The FSF seems pretty clear that there's no problem with people selling free software or profitting from it in any way that doesn't restrict the freedom of others. Quite a lot of people use the code commercially. IBM has teams of developers improving it because they don't make their money on software.
Speaking for myself - I just want my code to be used. If I let people use it for free, there's still a decent chance that they'll offer any improvements back to the community. The free software concept is now sufficiently well understood that this tends to happen anyway.
I always felt this comment was a little rich coming from a series where spaceships travel using a magical warp drive, have inertial dampers that prevent acceleration and a device that allows them to teleport from one place to another.
The whole premise is based on changing the laws of physics.
This is no use to me. What if I want a takeaway burger? Sure, this chair can take me to my car, then I can drive the the drive-thru, pick it up, and drive back, but that means I have to get my ass out of a chair not one, but twice!
I'm not interested in any chair that can't physically place me behind the wheel of my car.
Look, he doesn't trust Penny Arcade. Since they stad for everything he's against, why should he?
Penny Arcade wanted to control all publicity. They wanted everything on their terms. They did not allow Thompson any flexibility. Didn't they consider that Jack might have wanted something out of it as well?
Would it really have killed Pennny Arcade to have announced this debate in advance? Is their security so hopeless that they can't protect a fairly anonymous guy from a crowd of middle class hobbyists? Why not let Jack accept the alleged security risk? While they may have lost out on the big splash of making it a big surprise, they would have still had an excellent item. It seems like a better compromise than what they ended up with.
They most likely knew that all Apple would have to do was publish their green policy and they could claim they were responsible, thus getting more donations and membership. Greenpeace's main purpose these days is to propogate the existence of greenpeace. Their campaign had absolutely no effect on any comany's envinronment policy.
I can find plenty wrong with a company that places pressure on corporations to do what they know they already planned to do just to score sonme political points.
Greenpeace stopped being about the environment years ago.
Well, I guess it is pretty much an undeniable truth. Most people who pirate stuff could afford a lot of the stuff they pirate. Nobody can claim to need DVDs or CDs. Some people might justify a need for computer software but most pirated software has a free alternative.
But it's a rebuttal to a non-argument. Everybody knows that piracy is a middle class activity.
1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
Yes. We know. We can tell because there are ads there.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
This is more of an inconvenient mistruth. i.e. it's technically true but highly misleading. AllOfmp3 had the money availalbe to rights holders. The rights holders refused. "Facing criminal proceedings" is very weaselly. It doesn't mean they're guilty.
Reputable copyright maintaining companies such as Microsoft and Sony have also faced criminal proceedings. MS were found guilty. Sony settled over the rootkit fiasco, I believe.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
This has nothing to do with file swapping. There is considerably less sympathy for commercial pirates.
4. Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
And we don't care that we don't care.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
No it fucking doesn't! That's a filthy lie and they know it. The finances don;t work like that. It's not about money recieved it's about return on investment expected.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Ehhmmm... They provide a network connection. Are we ghoing to charge the labels with selling CDs to pirates?
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth-it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
The FSF is generally considered part of the "anti-copyright movement". Free software creates a lot of jobs.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
No. It's caused by a general ambivalence about the rights of considerably wealthier foreigners.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
More weasel words. What does "wrong" mean in this context? Most people know it's illegal. They form their own opinions on the ethics of it. Some people evidently consider it a greater "wrong" to spend money on stuff they don't have to.
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
In most of Europe, far left means pretty much a pure socialist state. Michael Moore is considered a slightly left leaning liberal, and most Democrats are considered pretty right wing.
Microsoft is going to be bringing out their own equivalent fairly soon. This will be up to date and use all the features of a modern Vista system rather than be a passable port of an Apple application.
No. Patent it and licence it non-exclusively for a fixed fair amount per unit for the lifetime of the patent.
If you're bankrupted, the licencees will retain their rights, the asset still has value so your creditors will get some of their investment back, and you have a fair stab at making money. Meanwhile, other companies invest in improving and cheapening your device.
Hydrogen fuel cells are never going to become common until the infrastructure is in place, and the infrastructure isn't going to be in place until hydrogen fuel cell cars are common.
That and hydrogen fuel is a huge environemental con anyway. We get hydrogen from fossil fuels. Not water. It's cheaper and using nuclear or renewable electricity to separate the hydrogen from water would be false carbon economy. You might as well use that electricity to replace a coal or oil power station. Our best bet is to get as much energy as possible from the fuel.
