Thursday, July 4, 2002

Lawblogging

Some great stuff from Donna Wentworth's live blogging of ILAE in Copyfight. Dan Gillmor too.

This is journalism of a very literal sort, folks, and it is fundamentally changing the game.

This is pretty much what we're doing, isn't it? Except maybe for item #3

Eric Raymond wraps his latest series of essays with strong advice:

The war against Islamic terror must be fought on three levels: homeland defense, military power projection, and cultural subversion. We must foil terrorist acts; we must imprison or kill the terrorists who plan and execute them; and we must dry up the pool of potential recruits before they become terrorists who can only be stopped by being imprisoned or killed.

Thin chance

Declan thinks the EFF and 2600 decision not to pursue the DeCSS case to a likely Supreme Court loss was a good move. He concludes:

What this also reinforces is that every judge that has looked at the DMCA's anti-circumvention sections has thought they're perfectly grand. DMCA opponents now have four obvious choices:
Wait for a better test case
Convince Congress to amend the DMCA (fat chance):
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45522,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52602,00.html
Incite violent revolution
Get used to it

Caution flag

Dave Sifry: Community broadband activists: We need to be careful about how the media portays us, lest we become painted with the same "hacker, cracker, pirate, lawbreaker" brush that the MPAA and RIAA love to paint users of file swapping services and internet radio. This starts with terminology and concrete example. Why do we call it wardriving, for example? Or Warchalking? Well, it sounds cool, and we techies like the sounds of the terms. It sounds cool and dangerous. But it plays into the monopolist's hands.

It's too late to repress terms like "wardriving" and "warchalking," but not to re-characterize the "WAR" acronym in a truly meaningful way. Matt Jones (of warchalking fame) and I agree that "WAR" in this context ought to mean "wireless access reconnaissance." Works pretty well, no?

Happies

It's my pal Larry Gottlieb's birthday. Happy one, big guy. Also the deathday of Thomas Jefferson & John Adams (who passed hours apart). And, of course, it's the 226th birthday of the U.S. of A. Light the skies.