law

Last week, I received a call from Erin Anderssen, a writer and reporter from the Globe and Mail, Canada's great national newspaper. She was directed to me by a colleague of mine who suggested that I might just be the sort of person she wanted to talk to. Specifically, she wanted tech-savvy parents so she could find out how they explain copyright violations to their children. 

My children are a little young yet (not quite 3 and not quite 6) so that discussion is a few years away. Nevertheless, as those of you who know me will not find surprising, I did have some opinions on the subject.  So for the next 20 or 30 minutes, we talked about this very issue. I probably asked Erin more questions than she asked me because I'm like that. If you ask for my opinion, I'm infinitely curious as to what your opinion on the same matter might be. I may not agree with you, but I'm still curious. So we talked . . . and on Sunday, the article was published. under the title, "Illegal downloading: How do you explain it to the kids?" 

I am sure you can appreciate that what you get from the Globe and Mail article is a handful of words from yours truly, hardly enough to make any sense of what I might actually believe when it comes to this subject. Other than, perhaps, my belief that the issue is far from cut and dry. 

In case you've been away, there's been a bit of a mini-firestorm over an event that took place last week. It's about a teacher who, upon witnessing one of her students doing a Linux demo for other students and handing out live CDs confiscated then, then started a war. You can read about it on the Blog of Helios or watch my WFTL Bytes! coverage of the event.

Truth be told, I've been thinking about this story a lot more than I thought I would. After all, when I first reported it in my WFTL Bytes!, I made fun of it "Oh, no! Linux is under siege! Should I wear the general's press hat?"  It is, in fact, scary that somebody like Karen thinks as she does (from a FOSS perspective, that is), but she was, as I reasoned then, one person. Hardly an army. 

Then came the explosion of posts, both for and against, in the community. My reaction was surprise, but I found it interesting enough to want ompaul to post his take on it. Which got me thinking, and thinking . . .