[free-sklyarov] Disturbing analogies

[alfee cube]

this reminds me of our governments attempts to control
sexuality by defining pornography as "without social
redeeming value"!!!

result1: all sex flixs included the pledge of
allegiance or a reading of the first amendment at the
beginning of their tapes/films.

result2: "pornography" flourishes today more than
ever!

result3: our government lost the battle (not
withstanding the few who keep soldering on:) and the
war!
 
--- huaiyu_zhu at yahoo.com wrote:
> There was a discussion on CNet Radio over lunch time
> today.  I heard a
> section of it, and it makes me uneasy.
> 
> One guy was insisting on an analogy of someone
> producing a shoplifting tool
> which has no other usage, and selling it with ads
> like "use this tool to
> steal".
> 
> Then it was pointed out to him by the host and
> another guest that what
> Sklyarov did was not for stealing things you do not
> own, but for doing
> things to copies you already bought, that it does
> have other useful purposes
> like letting blind people hear the book, that he did
> not sell it in US, but
> merely gave a presentation on flaws of Adobe
> systems, that only his employer
> sold it, which is not illegal in Russia, and took it
> out when Adobe
> complained.
> 
> I thought, great, this is all clear.  But that guy
> still claims, "yeah well,
> I can hear arguments from both sides, it's not
> clear", or that sort of
> thing.  Then the host said something like, "In any
> case, it's not illegal in
> Russia, and US laws should stop at US border".
> 
> Hearing this, that guy started telling a story about
> two "Russian hackers"
> stealing company secrets and asking for ransom.  And
> they did this to US
> company from Russia.  And the FBI set up a fake
> company and invited them to
> come here to tell about their "techniques", and
> nailed them.  Et cetra.
> 
> We all know that is a completely unrelated story (if
> there was such a
> story at all).  But to a casual listener, what might
> stick in their mind
> may just be phrases like Russian hackers ... hack in
> Russia ... steal US
> secrets ... Russian hacker invited to US to talk
> about hacking ... FBI
> trapped them ...  US law protect US interest, blah,
> blah, blah.  If this
> was the first time I heard this story, I might be
> completely confused
> about "what this Russian hacker did".
> 
> This may even happen when the host and one guest is
> very clueful on the
> issue.
> 
> It has been said here that we should avoid using
> analogies in explaining
> this case, as analogies always tend to mislead one
> way or another.  However,
> analogies have been flying around in the media on
> this case.  Our opponents
> are not hesitent to use very misleading analogies. 
> It takes greater mental
> capacity to analyse an analogy and reveal its
> misleading intonation.  Such
> capacities might not be available in general
> discussions.
> 
> So my point is, if we do not come up with short
> accurate analogies of our
> own that can capture listener's imagination, we
> might lose in a "war of
> attention span".  And without attention from
> ordinary people, good arguments
> have very limited use (unless we'd like to see this
> go through the courts,
> of course).
> 
> When the other side is trying hard to muddy the
> water, what is the most
> effective way to make it clear again?
> 
> Huaiyu Zhu
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> free-sklyarov at zork.net
> http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov


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