How do you participate in your culture then? By vegetating in front of your television, remote in hand? By sending feedback tto its creators through buying products advertised on the shows? Can you actually interact with it, or are you stuck just passively consuming it like tube-fed nutrients?
This is not being elitist; there is culture at all levels, though you're more likely to find it in the streets around your home than in the committee-scripted, machine-made TV shows beamed down from on on high.
The mass media is not culture. Culture is not something made by the beautiful freaks of Hollywood and an army of marketroids and handed down from the megacorps to the hungry, bored consumer masses below; culture is something people create and interact and participate in. And buying consumer goods product-placed in TV shows doesn't count as participation in culture.
If you want to see culture, go to a band venue and see some live bands, or to an art exhibition, or read a book. But if you don't make the effort to participate, it is not culture. Purchased experiences don't count.
There is little difference between a sedentary, passive couch potato and the most benighted barbarian; in fact, it is arguable that most "primitive" societies, with their rituals and oral traditions, have infinitely more culture per capita than contemporary Western consumerist society.
By that argument, blocking the distribution of open-source DVD decoders is also restraint of trade, and is clearly not allowed. Though that's not what the courts said.
If Microsoft frame their restrictions on CD ripping (i.e., requiring ripping applications to be signed, and signing only those which strictly enforce copy control, or even only their own) as a measure to prevent piracy of recordings, they will most probably get away with it.
Most people (who aren't information-wants-to-be-free radicals) don't care about formats, as long as the magic box works when they push the button. Less support for one file format when there are others provided (such as Windows Media) won't make them make the effort to download the extra software.
As for MP3 support, other companies may drop it as well. Do you think AOL Time Warner will zealously defend WinAMP's playback of uncontrolled MP3s, or (at the behest of their music division) drop it as soon as WMA becomes the dominant format, perhaps even encouraging users to migrate?
Copy control may be exactly why Linux on the desktop can only decline.
To whit: consumers will demand that their machines play media. Media producers (Hollywood, the Recording Racket, &c.) will not sanction any formats that's not locked down to the hilt. It is impossible to make a "trusted client" player on any system where the filthy thieving user can recompile the kernel to capture audio (oops, there goes your Secure Audio Path!) or bypass anti-debugging protection and pull encryption keys out of memory images.
If consumer Linux succeeds, it will be on sealed devices where the user cannot replace the kernel without voiding the warranty (and probably committing a felony under the DMCA).
Firstly, most users don't use Linux; their applications and the boundaries of their comfort zone (they're not hardcore hackers or open-source zealots, remember, but ordinary people who don't care about computers as long as they do the job) keep them bound to Windows; therefore, it would be far easier for them to switch to WMA.
Secondly, the goal of this is to encourage those producing content (i.e., unsigned bands, musicians, &c) to use WMA instead of MP3. If MP3 can only be heard by those savvy and picky enough to download WinAmp and WMA works out of the box, guess which they'll post on their web site?
Mind you, this seems to be, from the article, just about the audio encoding feature of MS's standard software. It will play MP3s at full rate (for the time being; though auto-degrading them in the name of defending copyright may be on the board), and you can create MP3s with other software (and presumably those who actually publish content will obtain such software).
If J. Random Newbie wants to use a proprietary Microsoft format for storing their ripped CDs on their home PC, it doesn't really affect MP3. Though in a few years time, a generation of users will associate audio with WMA, and MP3 being as obscure as Type 1 fonts on a PC, support for MP3 may be dropped across the board.
I noticed in the developer FAQ that the Agenda uses its Flash ROM as a disk storage device, with RAM being used only for execution space. Given that Flash ROM deteriorates if rewritten too many times, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea.
Quick! Someone organize a march on Washington to protest the banning and let Darth Bush know that the open source community will not take this lying down. If there is one crucial issue facing us today, it is the potential banning of our Holy Scripture.
Though they probably won't ban it; after all, it's just violence; not like there's any sex there, is it?
