What is a cypherpunk?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, Feb 09, 2005 at 04:58:22PM -0800, James A. Donald wrote:

> Corporate lawyers did not descend on Linux until there were

Corporations never saw Linux coming. Now that FOSS is on the radar
screen, you'll see lots of very obvious ramming through of IP protection in
software.

You haven't noticed the software patent charade happening in EU
right now? It is not at all obvious who's going to win.

> enough wealthy linux users to see them in court, and send in
> their own high priced lawyers to give them the drubbing they
> deserved.

You're misinterpreting the events. Industry has so far been fighting with
propagada only. Outside of FOSS IP wars are the rule.

> > > If, however, you decline to pay taxes, men with guns will
> > > attack you.
>
> > If you ignore a kkkorporate cease & desist, men with guns
> > will get you, too.
>
> You live in a world of your own.
>
> In civil court, the guy with no assets has a huge advantage
> over the guy with huge assets -because the guy with huge assets

What a nice boolean universe you live in. Fact is that FOSS can be easily
DoSed by lawyers of a party with deeper pockets (basically, any party with
deeper pocket than a couple of bearded hackers).

> *cannot* send men with guns to beat him up and put him in jail
> - he can only seize the (nonexistent) assets of the guy with no
> assets.   So what we instead see is frivolous and fraudulent

Excellent strawman. Where are you getting these? I need to order a couple.

> lawsuits by people with no assets against big corporations, for
> example the silicone scam.
>
> It is in criminal court where the guy with no assets goes
> unjustly to jail, and that is the doing of the state, not the
> corporation.

Again, neither state nor the corporate has your wellbeing as optimization
criterium. It does frequently happen that superpersonal organization units
result in a better world than the alternatives. Then, quite often not.

We need smarter agents.

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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