Don't be so sure. In the same way that you can't "outwit" the GPL because nothing else gives you the right to distribute the software, Microsoft is going to claim that you can't outwit this document because nothing else gives you the right to use their patented protocol.
I'm not really sure what point you're refuting, but what I said was:
Since the GPL makes it near impossible for an entity to simply produce and sell software as its core business,
I'm not convinced that licensing your own code under the GPL means that you can't make a profit selling the stuff.
Trolltech and Sleepycat both license big chunks of their codebase under the GPL (among other licenses.) In both cases, their core business is producing and selling software. I know Sleepycat is profitable, and I think Trolltech is.
And with Qt... only the X11 version is released under both the QPL and the GPL... the other stuff require purchase or it's crippleware. Nice try.
Indeed. I hadn't known that. I may have to start using MySQL AB or Redhat as my second example...
Pedantia: Sleepycat actually licenses their stuff under a home-rolled GPL-style license, not the GPL.
Are you a troll? Well, in any case, into the abyss.
From what I've seen of the anti-GPL rhetoric that has come out of MSFT, they are primarily against Richard Stallman's political agenda that comes with the GPL.
... a fine reason to dislike RMS personally, perhaps, but a foolish reason to dislike the GPL itself. An interesting footnote to this was the message in which Linus said he specifically wanted the kernel to be licensed at v2 and not "any later version," because, while he liked the GPL v2, he didn't trust the FSF not to go haywire with future releases.
They see nothing wrong with altruistically giving away code (which is what the BSD license and its ilk are about) but licenses like the GPL that attempt to devalue the cost of software are anathema to such people. The GPL drives the cost of software to 0 or at worst the cost of distribution media (just take a look at Cheapbytes for a living example of this). This means that any entity that produces GPL software most augment their income in some way be it through moonlighting, consulting, support, selling hardware, etc.
If everyone were the kind of perfectly efficient weenie tightwad this argument assumes, then yes. I see no evidence of this in the real world, though. People do buy GPLed software in boxes in stores (I'm one of them.) CD sales were booming while Napster was in its prime. And every day, free sample trays in supermarkets sit peacefully on their little tables, the shoppers around them miraculously resisting the urge to maximize their profit by gorging themselves instantly. And I've never heard of anyone buying anything from Cheapbytes.
This is not a mere side-effect but was an explicit goal of the GPL which can be garnered by reading Richard Stallman's early writings especially the gunk about software developers should work as waiters so that we can afford to give our software away.
Interesting. I believe this tall tale to be attributable to this:
So I looked for another alternative [to writing proprietary software], and there was an obvious one. I
could leave the software field, and do something else. Now I had no other
special noteworthy skills, but I'm sure I could have become a
waiter. [Laughter] Not at a fancy restaurant, they wouldn't hire
me, [Laughter] but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers,
they say to me "the people who hire programmers demand this, this and
this -- If I don't do those things, I'll starve." It's literally the word
they use. Well, you know, as a waiter, you're not going to
starve. [Laughter] So, really their [sic] in no danger. But -- and this is
important, you see -- because sometimes you can justify doing something
that hurts other people by saying "otherwise something worse is going to
happen to me." You know, if you were really going to starve, you'd be
justified in writing proprietary software. [Laughter] If somebody's
pointing a gun at you, then I would say it's forgivable. [Laughter] But,
I had found a way that I could survive without doing something unethical,
so that excuse was not available. So, I realized though that being a
waiter would be no fun for me, and it would be wasting my skills as an
operating system developer. It would avoid misusing my skills.
Developing proprietary software would be misusing my skills.
Encouraging other people to live in the world of proprietary software
would be misusing my skills. So it's better to waste them than
misuse them, but it's still not really good.
There are, of course, provisions in the GPL that protect your right to resell GPL software at any price.
Since the GPL makes it near impossible for an entity to simply produce and sell software as its core business,
I'm notconvinced that licensing your own code under the GPL means that you can't make a profit selling the stuff. Asserting that the mere existence of GPLed software makes it near impossible etc. etc. is basically complaining about the existence of competition ("Yer honor, they can't sell it that low! I'll go out of business!")
