Am 13. Nov, 2001 schwätzte Todd Hought so:

> Exactly, but how? how does one fight for their freedom in this day and age
> without being labeled as a hacker/cracker/copyright_infringer/terrorist?

I'm not sure. One way is to make sure we have lots of voices. On /. doesn't
count. It's got to be in volunteer organizations ( think infrastructure of
things like Big Brothers and Big Sisters and MADD, not just EFF membership
), as corporate leaders, as small business leaders and finally in the ears
of our gov't representatives.

The first and third can be through AZOTO. We can help NPOs and small
businesses use Free Software for their infrastructure. For corps we can
continue to promote Free Software in our workplace. Much better strategy
than going in cold via AZOTO.

As to the ears of our gov't reps we can write letters, attend luncheons,
town hall meetings, etc. A cool way to get to them, though, is to not only
help gov't institutions move to Free Software, but to remind them of the
freedoms in free software. Not only should we remind them of those freedoms,
but we should demand them for our tax money.

Brad Kuhn of the FSF claimed at ALS that copyright law prevents the gov't
from holding copyright or patent. It's copyright or patent rights must be
given to the public domain ( he says NIST has a very clear policy to do
so, hence expect is available for us to use ). He said a practice that has
established itself is for a contractor to do work for the gov't, but retain
copyright, rather than giving it into the public domain as it should. The
contractor then turns around and sells the same product to another part of
the gov't even though the gov't has already paid for it.

This little tidbit is an example that we can use for one of the most
important defenses we have, namely educating other individuals. If it's a
large portion of the population demanding their rights be respected and not
just geeks, then we can avoid the improper labels they're trying to stick on
us.

> With people like John Ashcroft giving the constitution double duty as
> toilet paper, It's going to be an uphill battle just to keep the things
> that we deserve to have.

It always is :(.

> Where do I sign up

See your citizenship for that. Citizenship grants rights, but only if we
accept the responsibilities that go with them.

> maybe this thread should get moved to alt.politics? :-)

Maybe alt.cya is more appropriate :).

ciao,

der.hans
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