"Well they're my concern, and unlike your hypothetical corporate-run universe, in my world the government works on my behalf. So yes, desireable end results are the governments concern."
Not to get in the middle of this issue, but rather to ask a side question...
You couldn't actually have limited liability corporations without the government getting in the mix could you?
Is it semantics? The are only going to use packages that are in ubuntu, not add any special ones to ubuntustudio. BUT, they are going to add ones they want but are not currently in ubuntu to ubuntu instead. Is that what is going on?
"I am not an artist, I'm a programmer, so I can't really say exactly what needs to be done to make Linux handle audio/video/graphics for professionals, but simple re-arranging the packages isn't much of a step."
Well, audio with ardour really needs a low latency kernel. Having this come in the repositories would be a big help.
Being able to install a desktop setup primarily for audio or video, etc. will be nice if perhaps not ground breaking. Still, I would not underestimate the possible power of doing something like this.
"But I think there's a lot more to setting up Ubuntu to be KDE rather than Gnome than there is to get all the audio apps."
Perhaps, but if you think having to patch a vanilla kernel has been within easy reach of people more in tune with media producion than programming, I think you are underestimating that issue.
[Did you read their page at all? Their wiki says their plan includes "Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories"]
I read some, poking around on the wiki it seems like they are working on getting the packages that they want to use, and that are not currently in the repositories, into the repositories.
So you are right, but your statement doesn't capture the whole picture from what I can tell in a short time.
A decent "audio" (low enough latency for ardour multitrack recording - say 24 tracks recording at once would be nice, 10 ok) kernel in the repositories would be a big step in the right direction as far as I am concerned.
"If you're going to point fingers and call hypocrisy, stand on less shaky ground next time."
As a general rule, why should someone do this? When it comes to politics these days (always?) it seems you would be on fairly safe ground whenever you pointed your finger and called hypocrisy. Safe as to being right that is, not safe as to not being one while doing the pointing.
"It also helps when you're not trying to defend people that explicitly broke the law."
Now this statement is true in general, I am not up on the particulars in this instance to know of it applies here.
Feel free to take this whole post with a grain of salt. (Dash?)
"Not for long. Many of the files at Rapidshare are encypted RAR files. Without knowing the passwords, they're just so much random data."
But isn't this even more reason for them not to be held liable for those files being infringing? I mean, if they have no way to find out if they are, how can you sue them for it? How can you know that they are?
"With all the ire at GEMA's actions, I think the message here is clear: as covered above, we all respect the musicians, and we want them to have more money, rights, and respect. But only on our terms. If they take legal actions or otherwise demand more money, rights, or respect -- in other words, if they simply get too uppity -- then they're on equal moral grounds as the RIAA et al."
Some may be that way, but not all.
Look, if an artists signs up with a lot of these rights organisations, they will have to pay them when performing their own music in public. And these organisations use methods more akin to actuarial methods than accounting methods so that the money you pay them for performing your own works may end up going to big-pop star instead.
Also, from what I understand, unlike ASCAP and BMI, many European agencies refuse to let you sign up and then represent you on a work by work basis, they insist on the rights to all of your works or they will not accept you. And on top of that, it seems many are government mandated monopolies in their respective countries (if people have explained things correctly to me) so that you sign with them or no one.
Artists rights indeed.
My big beefs are the undue length of copyrights, back-dating protection lengths, statutory damages, criminal penalties instead of civil, automatic copyright protection without the need for at least a copyright notice on the work, making copyrighted versions or derivatives of public domain works without requiring a sensible notice, lack of a register of copyrighted and public domain works, penalties out of all proportion to the offence intended to terrorise and not to bring justice. (off the top of my head - there may be more.)
"Webspace is now trivially cheap, and so is bandwidth. If you need to share big binary files, setting up an ftp server or a website is trivial. The only real market for rapidshare that I can think of is illegal content, and it's no suprise to find so much of it there."
Living in a first world country are we? Please, speak for yourself, not for the whole world.
Now, I heve never even heard of rapidshare, but I am grateful that there are places like the internet archive and ourmedia.org that will host my media at no cost to me. (Trying Youtube now as well.)
I am from a relatively prosperous country but I have been looking for a long time and I can find no easy way to get a workable online payment system for myself. I use my credit card as little as possible online. Places like paypal will not give accounts to people in my country.
Also, I used to pay $40 per month for unlimited unix hosting with no set cap on bandwidth. I never went over what they might have thought reasonable and so don't know where that might have been.
The last time I went looking I couldn't find any deals like that. All the ones I came upon were $X for YGB transfer and overages above that. No thanks. I don't want open ended bills for a non-business site much less a small (micor?) business one.
Also, your thinking seems to be based on people in business. Hobbyists might prefer not paying if possible. (Might find paying harder to justify.)
And please, from reading on the Creative Commons lists, the European collection agencies are not too concerned with the artists rights.
It seems that lots of them are state monopolies. It seems lots of them will not let you sign up and represent you on a work by work basis so that once you sign with them, you can't release some of your works under various Creative Commons licenses. They insist on the rights to all of your works.
"Isn't it true that you are free to write your own music? Isn't it true that we all share that freedom? Isn't it also true that you are free to perform, record, and sell this music for whatever you wish?"
Indeed, all true, sort of. If I tried to sing some of my lyrics, I might actually suffer bodily harm, but that is another issue. ~;-)
When it comes to a lot of my works, I try to make it a little more free by using copyleft licenses.
"Copyright is good."
While I think that it might very well be able to be good, I don't think it is as the situation stands around the world today.
"No, you're right. The free market isn't really free, but then again it never has been,"
True, but when it comes to copyrights and patents, it is a lot less free than in some other areas I would think.
"and I think it would be a bad thing if it was."
It might very well be. I do appreciate your honesty here. What bugs me quite a bit is people beating the Free Market drum and telling people to let the market decide while wanting the government to strengthen their monopoly positions every so often.
"Guilds, unions, and cartels can all be very good things for artists. They can be very good things for society"
When it comes to unions, it bothers me that they are ever needed. (I admit that they are though.) It also bothers me how they often conduct themselves. I will not comment on the others right now.
"and in the course of looking out for their own interests, they're of course going to ask for more than they're entitled to."
I do understand this. Sort of. See my journal entry here:
However, I would prefer if they asked for things that may seem unreasonable but are not and which they are in fact entitled to. (I do understand the tactic though when the other side is also asking for things they are not entitled to and also being unreasonable. I just don't much like that game.
"I'm a little bit older now"
I don't know how old that might be, but I doubt most would consider me a spring chicken either.
"For the record, I'm in favor of shorter copyright terms."
"Nothing in the world is stopping you from quitting your job and trusting yourself to the free market, and in an era where anyone can burn a CD the costs of doing business are cheap."
Ah, I beg to differ. Yes there is. What? The lack of a Free Market in the first place, that's what! Copyrights are government granted and protected monopolies in case you hadn't noticed. (Since you were playing DA, I am responding to the person you were playing and not to you!)
Get rid of those government monopolies and we can talk about the Free Market. (I am not necessarily recommending that we get rid of copyrights althout I would rather that than to see the current abuses continue or get worse.)
To all you Free Market types out there (I may be one) can't the market find a better solution to these problems than government granted monopolies? Why are none ever proposed? Surely some brilliant Free Market person can propose a few possibilities?
"Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority?"
Because it can compete with the new copyrighted stuff. (One reason at least.)
To me it is one of the reasons they also don't want copyrights to run out, even if they never intend to offer the old works for sale again. They may compete in the market with the new stuff.
"The problem arises only when we turn to the for-profit content production, when the producer wants to receive income from his work, usually on per-copy basis."
The broadcast treaty part at least has nothing to do with the producers. They can get copyrights now for that. These guys want rights to your work and mine should they broadcast it. (Send it to someone over the net? Say I send you a video of mine with a CC BY-SA license and our ISPs claim you don't have the right to use the video according to the license I gave you because they sent it to you? Over the top perhaps, but so is the general premise.)
