And how is RMS incorrect in his assessment in that essay? You sarcastically say it's "great" and namecall ("Looks like someone is trapped in a small monkeysphere.") but you don't explicate how RMS is incorrect. Finally, it's hard to say RMS is polarizing anything when the open source movement came later and argued that dismissing freedom out of hand is preferable to defending software freedom.
That you can run GCC, GDB, and GNU EMACS on other systems is not the issue at all. The issue at hand has to do with giving credit where credit is due for the work people did and also accurately identifying the political stance of those people. It is right and proper to insist on such credit and note it when it is absent. There is also a technical advantage in properly identifying the major components of an operating system and distinguishing amongst them. There are times when I'm talking about the Linux kernel alone, so it makes sense to talk about "Linux". There are times when I'm talking about GNU regardless of kernel, so I don't need to mention the HURD, the BSD kernel, or the Linux kernel.
It isn't as if linux wouldn't have ever happened without them.
Nobody knows what would have happened had things gone differently than they did nor is that a reason to deny giving credit for the work that was actually done. That is a specious argument. What we know is that Linus Torvalds gets exclusive credit for a project he no longer writes exclusively while RMS' work (and the work of the others writing GNU) get no credit at all for writing their programs. Initial authorship is treated hypocritically between RMS and Torvalds. We also know that people tend to associate Torvalds' politics with anything to do involving any OS running atop the Linux kernel, most likely because the name "Linux" brings to mind Torvalds. The GNU portion is left out of many GNU/Linux distributions names (with the notable exception of Debian, one of the more popular distributions on which others are based, and gNewSense).
A major reason to say and write "GNU/Linux" is to remind people that a different philosophy helped make the system we have now; a philosophy that promotes software freedom and social solidarity for all computer users. In terms of history it is also intellectually dishonest to leave out GNU as GNU predates the Linux kernel and the open source movement. There are plenty of good reasons for giving GNU a share of the credit. I doubt you'll be able to posit an argument against giving GNU a share of credit that isn't already covered by that FAQ.
Absolutely, that is the logical and proper conclusion. On my machines I run nothing but free software. I see no point in distinguishing between proprietary software when it comes my software freedom and related issues such as privacy; there's nothing preventing a drawing program from silently indexing my system and sharing a copy of that index with the proprietor (which can then be passed on to who knows whom in a way I'd have no technical means to stop or examine).
Linus Torvalds didn't write today's entire Linux kernel either, he has long aggregated portions of the kernel from plenty of contributors. Credit for creation of software isn't going to get you anywhere in this debate. RMS initially wrote GNU EMACS, GDB, and GCC, three incredibly influential and useful programs among many others. RMS wrote GCC for freedom; it's not much of a stretch to infer he wrote other GNU programs for freedom as well. Yet under the specious creation argument all of RMS' work deserves no credit for GNU and we're supposed to call the entire operating system consisting of GNU running with the Linux kernel "Linux" thus granting exclusive credit to a project egotistically named after its initial author, Linus Torvalds (and thus bringing to mind Torvalds' politics). I think the GNU/Linux naming FAQ adequately addresses every argument which ultimately results in denying GNU even a fair share of credit.
Yes, I realize that RMS differs on the topic, but really we're all about doing the same thing: making great software available for everyone to share, copy and modify to their heart's content. Can't we all just get along?
But you don't seem to realize why RMS differs. So do compare that ESR essay to "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software" which, among other things, asks you to consider what is being proposed by the two movements and to give each movement their due. The free software movement isn't just about making software (in fact a lot of people in the free software community aren't programmers at all). The way you frame the issue, it seems that everyone getting along is fine so long as we all choose to call everything "open source" and toss aside the pursuit of freedom and social solidarity that are at the heart of the free software movement (and which the open source movement was built not to talk about).
I favor mentioning a browser that respects my software freedom over those that don't (Opera, MSIE). This is the chief reason why I'll continue to run Firefox and Konqueror even if Opera flawlessly implements all CSS3 selectors.
How is that post interesting? You're basically saying "we should be violating the copyright using a more attractive source so we won't get caught."
If you're an American, you're jumping to hypocritical conclusions. For all I know the grandparent poster is Swedish and is not in violation of Swedish law, merely recommending a Swedish website that works for a lot of people. America took a stance not too far removed from what you're describing when it allowed commercial publishers to publish Dickens' works (and many others) without sending him money. If I recall correctly, Dickens didn't like this at all and said as much in his writings. This issue of copyright violation is nowhere near as clear cut as it would need to be for your assessment to be fair.