Re:The GPL: Intellectual Theft
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
You have every right to write a DRM scheme using GPL3 code. It's just that virtually any GPL DRM scheme requires you to also allow people to circumvent it.
I must say, the general knowledge about weaponry in the comments makes this article fascinating. I hope to see Russia assert IP rights over more of their military hardware.
Well, the simple task of muder by polonium would, as you say, not be patentable, but invention is a continuous process mainly based on improvements to existing processes and devices, and the patent system recognises this. Hence, if you found an improved technique for murdering someone with polonium, then you would be able to patent this.
Naturally this would give you no protection against people murdering you by a less efficient method on poisoning with polonium.
The DMCA only prevents the removal of DRM without permission. The GPL v2 grants that permission in that it grants unlimitted permission to modify the code.
While it is certainly copying, it isn't the same. They are only copying a portion of the song. Still probably not legal, but probably closer to copying the audio portion of a DVD only. Secondly, I gather that there is a certain amount of creative work in transcribing. Even if the music was in the public domain, the transcribers would be able to claim copyright on their work and prevent a direct copy from being made of those.
But the main problem is that even if they do have the legal right to prevent this, they have no justification for it. Nobody makes money from guitar tabs. Music writers don't make their money from selling sheet music. They make it from royalties. Giving away the tabs will increase performances and increase the royalties.
Now, I will point out that a lot of this is based on assumption. If other Slashdotters know better please tell me.
It says as much in the article. GPL 3 doesn't prevent the use of DRM. It just prevents you from using legal means to prevent people from removing the DRM, which is something that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in anyway. The wording in GPL2 may well have been a perfectly valid defence in case of a DMCA complaint. GPL3 just makes it more explicit.
Anarchy is the only free system, but most freedom lovers aren't all that keen on that as a concept. The GPL is free in most respects except that you are not free to make in non-free. Some people see this as a price worth paying.
It does the job, is simple to implement, and is supported on a lot of software. The myriad drawbacks are really quite minor compared with these benefits.
Slashdot Mirror
The FSF seems pretty clear that there's no problem with people selling free software or profitting from it in any way that doesn't restrict the freedom of others. Quite a lot of people use the code commercially. IBM has teams of developers improving it because they don't make their money on software.
Speaking for myself - I just want my code to be used. If I let people use it for free, there's still a decent chance that they'll offer any improvements back to the community. The free software concept is now sufficiently well understood that this tends to happen anyway.
I always felt this comment was a little rich coming from a series where spaceships travel using a magical warp drive, have inertial dampers that prevent acceleration and a device that allows them to teleport from one place to another.
The whole premise is based on changing the laws of physics.
This is no use to me. What if I want a takeaway burger? Sure, this chair can take me to my car, then I can drive the the drive-thru, pick it up, and drive back, but that means I have to get my ass out of a chair not one, but twice!
I'm not interested in any chair that can't physically place me behind the wheel of my car.
Look, he doesn't trust Penny Arcade. Since they stad for everything he's against, why should he?
Penny Arcade wanted to control all publicity. They wanted everything on their terms. They did not allow Thompson any flexibility. Didn't they consider that Jack might have wanted something out of it as well?
Would it really have killed Pennny Arcade to have announced this debate in advance? Is their security so hopeless that they can't protect a fairly anonymous guy from a crowd of middle class hobbyists? Why not let Jack accept the alleged security risk? While they may have lost out on the big splash of making it a big surprise, they would have still had an excellent item. It seems like a better compromise than what they ended up with.
Greenpeace jsut wanted an easy win.
They most likely knew that all Apple would have to do was publish their green policy and they could claim they were responsible, thus getting more donations and membership. Greenpeace's main purpose these days is to propogate the existence of greenpeace. Their campaign had absolutely no effect on any comany's envinronment policy.
I can find plenty wrong with a company that places pressure on corporations to do what they know they already planned to do just to score sonme political points.
Greenpeace stopped being about the environment years ago.
Well, I guess it is pretty much an undeniable truth. Most people who pirate stuff could afford a lot of the stuff they pirate. Nobody can claim to need DVDs or CDs. Some people might justify a need for computer software but most pirated software has a free alternative.
But it's a rebuttal to a non-argument. Everybody knows that piracy is a middle class activity.
