By Casey Maloney
I've had the opportunity to observe Emmanuel Goldstein (not his real
name) on a number of occasions, and the 2600 website really allows
his personality to shine through. The site has gone through recent
revisions, but has ended up a very useful and interesting resource.
The site keeps tabs on all major news regarding our civil rights,
and in particular the lawsuits fighting to protect them.
The new structure is simple: A list of the few dozen most recent
news items, with special events and regular sections below. The best
thing about the webpage is that it is a complete entity, separate
from the 2600 magazine that originated it. While the print publication
features technical knowledge and how-tos, its online presence is concerned
primarily with the political and legal issues raised by the content
of the magazine.
The main issue that the magazine's site is currently concerned with
is the pending suit against it by the MPAA. The MPAA is prosecuting
2600 for distributing the source code to DeCSS, the DVD decoding software
originally written to allow the playback of DVDs on Linux. I went
to New York this summer to participate in the protests outside the
courtroom. 2600 is being litigated against for merely linking to a
website that contained the source code; code which can be expressed
as merely a dozen lines of code. The ridiculousness of the suit serves
to illustrate the problems with the DMCA, and 2600 is doing us all
a service by fighting it.
2600 has always had a presence beyond the magazine. For as long as
there have been subscribers, there have been organized meetings throughout
the country of readers. These were the original Mecca of curious rebels
exchanging the quasi-legal knowledge they had discovered. In my youth
I enjoyed reading 2600 for the romance of beating the phone company
and large corporations. Now that I am older, I appreciate the efforts
of the magazine in preserving all of our rights. 2600 is truly a icon
of our era, and I only hope it will continue to live on and go down
in history as the great institution of freedom that it is.