If whatever you're pirating is actually worth it to you, find a way to acquire it such that the people who made it still get paid.
You should tell that to the distribution establishment which, at least for corporate music associated with the RIAA, distributes money such that the popular artists get paid quite well and the lesser-well-knowns (which greatly outnumber the popular) often enter stifling debt to their label. The wealthy know the rule quite well: get paid first. Then if something remains, that can be spread in some fashion to whomever is left.
Why not get a job and just by whatever media you like.
I'm guessing you meant to say "buy whatever media you like". If so, perhaps you should tell the "Save Internet Radio" proponents that and see what they make of it. That could be quite an interesting exchange.
They don't all let you redownload what you purchased, but even if they did it would be no real security because it's a policy that can change. There's nothing stopping any of these distributors from changing policy to restrict redownloading. Thus if you want to be sure you can play the audio you bought at any time on any device, you should make the effort to transcode each track into something portable and lossless (if you're not already buying such files) so the quality doesn't further degrade in the transcoding process. FLAC makes a great choice for this.
Cellular networks are fragile. Much more fragile than the larger internet.
What backing do you offer for this claim? Other posters on/. seem to be taking it as fact with nothing standing behind it.
The rest of what you're getting at is really no different from any other non-free software—the proprietors set the allowable limits of development via development kits.
Lossless would be more useful in the future—I might want to archive the recordings in a format I know I'll be able to play/transcode to something else later on (FLAC is ideal for this).
As for Apple's new offering, I wouldn't pay 3x for a difference that I personally would only maybe be able to detect in a back-to-back comparison that will never happen.
You're not just paying more for something you might not hear, you're also paying more for embedding personal data in the track. According to ArsTechnica Apple embeds customer information in the DRM-free tracks too. Customers didn't get that when they bought wax cylinders, records, or tapes, nor do customers get that when they buy CDs. Customers can easily resell all of the older media without divulging personal information (theirs or anyone else's). I doubt most people leveraging their first-sale right by selling their iTunes tracks want to distribute anyone's personal information along with it. But maybe Apple has this covered: as George Hotelling learned, it's harder to sell one's iTunes tracks than it needs to be.
People care about avoiding lawsuits and yet it looks like one of the major suppliers of MP3 players recently lost a large patent infringement lawsuit earlier this year to the tune of billions of dollars (no doubt an appeal is pending). If the patent holder isn't paid off, the patent holder has the power to create a huge hassle for lots of ordinary people who will turn to their proprietor and ask why they didn't charge enough money to pay for the requisite licensing fee (or why a loyal customer would be left to the ravages of the lawyers). Just ask Apple about Paul Heckel's ability to get an undisclosed sum from them over patents that were allegedly infringed in Hypercard (or so says Heckel and his patent lawyer). People do not benefit from living a life where they are spared the harsh reality -- the US patent system as it pertains to software -- that exists for so many others. Lashing out at people for making you aware of that reality won't help people avoid these dangers.
As for software not being political, that has never been the case. Any activity involving multiple people is political; computer software is no exception. Only the naive believe they can divorce themselves from politics. While it can be unpleasant learning that computer-related work is filled with political ugliness you were unaware of; learning that the lives of others is more harsh than you knew. But it's worth knowing so that you can better understand how things really work, behave ethically in accordance with your newfound knowledge, and sleep easier.
"Open Source" is about securing people's freedom...
No, "open source" is not about software freedom and it never was. The open source development methodology has to do with writing more reliable software, more quickly, and at lower cost. To understand why this misses the point the free software movement raises, consider this excerpt from "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software":
"The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program which is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. How will free software activists and open source enthusiasts react to that?
A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.
The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but not at the price of my freedom. So I have to do without it. Instead I will support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it."
I'm glad open source proponents use the GNU GPL and help secure software freedom for the users of those programs, I'm also glad open source proponents work together with free software activists on a variety of issues. I'm even glad that people go into depth on how to make money and license software under free software licenses (most notably: the GPL and LGPL). But these business-oriented discussions are not the most critical issues—human rights for software users and building community are more substantial issues. The open source movement was defined in part to get away from the "freedom talk" free software activists engage in, thus it's no surprise that when some people talk about "open source" they're not calling attention to freedom very much. Some open source proponents, such as Eric Raymond, want to talk about what the two groups have in common which means often talking about only the open source movement's values. The organization founded to champion open source's values, the Open Source Initiative, has considerable work to do to reframe the debate such that software freedom is an important part of that movement, assuming they want to make that a goal in the first place.
