[sldev] The criminalization of open source

Barney Boomslang bboomslang at googlemail.com
Sun Dec 23 03:22:03 PST 2007


On Dec 18, 2007 10:33 AM, Argent Stonecutter <secret.argent at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, Ordinal. This is the key bit.
>
> On 2007-12-18, at 02:49, Ordinal Malaprop wrote:
> > Without the "toy economy" none of us would be here talking about it
> > on this list.
>
> Missing this point is just as bad as missing the original point about
> the ineffectiveness of DRM.


Yes. And it's quite irritating to see how allmost like being driven by a
program some ppl jump on any situation that in the farthest sense could be
seen as "they don't get the technical implications" and comes to conclusions
like "toy economy" and "they are stupid". Educating people with a big stick
that is banged on their head _never_ really worked right. It only will
further the bad feelings toward the techies. I really don't understand why
some ppl have to jump on that and start with calling names and calling the
end of the virtual universe on something as simple as this. And that's true
for both sides of the argument.

Yes, hiding the UUID in the interface won't help at all. But what it does
provide is a simple signal of "well, yes, you can get that - but if you do,
you will know you had to jump through hoops and even you should by now have
noticed that what you do is against what we want" in contrast to the former
signal of "well, h ere is the data, do what you like". Please don't forget
that humans are not run by programs, but by wetware and that does work quite
differently.

"Security by obscurity is no security at all" is _not_ (and _never_ will
be!) a valid _social_ argument. It is allways and _only_ a technical
argument. If you work with someone who produces security systems, you can
slap them with that line, but not in a discussion about behavioural norms
and social interaction. In a social construct it is complete and utter
bullshit. As should be visible to anybody who has ever seen doors in houses
where the window right beside it is not barred - that's no security at all,
but we live by that "security measure" quite fine - because anybody knows
that breaking the window or door (regardless of how simple that is) is
illegal, while having no door at all might be seen as invitation to public
space.

Please don't measure humans with technical scales and axioms. It will
backfire and make you look stupid.

bye, Barney
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