It wasn't too frightening for
Doctress Neutopia. For a short while, RMS was a shoo-in for the post of Gaia Messiah. It didn't work out, she complained about the disgustingly filthy state of his keyboard and started comparing him to Bill Gates.
Though blocking infringing uses takes precedence over allowing non-infringing uses. A system requiring each allowed MP3 to have written permission would make Napster impractical and unusable, but that is neither the RIAA's nor the court's problem.
RIAA's present business model has been ruled illegal. Whether they can find a legal business model or not is up to them.
The RIAA's people (actually, label A&R personnel and record producers) already listen to unsigned bands. The only effect this has is (a) they can find bands to pick up, ply with $500,000 advances and transform into more commercial, mass-market incarnations, or (b) to find what the underground sound is so that they can produce a diluted, more marketable version that eclipses it (examples: old-school hip-hop -> Will Smith, industrial/goth -> NIN/Manson, Jesus and Mary Chain -> Garbage, Liz Phair -> Alanis Morisette (-> Jennifer Love Hewitt's foray into music))
Well, if it's anything like CPRM, you can do that, but the file becomes a meaningless jumble of bits at the other end. Actually decrypting it involves having the right permissions.
As for writing your own decrypting/copying program, the information will not be available to do that; unless you crack it, in which case releasing it will land you in federal prison with a large guy named Bubba.
If the new Secure PC standard includes copy control in the hardware, and will only boot a Secure PC-enabled OS/send data to software that can authenticate itself, Linux will not run on it. Even if someone cracks it, it will be driven underground like DeCSS.
This is probably part of the plan; cut off Linux as a desktop alternative, benefiting both Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA (a Microsoft monopoly is someone they can deal with).
(indidentally, a DRM becoming mandatory would kill linux, which is something I don't see IBM doing in the future).
They could carve up the market into two categories:
1) server machines (3x as expensive, run Linux, cannot run Secure PC players)
2) desktop machines (cheap, copy control built in, tied to proprietary Secure PC OSes (Microsoft's, and possibly Sony's BeOS variant); also shipped in nice consumer-electronics cases)
The pricing structure would work like consumer vs. professional DAT, or IDE vs. SCSI disks; consumer outlets would only sell Secure PCs and components, with the server machines being sold through trade outlets. Needless to say, the server machines will be useless for listening to downloadable music, online banking, web surfing with plug-ins, games, &c.
The problem with proprietary, binary-only clients is that you never know what they're doing behind your back. A lot of clients have been found to collect information on their users for marketing purposes; given that they're paid for by the company and free to you, they have to earn their keep somehow.
How do you know that the 8Mb (or whatever) executable doesn't send back (over its proprietary, no-user-serviceable-parts-inside protocol) information they may be interested in? Like what hardware/software you have, or even what MP3 files are on your system (remember, AOL Time Warner is a big chunk of the recording racket). Or, once UCITA is law in your state, are you so sure that AOLTW's latest client won't take summary action and delete MP3s by Warner artists on your system? The possibilities are limitless.
The key point is that proprietary software doesn't serve you but its creator; you benefit where your interests align with theirs, but where they don't, you know who will prevail.
Now that Bush is in the Whitehouse, these people will be getting federal funds to brainwash the vulnerable^W^W^Whelp the needy. Bush, you see, believes that "faith-based" programmes are innately good, and has set up an Office of Faith-Based Action in the Whitehouse, to distribute a $7bn annual slush fund to religious charities. Now, because of this pesky thing called the Constitution, Bush cannot just give all the money to conservative Christian groups, but has to consider all religions equally. Which means that the Scienos will be waiting with their hands out to fund their already established "charity" programmes.
I've heard it speculated that the Inquisition was actually organised to track down and interrogate those contacted by superhuman agencies (which our technological society would categorise as extraterrestrial aliens, but which earlier people called "angels"/"demons" or things like the "wee people"/"elves"/"faerie" -- an archetype which recurs in many cultures), sort of like a mediaeval X Files conspiracy.
