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Hardware Hacking Your Rights Online Technology

Modding and the Law 219

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-just-for-piracy-anymore dept.
S3D writes "An article at O'Reilly discusses modding as a cultural phenomenon and its relation to the law and authority. The conclusion is that social activists are modders too. They want to change the government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science. They want to change corporations, change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships."
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Modding and the Law More

Modding and the Law

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  • Oram's Insight (Score:3, Interesting)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <yayagu.gmail@com> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @10:54AM (#13904729) Journal

    Andy Oram offers interesting insights, and paradoxically offers as a solution, modding our government. Cool!

    • Re:Oram's Insight (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Modding the government? Cool, I always thought the senate would do better with a few LED fans... then we could put in some UV lights and change all of the wires in the building to be UVR....

      Or did you mean moderation? That would also be cool, everytime the House draws up a bill for something Bush doesn't like, he could either delete it all together, or just keep giving it a -1 but then again that bastard Kennedy would keep bumping it for great justice
    • And some people try to effect change in society by modding walls, commonly known as graffiti. The United States (and Poland!) is right now attempting to mod Iraq. Construction workers mod city skylines. And useless analogies mod my brain.
       

  • Like Slashdot Mods (Score:5, Funny)

    by Spetiam ( 671180 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @10:56AM (#13904742) Journal
    They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science.

    If they're anything like Slashdot's mods, they'll also try, at times, to suppress facts that contradict their position.
    • "Why won't someone think of the children"
      A perfect example

      • Re:Like Slashdot Mods (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Spetiam ( 671180 )
        The more insidious ones are those that purport to increase freedom. (In the following case, the "right" to get into the business of your neighbors.)

        "We have a right to know if the person in front of us in the grocery store is carrying a gun, so the media must be allowed to publish the names and residence information of concealed license holders!" ...and then the information of women who are trying to hide and safeguard themselves from an abusive ex is published in the Sunday paper. (Ohio)

        There are plenty of
    • Mods, he's on to you! Quick, suppress him!
    • Heh, religion has that market cornered methinks. :)

  • Mod this up. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HugePedlar ( 900427 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @10:57AM (#13904743) Homepage
    What's so culturally phenomenal about modifying stuff? We've been doing it ever since we made flint knives. The only new aspect of "modding" is the restrictions unreasonably placed on it by corpolitics.
    • Yes, what can more 'American' that people modding with their automobiles and what not.
    • What's so culturally phenomenal about modifying stuff? We've been doing it ever since we made flint knives. The only new aspect of "modding" is the restrictions unreasonably placed on it by corpolitics.

      Exactly what TFA says, though I don't know how that rates +5 insight. Maybe the mods didn't read it either.

  • They want to change corporations, change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships.

    Change *everything*? That's a good plan ... for what? One rhetorical question: Does different = good?

    • Re:everything Yay (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:23AM (#13904839) Journal
      Change *everything*?

      The list you quoted does not include "everything". Jus three things, one a historically-new serious problem (corporations), and two on-going basic traits (but "broken" in the context of the current world) of our evolution as domesticated primates.


      That's a good plan ... for what? One rhetorical question: Does different = good?

      And a not-so-rhetorical answer: Yes, when what you have now clearly has serious fundamental problems.


      Corporations have a single motive (profit), the pursuit of which has the logical outcome of destroying the planet and enslaving the human race.

      People's day-to-day behavior, while "mostly harmless" in isolation, adds up to nothing less than the evironmental nightmare we now face. That needs to change.

      And our social relationships - As long as you can describe "haves" and "have-nots", yet we have the technological capacity for everyone to "have", we have a problem. As long as some people feel so trapped that they need to hurt others to cope, we have problems. As long as we have people so ignorant they need to blow up other people for their imaginary friends, we have a problem.


      Now, random change won't help. But only a fool would avoid carefully thought-out change, even experimental, to address any of those issues.
      • Corporations have a single motive (profit), the pursuit of which has the logical outcome of destroying the planet and enslaving the human race.

        You're scary.

      • ...a historically-new serious problem (corporations)...

