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Slashback: Spamnation, Long-Distance, Libel
But sir, all of these songs are under the Open Content License! atta1 writes "In an article on The Register, EasyInternetcafe has lost its court battle against British Phonographic Industry (BPI) over burning downloaded music to CD."
When last mentioned (August of last year), EasyInternetCafe was trying to avoid fines from BPI for letting Internet cafe customers burn to CD music they'd downloaded there.
After all, somebody's got to write 'em. g_adams27 writes "Several weeks ago, Larry Lessig proposed anti-spam legislation he'd like to see Congress pass -- legislation which he was willing to bet his job on. Now it looks like Washington might be taking his bet... and they want us to help out!
A congressional aide appears to be drafting legislation based on Larry's suggestions and is asking the Politech list for suggestions. The proposed law is posted here."
IP leases are nicer than telephone leases. Lots of people were interested in the story posted the other day about VoIP support in GnomeMeeting. I mentioned there that theKompany had a VoIP application for Zaurus owners; Shawn Gordon of theKompany writes with information about a forthcoming desktop version as well.
"So we released tkcPhone a few weeks ago, we found some issues with Net2Phone that we've just finished sorting out today, and we've about wrapped up the tkPhone beta, which we expect in a day or two. Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support. We also can have a system tray notifier and a roomier user interface. Because we spent so much time optimizing everything to work on the Zaurus, it means your desktop performance is going to be very good.We decided to use SIP as opposed to H323 for a lot of reasons: smaller, faster, lighter, newer, easier hardware requirements. So with our phone a regular sound card and a headset/mic will typically suffice for what you need or want to do. Our arrangement with Net2phone means that in addition to PC-to-PC calls, you can make PC-to-phone and PC-to-mobile calls as well. The prices range from free to as little as $0.02 per minute in the U.S. and $0.03 minute internationally. You're already paying for your internet access, might as well start to piggyback this stuff.
tkPhone is not free however, it is $9.95 for the electronic version of the application. We expect to have it up for sale about February 10, 2003."
And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both the Bayonne project (mentioned several times before)and asterisk (also discussed here).
You mean they're against my inalienable right to watch movies for free? geekee writes "An article on CNET states that the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) will include DRM support in the MPEG-4 open standard. Without DRM, the ISMA doesn't believe MPEG-4 will be able to compete against proprietary standards such as that provided by Microsoft since content owners 'want continually improved tools, with rights management.' For instance, Movielink, an online movie rental source, has opted to support Microsoft and RealNetwork formats because of their DRM capabilities. An interesting thing to note is that Apple is a member of the ISMA, and has previously declared its opposition to DRM."
Money talks, and sometimes it says nasty things. scubacuda writes "Since eBay removed the alleged libelous statements, Roger Grace has agreed to drop his libel lawsuit for $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Tim Neeley (who wrote that the magazines he bought from Grace had arrived late and in a worse condition than advertised). Interestingly, eBay removed the feedback not because it was 'negative,' but rather because 'the contact information for the seller was not correct.' Chris Donlay, eBay spokesman, says, '[T]hat is one of the circumstances in which we will consider removing the feedback,' EBay attorneys even went to far as to claim that Grace's original lawsuit is 'completely without merit.'"
(Here's the Slashdot post from last Saturday, 'Attorney Sues eBay over Negative Feedback'.)
And as several readers pointed out, if you're interested in VoIP on Linux, you should also check out the sites of both...
Might I also add (the albeit not particularly well named, IMHO) Linphone.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
It is no strange occurance for eBay to remove feedback. One party having invalid contact info is just one of the reasons. Others include feedback that contain swear words, real names, website ads, and underage bidders.
The person who sued eBay is an idiot, because eBay removes feedback if a court orders that feedback made by an individual is libel. Don't sue eBay, sue the person.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Whether you like it or not.
Microsoft Windows will remain the most popular operating system in the world, whether you like it or not.
Proprietary, patented video codecs will remain the "de facto" standard, whether you like it or not.
The open source movement is so often full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Open source technologies are not driven by the impetus to make money, the way proprietary technologies are. Thus they will be pushed to the fringes by aggressive, profit-minded corporations who are willing to pony up for the marketing, research and development, partnerships with movie companies, etc. it takes to become accepted.
That's the American Way.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
- Linphone (http://www.linphone.org/)
- SIPSet (http://www.vovida.org/)
Neither has g.729a support, though, so they're not going to work with net2phone, i don't think.Public key crypto is a little harder to laugh off. If the DRM is ignored in a correctly designed scheme then the video won't play at all. It will just be white noise. They aren't going to rely on simple flags anymore to enfore rules.
Once DRM is pushed to it's logical conclusion, it will require hardware hacks to defeat rather than software. I think DeCSS history will repeat itself. Some Taiwanese vendor will be in a hurry for a profit and will slip up with an easily tapped system board. Even without that help, the most evil Fritzed crypto scheme will be cracked sooner or later but don't kid yourself that DRM isn't possible with Open Source.
If you check out ISMI's members page then you'll see it lists Apple as one of six 'sponsor members'. Futhermore if you look at the board of directors page then you'll see that each of these companies has one board member.
So presumably Apple controls 1/6 of ISMI - so they'd need to get at least 2 of the other companies on their side to oppose DRM in MPEG4 sucessfully.