Gameplan

Effectively advancing freedom and good governance

I found a link to this which is essentially an article about how some fucking patent troll is trying to find out the names of the donors that donated $80k to the EFF to defend the practice of podcasting.

Obviously trying to get the donor list is lawful-evil, but that isn’t the subject of this post. The part I would like to focus on is how this method of defence against patent trolls and other parasites does not work. We do not win by trying to compete with teams of lawyers and lobbyists. We do not have the focus, the time, the resources, or the profit incentive. Even if the $80k (a small fraction of what a real defence would take) was successful in defending podcasting from one patent troll, we will not have the time or the money to buy freedom one patent at a time.

If a battle cannot be won, deny the field.

— Sun Tzu

Where have we (US / Canada) won?

1. Re-legalization of alcohol.
2. Racial integration / equalization.
3. File sharing (music, videos, etc).
4. Marijuana decriminalization / legalization.
5. Recording of on-duty police officers.
6. Encryption export.
7. Homosexual rights.

Where do we still need to win:

1. TSA.
2. NSA / CSEC / etc.
3. Patents.
4. Secret courts.
5. Secret laws.
6. Publication gag orders.
7. Militarization of police.
8. Plea bargain abuse to juke conviction stats.

What separates these two lists?

Ignoring unjust laws rather than trying to fight them in the press or the courtroom. When 90% of Americans and Canadians have smoked pot at least once in their lives, it gets legalized. I haven’t, by the way, but that wasn’t because it was illegal. Same thing with everything else on that first list. Alcohol, filesharing, minority rights (“no I will not sit at the back of the bus!”), etc.

We don’t win by paying off the patent trolls or going to court and playing on their turf. We win by either ignoring them or through some completely crazy out-of-bound strategy, like creating crypto-currencies or coordinated patent prior-art apps. We arn’t going to end the TSA’s egregious affront to our civil liberties by writing newspaper articles, we’re going to win by buying tickets to private flights en-masse, or by refusing to fly to America all together, or even by all of us showing up to the airport 8 hours early and opting out of the scanners. We’re going to get internet privacy not by lobbying for it, but by using TOR and other anonymizing services.

If the law is unjust we have both the right and moral obligation to ignore it. I’m not calling for disobedience for its own sake, but for the sake of Good. Using disobedience for freedom and as a tool to form government policy.

My thoughts go out to those that are currently fighting (and winning) for Good in Ukraine.