[DMCA-Activists] Re: [DMCA_Discuss] Seth Finkelstein Greplaw Interview (DMCA, censorware, etc.)

[Andy Green]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thursday 18 December 2003 15:08, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> Seth Finkelstein on Censorware, Copyright, DMCA, and Blogs
> http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=03/12/16/0526234&mode=nocomment
>
> posted by mpawlo on Tuesday December 16, @04:28AM
> from the interesting-people dept.
>
> "Seth Finkelstein is Mr Anti-Censorware. The MIT graduate and EFF
> Pioneer has devoted his talents into unpaid anti-censorware research.

Really good interview.

> Especially here, as I've seen a great deal of very odd double-think, 
> which simultaneously holds that censorship can't work for governments, 
> yet such control is cheap and easy and readily available for parents. 

To be fair, as a father of two daughters, one 13, censorship and context 
creation is a duty.  Children are on a journey from being dependents to being 
adults, as they go through the shades of grey it is the job of the parents to 
be the tour guide and sometimes the dictator.  At the end of the road the 
blinkers are fully off and they control their own knowledge, that's clear.  
But through the journey from a babe in arms to an adult the full raw feed can 
only do harm, since, for example in the case of advertisments, the siren 
voice is coming from those whose only desire is to control.  Censorship is 
one thing, control of the context is another.

> It's borderline. As any sort of influence platform, it's pretty much 
> a failure. While some people might be

I appreciate your posts in DMCA_discuss, many people read it and its hard to 
summarize the impact as a failure.  We ARE the stakeholders.

> There was nothing unique to the meltdown of the Censorware Project. 
> Many activist groups have seen someone try to pull a coup d'etat. There's 
> an unwillingness to think about the problem, but when there's something 
> of value, someone may try to steal it. 

I can testify to the wisdom of this statement.

> Don't ever think "They can't get away with it". They can. Once someone 
> has made the decision that for their own gain, they are willing to 
> betray the trust that their friends have placed in them, then they will 
> not scruple to lie to advance that goal. Remember, they've already 
> decided to be a thief, so what do they have to lose? From a logical point 
> of view, it's to their advantage to generate as much smoke as possible, 
> since they can only gain from it. People will say they don't want to 
> get involved, or the truth is in the middle, or everyone associated 
> isn't perfect, etc. etc. Which all means the thief wins. 

Oh yeah, this is the WORD!

> Operationally, copyright is a restriction on speech in order to facilitate 
> a business model.

That's the hat trick!  Great interview.

- -Andy
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/4y+ujKeDCxMJCTIRAn1SAKCKEt2wqn2eqqVkjfnyAsv4tJ3axgCfatIc
ATO1/gqsoE87LR8YEEijrQo=
=F6zg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----