        Corporations in the modern sense have been around since the 1600's. As a matter of logic, when your premises are bad, the conclusion is worthless.

        • Corporations in the modern sense have been around since the 1600's.

          And modern human history extends back to at least 6000BCE, possibly as early as 20,000BCE. Historically new.


          As a matter of logic, when your premises are bad, the conclusion is worthless.

          I had only one premise - Corporations exist solely for profit. Do you disagree with that? On what basis?

          Yes, with an invalid premise, the logic fails (though it doesn't necessarily make the conclusion false). But ipse dixit (or in this case, ego
          • And modern human history extends back to at least 6000BCE, possibly as early as 20,000BCE. Historically new.

            I'm sorry, I was distracted by this book from those newfangled printing presses.

            Your sense of "historically new" is long enough to be meaningless.

            As for your argument, you don't appear to have one, as nearly as I can tell. Breaking it down formally, it appears to be akin to the following:

            P1: Corporations exist to pursue profit.
            C1: Therefore, humanity is doomed.

            Spotting the holes in such a

          • Re:everything Yay (Score:3, Informative)

            by hackwrench ( 573697 )
            Corporations exist to produce a useful good. Profits represent the difference in value between instant consumption and investment. However the system has been broken by policies that reinvent those relationships. Instead of the question being asked "is it the most efficient way producing a useful good", and coming to the conclusion that if it is not, the investment needs to be placed elsewhere. http://mises.org/quiz.asp [mises.org] 20. B
            Insider trading [wikipedia.org] is wrongly maligned because who is better to judge the worth of t
            • Insider trading is wrongly maligned because who is better to judge the worth of the stock than those responsible for generating results.

              Insider trading is rightly maligned because "who is better to judge the worth of the stock" are also those who are responsible to report to the stockholders said value, such as the CEO of the company lying to the stockholders in order to inflate the value of the stock so they can sell before the deception is uncovered.

              Without protections against that, everyone will panic se
        • When looking through a historical lens, 400 years does equate with relatively new. Furthermore, the dominance of corporations within various spheres of life has expanded greatly, and thus the serious problem that the OP mentions is naturally more recent than that.

          Beyond this, the existence of corporations in general and the emergence of a particular problem with corporations in a given society necessarily happen in the order I just listed. Thus, the fact that you cite (existence of corporations as early
          • Furthermore, the dominance of corporations within various spheres of life has expanded greatly, and thus the serious problem that the OP mentions is naturally more recent than that.

            You've got better eyes than I do - the only "serious problem" I saw in that post was an assertion that we're going to hell in a handbasket, with nary a mention of how or why, other than some vague handwaving about corporations.

            Thus, the fact that you cite (existence of corporations as early as 1600) is irrelevant to his point

        • The US supreme court decision that gave corporations the status of persons has not been around since the 1600's. It was derived from the 14th amendment, roughly 20 years after the civil war ended. As a matter of logic, when the facts are so fundamentally in error, the conclusion is worthless.

  • Defiance is a changing the system too (Score:3, Insightful)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:01AM (#13904765)
    Sometimes the right way to change things, isn't by going thru the system at all. For example, illegal copying. Inspite of all the brow beating and guilt trip morality, there is nothing wrong at all with sharing music with other people. They not only have a right to copy, but they also don't deserve punishment for it either, even if it's the law, and even if they know it. IMHO, the internet and rampant copying have done more good for society in the last 10 years than all the information in the last 100 years combined. Starving artists? Bull, most people have a far better chance making a name for themselves by sharing their creations freely.
    • I trust that you never do anything creative in your life. Certainly not an expect any sort of compensation or reimbursment for it.

      There are artists that have decided they have "enough" money and freely distribute their work. That is certainly their right to do that. You, the consumer, do not have the right to make that decision for them. That is pretty much the same thing as your neighbor deciding that you should go to their church. Or the government deciding that since I don't want to work anymore, yo

      • Re:Defiance is a changing the system too (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Taladar ( 717494 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:38AM (#13904903)
        Actually it is more like we the citizens deciding to revoke the privilege that was granted in our name a while ago by the government elected by us. The problem today is only that you can not revoke it via the government because they are bought by the people that got rich using this privilege.
        • Actually it is more like we the citizens deciding to revoke the privilege that was granted in our name a while ago by the government elected by us. The problem today is only that you can not revoke it via the government because they are bought by the people that got rich using this privilege.

