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Free Culture
Lessig is now famous for a number of reasons, including his two previous books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. In the first, he was one of the first to affirm what many Slashdot readers know almost instinctively: whomever writes the code determines how the world works. Making the right decisions about power and control when designing a computer system is just as important as writing laws for the future. In the second, he writes of the importance of a vast cultural commons which acts as the wellspring for our expression and the grounding plate for our souls.
His new book is his most casual and most accessible. His prose is improving as he drops the footnote-heavy habit of legal writing and adopts a bloggier style driven by anecdotes and personal revelation. And what anecdotes he has -- Lessig's years on the barricades have given a surprisingly large collection of tales that will make any artist or citizen cringe. Time and time again, the powerful warlords of the entertainment conglomerates have banded together to try to stomp out the sharing and cooperation emerging from the Internet. After years of amassing a strangehold on the world's culture, the conglomerates aren't letting this cheap, fast and out-of-control technology sweep it all away.
My favorite anecdote, if one could be said to stand out, comes from a film maker documenting an opera company. When the camera caught a snippet of the stagehands watching the Simpsons with the sound turned down, the director wanted to add a four-second clip to the movie. Matt Groening said "Yes." The lawyers said it was clearly fair use. But Fox's executives responded with the kind of obscenity that doesn't upset the FCC: pay us $10,000. The clip didn't make the film because the director couldn't afford to go head-to-head with the Fox legal department.
This is just one of a number of stories of how interesting, invigorating content and innovation was strangled at birth by old guard. The anecdotes are, I think, an effort to atone for his loss in the Eldred case and reargue it. He presented the Supreme Court with a very logical and legal reading of why it was wrong for Congress to continue extending the length of a copyright monopoly and the court didn't buy it. A friend of his said that this tack was wrong because the court wanted to feel the depths of the injustice. The justices didn't want laws and footnotes, they wanted something human. Lessig blames his loss on not taking this advice. (As an aside, Lessig's personal description of taking a case to the Supreme Court is a good way to understand just how human the game can be.)
This time around, he piles the examples on top of more examples to show just how the conglomerates can hurt the artist and culture in general. After this case failed, Lessig tried another compromise that exposed the true goals of the copyright czars. Lessig describes his efforts to recreate a copyright registration system. If someone wanted to keep a copyright in force after 50 years, Lessig suggested getting them to pay a $1 fee. This would help everyone keep the copyright straight and make it simpler for everyone to understand just who has what rights to an art work. Any art work that goes unregistered flops into the public domain. Anyone who's tried to clear rights to a project will see this as a step in the right direction. The copyright industry, however, rejected this structure in a way that Lessig suggests illustrates how much this is about power and control, not creativity and expression.
Lessig has other tricks up his sleeve. If he can't convince the U.S. government to change the law, he can appeal to the artists themselves who have the ultimate control. He started his Creative Commons project several years ago and now artists can use several boilerplate licenses that reserve some of the rights while releasing others.
This new book itself is also available for free (PDF) under the license, a tactic that has worked well for Cory Doctorow and myself in the past. When I released Free for All under the license several years after the book was published, I watched the asking price on Amazon's used book market rise more than 40%. It wasn't a big jump, but it was still a bit counterintuitive. The freely available text encouraged people to buy the more readable printed version. I think Lessig will see the same effect. The sales driven by the people who read the electronic version will be greater than the sales lost to the people who just read the downloaded copy.
The good news is that the markets and the consumers are already heeding Lessig's advice because they instinctively disdain a monopoly. The power of the old networks is rapidly disappearing and the increasing concentration among the old guard is as much an illustration of the last ditch effort by the executives to cash out by taking large bonuses from the transactions. Some worry about the concentration of power in the radio world by companies like Clear Channel. But who listens to radio for music any longer? One Clear Channel station near my house plays traffic reports every 10 minutes during the day because their audience is dominated by people trapped on aptly named "parkways". The station may play as few as three songs an hour between 6:30am and 9am. The rest of the time, they yak about movies or the weather and their influence upon music continues to drop.
