[free-sklyarov] It won't happen

[Bob La Quey]

At 09:04 PM 9/10/01 -0700, you wrote:

>FYI:
>
>Bring Down DMCA/SSSCA? Simple... 
>http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/8/126/20924/75#75
>
>IT Workers General Walkout 
>http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2001/9/8/126/20924/113#113
>
>Looks like a couple hours ought to be effective. I wonder how
>many machines will experience bit rot during that time? Do you
>guys think this type of thing would work. Could it be organized?

NO. My  own experience is that the vast majority of programmers
and system admins are really very passive when it comes to expressing 
themselves politically. Especially if they would have to take any real 
personal risk. Doubly especially if their jobs were involved. It is a 
crew for the most part with very little in the way of balls. 

Do they have the power? Yes, of course, obviously the system admins
could damn near turn the world off. Will they exercise that power, 
no way. Not in my lifetime. 

The message in the first url ends as follows:

<quote>
So the answer to all this mess is simple. You just gotta ask yourself 
how much your rights mean to you. Are you willing to practice a little 
civil disobedience at very little risk to yourselves to gain government's 
total attention? Are you willing to stay home from work for a day or a 
week and change the course of history? 

It may not be time for it just yet, but seems to me the time to put up 
or shut up is quite near...
</quote>

Programmers unfortunately will shut up. Certainly they will not act.
A few letters, maybe the really radicalized will go to a march or two.
That is about it. But shutdown the corporate webserver? No way Jose.  
You will be lucky to get 1% of the computer elite to participate. 

These folks, wonderful humans though they may be, are simply cogs 
in the machine, and cogs do not ask questions. Good cogs certainly
do not stop the machine.  

The Open Source Convention in San Diego this year was a good example of
the passivity I am referring to. In the early stages of the Free Dimitry 
movement the place was like watching zombies at work. Let the EFF do it
was ESR's remark and could well have been a slogan that described the 
entire crew. So no matter how inEFFectual the EFF is, that is how, even the
most radical of the programming community, will react. They are, after all, 
programmers and system admins, not politicians. The wars they are used
to fighting are of a very different character and most geeks learned in
early childhood to avoid these "political" wars they could not win. Thus
even when they have power and could win they carry within themselves the 
mentality of a political loser and will not pick up the battle. 

The computer elite for the most part does not even begin to understand
the true power they have as a group and will not even begin to think
about collective exercise of that power anytime soon. Why? Because they 
are not truly willing to confront authority directly and assert themselves
and their moral authority. In simpler terms, they just have neither
the moral vision nor the balls it takes to fight this battle. 

I thank God that it was not programmers driving the civil rights movement 
or the anti-war movent of a previous generation. Had that been so we would
still have Jim Crow and the war would have never ended. 

Does that mean the fight is lost? Not necessarily. I just would not 
count on the bulk of the computing community to perform a lot
of heroics. Our path to winning this one depends upon allies from
other fights for freedom who understand in a much more visceral way
just what is involved.  These are the people to whom we must turn our 
attention. 


Bob La Quey