Way of the Mind

On Slashdot, I saw a discussion which, while mostly about other things, at one point mentioned this, and it got me thinking (which, as everyone knows, always means trouble).

The thing is: a lot of things that sane, rational people oppose have names which are absolutely wrong, and which were… skillfully named by its proponents, because, to many people, opposing them means opposing what the names suggest… and what the names suggest always seems “good”.

A few examples:

• The PATRIOT Act. “You oppose the PATRIOT Act? What, are you unpatriotic? Why do you hate America?”. This one is almost as blatant as naming Auschwitz “Camp Freedom” would be. The PATRIOT Act doesn’t help America, it only ensures that government organizations can do what they damn please, without warrants, and without giving a damn about that pesky Constitution thing. Yet, it was so cleverly named that most congressmen didn’t dare to vote against it - after all, who wants to be seen as “unpatriotic”?
• Digital Rights Management, a.k.a. DRM. Sounds good, a system to manage your “rights”, doesn’t it? But it’s no more than a system for movie and record companies to control what you can do with stuff you bought legally. In other words, it takes rights away from you. “Digital Restrictions Management” would be more precise. Yet, they’ve manage to convince most people that anyone who is against DRM must be a dirty, stealing pirate…
• Trusted Computing: again, sounds nice, doesn’t it? After all, with all the viruses, worms, spyware and such (hmm, another one… see the next entry), it would be nice to have a system that made computers more secure, more “trustworthy”, wouldn’t it? Indeed, but “Treacherous Computing”, as Richard Stallman calls it, is, in fact, a system to make hardware run only this or that software. Imagine a world where PCs could only run Windows, or only Microsoft software, or couldn’t play MP3s (Trusted Computing has much in common with DRM, they’re facets of the same problem), or couldn’t run any freeware, or any open source/free software. A world where your computer doesn’t obey you - it obeys its makers, even after you bought it. “Trusted”, here, means “it does only what we want”. But the name sounds nice and comforting, doesn’t it?
• Computer viruses / worms / spyware. This is mostly due to journalists’ technical ignorance than due to any kind of “conspiracy”, but it’s still very annoying to hear that “there’s a new computer virus out there”. There’s no such thing as a “computer virus”; there are Windows viruses (and, now, a couple of Macintosh ones). There are no “internet worms”, only Windows worms, Microsoft Outlook worms and Microsoft Exchange worms. There’s no such thing as “spyware” unless you run Windows. It’s really irritating that people still think computers are some unstable, crash-prone, insecure, virus-ridden, unknowable machines, when it is, and always has been, a Microsoft problem. And news reporters only help maintain that error.

There are certainly many more examples. But the point is: maybe we shouldn’t let the “bad guys” name things. We probably can’t change public perception, but, at least, when we talk, when we blog, and such, we should call things what they really are. If someone creates something to take away people’s freedom and calls it “Freedom Something”, when we realize it, we shouldn’t keep using that name.

Just my thoughts. Feel free to ignore them, as always.

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Related posts:

1. “Freedom” as just a word
2. Pro-Forced Maternity
3. I don’t like Microsoft…
4. The “religious freedom” question, again…
5. Why these guys are insane