The deal is pretty bad, but I don't think it is as bad as you make out. The last time I read about it, it seemed that they would only get rights to copies made from their broadcast. (broadly speaking.)
If you could get your hands on a copy some other way, cool.
The interesting thing is if this comes about, will Creative Commons and others modify their licenses to prevent broadcast by entities who claim rights in this way? If so, then will the broadcasters go back to the table to give themselves rights to do so no matter what the copyright holders want?
"At one time it was open source, then the acronym weenies attacked and we had OSS. The GNU zealots came along and insisted that we beat the definition of "free" into the ground, thus FOSS was born. Libre? Idiotic."
Actually, at one time it was Free Software. Then some people came along and called it open source for marketing reasons....
"You know that is completely ridiculous, right? Maybe don't post until you feel well?"
It might help if you pointed out exactly what is completely ridiculous. That I don't think slavery should be legalised? Or that I think all slavery may not be involuntary (at least at the start) on the part of the person to be the slave? (People do some pretty strange things of their own free will.)
[It is your belief that slavery is a voluntary arrangement on both sides?]
While I feel certain it would never be anywhere the norm. I am not sure it is an impossibility though. Even if it isn't, I think we woule be "safer/better" to keep it all forbidden rather than to just forbid involuntary slavery. (I think. This is off the cuff and I am not thinking too clealy right now due to health issues.)
I asked the question because someone has taken that position with me when discussing Freedom and the GPL. So now I tend to ask when things get near there.
[I'm not sure what was so difficult to understand about "Whether or not one agrees with that view (I don't)"]
I have been known to misunderstand a thing or two in the past and I am sure I will not be immune in the future no matter how hard I try.
I guess this was one of those cases. I think I misunderstood your, (I don't) - sorry.
I have run into those taking that stand in discussions like this and when it gets near that point, I try to ask to clear things up and know how to proceed.
["GPL is all about freedom. Our version of freedom." It smacks of the voices from ages past that yell, "Heretic!"]
The problem is, that is pretty much the situation with anyone choosing any Free Softwarre license instead of putting their code in the public domain.
It is especially true re people using the GPL2 versus BSD. Isn't this the same accusation the BSD folks have been making against the GPL2 folks all along? (In a very loose way.)
[A license that grants absolute freedom to the users, and follow on developers and integrators would place absolutely NO restriction on implementations.]
The GPL has never been about granting absolute freedom to the users, it has been about preserving as much freedom as it can for all users down the line. Yes? no? all the best,
[This post, by the way, can be interpreted as a love sonnet addressed to a musk ox, if you look at it closely enough and make up the meaning of a sufficiently large number of words, and wonder when I say, "it is, of course, impossible to create an unambigous document" if I really mean, "misey were the borogoves, and the momrath outrabe."]
Gee, and until I got here I was under the impression that the subject had to be 'Ode to a musk ox!' A sonnet you say? Are you certain?
Slashdot Mirror
"Corporations as they exist today are a mistake."
One idea I have that might make a positive difference is to only allow humans to own shares in corporations.
Any thoughts?
all the best,
drew
"Well they're my concern, and unlike your hypothetical corporate-run universe, in my world the government works on my behalf. So yes, desireable end results are the governments concern."
Not to get in the middle of this issue, but rather to ask a side question...
You couldn't actually have limited liability corporations without the government getting in the mix could you?
Partnerships, sure. Corporations as persons?
all the best,
drew
"Again, that'd be WONDERFUL if that's what they were planning to do."
This is the page that made me think they may be adding some packages that weren't currently in ubuntu. (Adding them to ubuntu that is.)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/ToPackage
Is it semantics? The are only going to use packages that are in ubuntu, not add any special ones to ubuntustudio. BUT, they are going to add ones they want but are not currently in ubuntu to ubuntu instead. Is that what is going on?
all the best,
drew
"I am not an artist, I'm a programmer, so I can't really say exactly what needs to be done to make Linux handle audio/video/graphics for professionals, but simple re-arranging the packages isn't much of a step."