          While I am sympathetic to this argument, it is sort of along the lines in "what is the harm in piracy of Microsoft software?" when the answer is that it denies Linux a chance to compete for this customer's computer. Si
      • I trust that you never do anything creative in your life. Certainly not an expect any sort of compensation or reimbursment for it.

        Copyright provides for a LIMITED monopoly on one's creations.

        The legal-fictional entities known as "corporations" have managed to trump actual human rights to their own culture by "modding" the laws so as to make copyright a doctrine of exclusion, rather than a means of encouraging new creations. They have perverted even the underlying goal, of rewarding the creators themse

      • I trust that you never do anything creative in your life. Certainly not an expect any sort of compensation or reimbursment for it.

        For you information I am a writer, a programmer, an artist, and a miscican. But, I'm not supprised. This is typical of the pro-copyright crowd who can't argue the facts, so instead decide to attack the source.

        You, the consumer, do not have the right to make that decision for them.

        I'm not making a decision for anyone. Nobody forces you to do creative things, nobody forc

    • Sometimes the right way to change things, isn't by going thru the system at all. For example, illegal copying. Inspite of all the brow beating and guilt trip morality, there is nothing wrong at all with sharing music with other people. They not only have a right to copy, but they also don't deserve punishment for it either, even if it's the law, and even if they know it.

      Is this a troll? Or a subject of honest debate. I cannot tell, so I will assume that it is not....

      Aside from all the moralizing about cre

      • The first is that it provides ammunition that Congress can use to pass more draconian laws and also to justify the access control provisions of the DMCA.

        You're working under the premise that they are not already doing everything they can anyhow.

        The second is that it materially undermines any real attempt to build an alternative, open content distribution system. FOr example, I might not be sympathetic to Microsoft for all that "lost revenue" from illegally copied software, but the fact is that each il

    • I just have to add that digital piracy saves resources and money on boxes, manuals, DVD's and CD's that do not take up physical energy or matter, beyond what is used to transmit the data to someones hard disk, what is lost in profit is made up for in less obvious ways (i.e. less physical resource use from the environment).

  • Whoa... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MisterLawyer ( 770687 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {reywalekim}> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:09AM (#13904786)
    Did anyone else misread the title as "Modding the Law"?

    I got excited for a second there...

  • In my view (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrugCheese ( 266151 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:12AM (#13904793)
    modding has always been around. Only recently has it become any phenomenon through greed of the manufactorer. Could you imagine buying a car, and then being sued for replacing the factory deck with a new one? Looks like some corporations seek to stop selling any goods to anyone and instead just want to lease out the use of their property. If they do it should be clearly printed on the box. If not, when you purchase it, it's YOURS to do whatever you damn well please to do with it.

  • Modding Problems (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fitchmicah ( 920679 )
    You can call it "modding" but I think the we are supposed to try and fix social injustices.

    • Re:Modding Problems (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RexRhino ( 769423 )
      The trouble is that "social injustices" is a concept that is completly sugjective... if you ask 20 people what "social injustice" is, you will get 20 answers. So that the process of "fixing" that "social injustice" usually involves the strongest of the 20 telling everyone else what to do at gunpoint. And it is inevitable that one person's "social justice" will be percieved as anothers "social injustice".

      The concept of "social justice" is so vauge and meaningless, and therefore how to fix "social injustice"

  • Bah humbug (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris@[ ]u.org ['bea' in gap]> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:13AM (#13904799)
    > The conclusion is that social activists are modders too. They want to change the
    > government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions
    > to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science. They want to change corporations,
    > change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships.

    Oh bullshit. YOU may THINK you are promoting that in YOUR activism. Other equally activist folk are promoting very different things. So stop projecting your own political notions on everyone else and pretending it is the only possible viewpoint.

