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Grrr. Well, I sent my /second/ letter to my (previous) Senator: Tom Daschle. Yes, that's right, I am an apostate South Dakotan. I figure (say 'figure' with a drawl) that although I am now a Massachusetts voter, I might as well take advantage of my prior association with our Senate majority leader. Anyway, just so you can point out spelling and grammatical errors and other stupidities, this is the text of what I wrote. I submit this for feedback, because I'm hoping to refine and whittle my argument. I'm not done sending letters. I encourage others to write to congress as well. -- Senator Fritz Hollings will testify about his proposed SSSCA legislation before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 25. Passage of this legislation would have disasterous consequences. Specifically, should SSSCA become law, it would abolish what is referred to in the computer community as "Free Software". Free as in liberty, not free as in free beer. (For more on this point, you might refer to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html). SSSCA masquerades as an attempt to control digital content delivery, as an attempt to protect copyright holders from having their product stolen by "pirates" on the information superhighway. In short, the content producers want to have absolute control of the information they produce, from the studio, all the way to your ears and eyeballs. The legislation being proposed in support of this goal has consequences far beyond the dubious goal of establishing absolute control over information (libraries anyone?). In order to achieve this measure of control, this legislation outlaws free software. It outlaws the efforts of innumerable contributers, millions of lines of code, all for the purpose of further enriching Senator Holling's campaign contributers, like Disney Inc. It outlaws software produced and used by NASA. It outlaws an operating system, Linux, that may very well turn out to be the only viable alternative to Microsoft's monopoly of PC operating systems. As stated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Eben Moglen: "If the computer closest to your eyeball and eardrum has a free software operating system, the whole rest of the pipe doesn't matter: sound on its way to the sound card, or video on its way to the screen, can be copied or sent anywhere by the OS kernel. So the content industries cannot -- so long as they adhere to their present obsolete business models -- tolerate the existence of any user-modifiable operating system for computers. Period." The United States government should allow competing business models to compete. If content producers are concerned about copyright violations, they should seek remedies which do not outlaw, which literally criminalize, the heretofore beneficial and legitimate contributions of some of our nation's most intelligent and caring citizens. The SSSCA legislation proposed by Senator Hollings should never see the light of day. It's proponents should be ashamed. Should the SSSCA become law, it would criminalize the work of many of this country's brightest and best citizens. I am concerned all the more because of the all-consuming nature of recent events. I am afraid that this legislation will slip under the radar. We are fighting for freedom. Our country was founded on the principle of freedom. Please do what you can to dismember legislation that takes freedom away. My thoughts are with you and your staff. Be well. -- -Ron- https://www.yellowbank.com/ - Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).
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