Re: A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet

[Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>]

Tim wrote:

| * When he grasped the basic idea, of chained mixes, he got quite upset
| and said they were "threats" to his business. (Anonymous forwarding of
| ClariNet articles happens, of course. Brad was expecting that he could
| get a court order, if it came down to that, and was shocked to hear
| that the Cypherpunks model does not make this possible.)
| 
| * I shrugged, and said that, longterm, copyright was dead as we know
| it today. I pointed out that dozens of Cypherpunks-style remailers are
| operational, including many in Europe and elsewhere.
| 
| * Brad: "Then they'll be outlawed." 

	Brad is in the 'intelectual property' buisness.  He makes his
money selling access to information.  There is an entire parasitic
class that does nothing useful, but makes money from the idea of
copyright.  (Most entertainment industries operate like this.  The
industry puts up seed money in exchange for the profits that an artist
generates.)  Books, music, film to a lesser extent are all in the path
of a digital revolution which eliminates the need for a middleman.  If
I can download music to DAT, I don't need Sony records.  Neither does
Peter Gabriel, Robert Fripp or any other musician.

	When you point out to these people that their jobs are going
to be eliminated, you force them to become luddites, in the original
sense of the word.  Their jobs are being destroyed by technology, and
they don't like it.  We need to make sure that we paint them as
luddites at every step of the way.  Any other conception of the
middlemen who profit from other people's work is bound to result in
stupid laws.


Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume