Open Source in Politics
Posted Jan 13, 2004 12:05 UTC (Tue) by
frazier (subscriber, #3060)
In reply to:
Open Source in Politics by stonedown
Parent article:
Open Source in Politics
Dean posted on Lessig's blog last year. He makes heavy use of open source software, and his campaign has been heavily aided by technology advocates.
So he's using this to his advantage...
He will be hard pressed to ignore our views on digital rights.
...or that's the perception strategy...
Even so, it's a bit early for the Dean campaign to formulate a policy on digital rights.
Perhaps in detail, but the obvious level of "own DVD, own DVD drive, can't play DVD even though the code is available outside of artificial legal restriction" is still there. Really, how obvious do things need to be? This is not rhetorical, please fill me in here.
He's been in contact with Lessig. The DVD/player/computer reality is painfully obvious within 30 minutes, even when looking at all sides with no background.
Politicians back out of campaign promises all the time. When they won't even make something a campaign promise, be very concerned, especially when it is this obvious.
On another note, I followed your link and noticed the "Help the Democratic Party raise the money" link from there. Just to repeat what I stated before, you partison people need to bark hard at your own houses. The (quoting from your page) "Dean should understand" doesn't cut it. People involved with political parties spend way too much time on 'they suck' and need to spend more time on 'we could be better'.
The 'oh geez, I sure hope they'll do good' procedure doesn't work in general, let alone with politicians. I agree that indepth policy can be tricky, but the easy stuff like "own DVD, own hardware, software freely available" is not. If that's a struggle, well, draw your own logical conclusion. If that's potentially conflicting with something else it shouldn't be, and again take a deeper look.
You know better. Bark and bark hard! I know you're an active participant in a two-party system that has removed obvious rights from me as well as yourself. Stop feeding it and start fixing it or continue to be part of the problem.
You have full right to do whatever you want. I wouldn't fund anything unless
- I have at least a decent idea what's going to happen ("Dean should understand" doesn't cut it)
- I'm pretty certain I'm not funding evil
...but hey, that's me.
Please don't take this as disrespectful. I am very frustrated. I bought a laptop to put Red Hat on last year that had a DVD and my wife wondered why I couldn't play a DVD on there. I had to explain. Then I went back and read further. It only got worse.
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