There are surprisingly good alternatives developing to take over the space. Lessig does an excellent job describing how the Internet radio stations were mugged with unfair regulations, but it's important to remember that they continue to exist because they offer something better than endless traffic reports. Furthermore, competition is coming from strange places. Starbucks is just one such company selling commercial- free mix tapes that are, for almost all intents and purposes, just a plastic disk version of a cool DJ. More and more radio-like venues are appearing.
There are other reasons why the concentration is backfiring. Lessig does a good job explaining how the television networks are squeezing out competition from independent producers. He describes how Norman Lear was only able to bring us "All in the Family" because he was free to take his work from ABC to CBS. That freedom disappeared after Congress repealed the laws forbidding the networks from owning stakes in the shows they broadcast. Now, if you want to get on CBS, it helps to sell a part of your show to CBS or, even better, just sell the whole thing.
But is this strategy really working for the networks? Their ratings continue to plummet. There's a reason why there are so many drug commercials for arthritis remedies on network air. That generation is the last one who watches network television almost instinctively. Lessig likes to complain about the "soviet" nature of these networks. It's a wonderful word that reads on many levels. The more they squeeze out competition and aggregate power in the committees, the more they lose the fluid competition that lets cream rise to the top.
So, who really cares if CBS isn't available on the Dish network? There are hundreds of other channels offering good fare. It was a different story in the 1970's when there were only three networks and CBS offered shows like "All in the Family" and "Mary Tyler Moore". Then, they controlled the heart of our popular culture. Today, the network ratings are so low on Saturday night that all of the networks are looking for a way to stop broadcasting on that day. Aside from the NCAA basketball tournament, I've lived without CBS for years without missing a thing. (Even then, I get most sports news from the websites.) The DVD player is a very, very powerful and destructive technology. When you can buy 50 movies for $30, who even needs CBS, the Dish network or HBO?
All of these idea swirled through my mind as I read Lessig's book and waited during jury duty. Are things getting worse or better? Are the 40+ million plus fileswapping pirates winning, or are the draconian laws crushing our creativity like a jackboot? I spent my time thinking of this balance while waiting for the judge and the attorneys to sift through 150 people to find the right 12 folks to render a fair and impartial verdict. On one hand, it was remarkable that society was being so careful before imprisoning someone for attempted murder. On the other, it was clear that the effort can't be sustained for the 40 million+ file sharing pirates who are thumbing their nose at the law.
Lessig understands this. One of his most persuasive arguments is that the current law becomes more marginalized as
it becomes increasingly less fair. Prohibition of alcohol corroded the law and now the increasing prohibition of
fair use is eroding respect for copyright.You only need to travel a few blocks from the Mitchell court house to end
up in dangerous regions of Baltimore where the marble and the pomp can't do much to protect you. Lessig, the lawyer,
knows the law can only work when it is fair and equitable. This new book is a strong and passionate argument for how
we can restore some sanity to the system and restore our faith in copyright law. Some people think that Lessig is trying to "smash"
the copyright system, but I think he's just trying to restore its ability to function.
Peter Wayner is the author of Free for All , a book on the open source movement and Policing Online Games, a book on how to build the Mitchell courthouse in cyberspace. You can purchase Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. mpawlo points out you can get the book free and gratis via Bittorrent.
IJWTS that Lawrence Lessing gave a fine interview on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" this past Tuesday. More info, and the interview in RealAudio format, here.
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My favorite anecdote, if one could be said to stand out, comes from a film maker documenting an opera company. When the camera caught a snippet of the stagehands watching the Simpsons with the sound turned down, the director wanted to add a four-second clip to the movie. Matt Groening said "Yes." The lawyers said it was clearly fair use. But Fox's executives responded with the kind of obscenity that doesn't upset the FCC: pay us $10,000. The clip didn't make the film because the director couldn't afford to go head-to-head with the Fox legal department
-----
And that, folks, is just how it's going to be done.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Here's the book in PDF, licensed under Creative Commons... (right-click, and save-as, to download a copy).
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
When jury duty called, I was lucky enough to have a copy of Larry Lessig's new book...
Hey, how about actually doing your civic duty? I wouldn't want to be the defendant in this case.
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=17859 31
jherber
pdf is an waful format to make derivative works from. for example, I would like to bake a plucker-ebook for my palm from it, but with acrobats text export function as the only available export tool, it screws footnotes and page numbers etc.
