Mike Godwin on Godwin's law, HP, and Nazi analogies [ip]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Here's the official version of Godwin's law:
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/godwins.law

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Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 15:33:48 -0500
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>, politech () politechbot com
From: mnemonic <mnemonic () well com>
Subject: Re: [Politech] Criticisms of "HP and death of open PC" Politech
 post
Cc: CSims () proskauer com

> Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:20:49 -0500
> From: "Sims, Charles" <CSims () proskauer com>
> To: declan () well com
>
> Declan:  you circulated today an appalling attack on HP's attempt to
> protect itself and its customers which analogizes HP to the Nazis and
> this policy to the Holocaust.  "The dialog is beginning.  Should we all
> go quietly into the showers?"  Don't attacks like that make you stop and
> think?

Sims is entirely correct to condemn the inapt comparison of HP's embrace of 
DRM-based platforms to Nazis and the Holocaust.  Where he goes wrong is in 
characterizing HP's move as an "attempt to protect itself and its 
customers."  The demand for hardware-implemented DRM in PCs is not coming 
from individual PC buyers; it's coming primarily from content companies 
that are pressuring platform makers to include DRM, and secondarily from 
corporate employers who like to have more control over what employees do on 
PCs in the workplace.

Both of these demands, together with various legislative and regulatory 
initiatives also backed by content companies, are aimed at forcing PC 
makers to end the open PC as we know it.  That will be a tragedy that, 
while certainly not at the level of the Holocaust, nevertheless ought to 
frighten those of us who recognize that open platforms such as the PC and 
the Internet have been the driving forces behind the personal-computer 
revolution.


--Mike


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"I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy ...."
           --Walt Whitman
Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-518-0020
His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at
        http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic .
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