EFF Creates Endangered Gizmos List 213
linuxwrangler writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week announced the creation of the Endangered Gizmos List. According to their press release, this project highlights 'the way misguided laws and lawsuits can pollute the environment for technological innovation.' The site categorizes technologies ranging from the Betamax to the Advanced eBook Processor as 'Saved', 'Endangered' or 'Extinct'."
EFF doing an awesome job (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Coral link (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Apparently. If you decide to use a Coralized link, it's best to get the Coralized page yourself first, so that the "inner ring" of Coral servers (see the Coral homepage) have the content already.
Missing species (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA and MPAA attack every peer to peer network because of illegal filesharing. Peer to peer networks can be abused, this is true. However, so can social networks, radio networks, cable networks and etc. Yet, if these organizations had their way peer to peer networks would cease to exist. Shall I remind you that the Internet operates on protocols [wikipedia.org] that essentially make it a peer to peer network?
Forgive me for pontificating.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company can control the distribution of its "intellectual property" - e.g. a song - from the moment it's recorded until it hits your ears - then there's additional opportunities for a revenue stream at any point in that line. For instance, you can purchase a song from iTunes. Or you can pay XM $10 a month for the privilege of listening to that same song on their satellite service. Or you could go to the record store and purchase a disc you can put in your CD player and play.
But the act of copying said content, and giving it to a friend - that's completely outside the revenue stream, and the content companies seek to stop this type of action. Even if the creator of the content - the artist - would see benefit from this action. (An example: a friend recently made a copy of the Secret Machines album for me. I bought a copy for my brother, and then a copy for myself. How is this bad for the artist?)
Music, video, and other entertainment content is *not* intellectual property. Trade secrets, manufacturing methods, software - that's IP. But music in specific is undergoing a transformation. Content control is not natural in the broad scope - it's an artificial control mechanism put in place to generate revenue.
Great but funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny world but it shows that EFF and their staff/volunteers are standing for principles and not products/behaviour
Re:You're right. One button is just silly now a d (Score:5, Insightful)
Because not all users have a right mouse-button, it maintains the very sensible UI rule that you should be able to do everything without using it - all features you'd RMB for are available in the menu.
Windows is horribly inconsistent about what the RMB is actually for, and you don't know whether or not a feature actually exists until you try right-clicking on random objects to have a look.
Extra buttons and wheels are undoubtably useful things for shortcuts, but the design principle that everything should be available in a consistent manner without HAVING to use them is great for those of us that don't use them very often.
Re:A bit cruel to the animals - and humans (Score:2, Insightful)
I didn't say the endangered species list was above ridicule or parody. But I did say that the parody listed was feeble and in poor taste.
Just because there exists a freedom to send-up anything and everything that others hold sacred, does not mean it is right to exercise. In a truly free society, the only way to counter rotten ideas is to speak up when they are foisted upon you. However, (as my -1, Troll rating may demonstrate already) "PC" doctrine discourages speaking up against any proffered ideas. Instead, silent tolerance is supposed to be the norm. But freedom of speech implies freedom of destructive and critical speech just as it implies freedom of constructive speech. (And there are no moral connotations attached to those adjectives)
I find this bad parody of a serious endeavor in poor taste, and just as there's nothing wrong with them coming up with such bad humour, there's absolutely nothing wrong in my saying it's garbage - the querulous minds of the anonymous moderators excepted, obviously.
Re:You're right. One button is just silly now a d (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't you design the interface to be usable with one button without bundling a mouse that will not be used by a large portion of your customers?
Yes, you can, but try getting every 3rd party software manufacturer to do the same.
Re:Was beta really that good? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were in Europe, where they use PAL (a higher quality standard) then the difference between Beta and VHS became more apparent.
The bottom line: VHS was "high enough" quality for the US market, and it had features that Beta didn't have (wider licensing, longer recording times).
In many ways, it's a similar situation to CDs today - none of the attempts to replace CDs have been successful because CDs are "good enough" for 99% of the consumers.
