Lessig @ OSCON 206
passthecrackpipe writes "Leonard Lin has put up the presentation Lawrence Lessig gave at OSCON (mirror). It is great. It requires Flash." Nice Flash work, very impressive, and of course Lessig is a superior speaker. Worth your time and the 8Mb download.
8 mbs? only? (Score:1, Insightful)
way to go /. (Score:1, Insightful)
meanwhile, i can smell the smoke from the fried processor in the site's cisco
That's nice but, (Score:5, Insightful)
I just sent EFF $100. If we invoke "Chinese arithmetic" (anyone who's looked at a business plan involving China knows what I'm talking about- "if we could just capture
Re:That's nice but, (Score:2, Insightful)
You're missing the point of moderation. Sure, it's nice to get karma but that's secondary to the function of letting me filter through all the crap that gets posted here.
One thing I really liked.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought that was an awesome way to measure it. As far as I'm concerned, my bandwidth bill just doubled... any amount I spend on that, I'll match in donations to EFF.
Bandwidth means little without the freedom to use it.
Another unemployed Flash designer accounted for. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now I know what all those unemployed Flash designers are doing with their time.
Seriously, could this guy make it any more *difficult* for us to listen to his message.
Let's get serious (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's a great idea, which is why I'm bringing it up again. Lobbying congress and educating them on these matters just isn't going to work. Politicians aren't passing things like the DMCA because they're ignorant -- they are doing it because they are bad politicians. After failing to do the right thing over and over, we can't give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. We can't reform corporate shills, but maybe we can replace them.
Instead of pleading with them to do the right thing, we need to at least try to make them do the right thing. In a case when it's hard to identify the good politician -- especially the good and effective politician -- it's a lot easier to identify the bad guy. There's lots of politicians that aren't standing up for the public's rights. But there's only a few that are standing up to actively take those rights away. We should focus on them.
When we do, we can run online ads, radio ads, and grassroot ads, anything to try to defeat this person. It doesn't have to be that expensive. We play the negative game -- it doesn't matter who the opponent is, this is a question of symbolism, of asserting our power. Because if we can cost that one politician the election, that will really mean something. Sure, there'll be more to step up in his place, but maybe we can get them out too -- do it a couple times, and people will be afraid to be the corporate media lacky.
And yeah, that's not the nicest political game. It's classic "special interest" tactics. But shit... if politics was so nice, we wouldn't be having these problems. And we're not doing this to get ourselves subsidies or for other selfish reasons (mostly) -- we're doing it for the public. And there's nothing wrong with negative politics -- that's how this country has worked since the beginning.
Unlike all the other techniques -- that dream of the day when there's massive participation -- this doesn't seem that remote. I bet $50,000 and a lot of volunteer manpower could could counter $500,000 in campaign finances, if the target was right and the manpower clever.
What Lessig Doesn't Point Out. (Score:4, Insightful)
What Lessig doesn't point out is that technology has completely blurred the boundary that used to exist between the red circle and the white background. In the absence of DRM, there is no meaningful distinction between publishing an e-book (red circle) and making a purchased version available to a few of your 'friends' on a p2p network (white background). Or, if you prefer, there's no meaningful distinction between purchasing an e-book from a publisher, and downloading it from your p2p 'friend'.
In other words, the world is going to be all white or all red, not because Valenti, Rosen, and their ilk are trying to actively expand the red circle, but because technology has made the circle meaningless. The content distributors understand that they're fighting a 0-1 war, and know that their days are numbered unless they make the whole world 'red'.
I don't think I'm being unfair to Lessig by saying he misses this particular point. One of the examples he uses was that sales of CDs only went down 5% last year, so the content distributors are presumably over-reacting. But that's too myopic. Within a few years, with unregulated technology, John Q. Public will be able to fire up their p2p client, type in the name of the album they want, stick a CDR in their burner, then go away for 15 minutes while the software queries freedb, downloads the songs on the album at CD quality, burns them to the CD-R, downloads the cover art and lyrics and sends them to the color laser printer. It could possibly even schedule a micropayment to the artist's account and put a shortcut on John Q. Public's desktop in case he decides the album was worth it.
