Corporate Greed sucks

here "Recently Mathworld, what many would consider one of the more valuable Web resources, fell victim to a copyright lawsuit. We've seen in the past that through sufficient mirroring the community can save such resources (DeCSS for example) from similar legal onslaughts. What Web resources do you consider most valuable and/or most vulnerable to legal attack and is there any effort under way to mirror and preserve these resources?" __________________ slashdot rules.... :-P __________________ osOpinion 11/7/00 By Dave Manchester Now that Napster has made deals with member-companies of the RIAA and decided to move to a subscription model for its software, perhaps it's time to review some of the issues. (By the way, those wishing to continue to use their current version of Napster to freely swap tunes should get Napigator from http://www.napigator.com. Napigator permits you to use your existing Napster client to connect to free servers not controlled by Napster the company.) As I noted by parable in my column "We're Goin' Boom, Boom, Boom," the issue is not copyright. The issue is the First Amendment. (And I am personally embarrassed for the system of jurisprudence that it is so ill-informed of the Law we repose into its care that a layman such as myself must point it out.) When P2P (Peer-to-Peer Computing) and micropayments collide, the real casualty will be the existing economic system. True Open Source P2P micropayments could just mean the elimination of banks as middlemen, at the worst; at best, being relegated to the comparatively non-lucrative position as clearing agents. This will depend on what form P2P micropayment systems take. But what about Human Freedom to share ideas? What about Free Speech? What about Freedom to Assemble? The issue at stake here is the Freedom to Assemble without special dispensation from the government or private arbiters of who shall be allowed Individual Rights, and who must give up those Rights. The Internet, the Web, and each online community is a gathering of People. In the USA, the alleged Law is that we enjoy the First Amendment guarantees of Freedom of Assembly. And it bears noting that there would not even be a United States of America had not the first 10 amendments to the Constitution been included. The framers of the Constitution were unable to sell it to their respective states without these 10 essential guarantees. And they were sold as Guarantees with a capital "G." This confers, or should confer upon those amendments a unique and overriding status that has enjoyed only sketchy and inconsistent recognition by the Courts, in this layman's meagerly informed opinion. It matters not if we physically assemble together in a room, or on the Web. The First Principal remains the same. Let the court decide what it may about Napster (all but moot, now). Trying to stop the aggregation of Free Persons in Communities on the web, and the subsequent sharing of ideas (in whatever form, be it MP3 or txt, jpg or pixmap, or DVD) is futile. If Judge Patel's order to shut down Napster were upheld, that's just one more area the Law will be viewed by most as having become irrelevant. Like the simulation of an antitrust action staged against Microsoft...it lost, and was ordered to break up. Has it broken up? No. Fines? No. Sanctions of any kind? Not so far... It seems big money is able to buy its way out of adhering to the Law, and the rulings of judges. No wonder thinking people look askance at such subterfuges for fascism and oligarchy (be it corporate or private). Let us ask, in this regard, where the Federal Government's respect for the Law was in the establishment of the National Security Act of 1947; or in the Executive Orders leading up to it; or the layer upon layer of secret Presidential Directives. The "national security" states are outside of the Constitution and always have been. The main concern at the time was not Freedom, it was the Communist threat posed by the USSR, and COMINTERN (International Communist Party), and their doctrine of "Total War," which the UKUSA secret government picked up just as quick. This was and is a putsch (the overthrow of a regime by a very small group). The country that would from then on live on only in simulation of Free Society was the United States. Where is the respect for the Bill of Rights when well connected politicians acting at the behest of only the richest and most secretive concentrations of wealth seek to establish an informational cage around every single Individual on the planet, calling it "Echelon"? Why is there a policy of 50 year delay in revealing what these elements have done? And only then, what they haven't shredded? Individuals are going to share ideas in whatever form. And they are not going to pay a toll each time they retrieve those ideas in whatever form. They won't pay a fee for unscrewing bottle caps when they've already purchased the liquid inside. Neither will they do it when the contents are a movie on a DVD, with MP3s, or CDs. We should, if Patel's order (or any like it) is upheld, initiate a class action suit on the behalf of the estate of Archimedes, against all manufacturers of screw-top bottles and bottle caps that fit them...after all, the screw was his idea. This effort by the RIAA/MPAA against Napster and DeCss is fruitless tilting at the windmill of progress. The Courts can only discredit themselves and enslave us by entertaining them. Take a look at John Perry Barlow's excellent article on technocrat.net titled "Napster and the Death of the Music Business." Barlow is right when he says there is an upheaval coming soon. It won't just apply to the Music business, either. The entire world economy will show it. We need to very carefully think through what we want from a P2P micropay system. Should the Artists create a viable peer-to-peer micropayments system for the Web, we won't even need banks. Soon, the Artists will be in a position to take 90 percent...not the pittance the RIAA hands them for their Intellectual Property they were duped into handing over as "work for hire" in order to get that recording contract. If you don't believe it, read a record contract; then take a look at the UCITA legislation, and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act, legislation written by the RIAA and members, and given to "Your" representatives in the Congress to rubber stamp. Which they did. adding a few choice items AFTER hearings were done.) It is the RIAA member companies that are offensive here. Especially when they lead groups like Metallica and Dre down this primrose path to enslavement, taking the rest of us with it. Maybe this is part of the intelligence community's "music" project, referred to in the last pages of Miles Copeland's "work for hire," "Beyond Cloak and Dagger." Aside from the practice of covert domestic political assassination to which Paul Kanga and others may have fallen. Too bad it won't work. __________________ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2000Nov6.html ;0) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Good thing for online traffic school otherwise I'd be hosed Mavi forum