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It's not that young people grew up with stable rules. It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propagan

It's not that young people grew up with stable rules. It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy (thanks to the Software Publishers Association and the friendly local Microsoft rep), this conditioning to get kids (and less intelligent adults, sadly) to believe in the supremacy of illegitimate authority has been going on for a while now. Now those kids are starting to become adults. So, of course, you're starting to see bullshit like the CFAA1986 (and it's downright laughably broad definition of a 'protected computer') and the DMCA (likewise) starting to be abused like they are. The "don't copy that floppy" music video was the thin edge of a wedge that continues being driven into the heads of kids and adults alike, even today.

otakucode 9y ago
I don't think that it warrants a name so grand-sounding as 'industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda'. I don't even believe it was done entirely intentionally. When I was going to school in the 90s, schools were locking down more and more each year. Eventually, that produced Columbine and several other school shootings, intensifying their efforts (they were blind to the fact that they were the cause). Eventually they reached a fairly steady state of today, where learned helplessness is inflicted either before or early in adolescence, resulting in things like a 40% drop in the number of 16 year olds who have a drivers license between 2005 and 2015, many fewer adolescents having jobs during school, etc. Why try, if you are going to be surveilled and get your hand slapped at the slightest violation, and have every rough spot or sharp corner sanded down off of your personality. If you don't want to get classified as a threat and separated and sent to remediation therapy and special schooling and things like that, that is. In the name of security, the teachers derision for the weird kids was given sharp teeth, eventually perfected. The tunnel vision that develops during schooling, the one that leads kids to kill themselves or each other over simple school problems because they can't even see themselves as human beings with a life outside of the school environment, extends further now, well into college, and perhaps soon far beyond.
- wutangson1 9y ago
  wow, so if you believe there is systemic 'infliction of learned helplessness' on pre-adolescent children, then it does warrant a 'grand-sounding name'.
pwaai 9y ago
> As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy I remember having this discussion with in HS and also at work with people who were convinced pirating a PSX game is same as stealing, while not realizing there is no evidence that suggests a pirated copy means a lost sale (people can't afford it in places like Brasil where they still play Sega Genesis). The level of brainwashing of my generation is appalling, but I'm glad people like us realize the ridiculousness of claims like downloading an mp3 is stealing from an artist (they clearly have no idea how much the industry leeches off the artist in first place). Also, now that I've monies I ended up buying most of the games I use to play as a kid on a mod chip, and warez sites on Steam and the dreaded Playstation Store. 2018 is off to a good start.
- jeremy_wiebe 9y ago
  Equating “fair use” of a website to pirating software is a stretch. In the first case the method of access is at issue (not whether you can or not). In the second the company has not given you any _legal_ right to access. I don’t see how affordability (or lack of it) is justification to the game.
  - pwaai 9y ago
    Stealing would mean the loss of property, but there are infinite copies of the digital good. Users for the most part do not read EULA agreements or Terms of Service of a website, the expectation is on the software company's side, it's not a a crime unless there is proof of damage (selling it for profit) from either copying that floppy disk or scraping a public website so hard you interfere with their operations. So basically if you are poor, you deserve not to gain from the same things rich people can, even when no loss of property or damage occurs by having someone who can't afford it in the first place be your loyal fan. This doesn't apply in cases where there is explicit loss of property and damage that occurs as a result. Mozart also got his ass arrested because he transcribed music he liked onto a medium which he was not authorized to do so. But we all know how ridiculous that was.
    - 9y ago
busterarm 9y ago
It might be that... I also like to think that young people just don't really understand the full picture of how all of this actually works...they just think they do and that google/SO/wikipedia contains the answers they they don't have to know. Our abstraction layers are that good. You can write code in a framework, ship and make millions and suddenly you're a tech genius! In fairness to them though, when I was starting out 20 years ago, if you could sling a few lines of HTML and make things appear in a browser, people certainly treated you like one.
- taneq 9y ago
  It's always been this way (at least, since the start of the 70s, according to my mother). Those who are capable of reading the user manual (or documentation, or stackoverflow, or...) will be regarded with superstitious awe by those who are not.
Stranger43 9y ago
It's not just propaganda it's also an effect of formal vocational training being focused on teaching people procedures for doing a task rather then forcing them to learn by having to recover from failures the way most self taught people were, and lets not forget that doing the boom years practically everyone was self taught in an environment that haven't yet developed teachable procedures yet. I don't think that it's as much a generation thing that is it a consequence of IT having grown to the point where it is no longer it's own semi-anarchic subculture.
george3383 9y ago
>It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. Uuuuh that's a dangerous argument. What if we applied it to abortion or homosexuality?
- pjc50 9y ago
  Young people certainly have grown up with anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality propaganda, gradually shaking it off as it was revealed to be made of fear and nonsense.

