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

[Nate Riffe]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Steve Stearns wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Nate Riffe wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Agreed.  Also I think the mueller issue is somewhat outside of what we
> should concern ourselves with in protesting.  It turns this into a
> personal attack on him which may hurt us. 

I agree completely.  Picking live targets like companies and people
(especially people) will tempt us toward degenerate arguments like
personal attacks and name calling.  By focusing on the law and the
injustice as our enemies, we can quite easily maintain an intellectual
debate.  The press will eat up a good intellectual debate because it's
actual content, as opposed to covering traffic accidents and
murders.  People will actually respond to a good intellectual debate
because it's provocative.  As Larry mentioned at Protest #1, it only takes
ten letters to perk the ears of the average U.S. Respresentative, becuase 
they figure that for every letter written there are about a thousand not
written.  If we can stir ten people to write to Congress, and then send
our own, then we've got a fighting chance to kill the DMCA.  But first
we've got to stick to an intellectual debate.

-Nate

> I really think the
> anti-dmca/free sklyarov aproach is good and we should keep our focus
> there.
> 
> ---Steve
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> sklyarov-chicago@ufo.chicago.il.us
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> 


------------------------------------------------((\))<----------------------
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