... it is unsurprising that the world's largest software company would be wary of doing anything that encouraged the spread of this meme. What is surprising is that most observers find it difficult to realize this and instead of applying Occam's Razor, resort to conspiracy theories about how MSFT wants to steal their code.
Hehe. That bit was very nicely done. That google search seems to indicate that some people take this kind of rhetoric seriously, though...
Likewise, make sure you teach them how to use the package management system properly. Make sure they know that downloading and compiling stuff is usually wrong; most Windows people I know will attempt to do this, because it best fits the pattern they know for installing "freeware" (Winamp, etc.), when they should have just typed "apt-get install xmms" or "urpmi xmms".
I understand that you are seeking comments regarding the CBDTPA introduced by Senator Hollings. Copyright infringement is a serious problem, but the measures proposed in this bill will be largely ineffective at preventing infringement. They will also cause serious harm to the American technology industry. The goal of reducing infringement of music and movies would be better served by proper enforcement of existing laws than by new legislation, and so I urge you not to support the CBDTPA.
For decades now, copying software has been as easy as copying movies and music is today; long before it was feasible to store a full-length film on a desktop computer, the software industry was trying to find a solution to the problem. Copy protection, both in software and hardware, was tried. It failed. Consumers rejected its inconvenience, and infringers found ways around it with surprising ease. Accepting the judgement of the marketplace, software manufacturers implemented convenient (but weak) copy protection and pursued the most flagrant sources of illegal software in court. Some infringement still takes place, of course, but the software industry thrives nonetheless.
The content industries have tried to implement copy protection. Their SDMI initiative was shown to be ineffective, and their new copy-protected CDs won't play in some players, yet will copy perfectly in others. The CBDTPA demands, in other words, what technology has thus far failed to invent. If history is any guide, the system that the CBDTPA eventually mandates will be expensive, cumbersome, and wholly ineffective at preventing infringement.
The damage resulting from this bill will be severe. Since any "copyrighted work in digital form" is by definition just a stream of information, any device capable of copying or accessing digital information is a "digital media device" by section 9(3); for example, because a word processor is capable of displaying copyrighted text, a word processor is a digital media device. Essentially, any hardware that communicates in digital form, and all software that can load or save data, will be forced to include copy protection technology. No other area of law works like this. We don't mandate installing 65 mph governors in all motor vehicles, or ban crowbars and firearms, since such a ban would needlessly infringe the rights of law-abiding citizens. I urge you to form our copyright laws likewise.
Now, catching Code Red could potentially cost someone lots of bandwith money. Those stupid pop-under downloads might install a P2P program without your knowledge or consent. Online media files are often much larger than you expect.
Okay, so each byte transmitted costs some amount of money (in the aggregate, at least). Given that someone is going to have to pay that bill, would you rather it be:
Every internet user?
The user whose machine is loaded down with spyware/viruses/P2P crap, thus providing an actual incentive for good netizenship?
The spyware provider/spammer, after a hefty court battle in which actual dollar amounts of damages can be easily estimated?
I like 2 and 3. I don't like 1, but that's all that's realistically going to happen under today's pricing model... I'm still getting hammered with Code Red and Nimda, and I think the people whose machines have been chewing up all of our bandwidth for the last several months should have to pay for their carelessness.
Uhh... the breakup of AT&T was an antitrust action, which is pretty much the opposite of deregulation. If you're talking about something else, would you mind explaining in more detail (or posting a link)?
Find yourself an expert ISP - someone like Speakeasy
I'd like to put my plug in here for Penn Telecom (in Pittsburgh) -- I don't work for them, but we've got their DSL service here and it's great. When we switched over from Verizon I asked the signup lady all sorts of paranoid questions ("What upstream speed will I get?" "512k." "Oh, the 512k is both ways?" "Yes, of course.") -- she actually laughed when I asked about blocked ports ("Why would we do that?"). The one outage we've had since late last year was at 3am or so, but I got a human on the line instantly. He explained that they were changing their routing and that it should be fixed soon, and it was, within the hour. I now recommend them to anyone who asks. Static IP is standard, no PPPoE, and they've allocated us a/27 in case we need more IPs (though I think they charge a fee for each one.) All-around phenomenal service.
