Responses to Lessig's Challenge I've received a number of very good responses (even and email from
Lessig himself!). I'll post a few excerpts here.
My favorite negative response so far has been the
450
word essay about the futility and irrelevance of Lessig's Challenge from an
old high school debate sparring partner, followed closely by my shortest
negative response, which reads in whole: "WHAT THE FUCK IS EFF?????????????"
(I replied: "The fuck is: http://www.eff.org").
A common theme in the emails is that my idea has motivated people to help
out. Paul Curry wrote, "I think you have motivated a lot of folks, myself
included, to do more." Kathy Tafel says, "thanks for helping me get off my
butt and do something!" Brad Kuhn of the FSF writes on
his Lessig's
Challenge page:
It's hard to think of people who've done more for the FSF than Brad Kuhn
or Eben Moglen. But even they are donating money. That's amazing!
Together, we are powerful. Don't underestimate the power of a simple idea
with a catchy name.
Whew! It's be a crazy couple of days since my
Lessig's Challenge page went up
on Slashdot. It was posted in the early morning so the number of hits
wasn't what it could've been (Most of my co-workers didn't even see it). I
hesitate to think what my inbox would look like if it'd been posted at
noon.
That Slashdot story was one week to the day after an FSF fund-raiser in Boston, where I watched Eben Moglen (who gives many hours of volunteer time a week to FSF) write a $20,000 check to the Foundation. After all this, I knew that simply donating time -- however substantial -- was not enough.
Posted at 22:21
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Supporting the Rebel Alliance Jarrett is an old debating colleague of mine from back in high
school. Seeing my page on Slashdot compelled him to write this essay.
Online privacy is an oxymoron at best. Our data is no more secure
online than the size of the cluster required to break it. And we have
no excuse or reason to complain or whine about our lack of online privacy.
We have reached an interesting point where, the internet community can
not be shut down or voted out because of the DMCA or other associated
bills. In fact Gnutella servers thrive across the Internet in spite
of copyright law, fair use provisions and the DMCA.
Lessig's challenge is flawed in the belief that single points of
challenge hold sway over the future of the Internet. They do not.
Let us say, hypothetically, pictures of Bill Gates are banned by the
government. This will not prevent thousands (more than effectively
punishable) of enthusiasts from posting Bill Gates pictures on their
sites in response.
The Internet is effectively its' own social structure. No more is
online freedom a question of government, it's a practical fact. You
cannot punish tens of thousands of people with imprisonment for one crime.
Software like Freenet directly inhibit enforcement of 'unjust'
legislation. If Dmitri Sklyarov had used Freenet and simply referred
to the anonymous node, he would not have landed in jail.
The most effective way to get legislation overturned is to prove its
inadequacy. Demonstrating that is harder than sending ten dollars to
the EFF. In fact that is almost pointless.
If you want to save your online freedoms, use the software that
secures them en masse. Freenet, PGP and other free software is a
better target of your money than a PAC or the digital equivalent of
the ACLU.
I would rather see one million people using PGP than one million
contributing to the EFF. Supporting the Rebel Alliance (EFF/GPL) is
sometimes not nearly as effective as paying lip service to the Empire
and reaping the rewards of doing so.
If the open source community truly desires freedom, they will chuck
Stallman off the cliff. His mindless bantering about GNU and the GPL
causes businesses to turn away from free software and the secure
benefits it brings.
By simply using one piece of software over another you can provide a
de facto public response to legislation. If you don't like the DMCA,
request a company like TIVO to manufacture products that allow you to
backup your DVD's. Commerce is the one area that willingly breaks the
law to encourage litigation and have the legislation reworked.
A chorus of voices are more powerful than two litigators and a judge
in a back room deciding the fate of the land.
By Jarrett Wold (indented comments by Luke Francl)
This is neither here nor there.
I suggest you read Lessig's book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace for the reasons why this argument is not true. In short, just because the internet is architected in a way that makes control hard now does not mean it always will be. Consider, for example, Microsoft's Palladium DRM scheme.
My idea of a challenge is more akin to thousands of people posting contraband photos of Bill Gates than it is to government control. It's a decentralized effort to support organizations and individuals who will further the fight against the forces of centralization and control of the net.
This argument won't help you if the government or the RIAA choses to make an example of you (consider the Navy midshipmen who were busted this week for file sharing).
Nor would his company have made any money selling their software.
Also, Freenet has serious technical problems as a workable anonymous caching service. See: http://pl.atyp.us/content/tech/freenet_fiq.html
The battle for control of the internet has not yet been won or lost. That's what my challenge is about.
There is no reason why one cannot do both things.
I have donated to the Freenet project before. Have you? No one is forcing you to donate to anyone. I merely give a list of suggestions. The idea of the challenge still stands: are you giving more money to people who want to destroy the internet than you are to the people who are trying to save it?
Again, there is no reason why you cannot do both.
This is also neither here nor there.
And who do you think provides legal support for the TIVOs of the world when they get sued by the MPAA? The EFF.
See: http://www.craigslist.org/about/craig.vs.hollywood.html
Which is exactly the point of Lessig's Challenge. Instead of being so self-assured, you can help determine the future of the net supporting the organizations and individuals who care about its future.
You can also read my post, "To my doubters": http://justlooking.recursion.org/2002/Nov/25#on-slashdot
Posted at 22:19
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Nick Mark on Katherine Kersten Hopefully the Star Tribune will publish his piece.
Speaking of which, there was a
hilarious letter to
the editor today about Kersten's piece. I include it below because of the
Strib's link-breaking policies.
Nick Mark emailed me regarding
my recent
discussion of Katerine Kersten's
opinion piece about
campus liberalism. He wrote a
very nice counterpoint to
her editorial:
Kersten seems to claim that to "adopt a reflexive skepticism about America's role in the world" is to be brainwashed by the political left. So we'd be balanced and open-minded to adopt a reflexive credulity? How would that further anyone's intellectual development? "[T]o analyze American society through the lens of race, class and gender," it seems, is to kowtow to lefty ideologies. No question of what conclusion your analysis arrives at . simply accepting that those aspects of society are important and informative analytical elements is indicative of "ideological imbalance." Please. Kersten is not, as she claims to be, arguing for "unrestricted critical investigation," of which skepticism is a necessary part. Rather, she seems to want an academy that serves right-wing instead of left-wing ideologies, and she's using intellectually dishonest tactics to argue for it. It's the same method that worked so well to create the "liberal media bias" myth, and it's crap.
I had to laugh out loud when I read the Nov. 22 letter from a reader asking, "If most professors who have been lecturing for years really do have the power to indoctrinate students with a leftist ideology, then where did all the Republican voters on Nov. 5 come from?"
The most obvious answer? The voters clearly were not very well-educated. Some of us have been saying that about Republicans for years.
-- Kirsten Cackoski, Minneapolis.
Posted at 21:40
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Save Joey's Christmas!
My friend Joey de Villa is in a tough spot. He's
unemployed and owed hundreds of dollars by dead-beat roommate(s). To help
save Joey's Christmas, he's
selling off dozens of
computer books from said roommate(s) at cut rate prices. So do yourself a
favor by getting some sweet, cheap books while doing him a favor.
Posted at 08:54
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