On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 01:53:21AM +0000, Matthew Toseland wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 05:35:35PM -0800, Troy B Klyber wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 04:04:41PM -0800, hal at finney.org wrote:
> > >
> > > The writing's on the wall here, folks. Ultimately I am afraid that
> > > Freenet will not be legally runnable in the U.S. without a blocking
> > > mechanism. I wouldn't rush to put it in unless or until people start
> > > getting legal notices, but eventually the issue will have to be dealt
> > > with. Either Freenet accepts that the U.S. market is off limits, or it
> > > provides a means to block certain data. Neither is an attractive choice.
> > >
> >
> > You are probably right, but the Ninth Circuit's Napster decision suggests
> > that if the Freenet design does not allow for simple blocking and removal,
> > that that may be enough to limit the liability. So in short, if Freenet
> > were to be designed in a way so that identifying material is difficult, it
> > may reduce the liability. Of course, no one would ever do that ON PURPOSE
> > in order to reduce liability. But, if the technical goals of anonymity
> > require it, then...
> Interesting...
> >
> > Practically, Freenet might lead to a reworking of the DMCA safe harbor if
> > Congress does not like how the Courts treat it. Then the outcome of
> > the DeCSS case becomes highly relevant (depending on how the Court decides
> > the First Amendment issues) and everything is just a mess...
> >
> If freenet is legal under the DMCA and is a serious threat to TPTB, they will
> just buy some more legislation to make it clearly illegal. Incidentally Europe
> is in the middle of adopting similar legislation; I'd be very interested in an
> analysis of those proposals.
> > A lot of these issues sort of came up back with the whole Media Enforcer
> > scare. They will not go away.
> >
> > Troy
> >
> No they will not. And freenet will eventually be banned in nearly every
> country,
> "free" or not. Money talks. But if we have enough usage it won't matter,
> except
> that widespread unresolved but arrestible civil disobedience is a form of
> police
> state. In a democracy, this should lead to reversal of the relevant
> legislation;
> it remains to be seen if there is that much democracy left in the various
> countries, especially with the obvious tendancy to associate Bad Teenagers and
> Evil Perverts with filesharing. Hence the democratic duty to pirate as much
> popular stuff as possible onto freenet :) The only real problem is if they get
> the core developers before the network really works...
Resisting the state is very important. And remember that civil
disobedience only works when the state is weak and unwilling to use
all means at its disposal. Because the system will probably be
perfectly willing to use all means at its disposal, I say that if the
state really starts attacking, we should do *active* resistance. This
is not just civil disobedience - this is actively fighting back
against the system. To not actively resist and fight back is
surrender. Of course, active resistance covers a very wide range of
stuff - it ranges from street fighting and simple sabotage and
monkeywrenching to full scale civil war.
And there is no such thing as democracy.
--
Yes, I know my enemies.
They're the teachers who tell me to fight me.
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance,
hypocrisy, brutality, the elite.
All of which are American dreams.
- Rage Against The Machine
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