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.
Interesting...... (Score:1, Interesting)
Look, I'm all for bringing down these tyrants and returning to the 'free society' he speaks of, but what chance do we have? We're geeks and creators, not lawyers and politicians. And the way this world is currently set up, the latter group rules the earth and are usually easy to sway if enough money is thrown their way. Big media giants like Disney can afford to do this, but what can we do? The only real contender I can think of is Microsoft, but they're not exactly the free society posterchild.
And even if the whole geek community does something substantial (like boycott all mainstream movies and music, etc), we're STILL the minority. The masses don't give a shit about this stuff. I know this to be fact, because practically all of my non-geek friends (which is about 70% or more) show no interest in these issues at all. They feel as though it's so distant to them that it's not even a concern (much like the whole Israel vs. Palestine conflict). I've tried to make them see that it will effect them, but they are too apathetic to look into it any further.
I know, I know. All I've done is restate the problem and I've failed to provide any solutions, but that's because I simply do not have any solutions to give. So here's my question: what the hell can we do to stop our society from becoming what we fear it will some day become?
Re:Download time (Score:2, Interesting)
A little off target though... (Score:3, Interesting)
On patents, I think the most sensible argument against them was presented in a letter [mit.edu] to the US Patent Office [uspto.gov] by Donald Knuth [stanford.edu], where he points out that software and the algorithms used therein are mathematics, and mathematics have previously been exempted from patents.
Regarding copyrights, while I would be quite happy with a short limitation on the life of a copyright (5 years would suit me just fine... 10-15 would be ok, anything longer is ludicrous in the technology field), I think his presentation is quite a bit more radical than most professional programmers might agree with after putting some thought into it.
Some of us don't particularly like working as employees of companies which we do not own, but without the protection that copyright provides it would be impossible to make a living by creating consumer software products. Yes, you could write custom software under contract to a corporation for money, or write software as an employee of a company, but to write a product for consumers? Who would pay for that? The average person who'd want to use a word processor certainly isn't going to cough up enough money to pay my rent for the amount of time I'd need to write one...
Without copyright, if I write a cool app and want to sell it, I'd only sell it once before anyone who wanted it could just get it for free... This is absolutely great for code I write in my spare time for fun, or tools and libraries I write to help me do my work where they might be useful to others, but *something* has to put food on the table.
However, I do think that once you buy something, at least the copy you own should be able to be used by you in whatever manner you wish. So his speech seems misguided... The real threat is that with recent legislation [anti-dmca.org], that is less and less true.
I support the EFF [eff.org] and donate.... but the presentation is off target. I hope his arguments before the Supreme Court are less radical and stay based on the fact that 100 years is way too long for a copyright, rather than implying that copyright is bad.
Think he used a pirated copy of PowerPoint? ;)
Re:What can the average computer user do (Score:5, Interesting)
Number one, Vote with your pocketbook!
Issues, DRM enabled devices...
I did not buy the new Magellan Meridian GPS because it used SD media.
I bought a CD burner
I bought a CD MP3 Player. It does not support WMA, Liquid Audio, etc. It only supports red book audio and MP3 audio.
The Archos Digital Jukebox/recorder is on my to get list. It viloates the SDMI standard by allowing a stereo analog high fidelity recording to be made. It allows the recording to be exported and copied in an unprotected format (MP3). I plan on transferring my pre-recorded tapes and vinyl to CD. The SDMI standard includes the requirement for voice grade mono analog recording and nothing better. A good stereo cassette deck will outperform a SDMI recorder everytime! Is a HI-FI VHS or 8mm VCR going to be my next audio recorder? I hope not! I will not support the SDMI audio recording standard. Voice grade mono recording does not meet my needs to back up my aging music collection. SDMI stuff is analog input bandwidth limited This input will be restricted to voice-grade mono and band-limited (-3dB at 100 hZ and -60 dB at 8 khZ) It is also to be imediately converted to SDMI protocol for local use. This translates to "it'll never be burnt to a CD or shared with your friends" This is useless to use to record the baby's first words to share with the grandparants. A tape deck is more capable in this regard. The SDMI compliant hardware is uncompetive in the marketplace due to the severe restrictions placed on it.
