Interssting that you can put your encryption code down on paper , stuff it in an envolope and mail it overseas under freedom of speech , yet once you compile it , younthen come under export restrictions. Just look at our goverment now ie restrictions , size , regulations , goverment programs , and what they looked like 50 years aago , 100 years ago and 200 years ago. Quit interesting how the "peaples rights" keep geting narrower and narrower , while the "govermant" increasingly tells us how and what to do . Much more intrusive . Just check out some of the peaple who have lost the value of there land , becouse some burcrat decides there may be some sort of endangered species ( just a possibility but no PROOF) or that it is now considered wet lands. Just wait till this comes into the computer and network world. any one here herd of "project echalon" and what its being used for ? severl forenge countrys in eourope are looking inot it regardinfg comercial espionige ect... Its so sevret they refuse to tell congress what it is.. Was it roosevelt who took the trian to his inogeration , as oposed to the whole hoopalaa today ? I think it was ? cant quit pin it down. Too bad every thing is now run by carreer politions and the common man no lomger participates. Well exept for jesse the mond maybee. At 08:50 PM 4/5/2000 -0600, dkphoto wrote:
"Because computer source code is an expressive means for the exchange of information and ideas about computer programming, we hold that it is protected by the First Amendment."
soapbox on:
You may hold that, but I've got big news for you: There are people out there with enough money to bury you and I, and a million more like us before lunch. They are people whose greed goes beyond our ability even to fathom it, let alone deal with it and who think that the constitution and the bill of rights are their own playthings. They are also people who have so much power and influence with government(s) that it is reasonable to say that they "own" those governments. These people have every intention of "owning" all software, including what YOU create, AND important open source software too ("NO," you say? Oh yes they can. All they need to do is what our government has already done many times before: pass a law that says it's OK for them to steal it). And it will be far easier for them to succeed than any of us can possibly guess.
One only has to imagine what the very near future MUST be like with reference to the part computers will play in our lives to realize that OS's and other major software MUST be open-source or the system won't work/progress at all. But we cannot take a passive role, hoping that the open source framework will endure and protect us. It won't. When someone with enough power decides they need to own it badly enough, they will. The only possibility we have of a successful defense is to be more cunning and quicker than they are.
We need better safeguards, in fact at least two of them:
1. We need to build a new impenetrable internet that the government cannot spy on or control. Until now the internet has been a new frontier of freedom. Unfortunately, that is already over. You can't sneeze on the internet without anyone who wants to know about it finding out.
2. We need to "recruit" programmers to the open source movement with a zeal that outstrips any religion to date, so that when the day comes that someone wants to steal open source software from us, there are simply not enough cooperative programmers out there for them to pull it off. It is treason within our own ranks that is more likely (lesson of history) to sink us than anything else. (Don't think so!? Ask any photographer. Idiot photographers willing to severly undercut price and surrender their copyrights to boot, have turned most of the photographic profession into people getting little more than K-Mart wages, bowing and scraping for their corporate masters.) We also need these new recruits because the development of open source software is not fast enough. We need the final success of the open source movement to be so swift and overwhelming that the bad guys have insufficient time to react.
Make no mistake about it; open source is THE answer. It is the way things HAVE to be. Yet, the success of open source will cost incredibly powerful people untold fortunes already made, and yet to be made. These people will NOT take it lying down. And if you give it some thought you will realize there is more at stake here than just free software and corporate greed. Software is the NEW FRONTIER of totalitarianism. Who controls the world's operating system, controls the world itself!
soapbox off
David Kachel
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