Well, audio with ardour really needs a low latency kernel. Having this come in the repositories would be a big help.
Being able to install a desktop setup primarily for audio or video, etc. will be nice if perhaps not ground breaking. Still, I would not underestimate the possible power of doing something like this.
"But I think there's a lot more to setting up Ubuntu to be KDE rather than Gnome than there is to get all the audio apps."
Perhaps, but if you think having to patch a vanilla kernel has been within easy reach of people more in tune with media producion than programming, I think you are underestimating that issue.
all the best,
drew
[Did you read their page at all? Their wiki says their plan includes "Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories"]
I read some, poking around on the wiki it seems like they are working on getting the packages that they want to use, and that are not currently in the repositories, into the repositories.
So you are right, but your statement doesn't capture the whole picture from what I can tell in a short time.
A decent "audio" (low enough latency for ardour multitrack recording - say 24 tracks recording at once would be nice, 10 ok) kernel in the repositories would be a big step in the right direction as far as I am concerned.
all the best,
drew
"If you're going to point fingers and call hypocrisy, stand on less shaky ground next time."
As a general rule, why should someone do this? When it comes to politics these days (always?) it seems you would be on fairly safe ground whenever you pointed your finger and called hypocrisy. Safe as to being right that is, not safe as to not being one while doing the pointing.
"It also helps when you're not trying to defend people that explicitly broke the law."
Now this statement is true in general, I am not up on the particulars in this instance to know of it applies here.
Feel free to take this whole post with a grain of salt. (Dash?)
all the best,
drew
"Not for long. Many of the files at Rapidshare are encypted RAR files. Without knowing the passwords, they're just so much random data."
But isn't this even more reason for them not to be held liable for those files being infringing? I mean, if they have no way to find out if they are, how can you sue them for it? How can you know that they are?
all the best,
drew
"With all the ire at GEMA's actions, I think the message here is clear: as covered above, we all respect the musicians, and we want them to have more money, rights, and respect. But only on our terms. If they take legal actions or otherwise demand more money, rights, or respect -- in other words, if they simply get too uppity -- then they're on equal moral grounds as the RIAA et al."
Some may be that way, but not all.
Look, if an artists signs up with a lot of these rights organisations, they will have to pay them when performing their own music in public. And these organisations use methods more akin to actuarial methods than accounting methods so that the money you pay them for performing your own works may end up going to big-pop star instead.
Also, from what I understand, unlike ASCAP and BMI, many European agencies refuse to let you sign up and then represent you on a work by work basis, they insist on the rights to all of your works or they will not accept you. And on top of that, it seems many are government mandated monopolies in their respective countries (if people have explained things correctly to me) so that you sign with them or no one.
Artists rights indeed.
My big beefs are the undue length of copyrights, back-dating protection lengths, statutory damages, criminal penalties instead of civil, automatic copyright protection without the need for at least a copyright notice on the work, making copyrighted versions or derivatives of public domain works without requiring a sensible notice, lack of a register of copyrighted and public domain works, penalties out of all proportion to the offence intended to terrorise and not to bring justice. (off the top of my head - there may be more.)
all the best,
drew
Wouldn't GEMA be more like ASCAP and BMI in the US? With a bit more on their plate?
all the best,
drew
"Webspace is now trivially cheap, and so is bandwidth. If you need to share big binary files, setting up an ftp server or a website is trivial. The only real market for rapidshare that I can think of is illegal content, and it's no suprise to find so much of it there."
Living in a first world country are we? Please, speak for yourself, not for the whole world.
Now, I heve never even heard of rapidshare, but I am grateful that there are places like the internet archive and ourmedia.org that will host my media at no cost to me. (Trying Youtube now as well.)
I am from a relatively prosperous country but I have been looking for a long time and I can find no easy way to get a workable online payment system for myself. I use my credit card as little as possible online. Places like paypal will not give accounts to people in my country.
