Re: [vox] Left Wing Lawyers for Linux

[<donwMAPS@examen.com>]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 03:20:09PM -0800, Joseph Arruda wrote:
> 
> Ok, a few thinsg:
> 
> 1. IANAL

I don't, but hey, if that's your preference... ;) (IWABAL; I'm Working On
Being A Lawyer, one of these days).

> 2. I am right-wing (centre-right, but nonetheless...)

Nobody's perfect.

> 3. "Palladium" is not quite as how you described it.  It is more of an
> authentication/DRM schema from hell.  Basically it is the first step
> towards MS having a centralized DB of anyone with with a win32 box, what
> they do/install/blah blah blah.  It's 'Passport' on 2 buckets of
> horse-roids and 3 lines of good china white copping a cheap feel on its
> customers like a drunken senator and a 17 year old hooker in a fast
> moving vehicle on Connecticut Ave...dangerous, stupid, lethal, and in my
> opinion illegal.

It's a bit more than that; Palladium also incorporates DRM features that
keep Our Friend, The Media (tm) happy.  Palladium is indeed the 
authentication/DRM schema from hell, but it provides so many opportunities
for Microsoft to list alternative-OS webservers as being "insecure" or 
"containing copyrighted content" that it's asinine to assume they won't 
take advantage of it.

> Also highly unlikely to get too much traction (Palladium is the successor
> to Hailstorm, which fell over with a dull thud pretty quick). I
> guuarenfuckteeyou that Palladium is going to be hardpressed to succeed,
> because once an entire young generation cant gets its
> mp3s/vcds/pr0n...they will learn a new OS pretty goddamn quick.

That's the reason for all the laws (DMCA, et al.) strengthening copyright 
to super-Nietzchian proportions.  If using "alternative OSes" becomes illegal
(because of DRM laws), than what?  Form a gurella movement?  Hope that you
never get an email from a guy with the last name of "Montag" who works for
the FBI? (I know this is a paranoid stretch, but it illustrates a big point).

> The one thing hollywood has right..."content is king"

No, stupidity is King.  He's a shadowy one, always lurking where he's 
neither suspected nor warranted, and inevitably pounces at the oddest 
and most opertune times.

The content is there.  For a price.

>  My
> recommendation is everyone start writing letters to their congresscritters
> (writing means printed onto a sheet of paper and mailed) to voice
> disproval at such schemes, as well as to promote the use of OSS.

Sorry, but most Congresscritters don't seem to give a rat's ass what their
constituents have to say; I recall reading a letter that Diane Feinstein 
sent back to someone who submitted a *hand-written* letter; it basically 
stated that the voter-in-question could go screw themselves senseless with
a chainsaw, that Feinstein knew what she was doing, and that she was smarter
than some pissant little citizien.  Sit back, enjoy the in-flight movie, 
and don't ask the nice stewardess where you're going -- you don't need to 
know anyway.

I'll wager that mail was *pouring* in about the DMCA, and it still got 
passed.

Then again, I don't have any better suggestions, so I suppose writing would 
give you something to do. ;)

(End jaded rant; I'm working my way through Yet Another Political Science 
class and, while I have tons of faith in the structure of our government, 
I have very little faith in the people that populate it).

-- 
Don Werve <donw@examen.com> (Unix System Administrator)

Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue,
Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork!
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