DON'T use pdf for book distribution!
Did being informed on some subject get you out of jury duty?
When I sat through my jury selection process it seemed those who were well informed got the boot. Either side could choose to excuse someone too informed to make their chosen impression on.
So it goes within a free society.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I thought that letting subscribers look into the "mysterious future" was supposed to help us not to have broken links.
Here's the fixed link.
You probably shouldn't click this.
And no judge would allow a juror to read during a trial.
ObDuh: Duh!
--- Ban humanity.
Here's a working link to the Mitchell courthouse, sans magical Slashdot link space...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
mmmm. free yogurt
His prose is improving as he [...] adopts a bloggier style
Did I read that correctly?
Did he just say "bloggier" ?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I suppose that's meant to be facetious but it leads nicely into "Are things getting worse or better? Are the 40+ million plus fileswapping pirates winning, or are the draconian laws crushing our creativity like a jackboot?" Yeah, "fileswapping pirates" are the cornerstone of global creativity. What will our society do without their invaluable contribution?
I'm the first to object to the DMCA and abuse of fair-use but if the Lessig crowd wants to convince me that there's a need to tear the existing system to shreds, they need to come up with a better victim class than Kazaa users.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
My personal thought is that this is an irrational fear stemming from the popularity of home printers, video editing software, and the internet (all of which weren't easily available 20 years ago); it is now much easier for someone to "fairly use" copyrighted material in their own work. In the opinion of the media conglomerates this "devalues" their intellectual property so rather than allow fair use to proceed legally, they fight it in hopes that most of the little guys will just give up trying or cower in fear of the onslaught of lawyers.
Demanding the source and embracing capitalism goes perfectly well.
I've worked for several companys who demanded the source for almost everything (for their embedded products). They even had to more to get the source. But when there where problems they could diagnose and solve them themselfs. Instead of being dependent on third party support.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
... prestidgeous Ivy League degree ....
...Stop thinking like a couch potatoe.
Dan? Is that you?
There is considerable historical material that demonstrates that societies that muzzle their creative instincts go to the rubbish bin of history faster then most. This is the danger that the U.S. faces. There is a common thread in Lessig's complaints about copyright laws, the DMCA, the SCO/Linux lawsuits, dumb patent laws and of course Microsoft's monopoly. By locking up IP you stifle the creative capabilities of the U.S. What happens if you do this? Well, the creative people either give up or move offshore to countries that do not have such restrictive rules. There they can disassemble, reverse engineer, tinker and fiddle to their hearts content without needing a bevy of lawyers. You can seee it coming now. Europe, Russia, China and maybe India are going to dominate the software industry as long as they avoid getting tied up in U.S. sponsored IP laws. The last two programs I bought are DVD backup software - from Switzerland and Germany. I don't think the software can even be legally sold in the U.S. thanks to the MPAA. "Freedom to innovate in the U.S.?" - I don't think so.
Just because I'm Paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get me.
...of The Simpsons to save an opera documentary.
What a sad ancedote that shows how the conglomerates undermine the creativity and quality of new content. It seems that if it's not a research article . . . you better claim you're making an editorial or a satire (two well protected examples of fair use) or you better have a team of lawyers on retainer.
One thing that amuses me about this whole Media-Corporations-trying-to-reel-in-technology fiasco is how much of it they create themselves. For instance, the mpeg and mpeg2 (DVD) formats were devised by these big companies. So was digital HDTV. It was these media powerhouses that forced the change from analog to digital.
Then, one day, they say "Oh crap!" all of our media is digital and can be easily copied! We need to control it much better. Then they try to implement all sorts of technology to stop sharing that, in many cases, degrades the quality back to the analog level... or worse!
Where do they find these people?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Is that you?
I thought we got rid of him and this meaningless drivel a couple years ago. I guess "the man" can't keep Katz down.
Yet another person stupider than a monkey. (For an explanation, see this post.)
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Ripoff artists? This entire post is ripping off an article from Forbes. What bothers me is the hypocrisy here.
