Slashdot Mirror
VIA Pulls PadLockSL
yipyow writes "A few weeks ago VIA Technologies posted software based on Nullsoft's WASTE, as reported here a few days ago. VIA PadLockSL included both a Windows and Linux client and some special extensions to work with security hardware built into certain VIA products. It was released under the GPL so I managed to snag a copy of the source code right before VIA suddenly removed their page (Google cache). I have posted Linux compilation instructions and mirrored the source here. If VIA has decided not to pursue the project further, I think the F/OSS community should turn this project into something, it has potential to be a great tool."
LibreSociety.org Manifesto
Version 1.5.4
-- David M. Berry & Giles Moss
A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase its ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that will allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is a disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present.
-- In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative field of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership.
1. Profit has a new object of affection. Indeed, profiteers now shamelessly proclaim to be the true friend of creativity and the creative. Everywhere, they declare, "We support and protect concepts and ideas. Creativity is our business and it is safe in our hands. We are the true friends of creativity!"
2. Not content with declarations of friendship, the profiteers are eager to put into practice their fondness for creativity as well. "Actions speak louder than words" in capitalist culture. To display their affection, profiteers use legal mechanisms, namely intellectual property law, to watch over concepts and ideas and to protect them from those who seek to misuse them. While we are dead to the world at night, they are busily stockpiling intellectual property at an astonishing rate. More and more, the creative sphere is being brought under their exclusive control.
3. The fact that the profiteers are now so protective of creativity, and jealously seek to control concepts and ideas, ought to rouse suspicion. While they may claim to be the true friends of creativity, we know that friendship is not the same as dependency. It is very different to say, "I'm your true friend because I need you", than to say, "I need you because I'm your true friend". But how are we to settle this issue? How do we distinguish the true friend from the false one? In any relationship between friends we should ask, "Are both partners mutually benefiting?"
4. The profiteers' insatiable thirst for profit clearly benefits from their new friendship with the creative. Through their use of intellectual property law - in the form of copyright, patents and trademarks - concepts and ideas can be transformed into commodities that are controlled and owned. An artificial scarcity can then be established. But, unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas can be shared, copied and reused without diminishment. No matter how many people use and interpret a particular concept, the creators' use of that concept is not surrendered or reduced. But, much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products to be traded in the market place. Thus increasingly, intellectual property law is providing profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth. Indeed, immaterial labour (based on information, knowledge and communication) has now replaced industrial manufacture as the main producer of wealth in the age of technological capitalism. As such, the relationship codified in intellectual property law between creativity and profit can be seen as a core element of this wider structural transformation of the productive processes.
5. For many of us, the thought of intellectual property law still evokes romantic apparitions of a solitary artist or writer seeking to safeguard his or her creative work. It is therefore unsurprising that we tend to view intellectual property law as something that defends the rights and interests of the creative. Perhaps, in some removed and distant time, there was a modest respect in this specious notion. But this romantic vision of the creative is certainly ill at ease with capitalist 'reality'. Creators have become employees and each concept and idea they produce is appropriated and owned by the employer. Profiteers are using intellectual property law to amass the
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
That could turn into a C&D letter to the poster..
Its just a fancier GUI on WASTE.
Help, I've got a VIA up my ass!
how the fuck is this getting modded up when it's a link referring to how WASTE got taken down almost a fucking YEAR ago, and not VIA's release?
jesus h. christ's testicles, i wish i could post bullshit and get modded up for it.
this right here is why slashdot sucks balls.
"Any license that you may believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated."
Void? Perhaps. Revoked and Terminated? You can't revoke or terminate a license that isn't valid, and if it _is_ valid, you can't revoke or terminate the GPL anyway.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).