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BusinessWeek on Open Source and Copy Protection
prostoalex writes "An article starting with the words "Forget about Bill Gates, folks. The biggest enemy of free software may be Senator Ernest F. Hollings" historically had a little chance of being published in a recognized business publication. In this case, though, Business Week (no registration) runs a detailed but straightforward explanation of how the new copyright bills could threaten free software and open source movements."
This article may be the best answer yet for why Linux and Free Software community members should care about adaptation by the community at large.
Two things struck me:
1. Linux has enough mind share and has been adapted by enough businesses to solve real business problems that a threat to Linux is a threat to many businesses, which is why a mag like BusinessWeek is interested.
2. Did you notice the way they referred to Hollywood? Hollywood will this, Hollywood wants that. Sounds very much like a dark force and I think that's the effect it will have on readers, especially those who wonder what in hell Hollywood is doing in the middle of what ought to be governmental functions.
Another reason why Hollywood and Co. need to look into changing their business model is that sooner or later any copy-protection gets cracked. It may not be legal, it may not be right, but let's face it - it always happens! And when it does that copy-protection system is instantly worthless. Apart from annoying open-source fans like us they are just wasting their own time and money developing these things! I wonder sometimes if it has ever occured to them to combat piracy by just charging less for DVDs, CDs Videos etc. We all know it's costing them coppers to make so it's hardly surprising that people get tempted by pirate copies. If a brand new DVD was, say, 5 quid instead of 25 I think more people would go for that rather than a pirate copy which may still be cheaper but probably has inferior quality and lacks extras and a fancy cover.
Naughton is also the author of A Brief History of the Future, which is an excellent read.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
"Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved"
Following the available link to their main page... and a bit further, we arrive here . I seriously doubt there are any of us who haven't come accross a McGraw-Hill textbook at some point in time during our "career".
I'm certainly not saying this isn't a good article... it is... one of the best I've read on the topic so far, but it is also interesting to note we are watching major industries trading body blows with the press as their gloves. Rest assured, if the industries didn't have anything to loose from such legislation, we sure wouldn't be reading articles like this.
Excuse me while I fail to see the relationship between "communism" and Free Software.
A few days ago, I told a colleague that I had ad sites like doubleclick.net blocked by firewall on my machine and my whole net. This guy said that it was evil, because I was denying the sites' owners the little income that the ad providers would give them. When I said I was only developping open source software, he called ME a communist.
Sorry, but the communist is not who it seems on first glance. This guy thinks that every work is worth money (hence he downloads all ads, so that sites owners get their nickels). Yeah, and I'm sure you don't go to the bathroom during the ad break either... How's that for free market ? Forcing the end user to pay for something he might not want to pay for ? I thought that in a free market, the end user decided wether to buy or not something. It doesn't look anywhere near the ad-funded website model that is so common nowadays, where the user pays bandwidth and CPU time for ads and popups before he even get to see the site. And the user doesn't have any control on this fee: only the announcers do.
What if I don't want to see the ads and spend bandwidth (paid with my money) ? I don't watch ads on TV either, and I mute my radio during ads.
Besides, if the website doesn't have anything to sell, What Would I Pay For ? If the website owner wants so badly to earn money, he's trying the wrong way. Ads don't make a living, and he's better off making a subscription based site, a commercial site, or getting a real job to cover the expense of what I see as a passion. Sorry folks, but don't expect to make a living by writing webpages. If you do you're living in a dreamy world.
About the Open source software: WTH is it communism ? It's simply offering better price and services for the same thing software editors sell.
If they can't compete with this, according to the Demand/Offer trade law, they deserve to go out of business, they shouldn't try their best at making up laws to "protect" their business models against competing alternative models => that's Keynesianism.
Forbidding any other model, that's communism.