Whether or not this is the appropriate forum for this particular post, it's high time that hackers became politically aware. Existing power structures are set on criminalizing possession and usage of information in order to enforce artificial scarcity to maintain profits: Germany just passed a law declaring "hacker tools" illegal; the RIAA is now arguing that "making files available", even without copying, is infringement; there are provisions of the DMCA that make decrypting information you have legal access to illegal (DeCSS); Comcast is stopping BitTorrent transfers; patents threaten everyone; even your home Internet connection is severely throttled upstream to make you more of a consumer. The list could go on and on (Skype and new Federal eavesdropping-on-citizens-without-warrants "laws"; possible capital gains/income tax on virtual goods you've never sold; suing entire college student bodies at once in a fishing expedition for mp3 trading, etc., etc.)
There is an enormous amount of money to be made in the near term by plutocratic information restriction. Unfortunately the severe clampdowns threaten to change the model from wealth creation to wealth stagnation, and everyone loses as money transfer moves closer to zero-sum.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and
had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is
patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay
whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an
interest in excluding future competitors." -- Bill Gates
That's true, but unfortunately the type of "political awareness" that arises out of social news sites seems to be guys sitting around on their computers and complaining about it. That doesn't help anything; it just pisses off ordinary people who complain that "these tech folks are so negative".
IMHO, Google's got the right idea. Become wealthy and powerful, and then you're in a position to lobby the government to change things. Unfortunately many people just sit back and complain about what Google's doing too...
Nonviolent noncooperation FTW. "Evil" schemes can't be implemented without programmers to do the work. Simply by being aware and choosing to work on something else -- GNU, Linux, your start-up, defeating DRM, anything open source -- you help swing the balance back in favor of everyone else.
There is an enormous amount of money to be made in the near term by plutocratic information restriction. Unfortunately the severe clampdowns threaten to change the model from wealth creation to wealth stagnation, and everyone loses as money transfer moves closer to zero-sum.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." -- Bill Gates