Also, I used to pay $40 per month for unlimited unix hosting with no set cap on bandwidth. I never went over what they might have thought reasonable and so don't know where that might have been.
The last time I went looking I couldn't find any deals like that. All the ones I came upon were $X for YGB transfer and overages above that. No thanks. I don't want open ended bills for a non-business site much less a small (micor?) business one.
Also, your thinking seems to be based on people in business. Hobbyists might prefer not paying if possible. (Might find paying harder to justify.)
And please, from reading on the Creative Commons lists, the European collection agencies are not too concerned with the artists rights.
It seems that lots of them are state monopolies. It seems lots of them will not let you sign up and represent you on a work by work basis so that once you sign with them, you can't release some of your works under various Creative Commons licenses. They insist on the rights to all of your works.
all the best,
drew
"Isn't it true that you are free to write your own music?
Isn't it true that we all share that freedom?
Isn't it also true that you are free to perform, record, and sell this music for whatever you wish?"
Indeed, all true, sort of. If I tried to sing some of my lyrics, I might actually suffer bodily harm, but that is another issue. ~;-)
When it comes to a lot of my works, I try to make it a little more free by using copyleft licenses.
"Copyright is good."
While I think that it might very well be able to be good, I don't think it is as the situation stands around the world today.
"No, you're right. The free market isn't really free, but then again it never has been,"
True, but when it comes to copyrights and patents, it is a lot less free than in some other areas I would think.
"and I think it would be a bad thing if it was."
It might very well be. I do appreciate your honesty here. What bugs me quite a bit is people beating the Free Market drum and telling people to let the market decide while wanting the government to strengthen their monopoly positions every so often.
"Guilds, unions, and cartels can all be very good things for artists. They can be very good things for society"
When it comes to unions, it bothers me that they are ever needed. (I admit that they are though.) It also bothers me how they often conduct themselves. I will not comment on the others right now.
"and in the course of looking out for their own interests, they're of course going to ask for more than they're entitled to."
I do understand this. Sort of. See my journal entry here:
http://slashdot.org/~zotz/journal/154538
However, I would prefer if they asked for things that may seem unreasonable but are not and which they are in fact entitled to. (I do understand the tactic though when the other side is also asking for things they are not entitled to and also being unreasonable. I just don't much like that game.
"I'm a little bit older now"
I don't know how old that might be, but I doubt most would consider me a spring chicken either.
"For the record, I'm in favor of shorter copyright terms."
Well, we are both there.
all the best,
drew
"while no such fatal consequences are possible for entertainers or button-makers."
You forget the tremendous negative career consequences of a wardrobe malfunction?
(Soory, your comment was made for that. You are right though.)
"but I don't think anyone has ever died from a stopped watch"
Now here I think you might indeed be wrong. I can imagine some scuba diver or sailor getting into serious trouble due to a watch stopping.
all the best,
drew
"Nothing in the world is stopping you from quitting your job and trusting yourself to the free market, and in an era where anyone can burn a CD the costs of doing business are cheap."
Ah, I beg to differ. Yes there is. What? The lack of a Free Market in the first place, that's what! Copyrights are government granted and protected monopolies in case you hadn't noticed. (Since you were playing DA, I am responding to the person you were playing and not to you!)
Get rid of those government monopolies and we can talk about the Free Market. (I am not necessarily recommending that we get rid of copyrights althout I would rather that than to see the current abuses continue or get worse.)
To all you Free Market types out there (I may be one) can't the market find a better solution to these problems than government granted monopolies? Why are none ever proposed? Surely some brilliant Free Market person can propose a few possibilities?
all the best,
drew
"Why is the destruction of public domain a top priority?"
Because it can compete with the new copyrighted stuff. (One reason at least.)
To me it is one of the reasons they also don't want copyrights to run out, even if they never intend to offer the old works for sale again. They may compete in the market with the new stuff.
all the best,
drew
"The problem arises only when we turn to the for-profit content production, when the producer wants to receive income from his work, usually on per-copy basis."
