popular usage. In the US that usage never became popular, but the word was similarly applied by emerging right-anarchists like Murray Rothbard to distinguish themselves from the typically european left-anarchists, who were called libertarians in europe but anarchists here.

    Yes, it's confusing. But no more so than the fact that liberal is commonly used in this country to refer to the left, whereas in most other countries it refers to the right.

    Anarchy - from the greek "an" meaning not or no, and "archos" meaning ruler, thus a synonm for freedom (not being ruled over.)

    What you define as Libertarian is actually Minarchism - a doctrine generally held by those who are anarchists at heart but just don't believe that people are ready for it yet, and so advocate a "night-watchman" minimal state which can prevent worse states from taking over until people are ready for complete anarchy.

    Here, read and understand this [gmu.edu] - then come back and tell us about anarchism.

  • Violating, just this once, my normal practice of not feeding the "trolls"...

    Moderation is not censorship. It's not even close. You can say whatever you want to say. No one is forced to listen. Not listening is not the same thing as censoring. Anyone that wants to read about Natalie Portman and Hot Grits and Taco's mom and your silly cries of censorship have only to set their thresholds to -1 and they can see it.

    I happen to set my threshold to -1. Because sometimes some interesting stuff gets moderated down, and because I am interested in seeing how well the moderation is working. The number of posts that get moderated down wrongly is pretty small though, and those mistakes are usually corrected pretty quickly. The biggest problem I have seen is that way too much crap that should be moderated down isn't - presumably because the system is so stingy with moderation points, and a lot of folk won't moderate because it means they can't post. Those factors, combined with the floods of off-topic posts and flamebait of so-called "trolls" (a horribly misuse of the word by the way, real trolls are great, and usually get moderated to +4 at least if they are well written) actually make it so that you need to read at +2 if you want to avoid the crap. Doing that, of course, guarantees that you will miss some good postings. Very sad. Oh well, enough rambling, back to reading.

  • This is called "voting with your feet." If enough of you do it maybe the rest of us could have decent discussions without 20 page posts about bestiality and similar nonsense wasting the bandwidth once again.

  • This is probably due to you reading too much. I know that's why I almost never get to moderate (only once, and that was after I was away from my connection for several days.) The way I understand it, they take the bell curve of how often different people request pages, and chop off the ends - i.e. if you are a real "regular" that checks in several times a day, or someone that only drops by once a year, then you are automatically excluded. The idea is to make sure the moderation is done by "average" readers.

    Anyway, I think it's a bad idea, but if you really want to moderate, just log out, clear your cookies, and don't log in for several days. When you do log back in *poof* you have moderator access. Kinda funky.

  • Working together, I think that paying to buy movies online (maybe even before they're out in theatres) or buy songs will be the first step in preserving this threatened industry.

    Threatened industry? Please tell me that's sarcasm. Please. Time Warner made a 1.91 Billion [yahoo.com] dollar profit last year, and this is a threatened industry? Granted, there are other record companies (and other movie houses) that made less, but I really don't see any reason to consider them threatened just yet.

    or have I just been trolled?

  • I'm a moral relativist of a sort, but this is relativism of the stupidest sort. Imagine this conversation was being conducted in a repressive state like Indonesia.

    Your thoughts betray you, my young Jedi. You can't be much of a moral relativist if you really believe you can objectively criticize the Indonesian government's ways of knowing and doing.

    Now, strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.

  • Since they are, after all, associated with an actual political party that of necessity must deal with government in some way or other, the vast majority of Libertarians are minarchists (believers in the minimum possible government). Many (small l) libertarians are anarchists, believing that no government whatsoever would be better than the force and violence perpetrated on humanity by current and historical governments. If you pooh-pooh that idea, consider the nearly 100 million people killed by governments in this 20th century, the bloodiest of all centuries so far.

    As for Libertarianism being an "adolescent mental malady" I note that very few of my Libertarian friends are either adolescent or of stunted mental ability. Most of us started out as Democrats or Republicans, but then grew out of those blinkered viewpoints into consistent Libertarianism.

    If you like having the force and violence of the FBI, the IRS, the DEA and the ATF (etc. etc. ad nauseum) perpetrated against you, continue to vote for the mentally blinkered Demoblicans that litter the political landscape. If, on the other hand, you'd prefer that those bureacracies be done away with, vote Libertarian.

