"If there are legal things to do with the tool, then you don't ban the tool and you don't ban the person who came up with the tool," said Brad Templeton, chairman of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, an Internet civil liberties organization based in San Francisco.

Quote related to the Sklyarov case. Some guys are trying to make that law (the DMCA) illegal, by saying it's unconstitutional. How about STUPID?

posted by Jeremy Smyth 10:16  |  

Thursday, August 30, 2001

Grrrr. Sklyarov has been indicted. It's been a while since he was arrested (I've more info below in an earlier blog), but that's it. He's down.

I've a little more news, but can't type it out right now. Grr. Busy.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 13:31  |  

Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Tired today. I'm training some people in the gentle art of Visual Basic. Eurgh. Icky language. In fact, calling it a language is icky. But it pays the bills. Next week I'm training Microsoft in one of their own server products. Yum.

Yesterday I went for "a pint" (in the Irish sense) with an old pal. We collected a few people as the day went on, and there were about 10 people in the pub by the time I arrived. This dwindled to five, and finally four of us went for dinner in a Thai restaurant. Very very nice, I must say. Tiring, though. Nearly missed the train this morning as a result.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 13:19  |  

Monday, August 27, 2001

I mentioned Dmitri Sklyarov before - there is a site, freesklyarov.org, that has a background and regular update of his situation. Pretty abysmal, really. This whole DMCA thing is very Orwellian. Brief summary: it is illegal to create in software any tool that allows the cracking of a computer code (tech-speak: it's illegal to break encryption). Sounds OK so far? Then why isn't it illegal to make chainsaws? They're a tool that allows the slicing and dicing of innocent people. Or cars? A tool that kills more people than anything else, except perhaps cigarettes. Oh, and what about cigarettes?

My point is simple: creating a tool should not be illegal. The illegal use of that tool should be punished. If Joe Bloggs buys a length of wood from a hardware store and uses it to beat his neighbour up, he is the criminal, not the hardware store that cut, shaped, and sold the plank.

Rant over for now. I'm tired, doing the daily coffee ritual, etc. Recovering from a weekend that was quite gentle by my younger days' standards. Friday night, went out with the new workmates, had dinner in a Belgian restaurant, lots of Belgian beer, and not enough scandal. Boring bunch, really. Saturday, drove to Leitrim (very rural relatively depopulated area in North-West Ireland), stayed in a nice cheap little hotel, played a gig to a crowd who could be realistically described as lethargic, dead, bored, or disinterested. Apparently, we went down very well. A few came up to us afterwards and said it was the best gig they'd seen in a while, we were the best band, etc. Hrmph. The others in the band thought it was a bad night. Obviously not seasoned professionals like me ;-) Sunday was simply a long winding drive home. It was a lovely day, so we stopped in a few little towns, sat by a lake, looked at boats, thought about having a weekend boating up and down the Shannon, bought Ice Cream, talked shite, and got no tan.

So how was your weekend? Oh, that reminds me. I've put up "The Fridge" (over on the right). Drop into it and leave me a note if you like.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 10:35  |  

Friday, August 24, 2001

Ooops - that was quick. In Australia, Excite@Home are snooping on user downloads. They are run by Optus, a major provider down under. And the news is they are policing the content they serve, closing the connections of people who download copyrighted material. Ick.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:04  |  

Grief - its' been ages. Right - quick summary of my life since then:

• Got a job. Wear a shirt and tie lots of the time. Working with some cool people.
  
• Still living at home. Trying to change that ASAP
  
• Not on dole anymore
  
• Still getting job stuff from some agencies - not sure how the info got out, but they are not agencies I spoke with
  
• I'm in a crap covers band again! More later, no doubt. We're busy enough, gigs every week. Three last weekend, one this weekend. Lots of travelling.
  
• Want to get a motorbike. Sick of public transport and 95% service from the DART. Loathing the idea of driving through city traffic in rush hour. Good thing about the job is there's not much need or culture for staying in late. Bad thing about that is you get caught up in rush hour. Grrr.
  

Right - to get back in the jist of it - here's a link to Brazil going against patent law for AIDS drug. Regular readers (if there's such a thing from so long an absence - sorry!) will know I have a special place in me for copyright / patents / intellectual property issues. Well this article shows how one government is making its stand, against the will of major corporations.

Something else to have hit the news in recent months is the issue of Dmitri Sklyarov. Dmitri is a Russian programmer who works for a legitimate security company, and was attending a computer conference in the USA. He delivered a presentation regarding a piece of software his company had created, and he is now in prison. He broke a US law, part of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), which states it is illegal to break an encryption mechanism. You may have read the Pig Latin gnutella encryption article I linked to previously. It's probably in the archives. Well a lot of the DMCA is quite silly and over the top. In this case, a Russian tourist was arrested in the US for committing a "crime" which is not recognised in his home country while he was in his home country. He did not write the program in the US, nor did he sell it in the US. In fact, it was distributed by a US company in the US, and some of the major customers of that company were government departments. The plot thickens. I will find more links and drop them in here. It's getting more and more interesting as time goes on.

Oh, and I lost a bet recently and have to write a short story. It is nearly finished. I'll drop it into Writings eventually.

That's it for now. I'll be back soon. Promise.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 10:53  |