Software patents hurt all users all the time.
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A Million Zunes Sold
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In late February Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.52B patent infringement suit against Microsoft over 2 patents which cover something in MP3 (neither is included in the Frauenhofer license which Microsoft paid for). Microsoft may get this reduced or overturned. But don't let a Microsoft "victory" fool you: the structure of patent law doesn't allow for the safety you speak of; that structure is designed to create the ambiguity which places all software users and developers in jeopardy (be it the jeopardy of being sued, losing the exclusivity patents ostensibly create, or the jeopardy of losing a patent infringement lawsuit). I remain unconvinced that delivering the ability to use most popular free software codecs is any more risky than MP3.
In an interview with Wired magazine IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian claims Alcatel-Lucent should have dealings only with Frauenhofer but I think she mainly says this because she's speaking for the desires of businesses distributing MP3 players, not the realities of patents. That one-stop MP3 license shopping would make businesses comfortable dealing with software patents. But Apple, another major MP3 licensee, knows all too well the danger to their customers if a patent holder isn't properly paid off (or their patents avoided entirely). Richard Stallman tells the story of Paul Heckel's patents when Heckel's lawyer told him his patents may have covered something in Apple's Hypercard:
For instance, Paul Heckel--when Apple wasn't very scared of his threats--threatened to start suing Apple's customers. Apple found that very scary. They figured they couldn't afford to have their customers being sued like that, even if they would ultimately win. So the users can get sued too, either as a way of attacking a developer or just as a way to squeeze money out of them on their own or to cause mayhem. All software developers and users are vulnerable.
As more MP3-related patent holders come out of the shadows, more companies risk being similarly exposed as organizations that don't do all the research they need to do to resolve these issues (and such research is impossible to completely do). This places their users at risk. Any such patent holder could have Apple over a barrel just like Heckel did. While this could certainly happen for any kind of program we know that the known patent holders of ideas implemented in free codecs aren't charging anyone for any use, even commercial use.
The free market is neither really free nor is it what you're making it out to be. In the free market we also see monopolies where there is no alternative to switch to and business behavior which indicates businesses which do not have to "respond to the buyer every single day". It's sad that American memory is so short in regard to the recent corporate scandals (Worldcom, Enron, Exxon, etc.) which dominated the headlines and the lack of structural change that resulted from those scandals. In software, all software proprietors are monopolists; when you choose proprietary software you're giving control of your computer and your data to a monopolist, trusting that that master won't hurt you. This has proven to be an unwise choice.
Public involvement makes American government better and municipal wi-fi need not be privatized to be real or good. I'd much rather have some degree of democratic control over it than to hand it over to a private tyranny where I am at the mercy of an organization where profit means more than my welfare.
There doesn't need to be a conspiracy, one can achieve the same ends with many businesses pushing for the same thing—business managers believe that MP3 is a file format where one can pay off all the right people and organizations then go about doing business. Hence, businesses believe they should favor MP3 over Ogg Vorbis.
This is, of course, an invalid line of reasoning because all of the patent holders are not known. In fact, in February 2007 Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.5B judgment against Microsoft for patent infringement. Whether Microsoft successfully appeals the decision or not, the lesson is there to be learned: so long as software patents exist every programmer in patent-encumbered countries are threatened by them.
5. There are no set hours. It's not 9 to 5, and being flexible for your customers across timezones puts you at an advantage over cube jockeys with a commute.
In the interest of clarity: Are you describing what some call "flex time" where workers get credit for working whenever they work and are in the clear with management so long as they fulfill their weekly work hours? Or are you saying that telecommuting ought to be a message to one's boss that one is willing to work whenever management says to work? The former seems quite reasonable for self-starters, the latter is unreasonable for any worker. I'd work my hours and produce good results. I'd make appointments with clients and meet them in person, on the phone, or online as the client prefers. But I would become unavailable outside those hours because businesses aren't charities and I expect to be paid for my labor. Even if I'm still in possession of the work-supplied laptop and telecommunication device during my vacation, I can go on vacation and not work.
Then until CNN decides to either place the recordings into the public domain (the only way to impose no restrictions) or pick a CC license and retain copyright, it's too early to celebrate.
Furthermore, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, one must be careful which CC license is chosen. Gone are the days when all CC licenses featured a common baseline of permissions/freedoms. One might recall the recent C-SPAN licensing on Congressional floor coverage (and related footage) where the licensing terms were so vague nobody could be clear of exactly what they were getting.