  • A free market doesn't mean literally "free" as in nobody pays for anything; it means that people can sell their products for money. If people aren't rewarded for their work, they'll stop. No more movies, no more music bands, etc.
  • But the sad, sad fact is that stealing is almost always easier, and certianly cheaper, then buying. Therefore there will always be people trying to get something for nothing.

    Well there are always thieves in every society. But the point about it being easier to steal is what needs to be addressed. If it's easier to buy it and not be hassled from copyright people (ideally the format won't allow free distribution), then most people will go the legal route. Just like burning CDs from your friends--sure some people do it and it costs software companies some revenue, but in the long run it's a tiny fraction because it's so much easier to buy a cd with documentation, etc. than to spend an hour making a bootleg copy. Most people will pay simply for the convenience.

  • That's why copyrights and patents are of limited duration.

    They're supposed to be limited, but the Sonny Bono act (which IMHO is unconstitutional) sets copyright at life plus 70 (sounds like a prison term), which goes entirely against the constitutional reason for copyright, to promote the progress of science and the useful arts.

  • and remember, according to Vallenti, they would have made another 2.5 billion if DeCSS hadn't let so many people pirate so many DVDs: "According to the MPAA, the pirating of DVDs poses a "serious threat" and costs the organization $2.5 billion per year." -- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,35394,00 .html
  • Those who would be really happy with no more gov'ts are mafias. They have everything they need to replace nowaday's gov'ts: mercenary armies, guards, intelligence services and other. They have all they need to replace the force and violence of the FBI, etc. In fact, as seen in formerly sovietic countries, this kind of men is very likely to join a mafia if there is no more a real gov't.

    But mafias surely don't have healthcare or other social interest, except for their bigbosses. How, neither American gov't, or am I wrong?

    True anarchy can't exist in populated area. Anarchy in the first meaning of the word, without power, needs very little human colony, small villages of less than 200 peoples, scattered and far, far away from the nearest other village. Then, it need also a strong anarchic culture, with people loving and wanting neither command nor be commanded. It has been historically proven that larger human population need rules and law to avoid barbary. It's also proven that if nobody hold power, someone will want it and take it.

  • The real question is "Will we still have to use closed standards ?".

    In this computer age we are seeing technologies shifting from hardware to software based. Where twenty years earlier we would have use tape or LP players, we are now decoding bytes of informations to listen to MP3 files. When it was very difficult to an individual to create such devices, we are now all able to duplicate them in a mouse click or recreate them by reading to their desassemblied code.

    Duplicate or reverse-engine a program are both illegal. But watching movies or listening to musics are the principal mankind entertainment activities that are now possible by software on any hardware. We are not more tied to buy specific products designed for one task, we have computer that run any software, some written instructions capable of anything.

    The cracker actions are to make sure we won't have to pay for something we don't have to. The CSS protection is only here to make sure DVDs are not anymore some video files playable in a standard way (MPEG2) but video files you have to pay for a way to play them. We still have to buy some computer hardware: DVD-ROM for videos and/or CD-ROM for audio. But where we were able to listen easily to our audio CDs, we have to buy software to watch DVDs.

    In the way (common) people are tied with Window$ those days, we are tied to pay to play videos. Maybe the way (some) people still to pay for an OS explain the conduct of some corporation and industry.

    In twenty years, after 10 to 15 more new Windows releases, ALL (left) people will be tired to update or buy it with each new computer and will understand why open source OS and software IS the only way. Linux and all the BSDs will gain the momentum and the market share they deserve, that is 100%.

    We will all remember the way all those DVD crakers have fought to bring open source DVD software, to open standards to mankind and we will all value them for what we will enjoy, free and open knowledge.

  • Lots of people don't want to read the -1 posts. We had this problem on ticalc.org--everyone was complaining about how long the pages took to load and read because there was so much crap interspersed with the actual discussion, then they started whining their arses off when they started moderating. Most people know whether they want to see the -1 posts or skip them, so it's not like they'e "blindly" leaving their threshold at 1 and following the moderators.

    I don't like seeing the -1 posts. I go through them occasionally to see what they say but I don't want them to appear by default because I find them brainless and a waste of my browsing time. If I were to find that posts were modded down for expressing a contraversial point of view, or anything else I don't agree with, I would quit supporting the moderators.

    To sum up-I support moderation because they don't abuse it. They save us time without stifling anybody's point of view.
  • If it's governed by our fellow readers, how come I don't get to vote? I don't see any buttons or links for "mod this post up" or "mod this post down". I think they're just a core group inside /. who does it.