Don't bogged them down in the details of programming
Agreed. In fact, I'd stay entirely away from the free software/open source angle, except as a possible footnote, just because it's wierd and people don't value it (don't get me wrong, I love the stuff, but even most tech-savvy people I know still don't really understand that it matters.) My bullet points:
It won't work. You can copy software as easily as "content;" if a hardware solution like this were correct, the tech industry itself would be doing it by now. We're not morons. The {arrog,ignor}ance of the "content" industries, waddling their fetid selves over into our hallowed halls and announcing, "HEY I JUST DISCOVERED THERES THIS REALLY BAD THING I CALL IT PIRACY BUT THATS OKAY ILL MAKE THE LAWS AND YOU GUYS SPEND ALL THE MONEY AND DO ALL THE WORK WE CAN FIX IT I KNOW HOW" is really mind-blowing.
The freedom. Point out stuff like www.thefreeworld.net and Debian non-US, and why it is reasonable and necessary (DeCSS etc.). The attempted prosecution of Johansen, Felten, and Sklyarov for publishing useful information not only makes us look like assholes, it scares people. Now think about the phrase, "Shit, I'm going to the US. I guess I have to leave my laptop behind."
This leads into... The money. First off, the aforementioned "anyone from overseas with a laptop/palm pilot/complex cell phone becomes some sort of multiple copyright felon" effect will push business conferences, corporate headquarters, R&D labs, and lots else overseas, gutting much more than just the tech industry. Our executives will attempt to teleconference with their counterparts overseas, only to be met with Windows TNG error 0x34DF0AD: Could not authenticate remote DRM; denying video card access. Our OEMs will be saddled with extra costs and putrid sales, as everyone digs their old Pentium-600s out of the garage because "all I really do is mp3s and email." TCP/IP will become restricted technology (checking law... yep, routers are a "digital media device" by my reading of sect. 9 (3)), and the internet will route around the US. You wanna make a videoconferencing program? Better hike your ass down to talk to some Soviet-style beauracracy to get it "DRM approved." Hope you don't need access to the standard you'll need to implement; that's a patented trade secret trademarked by WeReallyDontCareWeSellMovies, incorporated. And don't forget the legions of innocent kids who are going to be going to our Danteesque prisons because they were caught with an imported network card, pushing rapists and murderers back onto the streets (see also "war on drugs.")
Jesus Christ this is such a fucking bad idea. We tried "Interactive TV" in however many different forms, and it always failed (because people don't want the lukewarm dry-hump you soulless marketing pukes think is "entertainment"), and now we're going to gut the tech industry and our freedom so that we can have interactive TV.
Wow. Holy good gravy. Okay, I have to admit: I have not yet written my congresspeople. I've been putting it off. I didn't realize how bad this was; compared to the unimaginable damage this is going to do to this country, the trouble it'll cause for free software is a drop in the bucket. I'm gonna calm down a little bit, and then I'm gonna write a letter that explains this all so my representatives can understand it, and then I'm gonna copy it out by hand (being careful to write neatly) and send it to them, today. And then I'm gonna start writing to the newspapers. (I'll post my letters as replies to this comment, just so's you'll know I'm not bullshitting.) Please, please do the same. Tell your friends and your parents and the people you work with; adjust your story optimistically so that they'll believe you. No one will believe you if you tell the truth.
On a related note, if you happen to come across an 800 number for this guy (800-333-xxxx) while Googling, please note that it's been changed since then -- it now points (apparently) to some innocent woman's voice mail, and calling it as a way of harassing Novak isn't productive. My bad.
Digging through Google's cache of petswarehouse.com seems to indicate that the only number this guy has now is a toll number. Ain't that a shame.
