Gillmor wrote, "When copyright owners extend the copyright terms of existing works, as they've done repeatedly in the past..."

Actually, copyright owners do not have this power. Only Congress can do so. Congress has the power and the responsibility. Let's put the blame where it belongs.

"...until everyman can understand the language of the fight..."

PY sums it up nicely. The tech community needs to get over itself. It needs to use words that have the same emotional impact as those of the entertainment pr machinery. Even terminology as mind-numbingly basic as file-sharing is too soulless to be effective propaganda. Until there's an understandable and simple counter to "Stop the theft of property!", h-wood will continue to win the hearts and minds of the public. If it's about individual freedom, then that's a good place to start.

Solution: Explain the situation with drama and stories.

Edited by author 08-12-2002 04:01 PM
The problem is technologically aware people put emphasis on precision and logic. Our enemies in large media fight using alarmist statements and untruths, if not outright lies.

They scream "The sky is falling!", and we reply "No, some small water droplets are falling from the sky. The sky as a whole is not falling." We don't yell back "No it isn't!", because it would be imprecise. The public and the politicians want a "well is it or isn't it?" yes-no answer, not a technical explanation.

As long as we insist on giving technically accurate, non-hyperbolistic answers, the public and politicals will ignore us. And if someone dares answer in a non-technically accurate manner, the rest of the tech community will cut him down, doing the media corporations' work for them, since techs' hated of imprecision blinds them to the harm they do to their own cause.

In a discussion of this very thing recently, I noted that the fight between big media and those who want electronic freedom is couched in language and concepts too arcane for Joe or Jane Average to understand without a crash course in subject. Most of us don't have the time for that and nobody has shown us that we should take the time. My point was that until everyman can understand the language of the fight, we aren't going to care.

My mostly geek friends disagreed. They said that the concepts can't be expressed more simply without a major loss in precision and that as a result non-tech people will never be part of the fight for electronic freedom, and that basically that was O.K. for now. They explained that the common clay would get up to speed eventually as their interests were directly violated.

Reading this, I wonder if I didn't have a point after all.