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Linux Foundation Reports Highlights from Annual Collaboration Summit Nokia Internet Tablets Get Ubuntu and Qt Ksplice Automates Hot Patching Linux Kernel with No Reboot Needed SECURITY: Study: 70 Percent Say Red Hat More Secure than Windows Linux Today is not responsible for the content of the message below. Ruben I Safir - Subject: Re: Boycott Strategy ( Feb 13, 2000, 02:26:11 ) Hello Everyone - I've given this a lot of thought over Shabboes (The Jewish Sabbath). It has definitely pervaded my dinner table. About 3 in the afternoon, it occurred to me that the real threat of the DMCA is not just that we can't play DVD's with Linux, or that the media it's is controlled by a ogonopoly of Media Giants, or that the future libraries in the the world are going to locked up for the privileged few and information is going to be controlled to a degree of stifling the free speech needed needed for the democratic process, what is a greater threat is that we are going to FURTHER loose control of our ability of present ideas and contribute to our society in meaningful ways. Rap Music, (which I hate) started in the basements of ghetto minorities, on the street. Without the ability to tape Rap music, and distribute it on cassette, which was the Rap media of choice in it's formative years of the early 1980's, it would have never seen the light of day. When theaters of the near future abandon traditional film, which is probably long overdue, for digital media, how is independent film makers going to MAKE films that people can see without projectors. If you don't have a legally acquired encryption key, you can not use the media media of choice for people to CREATE new works.To quote the fictional Character Hilton "Hammerhead" Kreiger, "The Plex supplies "em with conventional weapons, vidunits (currency) and American Plexpress Cards - (The Gangs) know the rules - No Aircraft, No Nukes, No combat in commercial zones -- and of course NO Suburban Adventurism (in their gang warfare). (In return the Plex gets back) Only the Highest raded Vidshow on 3 planets... the Plex makes a fortune in AD Revenues (and gambling bets). To control the content presented to the masses this severely is to control the education and reference of discussion discussion for future generations. Two of the most empowering thing to happen to mankind in civilized history is the development of the Printing Press, putting inexpensive books in the hands of millions, and the Internet, which makes worldwide publishing and communication inexpensive and instantane I have been one stupid dude over that last few years. I've watched technology after technology destroyed over the last decade by the wishes of media giants, and have allowed myself to be strung along by the media ous.industry and the computer software industry into apathy. I thought we were moving to a state of technological freedom with increasingly sufficticated hardware and software which improves presentation and creation, facilitating freedom of expression. Boy was I wrong, and a light is now going through my consciousness similar to the one that occurred the first time I joined a Compuserve Forum in the mid eighties, or the first time I ran Linux on my desktop and realized it works better than Windows, or the first time I got feedback from a Website I created. I'm realizing that what is the current status quo, as it is being presented to the public by large corporations, and the press, is actually a HINDRANCE to innovation and freedom of thought. The Internet was an Accident of the Government. Left to Corporate America, it would never had arrived. I an now communicating to a few hundred people using a technology -email invented over 3 decades ago and which came into the public mainstream only 2 years ago in a major way. Digital media has had to live with CDRW which is inferior to the Digital audiotape killed as a consumer product in the mid eighties. And the only computer system which can assure that people a free to innovate new products and software, is being threatened to it's core by the DMCA. All Intel has to do (and this is not to pick on Intel which I believe is one of the better companies out their in terms of fairness), is to put an encryption around the Bios of a computer which permits only licensed OS's to run on it, and anything like a future Linux is dead before it begins. After all this consideration, I jumped on the net this evening, and sure enough, it's like the entire community is working through this problem in the same way, and drawing the same conclusions. http://linuxtoday.com/stories/16556.html "What CSS lets the consortium do is determine who will make players, and on what terms, and who will provide content. If you can neither enccrypt or decrypt the bit stream, you are locked out of both markets. If you purchase a license to use the technology, then the consortium has a way of controlling your actions. Want to sell a player that doesn't honor region codes?. Hmm, maybe we'll revoke your license. Or maybe yes, of course, but you gotta charge three grand for it." This is EXACTLY what is happening, and what is instore for us in the future. This combined with AOL's announcement that they are no longer lobbying for open access on cable networks for all internet sites, means that the forces of business are making an increased power grab for control of access to information and services, which in turn destroys the free market economy and our person freedom. I am not happy enough to just join a Boycott, and petition a court room. We, the members of the Linux Community, and the open/free software movement, need to mature and take our seat of with the great powers of the world. We need a LOBBYING GROUP. We need to not only protect the rights of main stream American's and World citizens to innovate and communicate, but to lay down the legislative and policy agenda of the next hundred years to ensure that we are not victims of technology, but it's beneficiaries.