houndofulster
08-12-2003, 10:25 PM
I feel that it's necessary to bring a few things to people's attention about the new petition being linked to on the Kazza Lite main page. I am a long-time P2P user, and I am certainly against the RIAA's version of the Patriot Act, but I cannot in good conscience sign the linked petition and I urge others not to as well.
While the content of the petition is sound (of course invasive computer crime commited by corporations while the gov't turns a blind eye is wrong), the execution of the petition concerns me. I believe that one of the strongest arguments that the gov't sees the RIAA, as well as any related companies, organizations and lobbyists, has is that essentially the only people who are fighting to keep P2P software and sharing free and protected are just a bunch of punk kids who don't want to pay for anything. And as much as I don't want this to be a flame of any kind, I must observe that the petition linked to does little to counter this argument. Frought with misspellings and bad grammar, imprecise in what aspects of this introduced legislation it objects to, I certainly don't want this document to be representative of my wishes, and I fear that if it were ever viewed by anyone with the power to affect some change, it would do little but confirm that we, the P2P community, can't bring much to the table in our own defense. To the author of that petition, and any future ones, please, please for all our sakes take the time to be precise and spell-check these documents you want to garner signatures for. Someone, in the end, may read them with an eye towards policy, and if that happens, I think we all would want it to be taken as seriously as possible.
While the content of the petition is sound (of course invasive computer crime commited by corporations while the gov't turns a blind eye is wrong), the execution of the petition concerns me. I believe that one of the strongest arguments that the gov't sees the RIAA, as well as any related companies, organizations and lobbyists, has is that essentially the only people who are fighting to keep P2P software and sharing free and protected are just a bunch of punk kids who don't want to pay for anything. And as much as I don't want this to be a flame of any kind, I must observe that the petition linked to does little to counter this argument. Frought with misspellings and bad grammar, imprecise in what aspects of this introduced legislation it objects to, I certainly don't want this document to be representative of my wishes, and I fear that if it were ever viewed by anyone with the power to affect some change, it would do little but confirm that we, the P2P community, can't bring much to the table in our own defense. To the author of that petition, and any future ones, please, please for all our sakes take the time to be precise and spell-check these documents you want to garner signatures for. Someone, in the end, may read them with an eye towards policy, and if that happens, I think we all would want it to be taken as seriously as possible.