Message-Id: <200110221745.f9MHjvF04940@schroeder.cs.wisc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
From: Nick LeRoy <nleroy@cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: UW Condor
To: Wayne.Brown@altec.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:46:04 -0500
In-Reply-To: <86256AED.005FB443.00@smtpnotes.altec.com>
In-Reply-To: <86256AED.005FB443.00@smtpnotes.altec.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

Wayne, everybody..

I hate to belabor this point, but I'm in full agreement.  If I really 
believed that Alan's boycott would have *any* positive affect, I'd fully 
support it, but the reality of the situation is that Wayne is right -- nobody 
with any real power will ever know or be able to a difference.  I think that 
civil disobiediance is the only sensible action.

-Nick

On Monday 22 October 2001 12:21, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> It's highly unlikely that Alan withholding information from a handful of US
> Linux users and developers will have any effect on US laws.  Plenty of us
> have complained already to our elected officials, without results.  The
> number of people who would care (or even know) about Alan's security
> boycott -- even if it includes the entire US readership of linux-kernel --
> is vanishingly small compared to the general population, and no politician
> is going to pay attention to such a small and dilute constituency.  All a
> policy of secrecy will accomplish is to punish US kernel hackers (who
> probably disagree with the DMCA as much as the rest of you) and have no
> effect on the average citizen who doesn't have a clue about either the DMCA
> or Linux.  I'm seeing a disturbing trend here; with all the talk about this
> topic and about EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL here lately, I'm starting to think
> linux-kernel is more about restricting information than disseminating it.
>
> I believe the DCMA should be treated like firearms laws or any other bad
> laws: Fight them where possible, and disobey them where fighting them is
> not possible.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/