RE: there is a new battlefield folks


Subject: RE: there is a new battlefield folks
From: William F. Fulton (fulton@gci.net)
Date: Wed Mar 27 2002 - 11:40:16 AKST


Hey guys it looks like we can get a meeting with Sen Stevens we need some of
our leadership to be involved who would be interested in doing something
like this????????????????

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: aklug-bounce@aklug.org [mailto:aklug-bounce@aklug.org]On Behalf Of
James Gibson
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 2:42 PM
To: aklug@aklug.org
Subject: Re: there is a new battlefield folks

On Fri, 22 Mar 2002, Arthur Corliss wrote:
>
> > This is a bunch of fascist BS and I think we need to send a message
> > to OUR Senator that this type of legislation is an abomination and
> > to have him support, let alone SPONSOR such a piece of trash is
> > unacceptable. We should write an official letter from the Alaska
> > Linux Users Group protesting this nonsense.
>
> I think this is an excellent idea, as long as no one has a beef with this
> slight political intervention. Getting a petition signed and delivered
(even
> an electronic version) would be great, and if we can tap some of the
> excellent oratorical skills of the group, we could make a compelling
argument
> to stop this kind of nonsense.
>
> --Arthur Corliss

Some thoughts to bring to the table:

My biggest problem with this bill (not that there aren't some number of
runners up) is the bass-ackwards nature of what we are considering here.
Copyright (aka Intellectual Property) is NOT an in-alien-able Right;
Congress is given the Power to "promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" [1]. Nowhere is it
stated that Congress is even required to USE this power, nor is it
compelled anywhere with the task of enforcing that Right, and the Industry
itself has no Right granted to it to guarantee it's continuance. Certainly
not at the cost of freedoms. My body is capable of storing digital
copyrighted works; My voice is capable of making them audible; My hands
can make them visible. Does this mean I need a DRM chip implanted in my
brain? Or perhaps the copyright industry has out lived it's usefulness in
it's present form; As it stands it scarcely falls under the category of
"useful Arts".

As an example, consider when electricity was beginning to be used for
lighting. This had a HUGE impact on the candle-making industry, oil-lamp
vendors, and a quaint little profession known as whale-hunting. Whale-fat
was top-notch fuel for oil lamps in those days. So where would we be today
if our government had said "No, wait. We need laws on the books to keep
people from using electricity to make light, so that the whale-hunting
industry will continue to thrive."? Just imagine.. even if we GOT to the
point where we had computers (and were still using our oil lamps) we'd be
stumped over the whole monitor issue: we can't have a monitor because it
could be used as an illumination device.

If it comes to choosing between un-crippled soft/hardware and the tripe
generated by the Music and Video industries, take a wild guess where I
stand.

James

[1] (US Constitution. Article 1. Sect 8 Clause 8.
"http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html"



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