    Not that I know anything, or that that changes my position at all.
  • "I personally believe people are inherently good, and if you make it easy enough for them to do the right thing (pay rather than steal), they will do it. " I'm sorry, but the internet has clearly demonstrated that people are inherently unscrupolous when they can get away with it. The minute any site posts anything requiring people to pay for it whether it be porn, music or games, at least five other sites pop up with the same content, stolen and posted for free. As good as the idea of posting material for a cost might sound, within one week you would see the same material stolen and posted on other sites. It's just not practical. http://www.dupayosh.com

  • I hope he's not really an "anarchist" (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I always have to bracket that term anarchism, since it refers to no actually existent thing or quality.

    What happens with "anarchy" is not that the laws really disappear, but that they become arbitrary, the playthings of the powerful, totally beyond the reach of majorities to consent to, modify or rescind. Civil disobedience and anarchism should always be distinguished.

    Anarchism is the end-state of that other adolescent mental malady, Libertarianism--although neither political camp will admit and owns up to the family relationship.

    Thus I hope the Anarchism referred to as triumphant are the arbitrary and unjust laws that Moglen opposes and wants to see rescinded, such the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

  • My thoughts (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Okay, he might have a point but I think his position is biased to the point of no return. I mean, sure, some of the people that today we see vilified will become the "heroes" of tomorrow, but that's only to be expected - people who get caught up in changes through no real action or intent of their own often seem like "heroes" to those looking back at the situation.

    But he has an opinion on the matter that makes what he says immediately suspect. As an "anarchist", he is obviously going to be anti-regulations, and so his stance that today's DeCSS authors are tomorrow's heroes is little short of ridiculous. They're not heroes, they're just in way over their heads after having done something before thinking of the consequences. And look at Matthew Skala. Yeah sure he broke Cyberpatrol's encrypted site list, but he's certainly no "hero" - he caved in as soon as Mattel threatened him with a lawsuit.

    And the point is that even if these people were to become tomorrow's heroes, at the moment they are still breaking the law, and as such should expect to face the consequences. Sure the law isn't perfect, but breaking it to point this out is just childish and immature. Change in the law itself needs to be enacted within the law, otherwise it is little more than throwing tantrums, something which /.ers seem to be quite good at recently.

    Anyway, I think that the whole premise is flawed - I don't think anyone would see these people as "heroes" in retrospect. Look at RMS as a prime example of a so-called "hero" - while /.ers seem to worship him they seem to have a miraculous ability to ignore any flaws in what he says and his arrogrant, elitist attitude. This is the man who throws a tantrum over the name Linux, insisting it be called "GNU/Linux" or, even worse, "Lignux". In ten years he won't be considered a "hero", just another piece of a larger whole.

  • Reading the Constitution, it seems pretty vague about copyright length. It simply gives Congress the power to grant copyright for a limited amount of time, but it doesn't define "limited." That seems to be the problem. The corps have pushed their agenda and Congress caved in, screwing the rest of us.

  • We're having this discussion because the industry THINKS they are threatened. I've seen no evidence that leads me to believe there is actually a real risk right now. But, it will probably depend on how they behave and on the outcome of some court cases. Either way, there is no immediate threat that I know of.

    As sorehands said, they thought for sure that their industry was doomed when VCRs were ruled legal and people were allowed to tape things off the tv and had the ability to make copies of videos. Instead, they ended up making even more money than before. Now they are claiming that the sky is falling again.

  • A society without educated citizens is a society that is manipulable by those that run the media.

    This is somewhat OT, but I was just talking about this with someone the other day. I was wondering why the government doesn't do a lot more to improve public education in this country. Instead they leave it up to those who can afford the best schools and those few who make it on their own to lead the country. The rest of the people remain inadequately educated, many severely so. As long as education remains at its current shockingly poor level, the country will be full of people who lack the critical thinking skills and background knowledge to effectively evaluate the issues we're faced with every day. Instead, they will rely on the media to tell them what to think about things. This does not bode well for our future as a country.

  • It's at least 5 years late. 5 years ago, Linux was already at version 1.0. Oh and since I'm nice, I won't even mention the Torvalds-Tannenbaum debate [wesleyan.edu] -- poor Andrew, having this shoved in his face all the time must hurt in the end ..
  • If you'd actually bothered to read the article whose title dealt with anarchy, you'd see that it never claimed he was an anarchist. What he says is that the current situation is an anarchy- because the old rules are being applied to a new situation for which they weren't intended, they are being applied poorly, or not at all. In that sense, the current situation is an anarchy. He doesn't propose that we get rid of laws, but rather that we scrap the ones we have in order to write new ones that make better sense.
    Anyway, go read it... it's a fascinating look into legal history and how in the past this type of "anarchy" has led to huge changes in our legal system. He feels that this will occur again, and has some pretty convinving arguments as to why.
    Remember- someone is going to be in charge- no one is claiming that no one should be. The only question is who, and that is a stunningly important question in a way that it hasn't been in many, many years.
    ~luge
  • Hey Sgt! I can easily see some of those huge companies making some troublemakers "disappear".

