If you missed it at KPLUG or want to see it again (this time with a working projector)....
http://www.sdoss.org/events/events-index.html#copyrights See sdoss.org web page for map and directions and summary. ======================================================== 10/05/05 6:30pm Intellectual Property Extremism, it effects us all! We are in the middle of the Intellectual Property Wars. This is sort of the Civil Rights Movement of the 21st century. * Did you know that criminal charges were brought against a Linux user just for trying to do the good deed of giving away software to play DVDs? * Did you know that if you design a Linux e-commerce application that requires too few mouse clicks that you may be committing a crime? * Did you know that Linspire, a Linux company, is reconsidering a decision to distribute software over peer-to-peer networks because of the fear of legal retribution if they do? * Did you know that Senator Berman of California recently proposed a bill that in some cases would make it legal for others to hack into your Linux PC without fear of liability? You'd almost think the US government had declared war on Linux and open source! I framed these points to emphasize their impact on the Linux community. Unfortunately, this war is wider than just some odd discrimination against geeks. * Did you know that the Girl Scouts were sued for singing songs around camp fires because they wouldn't pay up? I could go on and on with many more examples but you get the point. This extremism is sometimes justified today with references to the sanctity of "property". Those who disagree are labeled as: "anti-property", "un-American" and "pirates". Such rhetoric is a ridiculous distortion of our history, the Constitution and common sense. One severe handicap in fighting this war is that it is not quick and easy to understand the counter-arguments we need to make against such charges. We'd all rather be talking about interesting Linux software and hardware. If you can spare a short amount of your valuable time, I'll try my best to give you a worthwhile overview to enable you to talk intelligently about such matters and to prevent yourself and others from becoming casualties. Most of this discussion will be "pirated" from Professor Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture . Speakers bio: Christian Seberino has been programmer for many years. He is currently an independent software consultant who is always on the lookout for interesting and challenging work. He has worked with numerous languages on personal computers and supercomputers. He earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of California, San Diego in 2000. As part of his dissertation, he built a parallel supercomputer to run a parallel magnetic recording simulator he designed. This software utilized then recently developed algorithms and is still in use today. He has developed many other scientific and engineering applications including cryptographic libraries for the National Security Agency (NSA) and stochastic simulation software for the United States Navy. Chris -- _______________________________________ Christian Seberino, Ph.D. SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego Code 2872 49258 Mills Street, Room 158 San Diego, CA 92152-5385 U.S.A. Phone: (619) 553-9973 Fax : (619) 553-6521 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