Back in early November 2001, I started following a discussion between two factions of the Linux kernel community... There were two main factions, the preemption patch faction and the low-latency patch faction. Both groups were very passionate (i.e. vocal) about the superiority of their solution.
Er... while some misinformed folks have in fact been arguing over "which approach is better," both Robert Love (preemption) and Andrew Morton (low latency), the authors of the patches, have agreed since before November that a hybrid approach is probably correct, and it seems to me (though I don't speak for them) that they're faintly embarassed at the number of True Believers who have stepped up to champion one or the other's side in this nondeathmatch. They're attacking different sections of the same problem.
They can't stop you sharing MP3s with people you know, but (Hollings's lies about technical feasibility notwithstanding) there's nothing they'll ever be able to do to stop that. The problem they have a right to work on solving is that of huge networks of content with no effective means of controlling illegal distribution. Copyright law currently isn't structured to punish small-scale copyright offenders; it's designed for large CD pressing outfits and the like, whereas a traffic citation-style $50 fine would be more appropriate for someone who's posting N'Sync songs to an FTP site somewhere. All they would have to do is look around on IRC/FastTrack/etc. for their songs, and fire off some identifying information (IP, time of day, screen name) to the offender's ISP & local police dept. every time they found one. The cops would love it (extra revenue for the city; see also small-town speed traps), and it seems to me that the implementing law would be fairly minor. My guess is that most Napster-style file sharing would dry up pretty quickly, leaving the RIAA where it claims it wants to be.
Nobody likes this solution, though; it's similar to the situation with software copying in that both the producers and the infringers prefer that there be easily-circumvented "solutions" in place (that stop casual copying while allowing enough copying to prevent competing products from getting a foothold.) The studios are probably also terrified that trying to push something this straightforward would cause the masses to really _look_ at the bargain they're getting from copyright, and decide they don't really give a shit about the record industry's profit margin.
I like the concept of free software and indy music, though, and I'd prefer that it be difficult to infringe the copyrights of people who claim to want their content to be stiflingly controlled. Take them at their word, and let their content die from lack of attention. Conversely, I went cold turkey off file-sharing software and deleted all my illegal MP3s a few months back, and I found myself buying a handful (just a handful) of CDs to replace some of my favorite songs. If I'm gonna get proprietary content, though, I'd rather suffer for it, so that I can keep in mind why free content is so important.
(In all actuality, of course, what they REALLY need to do is simply change their cost structure and product to a point where the benefits of purchasing a legitimate copy outweight the benefits of a pirated copy.)
Agreed. They're not going to do it themselves, though, because they make more money this way; if indy music really gets a foothold, of course, then they can "discover" the internet, charge a tenth of what they do now, and crow about how they've embraced the internet revolution. They'll lose some revenue (which is why they're trying to buy the SSSCA), but they'll still be rich, rich as Nazis. Sickening, ain't it?
You know what would cut digital copying down to an acceptable level, where it genuinely wouldn't cut into the studio's profits? If people got in trouble for it.
All the weeping and wailing the industry does about "millions of illegal copies" and "no way to prevent it" flies in the face of the basic fact that this stuff is de facto legal, since the copyright holders have shown no interest in bringing charges against any of those millions of people who are breaking the law on a daily basis. Nowhere else does the law work like this. "All across the country, people are driving too fast, because not a single person has ever gotten a ticket. Ever. We must need special devices in all the cars that prevent them from exceeding the speed limit." When you write your congressfolk, remember to point out that thus far, the industry has shown no interest in even trying to use the laws already on the books to protect their copyrighted materials, and that this is an attempt to push the cost of enforcement off onto another industry, where it will be more expensive, less effective, and more of a pain in the ass for those all-important "consumers." Other industries do this right -- the credit card companies already eat an estimated billion dollars a year in losses from fraud (in the US); they pursue the more flagrant cases, do what they can to make it difficult for fraud to occur, and do fairly well for themselves overall. What they don't do is go whining to congress about how possession of card readers should be made a felony.