    *L* Do you even remember me? Back in the good ol days of TPD and my very own SPLHC BBS? *LOL*

    As far as porting wakeup to win32.. why? Win95/98 have Task Scheduler, just make sure that mp3's are associated to a player, set task scheduler to run an mp3 file in the morning, and it should all go. That's what i did in windows, works fine.

    A couple of very simple reasons actually:

    1) I can ;)
    2) I too am learning perl, as the only thing i have available to me at work is Win32 I'm learning perl there ( no, telneting into my home PC is not an option until i get my DSL line ;) )

    The only problems are...while wakeup HIDES at/cron it still uses them....I suppose I could have wake up call the task scheduler, but that would defeat the purpose *L* I have some ideas but *shrugs*

    Back to the subject... in the wake of civil disobedience, many power mongers cannot control themselves and resort to irrational measures. It happened after the Boston Tea Party. It can happen anywhere. Irrationality is everywhere.

    This is true, but I hope we would be able to stop it before it got THAT far...

    Shit..there goes our Karma...off topic posts and all....

    Sgt Pepper
  • *LMFAO* Roberto, my friend, don't you think that's just a little tad bit overractionary? No one is talking violence here. Now, when they start implementing the death penelty for Reverse Engineering then we can talk about Revolution in the old school sense of the word. The good consuel was simply pointing out the SYMBOLIC similarities between the too. Now there might be some SYMBOLIC deaths....the death of Free Software or the death of the "profittering gluttons" we have yet to see. Make no mistake though, it is a fight. :)

    PS: I'm working on porting Wakeup to Win32, if I actually get it done want me to send ya the code?
    (hey it gives me something to do at work! *L*)

    Sgt Pepper

    Another Cleveland Linux [lug.net] Geek

  • Thank god for CygWin [cygnus.com] I have bash and everything *LOL* Hmmm...i'll see what i can do about the snooze....
  • I personally believe people are inherently good, and if you make it easy enough for them to do the right thing (pay rather than steal), they will do it.

    Oh how we wish that was so. But the sad, sad fact is that stealing is almost always easier, and certianly cheaper, then buying. Therefore there will always be people trying to get something for nothing. I see a shift in the business world though, a shift from product based selling to service based. See, how much easier would it be ( and profitiable? ) for Time Warner, et al., to set up..oh..i don't know...a $15 a month service in which you get to download unlimted ( or a set amount of Megs/bytes/minutes ) music/movies/etc.? This, I believe is the wave of the future. Some places might even do it for free, supported by advertising ( kinda like commercial radio stations ). Is this a bad thing? I'm not sure yet, we'll have to see how it plays out, but I /do/ think it's intresting and deserves disscusion and thought.
  • When the British imposed the Tea Tax, every man and woman could feel the pressure immediately.

    Actually, the net price of tea fell when the East India Company was given the monopoly and the tax was added -- there was no immediately felt pressure.

    Steven E. Ehrbar

  • Ireland - 25 years of 'struggle' no change, everybody (including bomb-dodging Londoners) miserable. 1 ceasefire and things start happening yet people seem to forget that and talk about resuming violence, in this case it really _didn't_ do anything.. and as I said it did nothing for a quarter century

    Let's not forget Ireland, 1916. Several hundred years of "liberals" bemoaning the "Irish problem" and working within the law - among them the Home Rule League, Daniel "The Liberator" O'Connell, the Land League, all the Irish Whig MP's in the British Parliament. A lot of trying to convince vested interests to change by the rules, a lot of failure. Then the Phoenix Club, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Citizen's Army and revolution, several years of guerrilla action initiated by several hundred law-breakers - the result? Freedom from the imperialist yoke. The reason that the North is still a problem is that the sectarian, nationalist elements of the IRA gained the upper hand over the socialists. There was then no chance for forging an alliance with the equally oppressed Protestant working class. In fact during the strikes in the shipyards in the 20's there were alliances between workers from both backgrounds which were quickly suppressed by the Unionist bosses using religion to drive a wedge.

