I'd like to comment on the line "It needs to be drilled into the heads of politicians,"
There was a similar conversation on the Digital Copyright Canada mailing list years ago[1] in which I made my choice. We can try to educate the politicians in a non-partisan manner [which I whole-heartedly support btw!] or bring that knowledge into the system ourselves. I chose the latter. I do not trust legislators when it comes to technology law; it's similar to letting the Church[2] decide what is or is-not in the realm of Science. Something else that drove me to the decision: "With knowledge comes responsibility." I'm not saying I'm a subject-matter expert here, but if I don't stand up then who will? Most likely someone with even less knowledge in this area. Canada was the first Pirate Party to be officially registered outside of Europe; we've lost momentum but that should not be surprising. I knew going in that it'd take years for us to have any serious impact, that there would be more downs than ups during this period, and that generally-speaking it would be rough going. So far, we're right on track. That said, many people who are aware of us (and even some of our membership[3]) still think we're only interested in getting Entertainment content for free. This couldn't be farther from the truth though - among the "serious" Pirates - those I refer to as "Political Pirates" are far more concerned with naiive/ignorant[4] legislators, legislation and their effects on the public. Best, - Scott [1] circa 2005/06 IIRC - roughly around the time the Swedish Pirate Party was launching. Unfortunately I was unable today to locate a link to the conversation on the DCC website. [2] I'm not attacking the Church (or any religion) here; I'm just making reference to historical situations - such as the Earth being the center of the Universe - to make the point. [3] a generalization on global attitudes of Pirates, based on anecdotal evidence I've seen in various Pirate Party-related mailing lists. [4] again, I'm not trying to be provocative or insulting here. On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 11:38 PM, David C Dawson <[email protected]>wrote: > Is the sky falling? It depends on the perspective, but the infosec > community has had a number of dreadful shocks lately. > > Anyway, I just > wanted to say that the "War on general purpose computing." has been going > on longer than I knew. I think that the community to which we belong > should consider that the "fight" will not be "won" or "lost", but will > continue into the future and long past our short lives. > > Does anyone know > about Fred Saberhagen's stories of the Berserker Wars? I only mention him, > to make the point that freedom has to be defended constantly, or it's > gone. > > Therefore, the methods to defend freedom are more important than > the specifics. > > People suffer; 'content', code, and hardware do not. > > It needs to be drilled into the heads of politicians, > that software and hardware and *ware are not magic, that once an idea is > thought up, it isn't feasible, nor desireable to suppress it, as the > suppression causes far more damage than the idea can. > > Bad ideas die a natural death, so to speak --- or should, and keeping > bad ideas (like DMCA, DRM, TPM, and the like), on life support, is to > prolong the agony, and defer the inevitable. > > (If I (mis)quoted anyone without attibution, then *please* let me know!) > > Comments? > > -- > David Dawson VE7HP VE7HDC > IRC: (Freenode) VE7HP > > _______________________________________________ > fsfc-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfc-discuss > -- Scott Elcomb @psema4 on Twitter / Identi.ca / Github & more Atomic OS: Self Contained Microsystems http://code.google.com/p/atomos/ Member of the Pirate Party of Canada http://www.pirateparty.ca/
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