That means, hopefully, that the system is working: People get spam, people forward spam to abuse@sourcedomain, admin shuts down the spammer with extreme prejudice, spammer doesn't make any money.
I love spam. I really do. I love the malicious thrill I get from digging through the headers to find the magic Received-by: line that will be the target of my ire. I love the sudden urgency it brings to my day ("Gotta get this bastard before he makes a sale..."). More than anything I love to get that email back from the admin desk saying, "This account has been terminated. If you have any further comments blah blah blah..." When that happens, I do a little dance, because it means some pig bastard just lost money because of me. Someday, I'm sure I'll get bored and cynical and just starting using MAPS, but I don't think it'll be soon.
For some time, and continuing in 0.9.8, if you are brave enough to get that far, once you complete the install your browser will crash, and you will still have no Java support when you restart it.
You have to enable Java support by dropping:
user_pref("plugin.do_JRE_Plugin_Scan", true);
into user.js in the appropriate directory (c:\windows\application data\mozilla\profiles\default\${something_stupid}\ ) on Win2k, ~/.mozilla/default/${something_stupid} on Linux. Why is this not the default? Beats me. This helps, too:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true)
user_pref("browser.target_new_blocked", true)
Right now the entertainment industry is trying hard to reduce the power of fair-use exceptions to copyright law, and thereby expand their own power.
Rant mode on.
Right, and it's quite convenient for them to be able to point to the large number of technologies developed specifically to allow greedy technophiles to cheat the artists out of even the pittance they receive from the sale of their albums.
Crowing about "fair use" in an article devoted to figuring out an even more succesful scheme for copyright infringement is insulting to people who really care about fair use. It's openly dishonest -- "Well, fair use, nyah nyah nyah." Garbage like this tells the record mafia -- and the government -- that we're a bunch of irresponsible children who can't be trusted to use technology legally. It tells them that the only way to ensure that copyright (without which I'd be out of a job, and the GPL would be useless) can continue to be enforceable at all is with digital rights management mandatory in all hardware for which it is meaningful.
"DRM will never work blah blah Turing machine blah blah compilers would be protected technology blah freenet blah." Infeasibility doesn't stop the War on Drugs from ruining thousands of lives a year. It doesn't stop China's murderous war on Falun Gong, either. Laws are not subject to regression testing or quality control -- they're just passed, and enforced. Usually with a ruthlessness that is proportional to their futility.
Don't like the record mafia? Quit playing into their hands. Look here. Plenty of free-as-in-speech mp3s for your legal downloading pleasure. Most of them are shitty; the same problem exists, I hear, on Sourceforge... I found Sparky and the Wipers and Blues Motel to be fairly good, but that's just me. Hell, even mp3.com has some stuff that's not half bad. But advocating the sane-ification of copyright law by illegally copying music is about like supporting free software by pirating Windows.
"I like Jimmy Buffett, anyone got any Jimmy Buffett? I'll trade it for some Wayne Newton."
Fair use. Fantastic. There are artists out there who fucking agree with your ideas about copyright, Jamie -- and you're not listening to them, because you're busy advertising for the ones that don't.
It's a shame there's not a technology-based solution that automatically kicks in for obscenely popular sites. Some sort of popular site caching mechanism or a P2P system might do the trick (and provide a more legitimate use for P2P technologies). Such a system would also help out in non-emergency situations, such as when a given novelty site gets its 15 minutes of Internet fame.
There is -- it's called a caching proxy. You can set one up at your site, speed up local access, and help reduce load on the internet as a whole.
Re:I've been seeing .biz for a long, long time!
on
.biz Open For Biz
·
· Score: 2
You should also check out OpenNIC if you're interested in giving ICANN the finger... they're trying to stitch together the (often colliding) namespaces proposed by various alternative-root organizations into a single, sane, democratically-governed namespace.
I haven't heard anything from them in a while, though.
It also adds to the problem of running out of domains, since the number of domains is limited (until people get past.com,.org, etc...).
