[sklyarov-chicago] deciding our issues (was: from Adobe)

[Nate Riffe]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Peter A. Peterson II wrote:

> Quoting Michael Cannon:
> > Tough.  They brought this on themselves, when they
> > pressured Mueller.  Their stock price is intimately
> > tied to .pdf and Acrobat.
> 
> I acknowledge that. But I think a protest that is focusing on a small
> number of unified goals is better than a group that shouts 5 different
> things that to the uninitiated may seem unrelated. Also, boycotting
> Adobe right now does not help us meet our immediate goals.

For that matter, is there a consensus on which issues we should stick to?  
Pete and I deliberately limited the first protest to Sklyarov and the
DMCA.  Is that acceptable to everyone?

I, too, think that our goals must be clearly related in the minds of our
audience, and Adobe is somewhat of a small corner of our argument against
the DMCA.  Adobe is obviously tried to Sklyarov's arrest, but it's not by
an easily summarized line of reasoning which we could capture in the time
a pedestrian is talking with us.

In fact, let's play a game of Survivor with our issues.  Round one, name
all the specific issues that are related to our protest:

1) Sklyarov's arrest/detainment
2) the DMCA harms society
3) Mueller's appointment
4) boycott Adobe

Round two, vote one of them off the island (with sound reasoning for
doing so).

I vote to leave out Adobe.  Adobe has reversed itself WRT Sklyarov,
although they still stand behind the DMCA.  This puts Adobe in league with
most other content providers and I think singling out Adobe misrepresents
the copyright giants as a group.  I also think that we should avoid
attacking the pro-DMCA camp as it will inevitably lead to name-calling
(the greedy corporate pig style arguments) which will get us nowhere fast.

-Nate

------------------------------------------------((\))<----------------------
Nate Riffe			Help Dmitry Sklyarov find freedom in the so-
inkblot@geocities.com		called "Land of the Free."
                  http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010719_eff_sklyarov_alert.html