    Typical slashdot twaddle, what passes for politics and philosophy here isn't even cereal box pop philosophy. Bah!
    • I couldn't agree more with the parent.

      As a libertarian (small "l") political activist, the only thing on that list that fits with my personal activism is the part about wanting institutions to stop hiding facts and start paying attention to science.

      Otherwise, many of us want to work toward a more individualist, rather than collectivist, society. Does that make us any less of "social activist modders"?

    • I would have to agree with this. If we look at the situation honestly, most activism is directed at making one own place in society more secure. Fortunately, much of the time making ones own life more secure has positive impacts on others as well, the downside being that there are often negative impacts, sometimes even to one's own life.

      For instance, in the prior to the US Civil War, the North found it was cheaper to hire labor than to keep slaves, and slavery negatively affected their business model.

  • Ah, I love analogies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Angostura ( 703910 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:15AM (#13904809)
    A fun game anyone can play.

    This week; why social activist activity is like modding.

    Next week, why modding and social activism are like biological viruses: 'both set out to commandeer the host and change its functions to their own end'.

    The week after, why the IETF is like a shoemaker; both provide the tools that let people transfer information from place to place.

    The difficulty with analogies is not creating them, but in creating ones that shed valuable light on either topic. This analogy doesn't help understaning of modding or social activism.

  • Interesting timing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:17AM (#13904813)
    It is interesting to me that the main planks of the controlling interests were laid during the Clinton years:

    The No Electronic Theft Act of 1997

    Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed in 1998

    I guess we now know why Hollywood is so in bed with the Clintons. The established media companies, as usual, are fighting any trend that loosens their grip on us. Their latest ploy, the new TV program about a woman president, is just the latest transparent move (get us all used to the idea of Hillary in charge). Just think what onerous laws they will be able to pass once the Clintons get back into the White House!
    • The democrublicans strike again...

      When will Americans try electing government that isn't all about cronyism, corporatism, and pissing on the masses?

  • Modding as old as the human race (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:19AM (#13904821)
    I think modding and the related fanfiction (which can be considered as "add-ons" or even complete AUs to someone else's original creative work) derive from an even more basic impulse than to change the world. People like creating things, they like to tell stories, they like to make things. Most don't desire to be professional (at least initially) and maybe they don't have the talent. It is easier for you to tell stories/make new work based on what someone else has done as the universe/tools already exist. Also it helps you draw a larger audience as the audience is also familiar with the universe. I mean everyone when they were young after watching a particularly engrossing movie have made up stories in their heads how they were part of the Jedi or little plotlines about what happened after the end. Maybe you weren't entirely satisfied with some aspect of the movie/book/game and want to change it to suit yourself. All the internet does is allow something that previously would have been private gain an audience outside of your close friends and family. If you look at the rich cultural fabric of any society, you have stories that "grew" with each retelling as someone heard it in Village A, went back to Village B, embellish it a lot, and then someone in Village B went to Country C and changed it a bit to fit the local beliefs and maybe even mix it in with a preexisting story with a similar plotline. The idea of taking someone else's creative work or even a real story and using it for your own story that you tell someone else is one of the foundations of any country's creative fabric.

    Also, when you think about it, isn't it healthier to have people, esp. young people sit around using their brains to create mods or write fanfiction (even if it turns out crap) than just sitting passively watching TV or playing games that someone else wrote? At least they are using their brains and doing something and trying to create something than just sitting there and passively taking what someone else is saying.

  • That loud crack you heard (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hawthorne01 ( 575586 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:21AM (#13904830)
    was an analogy stretched so far it just snapped like an overwound violin string. :-)

    Those apes dancing around in the beginning of 2001 are the firt modders, with their l33t femur-bone mod.

  • Give me a break. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh look, the next generation of culture, mind, society and consciousness altering activists has found a way to ignore the failures of all the previous culture, mind, society and consciousness altering activists.

    Hippie, punk, hair metal, grunge, goth and now whoever these people are.

    Modding is modding. It's doing what you want with what you've bought. It's not social commentary and it's not a blow against the man, "the media" or a challenge to the educational system.

