Y'know, some days it just hurts to be a freedom fighter,
man. You wake up thinking that you're just about to turn
the corner on FREEDOM, and then some asswipe industry
cartel puts a WWF leg-lock on your neck. Fuck, it's
depressing.
Case in fucking point: the fabulous Register online magazine reports that
a group of unmitigatedly evil bastardos known by the cryptic
secret-tong-society name of the 4C
Entity have proposed extending the copy protection found in DVDs to hard
drives. NOT ONLY would they put this technology into their own stupid hard
drives, but it would become part of the ATA standard, so that ALL NEW HARD
DRIVES will have copy protection installed!
This means that you would be UNABLE to copy or store files that have been
marked as protected -- like music, text, etc. EVEN where such file copying is
legal and in your rights as "fair use," such as for making backup archival
copies. You'd still be fucking screwed! I mean, the whole thing is such an
invasive violation of your rights as a user that it makes my head spin.
Doesn't it just seem kind of strange that companies like this come up with
asshole proposals to protect CORPORATE BASTARDOS "intellectual property rights"
against YOU, but not to protect YOUR rights against corporate bastardos? Don't
forget that Sony-Columbia and NBC are -not- paying for your hard drive. YOU are
paying for your hard drive. WHY should you have to plunk down your HARD-EARNED
SMASH to get treated like a criminal by your own stupid hardware? FUCK THAT.
I say that HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER should get to CALL THE TUNE. And it's pretty
goddamned obvious that the people of the the world are not calling for an
encore revival round of "Fuck You and Your Rights, Dipshit Consumer."
My recommendations to everyone who cares about LIBERTY: go buy yourself a
goodly amount of hard drives with lots and lots of gigadoodles of space on
them, right now! The 4C Entity (I shiver as I write that) says that this copy
protection shit will be in new ATA drives by NEXT SUMMER. So you need to bank
up on FREE HARDWARE right away. Get a few pre-ban hard drives, put them in your
closet, and stretch them out for a few years. It should go without saying that
you should avoid any drives from the 4C Entity themselves (IBM, Toshiba, Intel
and Matsushita), who are quite obviously running-dog enemies of freedom that
don't deserve one teeny-weeny speck of your money. FuX0rs!
Hey, while you're at it: put some Freenet on your
machine, too. Now, more than before, we need some goddamned freedom. I dunno how
well this copy protection is going to work against Freenet. Maybe not that well.
Oh, and also: go read this article on The Register, and click through on some
of their ads. They have done a YEOMAN'S JOB on this excellent exclusive and
have proved themselves to be true Professional Journalists. Beaujolais to them!
They deserve some click-through cash.
