Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 164

@musicman
> It may be that having a global organization just isn't going to work

I suspect not. I mean, we don't have a single, global collecting society for all works covered by #ARR copyright, including proprietary software. Each country and each industry has come up with its own solutions; collecting societies, licensing etc.

@musicman you may have been ahead of your time. It happens. I remember describing something resembling the #fediverse to my colleagues in Indymedia back in the early 2000s, as a more resilient alternative to centralized sites whose servers could be seized by authorities. I also remember describing something resembling what is now called "cloud hosting", as another way to avoid that, well before that became an industry norm.

@LWFlouisa @musicman @lnxw48a1 no, how to disburse it:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/disburse

The fact that the money is dispersed is the problem we are trying to solve ;)

@jeremiah I find it telling that in a loooooong article about corporate PR front groups in tech, Levine flays the EFF, and doesn't even mention *actual* corporate front groups like TechFreedom, not once. Which is it's pretty clear to me that either Levine has zero idea what he is talking about and is suffering from Dunning-Kruger, or someone has paid him to smear the EFF in a prominent leftist publication.

@jeremiah the cable companies respond by funding front groups like #TechFreedom to campaign against net neutrality, and spin it as 'government interference in tech freedom':
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?search=techfreedom&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=Search

The result is that the Republicans oppose net neutrality, and the Dems support it, whether because they listen to the informed advice of experts from the EFF, ACLU etc, or because they get donations from Silicon Valley. Maybe a bit of both? Who knows?

@jeremiah take the #NetNeutrality debate for example. This is at least partly a battle between cable and server corporations about who gets what share of the spoils of the #DataFarm economy. The server corporations, normally our opponents in battles over #SoftwareFreedom, are in favour of net neutrality (it serves their business model better), so they give groups like the EFF some funding so they can campaign on it more effectively.

@jeremiah ok, this is an intriguing line of argument, but it's not usually how corporate PR works, and the burden of proof would be on Levine. A more obvious explanation for the EFF sometimes being on the same side as Big Tech is that sometimes what's bad for users is also bad for tech companies, so tech politics produces some strange bedfellows at times.

@jeremiah my opinion of the Baffler would now be pretty low if I hadn't already read some good better informed articles there by Graeber and others, like:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

@jeremiah good point. What I do is use articles on areas I do know about to assess the reporting accuracy and objectivity vs. bias balance of both writers and publications. It's more an art than a science, granted ;)

@jeremiah I have no trouble believing Levine writes excellent articles about areas he understands well. It's just that tech politics clearly isn't one of them. By writing stuff like that EFF article, and getting it into the Baffler, all he does it muddy for the waters for non-geeks leftists trying to understand tech politics. This makes our job - defending the software freedom of everyone who uses digital tech - much harder, and needs to be called out for the bullshit it is.

@jeremiah I think it is on Levine to explain how receiving those donations from Google compromises their independence, when they continue to publish articles like this:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/google-chromes-users-take-back-seat-its-bottom-line

@jeremiah sure, that's what I'm pointing out. Like Curtis (whose docos are normally much better), the author has started with an assumption that all politics can be reduced to bad corporations vs. bad government, and that every political actor takes one side or the other. They've then rendered the history of the EFF according to this assumption, jettisoning or changing anything that doesn't fit. The result, like Curtis' doco series on tech, is alternative history #SciFi, presented as nonfiction.

@jeremiah most of it is hard to refute because it's"not even wrong". The total misrepresentation of the situation regarding the Apple vs. FBI situation is a good example. The description of both the facts of the case, and the legal and technical issues at stake, are so utterly off-the-planet, that it's easier to dismiss the whole thing as a delusional hit piece. It's like trying to correct Alex Jones followers over 'lizard people use chemtrails for climate change hoax' stories. Where to start?

@jeremiah OK, there's the claim that the EFF was silent on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From their website:
https://www.eff.org/search/site/cambridge%20analytica

@jeremiah where to start? The entire thing is "not even wrong"
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

@dazinism @clacke yes. But I wouldn't use it, because I don't trust the motives of the people who make Signal, or their approach to security. If I want to use a centralized, #E2E encrypted chat app that I can't install via #FDroid, I use #Wire.

The Baffler publishes some great writing by #DavidGraeber and other activist academics. But for some reason every piece it publishes on tech follows Adam Curtis down his technologically illiterate, '... Machines of Loving Grace' conspiracy theory rabbit-hole, reducing an incredibly complex, global, political struggle to Silicon Valley corporations vs. the US government. As if the two are on different sides, and the rest of us have to pick one. Get real.

It reminds me of the similar #Baffler piece about Tim O'Reilly, which all but ignores the existence of RMS or anyone else who doesn't fit into its narrative that #OpenSource is all a conspiracy by O'Reilly and Silicon Valley:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler

I just went down a #RationalWiki rabbithole and somehow ended up at this hit piece on the #EFF:
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

Mind. Officially. Blown.

@lnxw48a1 @musicman otherwise it just feels like slapping $5 band-aids in gaping wounds like the FMA funding gap. It's overwhelming, and quite frankly, depressing. I felt better about it when my wife was a broke student and all we could afford to put in was activist labour.