Lessig's response can be read at his blog
More than that:
Are the 40+ million plus fileswapping pirates winning, or are the draconian laws crushing our creativity like a jackboot?
Apart from being inflammatory, this question sets up a false dichotomy, which presupposes that fileswappers help innovation. Yet this is far from proven, given that almost all of the files shared by fileswappers are the same pop culture materials produced by the conglomerates.
The reading of the review is not terribly critical, and is more like a rant.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What went through the alleged mind of the subliterate fuckwit Slashbot moderator who decided this was "Offtopic"? Half of it is quotes from the freaking review!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How foolish of Lessig, to think that a Supreme Court Justice might put an emphasis on the actual law and its logical implications.
Sheez. You'd think they were a freakin jury off the street. No wonder the law is such a mess these days.
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The real smart ones stay on and become graduate students and the smarter ones again become TFs
-----
You're ignoring the financial aspect. The "real smart ones" that don't have enough financial backing to shield them from the demands of modern life go on to get boring jobs.
Oh wait. If you're at an Ivy League school you're inundated with yuppie brats who don't need to worry about the financial backing that it takes to tread water in everyday life.
Okay. Your point about couch potatoes is probably 99.998% true in your environment.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Nobody reads the reviews.
Not even moderators.
The couch potatoes go on to lead boring everyday lives where they just tread water.
Or get elected to the US Senate, followed by eight years as Vice President of the US. Nowhere near as exciting as being a teacher, I'm sure, but it ain't exactly treading water, either.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Because you are an unabashed, egregious troll?
Though "cut and paste" was limited to scrapbooks, creators of all stripes somehow managed to flourish.
the things we are cutting and pasting from is no longer magazines and newspapers, why should that change anything?
movies and websites are now our "scrapbooks" and nothing should be different.
Some worry about the concentration of power in the radio world by companies like Clear Channel. But who listens to radio for music any longer?
I think the real change that Clear Channel has brought about is this:
Stores used to pay companies like muzak to pipe in a pacifying soundtrack for our shopping pleasure. But in the last ten years businesses have figured out that e.g. an actual Hall and Oates song is just as muzakky as an orchestral arrangement of a Hall and Oates song. (No offense to Mr. Hall, Mr. Oates or any other pop entertainers, but there it is.)
Using this insight, Clear Channel is providing a pacifying soundtrack to our stuck-at-work/stuck-in-traffic pleasure.
...doesn't mean that it's not helpful to have in the discussion too. Methinks you need to take a deep breath, and relax, eh?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
(1) EFF & Lessig argue that filesharing and related technology is so prevailing that the old copyright regime no longer works, and it really needs to "get with the times."
(2) They also argue that the copyright laws enacted in the last 20 years (but espceially in the last 8 years) significantly crush creativity.
Your problem is that you mushed these two concepts together. The filesharing people are not the victims the so-called "Lessig crowd" are talking about necessarily, but instead he's talking about artists and authors.
DON'T use pdf for book distribution! Agreed! The problem with PDF is that it is based on page defintion -- defining exactly how to layout the letters. PDF has no conception fo words, sentence, paragraphs, headings, footnotes, etc. -- it all just a bunch of filled polylines sprinkled on a fixed-size rectangular space. PDF is totally incompatible with small screens. Its great for preserving the look of a page, but terrible for preserving the meaning.
If you want a universally readable light-weight format for text document, why not use HTML. If anything HTML is more widely used and readable than PDF. HTML can do a better job of semantically meaningful markup (H1 tags vs. Demi Futura Bold 28 Point) and has nice internal and multidocument navigation functions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
In the short term, fileswappers are probably not having much effect on creativity one way or the other.
I would think that although much of the traffic is in top 40, there is some traffic that isn't (older stuff, rarer stuff, bootlegs maybe?). The swappers aren't really a force for creativity, but they are a force for wider distribution.
Well, hey, I didn't spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.
What better way to protest the whole copyright fiasco than using the Mickey Mouse whose copyright would have expired in all your web pages without a copyright notice?
oh sure, call your congressman... but that's no fun.
for those either too young to remember or foriegn and had more important things to care about than our inadequate politicians...