otakucode 9y ago

I don't think that it warrants a name so grand-sounding as 'industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda'. I don't even believe it was done entirely intentionally. When I was going to school in the 90s, schools were locking down more and more each year. Eventually, that produced Columbine and several other school shootings, intensifying their efforts (they were blind to the fact that they were the cause). Eventually they reached a fairly steady state of today, where learned helplessness is inflicted either before or early in adolescence, resulting in things like a 40% drop in the number of 16 year olds who have a drivers license between 2005 and 2015, many fewer adolescents having jobs during school, etc. Why try, if you are going to be surveilled and get your hand slapped at the slightest violation, and have every rough spot or sharp corner sanded down off of your personality. If you don't want to get classified as a threat and separated and sent to remediation therapy and special schooling and things like that, that is. In the name of security, the teachers derision for the weird kids was given sharp teeth, eventually perfected. The tunnel vision that develops during schooling, the one that leads kids to kill themselves or each other over simple school problems because they can't even see themselves as human beings with a life outside of the school environment, extends further now, well into college, and perhaps soon far beyond.

wutangson1 9y ago
wow, so if you believe there is systemic 'infliction of learned helplessness' on pre-adolescent children, then it does warrant a 'grand-sounding name'.

pwaai 9y ago

> As someone that was prevented from distributing Linux at high school because the administrators thought that any copying was piracy I remember having this discussion with in HS and also at work with people who were convinced pirating a PSX game is same as stealing, while not realizing there is no evidence that suggests a pirated copy means a lost sale (people can't afford it in places like Brasil where they still play Sega Genesis). The level of brainwashing of my generation is appalling, but I'm glad people like us realize the ridiculousness of claims like downloading an mp3 is stealing from an artist (they clearly have no idea how much the industry leeches off the artist in first place). Also, now that I've monies I ended up buying most of the games I use to play as a kid on a mod chip, and warez sites on Steam and the dreaded Playstation Store. 2018 is off to a good start.

jeremy_wiebe 9y ago
Equating “fair use” of a website to pirating software is a stretch. In the first case the method of access is at issue (not whether you can or not). In the second the company has not given you any _legal_ right to access. I don’t see how affordability (or lack of it) is justification to the game.
- pwaai 9y ago
  Stealing would mean the loss of property, but there are infinite copies of the digital good. Users for the most part do not read EULA agreements or Terms of Service of a website, the expectation is on the software company's side, it's not a a crime unless there is proof of damage (selling it for profit) from either copying that floppy disk or scraping a public website so hard you interfere with their operations. So basically if you are poor, you deserve not to gain from the same things rich people can, even when no loss of property or damage occurs by having someone who can't afford it in the first place be your loyal fan. This doesn't apply in cases where there is explicit loss of property and damage that occurs as a result. Mozart also got his ass arrested because he transcribed music he liked onto a medium which he was not authorized to do so. But we all know how ridiculous that was.
  - 9y ago

busterarm 9y ago

It might be that... I also like to think that young people just don't really understand the full picture of how all of this actually works...they just think they do and that google/SO/wikipedia contains the answers they they don't have to know. Our abstraction layers are that good. You can write code in a framework, ship and make millions and suddenly you're a tech genius! In fairness to them though, when I was starting out 20 years ago, if you could sling a few lines of HTML and make things appear in a browser, people certainly treated you like one.

taneq 9y ago
It's always been this way (at least, since the start of the 70s, according to my mother). Those who are capable of reading the user manual (or documentation, or stackoverflow, or...) will be regarded with superstitious awe by those who are not.

Stranger43 9y ago

It's not just propaganda it's also an effect of formal vocational training being focused on teaching people procedures for doing a task rather then forcing them to learn by having to recover from failures the way most self taught people were, and lets not forget that doing the boom years practically everyone was self taught in an environment that haven't yet developed teachable procedures yet. I don't think that it's as much a generation thing that is it a consequence of IT having grown to the point where it is no longer it's own semi-anarchic subculture.

george3383 9y ago

>It's that young people grew up under the influence of industrial information warfare tactics and propaganda. Uuuuh that's a dangerous argument. What if we applied it to abortion or homosexuality?

pjc50 9y ago
Young people certainly have grown up with anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality propaganda, gradually shaking it off as it was revealed to be made of fear and nonsense.