Hmm.. And as I wrote this, I realized: Windows is "good enough" for 99% of the consumers too. I wonder if Windows is successful for just the same reason - it was widely licensed, and "good enough".
near as I can tell (Score:5, Insightful)
The new "technofeudalists" are the huge transnational corporations, who are increasingly controlling the "laws" in various nations, overtly (open lobbying, trade associations,pushing "free trade" instead of "fair trade", etc) or covertly (bribing and blackmailing their boys into power in the "legitimate" governments, copting journalists to push propoganda, etc, etc). And it's very hard to control them, because corporations act as a group of people as to profits, but the responsibilities that a normal human person might have are not conclusive or extensive enough, witness time after time corporation-x gets busted for this or that. Usually it results in a fine, said fine monies then being pushed off onto the ultimate customers to pay. The corps themselves are rarely if ever actually busted up entirely, no matter how many times their officers/managers whatever get caught in illegal acts. And to make it worse, even if that happens, they can just "go bankrupt" and most of the same people involved can just go start up another string of corporations under new corporate person names and controlling addresses.
Corporations are very similar to the old concept of "royal bloodlines" in that regard, they persist generation after generation, with the twist they can just morph away and reform, to go on and continue with unethical or illegal practices. You can't really kill them off or revolt against them,like you could with some royal feudalist gang of rank "bluebloods" in ye olden days, not in any practical sense anyway and stay inside technological civilisation.
Re:but seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:D/A; A/D Converters Endangered?? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not only that. It's hard for regular non-techies to understand what the concept of this issue really is, but try this analogy: what if book publishers wanted to installa microchip in every pen or pencil that was sold so that it would recognize if you were using it to copy a protected piece of literature, and would stop working? Not only is it insanely stupid, but now a 39 cent pen is going to cost you 10 dollars, and maybe more because the microchip it uses will be patented and only available for license through the industry association that lobbied the government for the rule in the first place. Yes, it's THAT bad.
D/A and A/D converters are something that electronics students build in a lab during one of their classes. Will we all be forced to be bonded like locksmiths in order to get a degree in electrical engineering now, because we have the knowledge to bootleg copyrighted material? Yes, it's THAT bad. It affects almost any modern electronic system that interacts with the real world.
I'll tell you, people NEED to put just as much effort into blocking this type of bad legislation as they do into the pro-gun lobby. This is even more fundamental than that. It's about the freedom to measure the physical world and store it in digital form. Unfortunately, people just don't understand the technology, especially politicians.
Seriously, I purchase A/D and D/A cards for industrial uses all the time. They're expensive enough. Now, do I have to pay extra just to stop someone from hooking up the headphones of their MP3 player to a resolver input on a conveyor and record the music through the control system? That's insane!
Re:Endangered Shameless Lawyers is More Like It (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe people like you are referred to as "trolls." To bad you haven't been modded as such.
Re:Endangered Shameless Lawyers is More Like It (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of protecting the public from Big Copyright involves making people understand what's at stake, and part of it is paying people to do the hard work.
Re:but seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
You're too modest. The "something else" is Fascism: the merging of corporate and state power.
You can use the word Fascism to describe what's going on. Go ahead. After all, it's exactly what it is, so don't hesitate. The talk-radio twits will scream about it, but they were never known for their logic, consistency, and overall secular Humanism anyway.
Re:D/A and A/D converters?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. But it's the RIAA and MPAA and the freaking IDIOTS in congress that put A/D and D/A converters on the endangered list. And as you say, they have absolutely NO CLUE about electronics or about technology in general. There has been lobbying and draft bills floating around Capitol Hill that would outlaw the manufacture of any new non-DRM-compliant A/D and D/A chips.
Which is why the EFF has it listed as endangered.
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Re:near as I can tell (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. I don't understand why we allow corporations to make political contributions. It corrupts the political process terribly and has no moral justification. Issues involving corporations can be perfectly well advocated by individuals. If legal changes are necessary for a certain industry to develop, for example, if the economic benefits outweigh the costs (e.g. environmental problems), people will still vote for it, but they'll do it on the basis of evidence and argument rather than what is effectively bribery, whether we call it that or not. Why isn't there a movement to forbid corporate political donations?