From Wikipedia - Dan Quayle:
"Throughout his time as Vice President, Quayle was widely ridiculed in the media and by some of the general public as a mental lightweight and was prone to verbal gaffes; as a result of this reputation, a great many apocryphal quotations are attributed to him. Most famous was his correcting a student's spelling of potato as "potatoe". When this story is related, it is usually not mentioned that Quayle was relying on a spelling bee card on which the word had been misspelled by the teacher although admittedly Quayle should have picked that up."
This last part about it already being misspelled is new to me.
turn it off. thx.
I've often thought the same thing, though along slightly different lines.
Someone -- more or less anonymous -- should come up with some kind of protest cartoon involving Mickey Mouse. Preferably, it shouldn't be too hard for moderately artistic people to draw. Then, everyone who cares should sport this cartoon on T-shirts, bumper stickers, and whatever. The design should not be sold; rather, people should reproduce it themselves, or reproduce it and share it with others.
Web pages are a little dicey -- at least at first. You can be tracked and sent cease-and-desist letters. But, shirts and bumper stickers and homemade greeting cards will escape censure.
What I'm really talking about is a grass roots movement. All the "Free Mitnick" graffiti has worn off by now -- it's time to replace it with "Free Mickey!"
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
You cannot defeat Death. You cannot defeat Information. Both are examples of Infinity.
As in, there is a lot of both around, it is a free substance.
People should be taught to -play- music, not buy it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Wow! No sooner did I post the above than I thought to check if a domain had been registered. It has -- and guess whose it is? ;-)
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
That is so not how it works. On Law and Order, they show up, are shown into a court room, asked a question, then the go home to be bribed/terrorized/killed.
What about some format based on SGML or TeX, for the master documents, and a set of converters (possible even operating on-fly, or online), to produce the format you desire - HTML, PDF, formatted plaintext with specified line length, anything?
Closed Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity?
Perhaps the word "Free" is used to trigger a knee-jerk buying reaction from zealots. Oh, I forgot, they don't pay for anything but the media costs. How much is a dead tree going for these days?
Plain text files?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
When I read Mr. Lessig's talks Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" comes to mind. Big business rewriting our laws to suit themselves. As I've said in the past - monopolies and big business are nothing more than kingdoms and everyone else are the serfs.
Kingdoms are monopolies. Do as the king says or else. It used to be the church which ran kingdoms from behind the throne. (Do it or be excommunicated.) Now it is big business. (Do it or we will change the laws to force you to do it.)
The secret is - laws are just so many words on pieces of paper. Some words are just but many are not. Some governments are just - but many are not. Why else do you think that third world countries continue to have so many problems? And why do we?
I tell you what! I just had an idea! Why don't we have a national black-out day? One where no one gets on the net for 24 hours! Nobody answers the phone. Nobody goes to work. Noone goes out to eat. Talk about scare big business. That would speak a lot louder than any speech given by anyone.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
The juries are in fact the fourth branch of government, the final check in a series of checks and balances. Suppose that Congress enacted an unfair law. Suppose that the President signed it. And suppose that the Judiciary upheld it. But suppose the majority of citizens still felt that it was unfair. This is where juries come in.
From the front page of the Fully Informed Jury Association:
That's right, citizens, as jurors you have the right and the responsibility to decide the merits of the law! This is the main reason we have juries in the first place, rather than just letting judges decide. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise, but keep it a secret. Lawyers are not even allowed to mention this fact during trial. Shhhh. Pass it on.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Finite and Infinite Games - A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility" by James P. Carse
;-)
ISBN 0-345-34184-8, Ballantine, $4.95
Excerpts here.
That second line should more properly end "It is free of substance." Tee hee.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...this question sets up a false dichotomy, which presupposes that fileswappers help innovation.
If they are able to help eliminate bad copyright law, they would indeed help innovation. If nothing else, they can show that creators don't have to give up their gov't given rights to distribute their work. We still need to remember that copyright is NOT a natural right. It's a service provided by gov't to promote...
What?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't want a system controlled by other people.
I don't want a system where I have to ask
permission to do anything.
I don't want a system that tries to micromanage
my behavior.
I don't want a system that assumes I am a
criminal.
I don't want a system that locks up when I do
something some eggheads don't like, even if it's
legal and covered under Fair Use laws.