    What's already happened is that some com
  • To claim the goal of all social activism is "They want to change the government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science." is a gross and naive oversimplification. Many social activists are actively ANTI-science (Fundamentalist Christians). Many social activists are actively ANTI-production (anti-globalization groups, ELF, etc).

  • She's always changing her clothes, her shoes, her mind...

  • They want to change the government into something that supports a productive society. They want institutions to stop hiding facts and to pay attention to science. They want to change corporations, change people's day-to-day behavior, and change our own social relationships.

    In other words, they're geeks.

  • Modding as a Business (Score:5, Interesting)

    by taskforce ( 866056 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @11:50AM (#13904944) Homepage
    At the end of the article the comment section asked how this could be turned into a social and profitable Business. The games industry has clearly taken the lead in this course of action. Even companies who are often considered tyranical by many gamers such as EA include vast swathes of modding tools with their games and have sections on their websites dedicated to link to mods.

    With my recent purchase of Battlefield 2 I recieved a full modding kit (which is also available online) including map editor and tutorials on how to use 3rd party programs. Thought to accomodate modding even goes into the development of the game: BF2 is scripted using Python, as many other games (the recent interview with the Civ4 dev team highlighted this: they used Python so the game could be extensively moddable.

    Many games companies even put up with some blatant copyright infringment. I work on http://ta-mod.com/ [ta-mod.com] which is a mod for the Battlefield Series of games, turning it into a Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun styled interface. Legally, EA could waltz in and shut us down for infringing their intellectual property on the C&C series, but they are fully aware of our activities and they seem to be quite enthusiastic about it.

    The traditional industries can learn this lesson. If they bundled Rip/Mix/Burn programs with their music/movies just as PC Gamer developers do I would actually feel pushed to buy the content as the value added from something which you can add to infinitely over time is so much greater than a passive disk which you watch/listen to then put back. They would be adding value to their product, reaping a PR victory and not expending more than 20c per unit sold for a printed CD including the modding tools. If they don't include the tools, people will get them from somewhere else - it's a question of keeping their market.

  • So what is modding? (Score:2, Informative)

    by SamSim ( 630795 )
    Are we talking about moderating a message board? Case mods? Mod chips? Quake mods? This story tells us nothing!

  • We like to tinker (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bullfish ( 858648 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:01PM (#13904992)
    It's inherent in our nature to tinker with what is, which is how we got out of the caves. Whether it's modding governments through revolutions, putting a few more horsepower through that engine or moving our processors ahead a few MHz. Companies (or anyone) trying to stop it are fooling themselves as it is a true force of nature. Of course people are going to mod x-boxes, cell phones and things like people's habits through things like anti-smoking legislation. While making legal claims that say you are not allowed to mod may give a company a right to sue, there aren't enough lawyers in existence to make a small dent in what goes on. Even if there were enough lawyers, there aren't enough court rooms.

    This is also a reason why attempts at computer security/anti-copy schemes are doomed to fail. They pay some poor schmoe to come up with these schemes and thousands out in the world treat it's arrival like the release of a new game. Who will win? As for telling people it's wrong, good luck. Most modders would rather ask forgiveness than permission and when they buy something take the attitude that you can't break into your own house. Make things onerous enough for them and they'll revolt. Technically, the American and French revolutions were illegal acts.

    It's all very much like in Shogun when Toranaga tells Blackthorne that there is no mitigating circumstance when it comes to rebellion against a sovereign lord. Blackthorne replies, "unless you win". Which of course Toranaga realizes is the one mitigating circumstance.

    Now get back there and unlock those cell phones and x-boxes. While your at it, mod those politicians to get them to tell these companies suck it up.

  • Well then..... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:01PM (#13904995)
    Start producing some independant canidates that hold those views, support them with your money and actually vote.

    Just like being an armchair quarterback, being a armchair politician will accomplish nothing.

    America is not just a two party system. We need to educate the voters that voting isn't a contest to try and pick who is going to win, It's about who you WANT to win.

    We need a canidate that acknolwledges that our economic system can't be purely capitalist nor socialist. We need a moderate mix of the two with the decisions based on the needs of the majority.

