Dear Kopimists and the People who Love Them.
For the featured Filo delicacy for Friday Filosophy, we will have potato burekas.
I propose we talk about the difference between source code, object code, and executable code in regards to 1st Amendment protection. In other words, when is code speech and when is it a speech-act subject to less legal protection?
Below is an excerpt from an essay by Lee Tien, a brilliant EFF attorney for more than a decade, on Software as Speech (2000). These two paragraphs are in the section: Viruses and other "dangerous" software.
Of course, as always, we can talk about whatever else. Such as conscience and the unconscionable, perhaps.
Lee Tien, Publishing Software as a Speech Act, Vol. 15 Berkeley Tech. Law Journal (2000)
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol15/tien/tien.html
> Let’s return to the virus hypothetical.192 The main concern lies in the fact that the software may be “diverted” toward unlawful purposes, regardless of the speaker’s intent. This concern is, however, not unique to software. It also applies to other types of information usable for mischief or harassment, whether highly technical like information about nuclear weapons, or utterly mundane like a person’s name, address or telephone number.
> Even if the virus author merely posts the source code and fails to release it in active form, the issue remains whether the posting was done with an intent to communicate. If the author claims that she intended it to communicate, we would need to examine the context to decide the plausibility of that claim. There will often be a plausible claim. There is no question that people study viruses and other dangerous software in order to prevent or relieve harm.193 One way to control a virus is to publish its source code so that systems operators can disable or protect against it. Communicating a virus’ source code as part of such an effort qualifies as a speech act because the publisher intends to communicate how the virus works in a conventional way. In fact, one could imagine entire journals or Internet sites devoted to viruses and other dangerous software.194 When such publications aim to alert the world to these dangers, their intent is clearly communicative.
sent from eddan.com
wow prescient, look at the date:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 11:42:41 -0600
From: Roger Baker
Subject: Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/1214_digital_storage_…
Conclusions
Declining storage costs will soon make it practical for authoritarian governments
to create permanent digital archives of the data gathered from pervasive
surveillance systems. In countries where there is no meaningful public debate on
privacy, there is no reason to expect governments not to fully exploit the ability to
build databases containing every phone conversation, location data for almost
every person and vehicle, and video from every public space in an entire country.
This will greatly expand the ability of repressive regimes to perform surveillance
of opponents and to anticipate and react to unrest. In addition, the awareness
among the populace of pervasive surveillance will reduce the willingness of people
to engage in dissent.
The coming era of ubiquitous surveillance in authoritarian countries has
important implications for American foreign policy. Strategies for engaging with
these countries will benefit from specific consideration of the presence, growth and
increasing impact of these enormous digital databases. This will impact human
rights, trade, export control, intellectual property security, and the operation of
multinational businesses with in-country facilities, subsidiaries, or subcontractors.
Finally, the use by authoritarian governments of systems that record
everything in the complete absence of privacy considerations will lead to a long list
of other unforeseen and generally negative consequences. Unfortunately, the
residents of those countries, as well as the rest of us, will soon start to find out just
what those consequences are
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this book is super awesome. it's about putting up FM radio stations
around the country in the last ten years (and more) and the group of
activists and former pirates that pushed for and won legislation to
increase legal access to the FM radio band.
it's an anthropological work mostly, and it has a lot of coverage of the
gender gap and dynamics which relate closely to what we're doing in the
hackerspace movement.
-jake
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2014 13:04:28 -0500
From: christina dunbar-hester <c.dunbarhester(a)gmail.com>
To: Christina Dunbar-Hester <c.dunbarhester(a)gmail.com>
Subject: announcing Low Power to the People
Dear friends far and wide,
Apologies for spam, but I'm pleased to announce that Low Power to the People, my book on radio activism,
exists in the world... just out with MIT Press!!
Wanted to share the news with the valued folks who contributed as friends, interlocutors, etc. along the way.
Please feel free to share with interested parties or lists (especially the activists amongst you who are on
lists I may not be on).
with thanks and best wishes--
c
[IMAGE]
--
Christina Dunbar-Hester, Ph.D.
Author of Low Power to the People, MIT Press
Journalism & Media Studies, School of Communication & Information
Affiliated Faculty, Women's & Gender Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
email: christdh(a)rutgers.edu
office: DeWitt 101 (185 College Ave.)
web: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/directory/christdh/index.html
phone: +1 848-932-7112
fax: +1 732-932-6916
mail: 4 Huntington St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901 USA
I seem to have misplaced my multimeter at sudoroom over the weekend: it's
greenish grey, autoranging, probably has 2 probes on it with very pointy
ends. It's got my friend greg's name written on the back in faint letters.
any leads are extremely appreciated!
Hey all,
Have just lost my only reliable means of transportation - my bicycle - and
desperately need a replacement asap so I can get to and from work. Does
anyone have a decent spare bike sitting around they'd be willing to loan me
for a few weeks until I can get a new one? I'll clean it, patch it, fix it
and generally do everything I can to return it better than I receive it.
Anyone able to help me out?
/Rikke
I’ve symlinked 3 robot-related tools into /usr/local/bin on sudodesk. The new commands are motocommand, motomessage, and motodisk. They are under development and can break, but if you want to try them you should. Here’s how:
1. Get people away from the robot
2. Turn on the robot with the black rotatey-dial thing on the top left of the robot cabinet door.
3. Press the “REMOTE” button on the right side of the robot console.
4. On sudodesk, type the following (including quotes): motocommand “SVON 1”
The robot will growl appropriately as the servos come on.
5. Now on sudodesk, type the following (including quotes): motocommand “START DEMO"
Currently the robot job called DEMO is really slow and unimpressive. Maybe someone could make it wave around perilously… or play the marimba (gently)! We could make a converter that turns midi streams into robot motion.
If you want less exciting stuff, try the above steps, but instead of step 4, type: motomessage “MUST KILL HUMANS”
The robot will show up to 23 characters of your snarky input. I’m working on these remote mode tools here: https://github.com/glvnst/yasnac <https://github.com/glvnst/yasnac>
Someone’s iPhone 4 with cracked glass has been hanging out at sudoroom for at least a few days. The device name it has been given is Vox. Its in sudoroom on the table in the middle of the room where the people sit.
look at the cover of this book (you can click on the image)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/low-power-people
the text in the back cover says:
Jake designed this transmitter with the help of wizened elders, to
provide a reliable and repairable communications device for noncapitalist
communities around the world. At that time, cheap and effective
transmitters from China were not yet available on eBay, found by
searching for ST-15B in "consumer electronics".
you'll notice that there are pictures of Mandela and Ghandi on there. The
circuitboards were fabbed eight at a time, so we put a transparency over
the whole thing with EIGHT different pairs of dead revolutionaries:
Mandela and Ghandi
Nina Simone and Rosa Parks
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rachel Corrie and Judi Bari
Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra
Emma Goldman and Mother Jones
Ernesto Zapata and Ricardo Flores Magon
Annie Oakley and Lyudmila Pavlichenko
you might notice a pattern of dichotomy in rhetoric vs. direct action,
that was accidental.