I don't want a system with other people's
paws in it.
I trust myself, I don't trust anybody else with
MY system and MY work.
I think they are doing a pretty good job of keeping themselves down, being that a couch potato by definition isn't up doing a dammned thing. Unless the cable goes out.
Oper on the Nightstar
The real problem with Larry is that he does NOT want to get rid of copyrights. Sadly, he more than anyone else should understand the harm they cause, but instead of pushing to get rid of them - he is acting like a sellout - making like it is more important to get along with the 'copyright lords' then it is to have freedom in the information age.
Of course, the 'copyright lords' know this and are all to happy to expolit him to persue their own agenda. I hate to say this, but the more Larry waffles about, the more he desperately tries to get along - the more he just sets himself up to be strung along like a doggie on a leash and for the rest of us to get screwed.
What I mean, is that by avoiding a direct fight against copyrights today, and avoiding blatent civil disobedience, all he is doing is making the pain we're going to suffer tommorow worse. All that's going to happen, is that the 'copyright lords' will get more power and more abusive - and when it does come down to the ineviatable fight, more people will suffer.
The book is distributed under a license that allows you to convert it and redistribute it. For example, here is a version of the book Free Culture that is html (some foobared characters and missing footnotes). It's not perfect, but feel free to fix the problems and reply to this thread. So get off your lazy bum and convert the darn thing to your favorite format.
The story is repeated in Free Culture (page 107).
is that "bloggier" is cited as an improvement of the author's prose style.
Apart from being inflammatory,
:-)
Well, yes, it's kind of that.
this question sets up a false dichotomy,
I don't think so. Or at least I didn't mean to give that impression. These are just the two extremes. The fact that they're not really true opposites might mean that there's some hope for a middle ground. The RIAA et al, worried about losses, is painting any tool for swapping files as a tool for theft. The creators, who often use the same tools, are losing their ability to rip, mix and burn culture, something that gave us so much before.
Dan Quayle really did say a lot of stupid things. He was never meant to be in front of a camera. Years ago, I had a quicktime movie with a bunch of clips of him saying stupid stuff. I should try to find it. My favorite Quayle quote:
"The future will be better tomorrow!" WTF?
I found a partial version on Google. It seems to be corrupt at the end, but most of it is there. Search for quayle.mov
It's the same with a thousand examples that appear everywhere once
you begin to look. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists
without asking or paying for the privilege. ("Excuse me, Professor Einstein,
but may I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show
that you were wrong about quantum physics?") Acting companies perform
adaptations of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission
from anyone. (Does anyone believe Shakespeare would be
better spread within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare
rights clearinghouse that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal
to first?) And Hollywood goes through cycles with a certain kind of
movie: five asteroid films in the late 1990s; two volcano disaster films
in 1997.
You got proof of that?
The whole purpose of file swapping is to get stuff you can't find easily. Saving $20 and a drive accross town for content you only want 1/10th of is a secondary consideration. Getting that recording of a concert that will never in a million years be worth some RIAA lackey's time and promotion dollar is the primary use.
Push is dying fast. Given time, people's taste veers away from top 40 and back to what people naturally want rather than what some dork in Hollywood thinks will make the most money. Song, dance and arts existed long before mass production and people will continue to sing, dance and make artwork long after mass production is ruled by the few who have been able to make a quick buck. No money, no push, much less garbage, the world will be a better place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That alone is an incredibly brilliant statement.
Haven't had the pleasure yet.
How about if I bring my laptop? Is there WiFi?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
where it says: "printed on acid-free paper"
Acid-free indeed!
And is it just me or did other's think the file was corrupted thanks to the weird horizontal lines on the cover?
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Let's be clear: Your saying you refuse to use GPLed software becouse the GPL requires the releace of source code to the public..
That requirement only kicks in if you modify an existing GPL application and distribute that same application.
Fine.. so you want to modify other peoples programs and distribute them. Any software that dosen't permit this you won't use.
Now..
What operating system do you use?
What web browser do you use?
Becouse I'd like to know what web browser you can modify and distribute in binary only that runs under an operating system that also permits you to modify and distribute.
I don't actually exist.