    We already have some socialist systems in place such as Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, Public roads and parks. Lets not try and dismantle those at any given opportunity.

    But for myself, what I see as the major problem in American Politics today is that the funding comes mostly from corporations and business people. Politicians don't represent the voters; they represent those who supply them with the money they needed to run for office and the promise of a cushy high paying corporate position when they are voted out.

    This of course has led us to the corpratism situation we have today where the lobbyists are going as far as writting bills that they then hand to the politicans to submitt (the energy bill for example).

    Our government has been bought from the people and is now solidly in the hands of corporations.

    Look, the republicans have done a good job of hanging themselves and violating everything they stood for as a party. It's pretty apparent now that the next elections will see alot of them lose thier seats. But, what good does that do? Corporate money is hedged between the two major parties anyway!!

    The whole concept of a government was to represent its citizens. Just like tribal hunting parties, if one hunter scores a kill the whole party had food. It existed for the benifit of the group. Leave it to human nature to subvert that concept and exploit it for the benifit of a few.

    It remains to be seen if the unorganized masses can change the system run by organized corporate intrests. We only tend to THINK about it around election time, they WORK on it EVERY DAY!!

  • I modded the sherrif (Score:4, Funny)

    by oboreruhito ( 925965 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:22PM (#13905086)
    but I did not mod the deputy

  • That's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:37PM (#13905159) Homepage
    According to Wikipedia, modding [wikipedia.org] is defined as:
    Modding is a slang expression for the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software to perform a function not intended or authorized by the original manufacturer.
    For the most part, the U.S. third parties (Libertarian, Reform, Constitution, and Green) are just trying to get the U.S. government to respect the Constitution. That's not modding, that's fixing.
    • Well, you know ...

      The US courts are coming increasingly to be filled by "original intent" judges, where that's a label for what is actually an outrageous mod to the functions intended by the original manufacturer. It's a "clear skies initiative" sort of thing. For prime example: It was the original intent of the manufacturer to preserve all rights not enumerated to the people; but the "original intent" judges believe that all rights except those enumerated (see: privacy) are preserved for the government. It

  • Modding vs. Activism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RexRhino ( 769423 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:40PM (#13905175)
    Modders want to change something that they own and paid for... and accept the responsibility if they fry their gadget or mess something up.

    Activists want to change not only things that other people own, but also change people against their will, and don't want to accept responsibility if they screw up (i.e. when do activists for public housing take responsiblity for the disasterous urban housing projects debacles of the 1960s that led to the creation of new "Ghettos"??? When do anti-nuclear activists take responsibility for global warming because they have eliminated a potential form of non-greenhouse emitting energy?? When do anti-drug activists take responsibility for the half-million and rising Americans in prison, and the thousands killed in the drug war in Columbia??? When do human rights activists who want the U.S. to cut trade with "human rights abusing countries" take responsibility for pissing off half the world???)

    Imagine if a "modder" decided to "improve" someone elses dialasis machine, and that someone else died in the process, and then the "modder" blamed the manufacterer of the dialasis machine... and that is a perfect example of an "activist".

    The world could do with a few less activists, and a few more people minding their own damn buisness!
  • It seems that he wants to say that copyright laws are smacking directly in the face of the humans ever impressive need to modify things.

    For something that seemed that it was about social and political reform, it was more somebody complaining about the newer copyright laws. The ones that prevent people from getting at content in maners other than how the distributors intend. Which is something that has always been a key part to copyright... those with distribution rights have always had a say in *how* some
  • Whether it's cars, cameras, furniture, bicycles, musical instruments, or tools, "modding" has always been going on. What has changed is that mass produced plastic products with embedded processors, and in some cases technological anti-modding features, have made it harder to adapt products to new uses; when devices were mechanical, made out of metal and wood, and used commonly available screws and components, it was easier to tinker with them. It's good to see that the old spirit isn't quite dead, but I
  • Programming is art.... ... modding is a cultural trend..... .... akin to social activism!.... .... which is another kind of modding .....

    Give me a non computing tainted, fucking brake.

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