Who in their right mind would bother to buy a CD then?!
Re:I dislike guns, but the NRA's tactics work (Score:3, Insightful)
"If you're explaining, you're losing."
Trouble is he's right. We need to tell people what they will lose if the MPAA and RIAA get their way. Tell your friends, your relatives, everyone you know what will happen. Things link, you won't be able to tape TV shows anymore, no fast forward, you'll have to buy an new DVD player, TV, stereo, etc. because they're going to break things so your old equpment won't work.
The NRA's basic premise is to fight against any action that could conceivably lead to you losing your right to keep and bear arms. This fight should be the same.
Re:What CAN We do? (continued) (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I know that $150K != $200K, I revised one number when I should have fixed both.
There are a lot of people who made have made their pile in high-tech, the latest ones being the ones who exited high-tech stock before the dot.bomb . If you are one of them, ask yourself "If Hollywood gets everything it wants unopposed, what are my chances of profitable high tech investment or starting a successful new technology with the Feds and Hollywood in control of what my company can and can't do? If you know one, show them this post and my other one on this thread.
Here's a fair usage quote from a recent slashdotted article by Cory Doctorow which might help you answer this:
"The tech companies at the BPDG had been there with the understanding that the BPDG's job was to establish a set of objective criteria for new technology. Those criteria might be restrictive, but at the very least, tech companies would know where they stood when they were planning new gizmos.
Hollywood suckered the tech companies in with this promise and then sprang the trap. No, you won't get a set of objective criteria out of us. From now on, every technology company with a new product will have to come to us on its knees and beg for our approval. We can't tell you what technology we're looking for, but we'll know it when we see it. That's the "standard" we're writing here: we'll know it when we see it."
Can you do business in this environment with CDTBPA thrown in and more legislation designed to lock down and lock out technology as Hollywood builds on its success? How much is it worth to you to have an America you can do business in?
I'm asking you to open your checkbook, your Roladex, and give some of your time.
The next person who asks you this in a few years may be asking for "your life, your fortune, and your sacred honor". It won't be me, I won't be in the USA at that point. I won't be able to make a living here.
Of course, you might be looking forward to retiring in a non-tech, sleepy, backwater America where bright, ambitious kids emigrate and high tech is something you buy or have smuggled in from Japan or Europe or Canada. If this is your wish, just do nothing, the Senator from Hollywood and his friends will bring this to your door.
If you who have benefited most from high-tech business are not ready to come forward and protect your own interests as well as those of the rest of us, fine. If your next vacation home or a high-end Lexus are more important to you, your money and your right to spend it as you please.
When you discover that your choices to do technology yourself are to beg the government and DMCA/RIAA for permission and wait or to emigrate, at least you'll know who to blame. Not Jack Valenti or Hilary Rosen. The person you see whenever you look in the mirror. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda" won't stop the content industry from turning the US high-tech community into roadkill.
I'm not nominating myself as the head of a geek-oriented version of the NRA/AARP.
I can say that I know how to find that person and the other resources needed to get started. But nothing can be done without the seed money. The people we need to get this running don't work for free and the services we need have price tags attached.
For the rest of you, if this happens, be ready to participate. No mass-action political organization works unless there are people who really will partipate, with your $5 and $10 and $100 and $1000 contributions, with the willingness to point-and-click a fax "message to Congress", talk to your non-tech friends, and to walk precincts for our friends if you're asked to do so.
If this doesn't happen and Declan is proved right, the best advice I can give you is to start preparing for a future when there is no longer a significant high-tech presence in America. Will you emigrate or figure out how to make a living in a depressed economy that isn't ever coming back?