    Poll tax - ignored by many people, eventually got dumped as it was impossible to enforce and looked like an election loser (however many people just didn't pay anything and simply saw it as an excuse to avoid paying taxes, my folks paid the previous tax rate + inflation and got ignored because they'd paid _something_)

    So here people broke the law by not paying the tax, organized their neighbourhoods so that bailiffs were physically repulsed when they appeared, co-ordinated with each other in mass non-payment to swamp the courts. These things are all civil disobedience, _breaking_the_law_. People didn't ignore it as an excuse not to pay taxes, they point of not paying it was not paying it!

    I think that both of your examples are strong evidence against what you argue for!

  • Excellent point. Revolutions usually seem to be initiated by a few people. It's as though others don't believe that change is possible until they see something concrete.
    I'm interested in the Franklin day planners. What the hell were those?
    B.t.w. as far as being a social miscreant goes Thomas Paine is right up there, a persona non grata in Britain _and_ revolutionary France
  • Well, revolutions need a critical mass to proceed. It doesn't require a majority, like you said.

    BTW, corporation haven't taken over our government (I'm assuming you are talking about the US). That's just paranioa.

    But notice that many of the people who were for the American Revolution had the most to loose. That is, they were land owners and the wealthy.
  • Newspaper lockboxes are often cited as an example of the "people are basically honest" dictum with respect to IP. The common street box in the US for buying newspapers lets you take an arbitrary number for your quarter, with a vanishingly small chance of being apprehended. Yet, losses from people taking extra papers are so low, that there is no economic incentive to replace the boxes with smarter technology. In a dishonest society, the first guy each morning would take all the papers and hand them out for free at work.
  • Working together, I think that paying to buy movies online (maybe even before they're out in theatres) or buy songs will be the first step in preserving this threatened industry.

    Who wants to preserve this threatened industry? I thought we had a free market, you don't set up industrial preserves in a free market. Serious question here, and I'd like to see reasons.


    --
  • So.. shall we find a bunch of social outcasts again and start a revolution? That seems to be how these things work...

    Yea, you ever hear of this site called /.?

    --
  • So by breaking a so-called "unjust" law you are just assuming that your opinion is better than the people which Americans elect to make these laws, which I would call arrogance of the worst kind. Your opinion is no more valid than any others,

    When I talked to my Congressman the other day, he didn't know what the DMCA was. He barely understood the term reverse-engineer. He didn't know you could patent sotware, or why that might *possible* cause a problem. He does have a killer website though [house.gov]. My point, although our leaders are trying to do their jobs the best they can (...) often there is just too much to keep track of. The Internet brings this to light even quicker because of it's incredibly liquid and fast changing nature. It has becoming obvious, IMHO, that many of our IP laws were built for a differnt time. With a different set of rules. It's as if the laws of physics for media have been changed, now the laws of the the land need to adapt. They have become so stale and brittle from years of selfish interfence, that the most logical way to change them, is to break them. Repeatedly and casually.

    --
  • So by breaking a so-called "unjust" law you are just assuming that your opinion is better than the people which Americans elect to make these laws, which I would call arrogance of the worst kind. Your opinion is no more valid than any others, although in light of your inability to deal with other people's viewpoints I would perhaps say it is *less* valid than most.

    I'm a moral relativist of a sort, but this is relativism of the stupidest sort. Imagine this conversation was being conducted in a repressive state like Indonesia. Would you still say criticising the rulers was arrogant? And identify the rulers views with people's views? Give me a break. You have got to be trolling.

    And some opinions are more valid than others!! Scientifically-ground ones for one thing.

  • Breaking a law you disagree with is attractive, hell sometimes it even works, but on the whole it's always useful to _try_ to change the law through the mechanisms that have been set up to allow that - it might not work but you are at least trying.

    Some examples (UK bias):

    Poll tax - ignored by many people, eventually got dumped as it was impossible to enforce and looked like an election loser (however many people just didn't pay anything and simply saw it as an excuse to avoid paying taxes, my folks paid the previous tax rate + inflation and got ignored because they'd paid _something_)

