I spent all yesterday coding WAT, my textfile todo handler with Palm synchronisation. This is why I’m not a programmer.
Excellent commentary by John “Catweazel” Gilmore on the DMCA.
EFF won’t be able to take every case that comes along. The community’s donations to EFF have been gratifying, useful, indeed essential. But there is far more money going into rabid company lawyers than is going into EFF or anywhere else for DMCA legal defense. It’s classic public choice economics — the benefit of the DMCA is concentrated in big profits to small numbers of companies, while the harm of the DMCA is spread widely through society. The companies will spend a lot to get those profits, while relatively few people will want to spend much to defend against them. EFF will have to pick which cases to focus on: ones where we can set precedents and get good leverage that will ultimately help the most people. But some people — I predict many people — are going to twist in the wind or in prison for years, before the courts or Congress are pushed into fixing the havoc caused by rabid copyright maximalists. So what if it decimates our profession? We’re a tiny minority of society, and we don’t bribe any legislators. They’ll only notice that we matter after we’re gone, when their security infrastructures fall to bits.
Hailstorm explained:
c/o slashdot