Just a friendly reminder: The number of domains is not limited by any factors except ICANN's greed and thirst for scarcity. Head over to OpenNIC if you'd like to go back to democracy.
I am a student. As such I have NO MONNEY! These kinds of ads will directly bennifit me. Tell me what student is going to complain about $100 bucks being knocked off of his/her tuition?
I am a journalist. As such I have NO BUDGET. These kinds of investments will directly benefit me.
It's not like our sponsors would ever pull ads from a program they disagreed with, or the execs would ever be craven enough to change our programming to avoid pissing off those sponsors.
TANSTAAFL. Someone who gives you money buys power over you, even if no "equity" is changing hands.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be so sure. In the same way that you can't "outwit" the GPL because nothing else gives you the right to distribute the software, Microsoft is going to claim that you can't outwit this document because nothing else gives you the right to use their patented protocol.
Pedantia: Sleepycat actually licenses their stuff under a home-rolled GPL-style license, not the GPL.
Interesting. I believe this tall tale to be attributable to this: There are, of course, provisions in the GPL that protect your right to resell GPL software at any price.
I'm not convinced that licensing your own code under the GPL means that you can't make a profit selling the stuff. Asserting that the mere existence of GPLed software makes it near impossible etc. etc. is basically complaining about the existence of competition ("Yer honor, they can't sell it that low! I'll go out of business!") Hehe. That bit was very nicely done. That google search seems to indicate that some people take this kind of rhetoric seriously, though...
Likewise, make sure you teach them how to use the package management system properly. Make sure they know that downloading and compiling stuff is usually wrong; most Windows people I know will attempt to do this, because it best fits the pattern they know for installing "freeware" (Winamp, etc.), when they should have just typed "apt-get install xmms" or "urpmi xmms".
Ah yes, The Drawing of the Line. "This 'day' you speak of, at what second does it turn into 'night' exactly?"
Okay, so I'm behind. Here's my letter:
I understand that you are seeking comments regarding the CBDTPA
introduced by Senator Hollings. Copyright infringement is a serious
problem, but the measures proposed in this bill will be largely
ineffective at preventing infringement. They will also cause serious
harm to the American technology industry. The goal of reducing
infringement of music and movies would be better served by proper
enforcement of existing laws than by new legislation, and so I urge
you not to support the CBDTPA.
For decades now, copying software has been as easy as copying movies
and music is today; long before it was feasible to store a full-length
film on a desktop computer, the software industry was trying to find a
solution to the problem. Copy protection, both in software and
hardware, was tried. It failed. Consumers rejected its inconvenience,
and infringers found ways around it with surprising ease. Accepting
the judgement of the marketplace, software manufacturers implemented
convenient (but weak) copy protection and pursued the most flagrant
sources of illegal software in court. Some infringement still takes
place, of course, but the software industry thrives nonetheless.
The content industries have tried to implement copy protection.
Their SDMI initiative was shown to be ineffective, and their new
copy-protected CDs won't play in some players, yet will copy perfectly
in others. The CBDTPA demands, in other words, what technology has
thus far failed to invent. If history is any guide, the system that
the CBDTPA eventually mandates will be expensive, cumbersome, and
wholly ineffective at preventing infringement.
The damage resulting from this bill will be severe. Since any
"copyrighted work in digital form" is by definition just a stream of
information, any device capable of copying or accessing digital
information is a "digital media device" by section 9(3); for example,
because a word processor is capable of displaying copyrighted text, a
word processor is a digital media device. Essentially, any hardware
that communicates in digital form, and all software that can load or
save data, will be forced to include copy protection technology. No
other area of law works like this. We don't mandate installing 65 mph
governors in all motor vehicles, or ban crowbars and firearms, since
such a ban would needlessly infringe the rights of law-abiding
citizens. I urge you to form our copyright laws likewise.
Thank you for your time and attention.
- Every internet user?
- The user whose machine is loaded down with spyware/viruses/P2P crap, thus providing an actual incentive for good netizenship?