    Ireland - 25 years of 'struggle' no change, everybody (including bomb-dodging Londoners) miserable. 1 ceasefire and things start happening yet people seem to forget that and talk about resuming violence, in this case it really _didn't_ do anything.. and as I said it did nothing for a quarter century
  • One way that I see it is that they can't win. You can't stop the free exchange of information in this day and age. It can't happen. No matter how deep you go, there is an underground channel that goes even deeper. We will get what we want. I hope it doesn't have to happen, but personally, I'm not worried either way. We're in control. We can watch their movies anywhere we want.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • The general public is not yet well aware of the direction in which forces like DMCA, UCITA, et. al. are going. When the British imposed the Tea Tax, every man and woman could feel the pressure immediately. Americans have a high tolerance for civil disobedience and mischief-makers if it appears they are working for some general good. Right now, however, the press looks at the DeCSS folks and their ilk as crackers out to do harm. While breaking bad software is fun and makes a momentary point, it is more important that we get the word out to the common man. Without him, we lose the fight. -cwk.
  • I don't think anyone would see these people as "heroes" in retrospect

    I am looking forward to the day when Intelectual Property laws are struck down and we are free to copy bits around as we feel fit. At this time I will look back on the people who made this possible and think of them as heros. It is the people who are willing to risk jail time to break a law that is clearly unfair that will make this possible.

  • What we need is for movie and record studios to set up efficiently run websites where, for a small but tangible fee, people can buy whatever movie/song they want. I personally believe people are inherently good, and if you make it easy enough for them to do the right thing (pay rather than steal), they will do it.

    With the studios fighting the new internet community, the natural reaction is to fight back--which is clearly demonstrated with the rise of Napster, Gnutella, and even DeCSS. Working together, I think that paying to buy movies online (maybe even before they're out in theatres) or buy songs will be the first step in preserving this threatened industry.

  • The movie industry was threated even worse in the BetaMax case.

    If VCRs were not outlawed and blank tapes were not taxes, then they would go out of existence.

  • Sure the law isn't perfect, but breaking it to point this out is just childish and immature.

    So Martin Luther King was just childish and immature?

    Change in the law itself needs to be enacted within the law, otherwise it is little more than throwing tantrums, something which /.ers seem to be quite good at recently.

    But if nobody realizes the law is corrupt, how will it get changed? The only way is for people to see ordinary, upstanding citizens like themselves who haven't done anything wrong being arrested. (or killed, or beaten by cops, or whatever)

    Look at RMS as a prime example of a so-called "hero" - while /.ers seem to worship him they seem to have a miraculous ability to ignore any flaws in what he says and his arrogrant, elitist attitude.

    Funny, because I haven't seen anything positive about RMS on /.. All I have seen about him here is lambasting over his "virus license" and how he wants to screw Taco's mom.

  • Ahead of the curve (Score:3)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @06:05AM (#1144344)
    Most slashdotters here can't seem to see the forest from the trees. The majority of the people in Boston were AGAINST the boston tea party. Only a MINORITY of people wanted to seperate from Britain. Most people were HAPPY with their lives being merchants, trading, and going on with their day to day business.

    It was a bunch of social miscreants that started the revolution.. a bunch of outcasts. Jefferson was a communist, Benjamin got hit by lightning and then tried to create a method of organizing his thoughts (see also: franklin series "day planners")... and George Washington was doing the same thing Clinton was this past year.

    Nonetheless, we benefited from their work.. for a few years anyway. Then the corporations took over large sections of our government, subverted the law, and generally raised hell. And before anyone knew it.. ah, well.. they're too rich to stop now!

    So.. shall we find a bunch of social outcasts again and start a revolution? That seems to be how these things work...

  • Link to Canadian IP articles (Score:3)

    by trance9 ( 10504 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @05:34PM (#1144345) Homepage Journal
    A Canadian law firm has a couple of good articles up on licensing, copyight, etc.

    legal documents [macleoddixon.com]

    I found these quite useful.

  • The GNUML (Score:3)

    by Wah ( 30840 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @03:38PM (#1144346) Homepage Journal
    to carry things to their logical conclusion. :-)

    I was hoping to create something I like to think of as the GNU Media License. The basic idea is to both protect the right of the original creator to profit from their work, and to encourage free and widespread distrubution of creative works.

    This is what I've got so far translated from a scribbled barroom napkin.

    --

    Protecting the right to profit. This is accomplished by explicitly prohibiting anyone from selling the artifact. Also, it must be set-up (somewhat like an EULA) that by using the artifact you are agreeing to the agreement under which it is released.

    There must also be some provision to both enforce the spirit of the agreement (widespread free (beer/gratis) distrubuition) and lessen the value of the artifact in absolute (supply/demand) terms. This is accomplished by requiring each "mirror" of the artifact to include a link to another "working mirror" (mirror defined as another Internet address where the file can be downloaded with less than 2 "clicks" (or redirects) working mirror is any Internet address with 90%(?) uptime, aggregated per week(?)) Including a working mirror helps to increase total distrubution as well as creating an open environment for exchange. This also makes it much more difficult to illegally control access to artifacts released under this license, as well as helping to ferret out abuses.

