Slashback: Ascent, Patents, Transferability

Slashback tonight brings updates on iTunes music sharing (the mentioned auction's been pulled), the continuing fight against software patents in Europe, the recently scuttled balloon-record attempt, and more. Read on for the details.

Your ruse, your clever trick. On August 22nd, we reported that OpenOffice.org's OS X version had been delayed for two years.

However, bluethundr writes "Hold the phone! Is it delayed or isn't it? Well, according to this story in the register, it AIN'T DELAYED...just undermanned. Apparently there are only TWO (count 'em! one...aw heck, where was I?) developers working on the OS X development team. Dan Williams (who is one of the two in question) says that 'the Mac version is in a Catch-22: with only two developers, it desperately needs man power. But no one will join the porting effort until they see momentum behind the Aqua port.' Maybe some of the coders among us could lend them a hand?"

Too late for the colonies, help save the mothership. leif.singer writes "While there still is some time left, please consider signing Eurolinux' petition against software patents in Europe." You'll be in good company: vinsci writes "In their news section, FFII has posted a more detailed story: "Within a few days, the petition calling the European Parliament to reject software patentability accumulated 50,000 new signatures.""

Free as in FreeDOS Jim Hall writes "I thought I'd submit this before the news item fell too far down our web page. If you remember about a year ago, Dell was to offer Windows-less PC's, instead pre-installing FreeDOS. You can now order a Dell with FreeDOS (or Linux) ... and have been for a while now. They are pretty nice machines, too (3.06GHz). We have the news item (with links to Dell) at the FreeDOS Project web site."

Nasty worms ought to at least produce spice. The NRC released an alert about worm infections and nuclear power plants. This is a reaction after the SQL-Slammer attacked the shut-down Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in January.

Tomorrow is another year. RoadKillian writes "New Scientist reports thats the QinetiQ 1, the record-breaking balloon which was supposed to rise to an altitude of 40km (131,000ft) has ripped during inflation. The weather is unlikely to permit another attempt this year."

When EULAs collide. Yesterday's story about selling a song downloaded from iTunes seems to have an unhappy ending: sideswipe76 writes "As I was watching this auction today, it approached $16,600! Now, if you try and check this link from eBay you get 'invalid item.' Is eBay wussing out just to avoid any legal snafus that _might_ occur? Or did he violate some ebay policy? Thoughts?"

Comments

Re:iTunes Sale

[dave420]

As was mentioned by another poster in the original thread, eBay regularly allows electronically-transferrable items to be auctioned. the on-line game assets (gold, weapons, etc.) are traded regularly, and they can *only* be transferred electronically.

I guess eBay is covering its ass with that clause. They probably only pull it out when there's something potentially dangerous being auctioned, and let it slide when something the RIAA isn't going to get pissed about goes under the virtual hammer. With the RIAA in the trigger-happy state its in currently, I can hardly blame them.

Re:Not really

[dave420]

well, this link shows that eBay has a lot of electronically-distributale items up for bidding, so eBay obviously allows it, otherwise these guys wouldn't waste their time making hundreds of auctions for things that eBay doesn't allow. And, from what I read originally, eBay has had that clause for a long time, to fight off illegal mp3 dealing.

As I said, they enforce that rule when it helps them, and lets it slide when it doesn't.

Why use e-bay?

[KalvinB]

E-bay is a nice place for the exposure if you can't get it anywhere else and don't mind the fees, but what's stopping him from firing up a site and taking bids via e-mail? He's certainly got plenty of attention.

Considering a 99 million dollar bid was placed it'd also be handy to list all the bids placed allowing people to bid in between in case higher bids fall through. It was also aliviate false inflation.

No point in putting in a fake high bid if anyone can bid lower.

It would then also be possible to contact the losing bidders at the end and ask them to donate their bid to the EFF or whatever even though they won't get a crappy song for it.

Using e-bay doesn't test the legality of anything relevant. It simply tests E-Bay's TOS. Selling it himself would test the legality of selling the iTune.

Ben

Re:iTunes

[alset_tech]

Interestingly, the site mentioned above doesn't seem to take into consideration that artists average about the same 10% margin when their music is sold in a store. The site blames Apple for musicians being treated unfairly, but this has been the case ever since Edison (evil man) sold recordings on lathes and kept ALL the profits.

I would applaud Apple if they kicked more of the cash to artists, but that's like asking Best Buy to pay a share of their profits to the artist. The distribution channel is not responsible to the artist, the record company is. That's where we should look for reform.

Dan

Re:iTunes

[squiggleslash]

That is really pathetic.

• It misstates the relationship of artists to iTunes. You do NOT have to be an RIAA-member published artist to get your music onto iTunes, and there's at least one company, CD Baby, that makes this a piece of cake with the bulk of the .99 going to the artist. iTunes insists on a middleman, it doesn't insist that Hilary Rosen be that "man".
• It suggests that artists are ripped off by this system but somehow are not by Kazaa and their ilk. How? Not explained. Just repeated, ad-nausium, like some kind of Hanzo-San.
• It suggests that making artists maintain the hardware and infrastructure for distributing music would, in some way, be preferable to Apple doing it and charging their 30c. Again, no explanation.
• Ultimately the agenda is revealed in the same paragraph - apparently 99c per song is too high! It should be 50c! And the artists should foot the bill (as above)

Downhillbattle is going to have an uphill battle unless it recognizes a few realities. Not paying artists is ripping them off - the music publishers may not be perfect, but if you buy a CD, you do ultimately transfer money in the direction of the artists, something you do not do if you download it from Kazaa. Rather than this mindless boycott campaign, if DHB really is serious and is concerned about artists (as with the rhetoric but as unsupported by every actual suggestion they make) rather than cheap music, they should be supporting the efforts to create infrastructures for the easy exchange of music (to the listeners) and money (to the artists.) I'd no more boycott CDs to help artists than I'd napalm Ethiopia to help the hungry.