- The spyware provider/spammer, after a hefty court battle in which actual dollar amounts of damages can be easily estimated?
I like 2 and 3. I don't like 1, but that's all that's realistically going to happen under today's pricing model... I'm still getting hammered with Code Red and Nimda, and I think the people whose machines have been chewing up all of our bandwidth for the last several months should have to pay for their carelessness.Uhh... the breakup of AT&T was an antitrust action, which is pretty much the opposite of deregulation. If you're talking about something else, would you mind explaining in more detail (or posting a link)?
/me rubs my hands together in glee. Good spot.
Wow. Holy good gravy. Okay, I have to admit: I have not yet written my congresspeople. I've been putting it off. I didn't realize how bad this was; compared to the unimaginable damage this is going to do to this country, the trouble it'll cause for free software is a drop in the bucket. I'm gonna calm down a little bit, and then I'm gonna write a letter that explains this all so my representatives can understand it, and then I'm gonna copy it out by hand (being careful to write neatly) and send it to them, today. And then I'm gonna start writing to the newspapers. (I'll post my letters as replies to this comment, just so's you'll know I'm not bullshitting.) Please, please do the same. Tell your friends and your parents and the people you work with; adjust your story optimistically so that they'll believe you. No one will believe you if you tell the truth.
On a related note, if you happen to come across an 800 number for this guy (800-333-xxxx) while Googling, please note that it's been changed since then -- it now points (apparently) to some innocent woman's voice mail, and calling it as a way of harassing Novak isn't productive. My bad.
Digging through Google's cache of petswarehouse.com seems to indicate that the only number this guy has now is a toll number. Ain't that a shame.
Er... while some misinformed folks have in fact been arguing over "which approach is better," both Robert Love (preemption) and Andrew Morton (low latency), the authors of the patches, have agreed since before November that a hybrid approach is probably correct, and it seems to me (though I don't speak for them) that they're faintly embarassed at the number of True Believers who have stepped up to champion one or the other's side in this nondeathmatch. They're attacking different sections of the same problem.
Nobody likes this solution, though; it's similar to the situation with software copying in that both the producers and the infringers prefer that there be easily-circumvented "solutions" in place (that stop casual copying while allowing enough copying to prevent competing products from getting a foothold.) The studios are probably also terrified that trying to push something this straightforward would cause the masses to really _look_ at the bargain they're getting from copyright, and decide they don't really give a shit about the record industry's profit margin.
I like the concept of free software and indy music, though, and I'd prefer that it be difficult to infringe the copyrights of people who claim to want their content to be stiflingly controlled. Take them at their word, and let their content die from lack of attention. Conversely, I went cold turkey off file-sharing software and deleted all my illegal MP3s a few months back, and I found myself buying a handful (just a handful) of CDs to replace some of my favorite songs. If I'm gonna get proprietary content, though, I'd rather suffer for it, so that I can keep in mind why free content is so important.
Agreed. They're not going to do it themselves, though, because they make more money this way; if indy music really gets a foothold, of course, then they can "discover" the internet, charge a tenth of what they do now, and crow about how they've embraced the internet revolution. They'll lose some revenue (which is why they're trying to buy the SSSCA), but they'll still be rich, rich as Nazis. Sickening, ain't it?
You know what would cut digital copying down to an acceptable level, where it genuinely wouldn't cut into the studio's profits? If people got in trouble for it.
All the weeping and wailing the industry does about "millions of illegal copies" and "no way to prevent it" flies in the face of the basic fact that this stuff is de facto legal, since the copyright holders have shown no interest in bringing charges against any of those millions of people who are breaking the law on a daily basis. Nowhere else does the law work like this. "All across the country, people are driving too fast, because not a single person has ever gotten a ticket. Ever. We must need special devices in all the cars that prevent them from exceeding the speed limit." When you write your congressfolk, remember to point out that thus far, the industry has shown no interest in even trying to use the laws already on the books to protect their copyrighted materials, and that this is an attempt to push the cost of enforcement off onto another industry, where it will be more expensive, less effective, and more of a pain in the ass for those all-important "consumers." Other industries do this right -- the credit card companies already eat an estimated billion dollars a year in losses from fraud (in the US); they pursue the more flagrant cases, do what they can to make it difficult for fraud to occur, and do fairly well for themselves overall. What they don't do is go whining to congress about how possession of card readers should be made a felony.