    Also, each mirror would also be required to produce "source" upon any request within 48 hours of receipt of request. This "source" is of course the original source (i.e. Internet address, most likely a URL) of the artifact. A bit of a problem here, as abuses could develop as someone uses this license to benefit from the distrubution and later remove the source. Perhaps some legalese is needed here, any lawmakers in the audience today?

    I just put this together last night, but there will most likely be few tracks released under it tommorrow (got a mini-disc and a mic today :) My friend's band, with their permission.

    I don't have much cash for lawyers, and I will be submitting for some help from the FSF, but I figured I'd post it for the phreaks here first, and I know they're pretty busy right now ;).

    Oh, and the original creator is allowed to profit by releasing the artifact under a different license (i.e. regular copyright) as the original author of the work, CDs, DVDS, Mini-Discs, Memory Sticks, whatever. Not to mention any other way they can from free global distrubution of their artifacts.

    Comments, flames, suggestions? (oh, and this is the "dealing with it" part..)
    --
  • To carry the theme a bit more...

    The basis for all "economic" laws is the prospect of the items that the laws proctect as being scarce. With the advent (or possibly the evolution depending on where one stands) of goods into a digital form, scarcity of those good disapear because of the inherent properties of the digital world. That is, the ability to create enough perfect copies of the good to actaully sate all possible desire for the good. What effect this had upon a market is simple: The market begins to devalue that good, in terms of market value, not personal or emotional value (see all of the toys and other collectables...there are literally millions of Star Wars action figures out there, but I can go to my local gaming store and find that any give one is well above original market value) and eventually expects it to be there as a part of the larger overall market for free or next to free (see paper, pencils, ink pens, etc). Those people, therefore, who are fighting the incomming digital world are fighting to keep thier goods scarce and by that, their ability to demand a certain price for their goods.

    However it becomes easy to predict that this is a loosing battle. History shows us a previous example for such use: Look only at what happened to the value of home-made or cottage goods when mass industrial manufacturing became a dominate method of creation of goods. While it may have taken close to a century for the home clothing industry to disapear, it was a very hard faught battle, with both sides waging campagins of what we now call FUD. One side would claim that their goods were superior, the other would shout that your could rely upon theirs much more. There was no right or wrong about it, theirs' was simply a time of change. And both worlds survived. People still make their on clothes, taylors and seamstristes are still employed, and while it may have fallen by the marketable good wayside, such goods are still valued by the people who own them.

    We are truly at a cross roads here, one that will define how the world will treat goods and the people that produce the goods of a digital market. With the ability to create as many goods as it will take to sate desire, we can for the first time in human history elmiate a form of want. Let us not waste it flippantly by claiming to be better than those who fight the future. In the end, both sides are needed for the future to occur.

  • Rating, not censorship (Score:3)

    by marx ( 113442 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @04:42AM (#1144348)

    Initially, I also considered Slashdot's moderation system to be censorship, but I don't any more. There is a clear rule that no post is ever deleted, so all information is available to everyone. Censorship by definition involves removal, so the term does not apply here. The cases in the article do involve removal, and that is why people are fighting back. If someone put "Score: -1 Immoral" above a link to cphack or DeCSS, I don't think anyone would care.

    The Slashdot moderation system is a rating system, governed by your fellow readers. What this produces is a rating which reflects the opinion of a (presumably) representative majority of the reader base. This can be useful for extracting related information from the responses (such as related links), but is generally not useful for opinion-related discussions, as it tends to filter out uncomfortable criticism.

    While a rating system can be useful, I don't think thresholds are. I always keep my threshold at -1, and even though most -1 posts are just noise, some are very intelligent and funny. The Slashdot trolls are like South Park in a way, and just like South Park plays an important role in criticizing our culture (mostly American though), so do the trolls for this subculture.

