… a serious topic.
I am blogging for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I am not a comfortable political blogger — I tend to be too sympathetic to too many positions, and too willing to see things as grays rather than the stark blacks and whites of the ideologues who preach from their virtual soapboxes around me.
But I’ve been finding myself more and more interested in more things that the EFF is doing and fighting for. Hence my membership, my blog posts, and my Blogathon work.
The EFF site is pretty approachable in terms of finding information on it, so I won’t go into a lot of detail. I think this “about statement” says it pretty well:
From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 — well before the Internet was on most people’s radar — and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today.
From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.
Most of this work is done in the courts, against corporations and governmental bodies. Whether it’s suing Sony over their rootkit invasion of consumer PCs, suing AT&T over their illegal turning over of phone records to the NSA, participating in the Grokster case to defend the “Betamax” doctrine that lets you record TV shows on VCRs and DVRs … the list is long, and even where
the EFF hasn’t succeeded, it’s tended to fight the good fight.
As with any advocacy group, I don’t guarantee that I (let alone you) will agree with their position in every case they participate in, but I agree with them enough to make it worth both giving them money and blogging on their behalf for 24 hours.
I hope you’ll agree. And if you don’t, I’m glad you can, and that we can discuss it. And I hope you enjoy the rest of my Blogathon effort.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled comics reviews.
(listening to: “The F.B.I.” from Television’s Greatest Hits)
(listening to: Clannad, “Closer To Your Heart” from Macalla)
(listening to: Lehrer, Tom, “My Home Town” from Tom Lehrer Revisited)
(listening to: Edmonson, Greg, “Reavers Chase Serenity” from Firefly – Original Television Soundtrack)
(listening to: Kinks, “Lola (live)” from Frat Rock: The 70’s) [It is amusing to me that I am much more familiar with the Weird Al version of this, “Yoda.”]