The broadcast treaty part at least has nothing to do with the producers. They can get copyrights now for that. These guys want rights to your work and mine should they broadcast it. (Send it to someone over the net? Say I send you a video of mine with a CC BY-SA license and our ISPs claim you don't have the right to use the video according to the license I gave you because they sent it to you? Over the top perhaps, but so is the general premise.)
all the best,
drew
The deal is pretty bad, but I don't think it is as bad as you make out. The last time I read about it, it seemed that they would only get rights to copies made from their broadcast. (broadly speaking.)
If you could get your hands on a copy some other way, cool.
The interesting thing is if this comes about, will Creative Commons and others modify their licenses to prevent broadcast by entities who claim rights in this way? If so, then will the broadcasters go back to the table to give themselves rights to do so no matter what the copyright holders want?
all the best,
drew
"At one time it was open source, then the acronym weenies attacked and we had OSS. The GNU zealots came along and insisted that we beat the definition of "free" into the ground, thus FOSS was born. Libre? Idiotic."
Actually, at one time it was Free Software. Then some people came along and called it open source for marketing reasons....
all the best,
drew
"You know that is completely ridiculous, right? Maybe don't post until you feel well?"
It might help if you pointed out exactly what is completely ridiculous. That I don't think slavery should be legalised? Or that I think all slavery may not be involuntary (at least at the start) on the part of the person to be the slave? (People do some pretty strange things of their own free will.)
all the best,
drew
[It is your belief that slavery is a voluntary arrangement on both sides?]
While I feel certain it would never be anywhere the norm. I am not sure it is an impossibility though. Even if it isn't, I think we woule be "safer/better" to keep it all forbidden rather than to just forbid involuntary slavery. (I think. This is off the cuff and I am not thinking too clealy right now due to health issues.)
I asked the question because someone has taken that position with me when discussing Freedom and the GPL. So now I tend to ask when things get near there.
all the best,
drew
[I'm not sure what was so difficult to understand about "Whether or not one agrees with that view (I don't)"]
I have been known to misunderstand a thing or two in the past and I am sure I will not be immune in the future no matter how hard I try.
I guess this was one of those cases. I think I misunderstood your, (I don't) - sorry.
I have run into those taking that stand in discussions like this and when it gets near that point, I try to ask to clear things up and know how to proceed.
"Well, thank you, Drew!"
You are most welcome!
all the best,
drew
["GPL is all about freedom. Our version of freedom." It smacks of the voices from ages past that yell, "Heretic!"]
The problem is, that is pretty much the situation with anyone choosing any Free Softwarre license instead of putting their code in the public domain.
It is especially true re people using the GPL2 versus BSD. Isn't this the same accusation the BSD folks have been making against the GPL2 folks all along? (In a very loose way.)
[A license that grants absolute freedom to the users, and follow on developers and integrators would place absolutely NO restriction on implementations.]
The GPL has never been about granting absolute freedom to the users, it has been about preserving as much freedom as it can for all users down the line. Yes? no?
all the best,
drew
"Whether or not one agrees with that view (I don't), that's freedom and it's Orwellian to declare that regulating voluntary choices is "freedom"."
And are you willing to take the stand that the world needs to legalise slavery again in order for us to be more free?
all the best,
drew
And soon we will have to plug the acoustic instrument hole.
all the best,
drew
"It would be total control in the hand of an artist. Afterall, it is their work. Why not give them ultimate control?"
So, you want to give the artist the ability to re-write history? What about the politician?
(Honestly, that is a really bad idea. Worth putting out there for discussion, but terrible.)
all the best,
drew
[This post, by the way, can be interpreted as a love sonnet addressed to a musk ox, if you look at it closely enough and make up the meaning of a sufficiently large number of words, and wonder when I say, "it is, of course, impossible to create an unambigous document" if I really mean, "misey were the borogoves, and the momrath outrabe."]
Gee, and until I got here I was under the impression that the subject had to be 'Ode to a musk ox!' A sonnet you say? Are you certain?
By the way, you must be brillig!
all the best,
drew