  • Slavery/War in the intellectual property era. (Score:3)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @11:24AM (#1144349)
    After all, in the 1850's they said that slavery was a property right, but it wasn't - it was simply a controll on human behavior as is intellectual property today. They said that we have no incentive to grow this great cotton crop without slavery as they say there is no incentive to innovate without intellectual property today. They said that we put effort into importing and training slaves, so therefore we deserve to own them and today they say that we put effort into these informational works so therefore we are entitled to controll how you use them. They even claimed that slavery was the reason for Americas great economic success as they claim that intellectual property is today. Of course slavery had to be right, because so many noble, intelligent, and prestigious men did busisness in it.
    Yes it is amazing how history repeats itself, but it gets better ....
    After all to them, the industrial revolution was not about industry but about the cotton gin and using it to leverage, grow, and extend their slave plantations as never seen before. One would think that the cotton gin would have been used to minimize slavery, but beeing so greedy it wasn't. Today they think that the internet is about extending these massive intellectual property mega-corporations like time-warner to leverage it's control in every home. Of course one would think that the internet would encourage them to share information more freely, but them being greedy it doesn't.

    AND OH GOD HOW there were always those fools who thought that the slave states could peacifully get along with the free states, and that those today who think that the GPL can peacefully exist in a world with intellectual property. They are wrong and will pay as dearly.

    Well, back then, it was only a matter of time before things hit the fan and war broke out. But BEWARE - the US civil war was one of the bloodiest in the history of the world and lost more lives for America than both WW1 and WW2 combined. This was directly because the industrial revolution was just bringing about new technologies like the machine gun and gas weapons, but society had not developed defenses for them yet. Yes for those of you who uphold in intellectual property, history has taught us that we should not try to compromize and hold no bars back in terms of simply "putting you out of busisness". Today we can know on faith that history, technology, and ethics are on our side. I just pray that you'll get it, before you get it, but if history is any indication you won't change until it's too late.

    David
    dmchr@netcom.com

  • Moglen knows dick about CyberPatrol! (Score:3)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @07:16AM (#1144350) Homepage
    Moglen makes serious technical mistakes about CyberPatrol.

    It is true that CPHack may allow a person to shut CyberPatrol on a system (if they go through enough hoops).

    What Moglen fails to note is that most companies use The Border Manager and Proxy versions. Since this is on a server, nothing anyone can do with CPHack on their machine won't matter.

    Moglen also forgets that ways to bypass CPHack have been around for quite a while.

  • Re:My thoughts (Score:4)

    by crush ( 19364 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @07:16AM (#1144351)

    As an "anarchist", he is obviously going to be anti-regulations, and so his stance that today's DeCSS authors are tomorrow's heroes is little short of ridiculous.

    So if a "vegetarian" were to enter a debate over whether or not to eat meat and praised people that had found a way to avoid eating meat as heroes, that would be ridiculous? You seem to misunderstand that the classification of anyone as a hero is a subjective thing and he is merely expressing the opinion that these are people that he admires

    They're not heroes, they're just in way over their heads after having done something before thinking of the consequences.

    A little patronizing that. How do you know that they haven't made a principled and thoughtful decision to do this?

    And look at Matthew Skala. Yeah sure he broke Cyberpatrol's encrypted site list, but he's certainly no "hero" - he caved in as soon as Mattel threatened him with a lawsuit.

    That would seem to indicate a rational, thoughtful desire on his part not to become a martyr. He's already done a lot to admire, he's raised the issue, made it public and shown us the threat.

    And the point is that even if these people were to become tomorrow's heroes, at the moment they are still breaking the law, and as such should expect to face the consequences. Sure the law isn't perfect, but breaking it to point this out is just childish and immature. Change in the law itself needs to be enacted within the law, otherwise it is little more than throwing tantrums, something which /.ers seem to be quite good at recently.

    Tell it to the people that founded this country on the basis of a tax-revolt, tell it to Gandhi, tell it to Martin Luther King, tell it to Nelson Mandela, tell it to the German underground resistance during WW2, tell it to anyone that's ever done anything to bring about change.

    Your diatribe about Stallman descends into the merely personal. No one is really evaluating him as a hero or otherwise on the basis of his arrogance or the colour of his socks or anything other than the fact that he had a idea that involved change to the way things are and tried to implement it.

  • The ability to rapidly and cheaply copy, transmit and store information brought on by the Internet and computers has put alot of pressure Intellectual property laws.

    Originally, Intellectual property law was modelled after the highly successful and largely settled physical property laws. But from the outset, it was recognized that intellectual property was differenent. That's why copyrights and patents are of limited duration.

    The holders of IP, some of whom are large, powerful corporations naturally want to protect and enhance their existing assets. This is to the detrement of the citizenry, because no new creation can retroactively occur. At the very least, new IP protections should apply _only_ to new works.

    We need people like Eben who know the law to help ensure the IP corps don't run roughshod over the rights of the people.

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