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  From: Jonah Bossewitch <jb2410@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 13:17:35 -0400

Re: live free or die, or the right to anonymity while driving with respect to people looking at your car from the front

First, even if you aren't disturbed by pdf tracking, that article is further
evidence which supports the contention that media providers are aggressively
attempting to transform the consumption of content as we know it. This
semester I have already argued against the tactic of trivializing any single
fact which compromises our privacy (the heap argument) - what's important is
seeing the patterns and their trajectories that these individual facts
suggest.

But even with regards to pdfs - Are you so wealthy that the prospect of
being charged for every piece of information you ever consume doesn't affect
you in any way? If you are, does it bother you that folks you don't share
the same economic fortunes as most lawyers are losing their ability to
access information which used to be free? Or what about the fact that this
kind of technology enables the content provider to "turn off" your access to
the document at any point in time?

This isn't just a privacy issue. It's also matter of people's traditional
means of artistic, creative, political expression being stifled and
controlled. We have explored the relationship between the loss of privacy
and the consequenqual possibility of intimidation and harassment.  But I
don't think we have explicitly talked about the suppression and erosion of
people's fundamental freedom of speech that will result from such measures.
To me, this train of thought runs naturally into the question of how IP laws
are beginning to erode our freedoms. For some reason (probably good ones),
Prof. Moglen has mostly avoided bringing IP into this discussion, but its
looming.

If pdf tracking doesn't bother you, is there any kind of media that you
consume whose tracking would bother you?  Have you ever hesitated to sign a
petition you actually believed in, out of fear it might affect your future
in some way? Now we are talking about that same hesitation being brought to
bear on _reading_ the petition.

You might not feel as if you are being affected, and you really might not
care, but you certainly are. And if you are not a heavy computer user today,
do you think you will be in ten years?  A decade from now, when ubiquitous
computing is pervasive, everyone will be heavy computer users...

In response to Eric's objection that notification of any informational
transaction is preposterous, I had a thought:

Why can't we start thinking about information transactions like we think
about monetary transactions?  Every time I exchange money with a vendor, I
get a receipt - and there is no constitutional amendment forcing their hand.
Only good business practices.  What if, upon the completion of ever exchange
of information, both parties received am open and clear "receipt" of which
information was exchanged?

best,
/Jonah

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Camden Hutchison" <crh2014@columbia.edu>
To: <CPC@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 12:25 PM
Subject: live free or die, or the right to anonymity while driving with
respect to people looking at your car from the front


>
> Here's a thought:
>
> Front license plate laws are anti-freedom.  I don't want something
> on my car that facilitates the oppressive state's use of automated
> camera speed-traps and crap like that.  More importantly, nothing
> disrupts the lines of a well-designed automobile worse than an ugly
> front license plate.  I wish that I lived in Pennsylvania (or
> Quebec).
>
> In all seriousness, this post is meant to show that, as is the case
> with all things, the privacy issues that we get the most worked up
> about are those which affect us the most personally (or that we
> perceive to affect us the most personally).  Being a pretty
> unsophisticated computer user, I couldn't care less about .pdf
> tracking.  Being a car geek, front license plate laws really annoy
> me.
>
> -Camden
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Computers, Privacy, and the Constitution mailing list
>


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