Whether or not there's any truth in that story, I've heard from a number of sources that the Vatican Archives contains the world's largest collection of pornography, going all the way back to Greek and Roman works.
It seems more like the INTERCAL of religions; something designed deliberately to be as perverse and bogus as technically possible and still (sort of) work.
The question is: would it be possible to design a belief system more bogus and implausible than Scientology, and yet make it somehow viable? Anybody care to take up the challenge? (Self-aware parody religions don't count.)
It was on the BBC's web site, etc., a few weeks ago. The law was just passed, though presumably hasn't taken effect yet. The recording racket and friends wanted a tougher law, which made sharing files with strangers a crime, but didn't get it.
What's more is that USING it to view any legally obtained DVD is not a crime. These things are what allow projects like xine and LiViD to exist with a relative lack of legal molestation.
xine and LiViD, AFAIK, do not include CSS decryption tools, and can only view unprotected DVDs out of the box. There are CSS patches, but they are in countries without a WIPO law.
The DMCA itself is strictly an AMERICAN law and has no jurisdiction * anywhere * else in the world.
True; though it is an implementation of the WIPO copyright treaty (the one everybody was up in arms about a few years ago). The EU and Australia have already criminalised circumvention devices; other nations are in the process of doing so.
Maybe someone can persuade Gaddafi to set up a data haven in those bombproof bunkers he has. Given the MPAA's panic, disseminating DeCSS may be a better way of attacking the Great Satan America than using it as a chemical weapons plant.
For the same reason Shell didn't train their own death squads to use in Nigeria. It's cheaper to rely on governments and militaries, who are already in that line of work, to do your bidding. All you have to do is grease the right palms.
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How do you participate in your culture then? By vegetating in front of your television, remote in hand? By sending feedback tto its creators through buying products advertised on the shows? Can you actually interact with it, or are you stuck just passively consuming it like tube-fed nutrients?
This is not being elitist; there is culture at all levels, though you're more likely to find it in the streets around your home than in the committee-scripted, machine-made TV shows beamed down from on on high.
The mass media is not culture. Culture is not something made by the beautiful freaks of Hollywood and an army of marketroids and handed down from the megacorps to the hungry, bored consumer masses below; culture is something people create and interact and participate in. And buying consumer goods product-placed in TV shows doesn't count as participation in culture.
If you want to see culture, go to a band venue and see some live bands, or to an art exhibition, or read a book. But if you don't make the effort to participate, it is not culture. Purchased experiences don't count.
There is little difference between a sedentary, passive couch potato and the most benighted barbarian; in fact, it is arguable that most "primitive" societies, with their rituals and oral traditions, have infinitely more culture per capita than contemporary Western consumerist society.
By that argument, blocking the distribution of open-source DVD decoders is also restraint of trade, and is clearly not allowed. Though that's not what the courts said.
If Microsoft frame their restrictions on CD ripping (i.e., requiring ripping applications to be signed, and signing only those which strictly enforce copy control, or even only their own) as a measure to prevent piracy of recordings, they will most probably get away with it.
Most people (outside of here) use only Windows on the desktop. Non-Microsoft platforms are irrelevant from a numbers perspective.
By supporting non-MS media formats, a media producer would get as much extra market share as by translating into Esperanto.
Most people (who aren't information-wants-to-be-free radicals) don't care about formats, as long as the magic box works when they push the button. Less support for one file format when there are others provided (such as Windows Media) won't make them make the effort to download the extra software.
As for MP3 support, other companies may drop it as well. Do you think AOL Time Warner will zealously defend WinAMP's playback of uncontrolled MP3s, or (at the behest of their music division) drop it as soon as WMA becomes the dominant format, perhaps even encouraging users to migrate?
Copy control may be exactly why Linux on the desktop can only decline.
To whit: consumers will demand that their machines play media. Media producers (Hollywood, the Recording Racket, &c.) will not sanction any formats that's not locked down to the hilt. It is impossible to make a "trusted client" player on any system where the filthy thieving user can recompile the kernel to capture audio (oops, there goes your Secure Audio Path!) or bypass anti-debugging protection and pull encryption keys out of memory images.