1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
Yes. We know. We can tell because there are ads there.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
This is more of an inconvenient mistruth. i.e. it's technically true but highly misleading. AllOfmp3 had the money availalbe to rights holders. The rights holders refused. "Facing criminal proceedings" is very weaselly. It doesn't mean they're guilty. Reputable copyright maintaining companies such as Microsoft and Sony have also faced criminal proceedings. MS were found guilty. Sony settled over the rootkit fiasco, I believe.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
This has nothing to do with file swapping. There is considerably less sympathy for commercial pirates.
4. Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
And we don't care that we don't care.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
No it fucking doesn't! That's a filthy lie and they know it. The finances don;t work like that. It's not about money recieved it's about return on investment expected.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Ehhmmm... They provide a network connection. Are we ghoing to charge the labels with selling CDs to pirates?
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth-it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
The FSF is generally considered part of the "anti-copyright movement". Free software creates a lot of jobs. 8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
No. It's caused by a general ambivalence about the rights of considerably wealthier foreigners.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
More weasel words. What does "wrong" mean in this context? Most people know it's illegal. They form their own opinions on the ethics of it. Some people evidently consider it a greater "wrong" to spend money on stuff they don't have to.
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
Wow. An actual truth. What went wrong there?
But if they manned the Monsanto corporation, the reputation of GM food would improve immeasurably.
Well, I can't really speak for China, India or Africa, who account for most of the rest of the world, having never been to any of these places.
In most of Europe, far left means pretty much a pure socialist state. Michael Moore is considered a slightly left leaning liberal, and most Democrats are considered pretty right wing.
Microsoft is going to be bringing out their own equivalent fairly soon. This will be up to date and use all the features of a modern Vista system rather than be a passable port of an Apple application.
No. Patent it and licence it non-exclusively for a fixed fair amount per unit for the lifetime of the patent.
If you're bankrupted, the licencees will retain their rights, the asset still has value so your creditors will get some of their investment back, and you have a fair stab at making money. Meanwhile, other companies invest in improving and cheapening your device.
Hydrogen fuel cells are never going to become common until the infrastructure is in place, and the infrastructure isn't going to be in place until hydrogen fuel cell cars are common.
That and hydrogen fuel is a huge environemental con anyway. We get hydrogen from fossil fuels. Not water. It's cheaper and using nuclear or renewable electricity to separate the hydrogen from water would be false carbon economy. You might as well use that electricity to replace a coal or oil power station. Our best bet is to get as much energy as possible from the fuel.
This has been doing the rounds since long before that.
You have every right to write a DRM scheme using GPL3 code. It's just that virtually any GPL DRM scheme requires you to also allow people to circumvent it.
I must say, the general knowledge about weaponry in the comments makes this article fascinating. I hope to see Russia assert IP rights over more of their military hardware.
Well, the simple task of muder by polonium would, as you say, not be patentable, but invention is a continuous process mainly based on improvements to existing processes and devices, and the patent system recognises this. Hence, if you found an improved technique for murdering someone with polonium, then you would be able to patent this.
Naturally this would give you no protection against people murdering you by a less efficient method on poisoning with polonium.
The DMCA only prevents the removal of DRM without permission. The GPL v2 grants that permission in that it grants unlimitted permission to modify the code.
This is a trickier situation than copying a DVD.
While it is certainly copying, it isn't the same. They are only copying a portion of the song. Still probably not legal, but probably closer to copying the audio portion of a DVD only. Secondly, I gather that there is a certain amount of creative work in transcribing. Even if the music was in the public domain, the transcribers would be able to claim copyright on their work and prevent a direct copy from being made of those.
But the main problem is that even if they do have the legal right to prevent this, they have no justification for it. Nobody makes money from guitar tabs. Music writers don't make their money from selling sheet music. They make it from royalties. Giving away the tabs will increase performances and increase the royalties.
Now, I will point out that a lot of this is based on assumption. If other Slashdotters know better please tell me.
It says as much in the article. GPL 3 doesn't prevent the use of DRM. It just prevents you from using legal means to prevent people from removing the DRM, which is something that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in anyway. The wording in GPL2 may well have been a perfectly valid defence in case of a DMCA complaint. GPL3 just makes it more explicit.
Anarchy is the only free system, but most freedom lovers aren't all that keen on that as a concept. The GPL is free in most respects except that you are not free to make in non-free. Some people see this as a price worth paying.
It does the job, is simple to implement, and is supported on a lot of software. The myriad drawbacks are really quite minor compared with these benefits.
"Banned in all the cinemas, NOW!"
But that spells "FPOPS".
[Red face]
Erm. Yes I was waiting for someone to spot that.