Read the SDMI spec here if you need to know the rest of the restrictions.
http://www.sdmi.org/
Most people have no idea this spec even exists.
Don't buy anything supporting these standards.
This includes portable media (memory cards).
Support companies that provide useful quality products and support open standards.
This is the biggest reason I use Compact Flash and CDr.
What I don't have...
A DVD player,
A DRM enabled book reader, audio player, TV/ computer monitor/ USB speakers, music in WMA or Liquid Audio format, portable devices supporting SD memory, etc..
I'm picky about my hardware and the content providers will have to cater to my needs or miss my purchases when they move into protected media.
I do not buy software that requires "activation" or a "dongle". The only exception is software that is part of an access to a service. An example is the firmware in my cell phone and pager.
This is the most important idea (Score:2, Interesting)
For people who think that linux will lose its coolness or its purity if it gets too popular. I want to tell them that they will lose linux if it doesn't get very popular, soon. Linux should get a market share of at least 20% before some form of DRM becomes mandatory by law, in US and Europe. DRM will kill Linux if it succeeds, and there is only one thing that can kill DRM and that is Linux.
The solution is that technical people should develop linux, and if they don't have anything really important then they should lobby to the government. And if the Elections are around the corner (like they are now) then get going against your local Senator if he/she was in favour of DRM/DMCA et.al. Local LUGs should be able to get this thing going collect as much information about the senator that you can and go after them. And if your senator is against this thing then also work in his/her favour.
Its important to delay DRM as long as possible, by any means possible.
-anandsr
What CAN We do? (Score:4, Interesting)
We have brick-walled on what public interest political educational and advocacy groups can do. If we are to be able to make a living at high-tech, we can no longer afford to send delegations to DC to give dog and pony shows which will be greeted with polite applause and be followed up by backroom political deals involving money comming from Hollywood.
Here's the minimum specification for starting something effective... along the lines of the NRA/AARP style political advocacy group I've been calling for which is the only chance we've got of reversing this tide before it rolls over our jobs.
What would it take to form a REAL political activist group with a chance of winning?
All it would take to start an organization along the lines of what I'm calling for would be for ONE person (or a handful of people) to hire a political organizer with experience, either out of NRA/AARP/etc. or one who understands their methods, an experienced political lobbyist, set up a domain, a server, a contract with a political fax server outfit (to do the "fax your legislator" setup), and a PAC registration... and announce on slashdot and Politech that "we're open for business"... that person doesn't even NEED to put together an overview, I've posted one in several versions.
The startup budget might be as much as $200K. That just gets the office open, the Webserver up, and minimum support staff, to actually make donations to politicians means raising money... as in open your checkbooks, we as a group must at least match Hollywood's spending on politicians. The good news is that we as a group collectively have a hell of a lot more money than they do. All we need is a group to aggregate our donations and get them to our friends and our enemies' opponents.
Note that there are people who've been saying "if you think this needs doing, why don't you do this?"... that's the answer. This is not something any random geek can put together, there's a cost of entry here and most of it goes to buy expertise that isn't in the average geek's head.
Anybody who believes otherwise is wasting his time, and if you get sucked into his trip, yours as well. (Greetz, GeekPAC! - *snicker*) If you can't do this, don't start a group, wait until somebody else does that can. If nobody else appears, start making plans for America's non-tech future. Saying "We're gonna take back Congress" is a waste of time unless you have access to at least some budget and expertise.
If nobody in our community can do this... as in pay the cost of freedom... we don't deserve it and we won't have it. We CAN win... but somebody's going to have to get together the framework described here to do this.
Losing on this issue is going to cost anybody in a position to do anything serious about our situation a lot more than $150K.