If consumer Linux succeeds, it will be on sealed devices where the user cannot replace the kernel without voiding the warranty (and probably committing a felony under the DMCA).
Firstly, most users don't use Linux; their applications and the boundaries of their comfort zone (they're not hardcore hackers or open-source zealots, remember, but ordinary people who don't care about computers as long as they do the job) keep them bound to Windows; therefore, it would be far easier for them to switch to WMA.
Secondly, the goal of this is to encourage those producing content (i.e., unsigned bands, musicians, &c) to use WMA instead of MP3. If MP3 can only be heard by those savvy and picky enough to download WinAmp and WMA works out of the box, guess which they'll post on their web site?
Mind you, this seems to be, from the article, just about the audio encoding feature of MS's standard software. It will play MP3s at full rate (for the time being; though auto-degrading them in the name of defending copyright may be on the board), and you can create MP3s with other software (and presumably those who actually publish content will obtain such software).
If J. Random Newbie wants to use a proprietary Microsoft format for storing their ripped CDs on their home PC, it doesn't really affect MP3. Though in a few years time, a generation of users will associate audio with WMA, and MP3 being as obscure as Type 1 fonts on a PC, support for MP3 may be dropped across the board.
I noticed in the developer FAQ that the Agenda uses its Flash ROM as a disk storage device, with RAM being used only for execution space. Given that Flash ROM deteriorates if rewritten too many times, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea.
Quick! Someone organize a march on Washington to protest the banning and let Darth Bush know that the open source community will not take this lying down. If there is one crucial issue facing us today, it is the potential banning of our Holy Scripture.
Though they probably won't ban it; after all, it's just violence; not like there's any sex there, is it?
It wasn't too frightening for
Doctress Neutopia. For a short while, RMS was a shoo-in for the post of Gaia Messiah. It didn't work out, she complained about the disgustingly filthy state of his keyboard and started comparing him to Bill Gates.
That should of course say "Napster's present business model."
(Though hopefully the RIAA's business model may be ruled illegal soon as well; keep an eye out for Courtney Love vs. Universal Music.)
Though blocking infringing uses takes precedence over allowing non-infringing uses. A system requiring each allowed MP3 to have written permission would make Napster impractical and unusable, but that is neither the RIAA's nor the court's problem.
RIAA's present business model has been ruled illegal. Whether they can find a legal business model or not is up to them.
The RIAA's people (actually, label A&R personnel and record producers) already listen to unsigned bands. The only effect this has is (a) they can find bands to pick up, ply with $500,000 advances and transform into more commercial, mass-market incarnations, or (b) to find what the underground sound is so that they can produce a diluted, more marketable version that eclipses it (examples: old-school hip-hop -> Will Smith, industrial/goth -> NIN/Manson, Jesus and Mary Chain -> Garbage, Liz Phair -> Alanis Morisette (-> Jennifer Love Hewitt's foray into music))
Well, if it's anything like CPRM, you can do that, but the file becomes a meaningless jumble of bits at the other end. Actually decrypting it involves having the right permissions.
As for writing your own decrypting/copying program, the information will not be available to do that; unless you crack it, in which case releasing it will land you in federal prison with a large guy named Bubba.
Welcome to the Digital Millennium.
If the new Secure PC standard includes copy control in the hardware, and will only boot a Secure PC-enabled OS/send data to software that can authenticate itself, Linux will not run on it. Even if someone cracks it, it will be driven underground like DeCSS.
This is probably part of the plan; cut off Linux as a desktop alternative, benefiting both Microsoft and the RIAA/MPAA (a Microsoft monopoly is someone they can deal with).
(indidentally, a DRM becoming mandatory would kill linux, which is something I don't see IBM doing in the future).