Vote the [wo]man, not the party.
That means, hopefully, that the system is working: People get spam, people forward spam to abuse@sourcedomain, admin shuts down the spammer with extreme prejudice, spammer doesn't make any money.
I love spam. I really do. I love the malicious thrill I get from digging through the headers to find the magic Received-by: line that will be the target of my ire. I love the sudden urgency it brings to my day ("Gotta get this bastard before he makes a sale..."). More than anything I love to get that email back from the admin desk saying, "This account has been terminated. If you have any further comments blah blah blah..." When that happens, I do a little dance, because it means some pig bastard just lost money because of me. Someday, I'm sure I'll get bored and cynical and just starting using MAPS, but I don't think it'll be soon.
Hm. This may be why easy installation is not the default :-). Out of curiosity, what OS/Moz version/JRE combinations have given you problems?
May I make a few small suggestions?
You have to enable Java support by dropping:
user_pref("plugin.do_JRE_Plugin_Scan", true);
into user.js in the appropriate directory (c:\windows\application data\mozilla\profiles\default\${something_stupid}
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true)
user_pref("browser.target_new_blocked", true)
... which disables popups.
Rant mode on.
Right, and it's quite convenient for them to be able to point to the large number of technologies developed specifically to allow greedy technophiles to cheat the artists out of even the pittance they receive from the sale of their albums.
Crowing about "fair use" in an article devoted to figuring out an even more succesful scheme for copyright infringement is insulting to people who really care about fair use. It's openly dishonest -- "Well, fair use, nyah nyah nyah." Garbage like this tells the record mafia -- and the government -- that we're a bunch of irresponsible children who can't be trusted to use technology legally. It tells them that the only way to ensure that copyright (without which I'd be out of a job, and the GPL would be useless) can continue to be enforceable at all is with digital rights management mandatory in all hardware for which it is meaningful.
"DRM will never work blah blah Turing machine blah blah compilers would be protected technology blah freenet blah." Infeasibility doesn't stop the War on Drugs from ruining thousands of lives a year. It doesn't stop China's murderous war on Falun Gong, either. Laws are not subject to regression testing or quality control -- they're just passed, and enforced. Usually with a ruthlessness that is proportional to their futility.
Don't like the record mafia? Quit playing into their hands. Look here. Plenty of free-as-in-speech mp3s for your legal downloading pleasure. Most of them are shitty; the same problem exists, I hear, on Sourceforge... I found Sparky and the Wipers and Blues Motel to be fairly good, but that's just me. Hell, even mp3.com has some stuff that's not half bad. But advocating the sane-ification of copyright law by illegally copying music is about like supporting free software by pirating Windows.
Fair use. Fantastic. There are artists out there who fucking agree with your ideas about copyright, Jamie -- and you're not listening to them, because you're busy advertising for the ones that don't.
There is -- it's called a caching proxy. You can set one up at your site, speed up local access, and help reduce load on the internet as a whole.
You should also check out OpenNIC if you're interested in giving ICANN the finger... they're trying to stitch together the (often colliding) namespaces proposed by various alternative-root organizations into a single, sane, democratically-governed namespace. I haven't heard anything from them in a while, though.
Just a friendly reminder: The number of domains is not limited by any factors except ICANN's greed and thirst for scarcity. Head over to OpenNIC if you'd like to go back to democracy.
I am a journalist. As such I have NO BUDGET. These kinds of investments will directly benefit me.
It's not like our sponsors would ever pull ads from a program they disagreed with, or the execs would ever be craven enough to change our programming to avoid pissing off those sponsors.
TANSTAAFL. Someone who gives you money buys power over you, even if no "equity" is changing hands.