Welp, he’s not beating around the bush. Well stated - do you suppose the politicians will listen?
Dodd et. al. won’t understand a single thing said in that letter until he gets to the last 5 paragraphs, and he’ll interpret those to mean “fuck you, we do what we want” and he’ll dismiss it, or worse, try to find some way to criminalize it.
As if they’d even read the letter.
Are we supposed to know who ESR is?
I think he’s a janitor at an outdoor food court:
That’s the picture I would choose for my blog . . .
Ah, OK. I still don’t know that guy, but I’ve heard of some of the things he’s involved in. I just thought it might be another pop cultural reference I was missing, like Jersey Shore cast members or Star Wars characters.
I agree with you, even after checking the Wiki link I have no idea why I sould know who this guy is.
Sorry, I tend to assume people on QT3 are familiar with some of the history of the open source movement. Which makes no sense now that I think about it, given that this is a gaming board. Quite a bit of overlap with open source developers, but by no means the same group.
ESR is one of the big names in the open source community, having been instrumental in starting the Open Source Initiative and involved in the development of many open source projects. He’s not shy about speaking up when he thinks politicians, corporations, or anyone else is on the wrong path when it comes to the Internet and computing in general. In the continuum of open source advocates, he’s not as far out as rms, but more radical than Linus.
I doubt he donates enough money to any politician for his opinion to matter.
No. For the most part even people who know who ESR is don’t care what he has to say. A bunch of politicians certainly won’t.
If he invented the internet, how come he doesn’t have a better webpage? Also, how is this gutsy? What’s at stake for him here? If Chris Dodd (whoever) doesn’t like this letter, what could he possibly do to ESR? I’m guessing nothing. I’m also guessing that most of the net doesn’t know who this guy is, much less have a desire to rally behind him.
That said, I think you posted this because of the content, not the guy’s self trumpeting. I suppose he has a point that censorship is bad, but we all know that. I don’t think he realizes just how easily big business and government actually could shut down the internet. Or perhaps he does realize it, and knows that if things like SOPA happened, it would mean the internet as he (and we) know it. This letter won’t influence the trend much either way, but it might serve as an interesting relic from a time long gone some day…which is sad.
ESR, having been involved with certain shenanigans in the very early days of the internet, is well aware (or at least, he should be) that the internet is controlled by governments, most especially the US.
For the American internet, certainly.
Not to mention the fact that ACTA is now in deep trouble in the EU.