They could carve up the market into two categories:
1) server machines (3x as expensive, run Linux, cannot run Secure PC players)
2) desktop machines (cheap, copy control built in, tied to proprietary Secure PC OSes (Microsoft's, and possibly Sony's BeOS variant); also shipped in nice consumer-electronics cases)
The pricing structure would work like consumer vs. professional DAT, or IDE vs. SCSI disks; consumer outlets would only sell Secure PCs and components, with the server machines being sold through trade outlets. Needless to say, the server machines will be useless for listening to downloadable music, online banking, web surfing with plug-ins, games, &c.
The problem with proprietary, binary-only clients is that you never know what they're doing behind your back. A lot of clients have been found to collect information on their users for marketing purposes; given that they're paid for by the company and free to you, they have to earn their keep somehow.
How do you know that the 8Mb (or whatever) executable doesn't send back (over its proprietary, no-user-serviceable-parts-inside protocol) information they may be interested in? Like what hardware/software you have, or even what MP3 files are on your system (remember, AOL Time Warner is a big chunk of the recording racket). Or, once UCITA is law in your state, are you so sure that AOLTW's latest client won't take summary action and delete MP3s by Warner artists on your system? The possibilities are limitless.
The key point is that proprietary software doesn't serve you but its creator; you benefit where your interests align with theirs, but where they don't, you know who will prevail.
Anybody got one which decodes to the Scientology OT secret documents?
This looks a bit like SuperCollider (an object-oriented DSP-processing language on the Macintosh); at least the idea of all types having methods does.
I think SC is derived from/inspired by some other OO language. Which language did constructs like '5.times {do this}' come from: Smalltalk? Eiffel?
Now that Bush is in the Whitehouse, these people will be getting federal funds to brainwash the vulnerable^W^W^Whelp the needy. Bush, you see, believes that "faith-based" programmes are innately good, and has set up an Office of Faith-Based Action in the Whitehouse, to distribute a $7bn annual slush fund to religious charities. Now, because of this pesky thing called the Constitution, Bush cannot just give all the money to conservative Christian groups, but has to consider all religions equally. Which means that the Scienos will be waiting with their hands out to fund their already established "charity" programmes.
I've heard it speculated that the Inquisition was actually organised to track down and interrogate those contacted by superhuman agencies (which our technological society would categorise as extraterrestrial aliens, but which earlier people called "angels"/"demons" or things like the "wee people"/"elves"/"faerie" -- an archetype which recurs in many cultures), sort of like a mediaeval X Files conspiracy.
Whether or not there's any truth in that story, I've heard from a number of sources that the Vatican Archives contains the world's largest collection of pornography, going all the way back to Greek and Roman works.
It seems more like the INTERCAL of religions; something designed deliberately to be as perverse and bogus as technically possible and still (sort of) work.
The question is: would it be possible to design a belief system more bogus and implausible than Scientology, and yet make it somehow viable? Anybody care to take up the challenge? (Self-aware parody religions don't count.)
It was on the BBC's web site, etc., a few weeks ago. The law was just passed, though presumably hasn't taken effect yet. The recording racket and friends wanted a tougher law, which made sharing files with strangers a crime, but didn't get it.
What's more is that USING it to view any legally obtained DVD is not a crime. These things are what allow projects like xine and LiViD to exist with a relative lack of legal molestation.
xine and LiViD, AFAIK, do not include CSS decryption tools, and can only view unprotected DVDs out of the box. There are CSS patches, but they are in countries without a WIPO law.
The DMCA itself is strictly an AMERICAN law and has no jurisdiction * anywhere * else in the world.
True; though it is an implementation of the WIPO copyright treaty (the one everybody was up in arms about a few years ago). The EU and Australia have already criminalised circumvention devices; other nations are in the process of doing so.
Maybe someone can persuade Gaddafi to set up a data haven in those bombproof bunkers he has. Given the MPAA's panic, disseminating DeCSS may be a better way of attacking the Great Satan America than using it as a chemical weapons plant.
For the same reason Shell didn't train their own death squads to use in Nigeria. It's cheaper to rely on governments and militaries, who are already in that line of work, to do your bidding. All you have to do is grease the right palms.