TCPA/PALLADIUM

[Jason Clinton]

Aldis A. Tuck wrote:

>Greetings,
>Im not politically smart. But I am ready to be a yes
>man for the cause. I do know that it is very difficult
>for one person to stand up and make a difference.  We
>have a chance to pull together the whole of the Linux
>community and become a pollitical force to be delt
>with!!
>
>Linux shall remain in the shadows no more, lol
>
>Kind Regards,
>
>
>

There are lots of places to make a little difference. For instance:
begin by demanding of people you interact with that they utilize open
standards and open file formats in their information exchange. If you
find a "IE Enhanced" web site, write the web master asking him to comply
to W3 specs. If someone sends you a Word document, politely ask for a
PDF, PS or OpenOffice.org file format. (OpenOffice, Abiword, and The
Kompany are busy creating a new open office file format standard.)
Closing out competators through propriety tech is a cornerstone of the
monopolies driving the Palladium initiatives.

Read sites like http://www.infoanarchy.org . The administrator of the
site is a bit arrogant but he's good intentioned and well grounded in
philosophy. He'll post as soon as he's aware of a location you can write
to express your distaste at this initiatives.

Help program or write docs for an open source project that you're
especially excited about. Make Linux any even more viable alternative to
the Other OS.

Talk with your wallet. Go out and by the Linux version of Quake 3 from
Microcenter. Don't buy, pirate or use anything Microsoft.

Talk to your friends. I have in the last nine months convinced our
clueless IT tech to move from Windows to Linux, from IIS to Apache, from
Exchange to Courier IMAP, from Outlook and IE to Mozilla and in turn
EVERYONE that works at this company begins to understand there is a
world without Microsoft and without Intellectual Property.

See these other interesting articles on the subject:

http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_3/soderberg/
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html
http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.html

And remember: intellectual property amounts to little more than
artificial scarcity.

Read about how this is killing the music industry:

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069732

Bottom line, though: keep doing what your pationate about; don't burn
yourself out.