[wsfii-discuss] Blog Post on Freifunk - It's do or die now!

[Vickram Crishna]

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

From:"Juergen Neumann" <j.neumann at junes.eu>
Date:Tue, 29 Sep, 2015 at 10:16 pm
Subject:[wsfii-discuss] Blog Post on Freifunk - It's do or die now!

Dear all,

we have worked on a rough translation of my recent blog post on
Freifunk. I hope it is not too bad!? Please halp spread the word:
http://blog.freifunk.net/2015/its-do-or-die-now

Thanks!


One can only imagine that this peculiar application of DRM to radio-equipped digital devices is intended to prevent the so called IoT devices from being diverted from their intended use once out in the wild.

As correctly pointed out in the blog, deliberate crimes then become nearly impossible to detect. In fact, existing cybercrime laws may make investigation of such crimes in itself illegal, unless carried out by state agencies, who are neither trained nor motivated to do so. 

However, of course there are people who don't actually work in organised crime or the corporate world who will want to use readymade radio devices for something else than the reason they were manufactured. Such people are called children. It is hard to believe that children will not be delighted to have cheap and readymade devices to tinker and play with, to learn more than we know now about electromagnetic waves and the way they interact with the world around us.

Perhaps in future messages you can help emphasise this. Just as we do not have laws in reasonably decent societies to prevent children from playing in gardens, so must we stay away from laws that will prevent them from learning.

And we probably will in fact need some way of protecting ourselves from rogue devices. It is extremely clear from the VW case that present laws and methods are weighted in favor of a status quo that presumes to confer protection upon those with the most resources and power to compromise hardwire and systems on a very large scale. Certainly, some change is necessary, but it does not seem this way is the right way. 

Thinking people will probably agree that the ability to audit publicly is one of the great social and intellectual advances of the past millennium. In almost every sphere of human activity, such audit has been resisted by those in power, and some ancient resistance still prevails. DRM is its appearance in the digital world.

Warmly

Vickram


JuergeN


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