EFF

John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder: I am still optimistic. I didn't expect that the entire wealth of the industrial period would gracefully allow us to render them irrelevant. They're putting up a spirited fight, but I don't think they'll win. Victory comes to the patient. The content industry used to call me the devil, now the same people come to me for advice on how to make it work for them, they're abandoning their King Canute strategy. I don't think there's proof that downloading has cost the record industry billions, for the same reason that hearing a song on the radio doesn't cost a sale. There are lots of studies, but no one can say for sure. Last year I asked Cary Sherman if he'd co-design a study with EFF to give fair insight into what the losses or gains are from downloading. He said, "I don't think we can do that. I don't believe my constituents would allow that because it might turn out that you're right." Wouldn't they want to know? "No, I don't think it's like that with them." It's a matter of religious belief. They're near retirement, they can have any religion they want. They'll be replaced by the electronic Hisbollah they've created with their Draconian strategies, the wild-eyed 17-year-olds who hack DRM will beat the 55 year olds in posh cars in Bel Air.

Can we come up with a regime for regulating the economy of ideas and the way of getting paid for work you do with your mind that doesn't treat thought as a noun and therefore subject to being treated as property. The IP system is a gigantic kludge of patches that have been laid on in different regimes, as it all goes to bits, it needs to be harmonized with a regime that recognizes that this regulates the relationship of the creator and the audience.

Seems like the forces to protect freedom-of-speech in the groundsetting Wikileaks.org case have spoken: Henry Weinstein at LA Times reports that a coalition of media and public interest organizations today urged judge Jeffrey White to rescind the shutdown of Wikileaks.org, which presents "restraint on free speech that violated the First Amendment", and is generally considered to become a representative case for free online speech. The dirty dozen organizations fighting for your voice and mine include the EFF, the ACLU, The Times, AP, Gannett, Hearst, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.

It's taken some time, but the EFF's Patent Busting Project is making progress. In the latest news, the USPTO has now officially rejected one of the 10 awful patents targeted, making the world safe again for administering tests over the Internet. This joins the reexamination of a patent on automated remote access of a computer over a network and the revocation of a patent on recording live performances to CD as notable successes for the EFF.

If anyone knows a good candidate for the EFF webmaster job opening, please pass this along! It's a great gig with fantastic people and a chance to really make a difference.

If only I didn't suck.

For a number of years, I've told people who have been thinking of getting me something for Christmas or whatever holiday excuse they have for gift giving that I'd simply prefer they not get me anything at all. The reaction to often ranges from confusion (i.e., how can you not want gifts?) to exasperation that my insincere "no, no, you don't have to get me anything…" ways just means they will have to be extra crafty in getting me a gift, since I’m not helping them by hinting at what I want. This is when people ask my wife what I want, and she tells them that I told her years ago to stop getting me Christmas gifts. At which point I suspect their heads explode.

Actually, I started doing something similar this year. Mainly because of his first reason, "When I really want something, I buy it." I really do buy myself the things that I want. Also, "it’s money more profitably spent on people who want something in particular, or (if you’re in this frame of mind) to a charity, or just kept in their own pocket." Going along with that charity thing, I set my mom this email:

From: brian@brianpuccio.net
Subject: Christmas
Date: November 17, 2007 9:43:05 PM EST
To: ctpuccio@optonline.net

So I was thinking that since this year my charitable donations have sucked, I'm not asking for anything. If anyone asks what to get me, they can just make a donation to any of the below. Also, another terapass would be nifty.

Thanks!

EFF
Habitat For Humanity
Medecins Sans Frontiers
Free Software Foundation
Heifer International
The Trust For Public Land
International Red Cross
International Medical Corps

I had this list put together and then I read this:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/702-darryl-c-didier

So I'd like to add the American Brain Tumor Association to the list.

Thanks!

I'm continuing my consumerism in a small manner by picking up some sweet new EFF stickers.

I've started to run a Tor server thanks to the Tor on Debian page, which includes Ubuntu. Tor is an implementation of second-generation onion routing - an anonymity system enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet. I've been watching the server stats like a hawk to see if there were any adverse effects. I've already defined the exit policy to not be an exit node because keeping my IPs from being blacklisted is important to the continued operation of this server. I've also set the bandwidth limit as to avoid an ugly bill at the end of the month. However, I do believe what's holding things back is the number of file descriptors. I'll look into changing that as soon as possible. Right now the default is 1024, however, it seems that 8192 is the amount they would like so I will be changing that this afternoon.

Looking at these stats, keep in mind the server was started around 19:00:

Fuck Big Brother.