You've repeated the myths of capitalism well, but not addressed how that justifies letting people grow sick and die from preventable illness. Who said society needs the best researchers doing this work? I'd rather have some researchers working on anti-malaria drugs for the poor than rich pharmaceutical corporations deciding that the would-be customers are too poor to pay for any anti-malaria drug thus never doing anything (even the little R&D they haven't yet foisted off onto the public sector) to make the anti-malaria drugs available. Under the capitalist system people are left sick and dying from preventable illness because those with the money place huge investment into drugs we don't really need (like Viagra).
The system you defend is horribly broken when viewed from the perspective of treating people's illnesses. It values investment over the health care people need. It tries to defend setting up a "modest retirement fund" despite evidence to the contrary where corporations are allowed to pull stock shenanigans and spend people's retirement money (like what happened with Enron, and various accounting frauds in Worldcom, Tyco, and other corporations). The only system of reward capitalism recognizes is money despite that after a certain amount of income people want more than just money. They want to know they're doing something good in the world.
So why not have a different system to make these drugs, one which we all pay for and is owned by nobody where none of the fruits of research and development are anyone's "property". This way we can get the work done, pay people to do it, and distribute what everyone needs on a basis of how sick you are, not how much you can afford to pay. I remain unconvinced that privatizing medical needs is a good idea, just as I remain convinced that privatizing firefighting was a good idea (thankfully reversing that work has been done).
The fees for licensing might not exist, depending on what one plays. As I understand it, there is a lot of music to be played under licenses that allow sharing and cost no money. I hate to keep bringing up the same example repeatedly, but Magnatune.com lets you download anything from their catalog under a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial rebroadcast in any medium (in a brief peek I saw some classical music licensed under the BY-NC-SA v1.0, US English version). I don't work for Magnatune nor do I benefit from mentioning them at all; they are doing what I think others could do as well and I believe their catalog will greatly benefit anyone looking to put together an Internet radio station of their own. Getting tracks from them is negotiating a deal with someone sufficiently empowered to license it to you.
To distribute the data, perhaps there's some sort of cooperative model which would let the listeners take on some of the load of rebroadcasting. Ideally, one would visit a website and without any setup or programming skill they could simultaneously listen to the station and share it with others. Would this would cut down on the transmission costs to the point where a consumer-grade "broadband" Internet connection work? This line might be inexpensive enough that many people already have they Internet connection they need to do the job. Some hosters could help drive down the cost of the station further still—Dreamhost.com has very inexpensive hosting packages with high bandwidth quotas and lots of storage. Depending on how one defines an Internet radio station, a playlist with a bunch of track files could qualify. Maybe you could run a program that concatenates tracks together creating a seamless audio stream.
One of the terms I've been throwing around in a fast and loose way is "Internet radio station". Jamendo.org, kahvi.org, and Magnatune.com are labels which each stream all of their catalog on-demand and gratis (with varying levels of quality and in various formats—Jamendo and kahvi can use high quality Ogg Vorbis files and Magnatune lets one download 128kbps MP3s with an automated announcer on the end of each track). Are they radio stations? Magnatune calls their playlists radio stations and I can't see why they aren't.
Apple has a monopoly, you see, on hardware that can run it's OS X operating system, and lots of people want to run it.
Then these people should be taught about software freedom so they don't fall prey to the traps of proprietary software—the monopoly you speak of doesn't just exist for the hardware.
Perhaps I was unclear in my response. I'll try to be more clear. I think the drive to stop this new fee schedule is problematic for a few reasons.
Show me, don't tell me: Opponents of the new fee schedule say the new fee schedule will kill outlets currently open to alternative (for lack of a better term) musical artists. When I listened to US radio (both terrestrial and over the Internet) I found these alternative artists weren't being played; the stations I heard were playing mainstream musical tracks I could hear anywhere. I had no easy way to hear these alternative artists on US radio even under the old fee schedule. So for me the battle to hear alternative musical artists has already been lost.
The claim is overbroad: Fee schedule opponents (including the place you pointed me to) set up sites and promotional drives asking me to help "Save Internet Radio" because "The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger.". My reaction to reading this is to say: no, it's not in danger. There are plenty of Internet radio broadcasters outside the US who aren't affected by this fee schedule at all. When I listen to Internet radio I listen to public affairs from outside the US, so I'm turned off (if you'll pardon the pun) by the overbroad language used by the fee schedule opponents. I think it's important to more clearly lay out the group of people who are adversely affected by the more expensive fee schedule.
Work with those who don't treat you badly instead of those who do: I think it's not too much to ask broadcasters to negotiate deals with artists who hold their own copyrights to their recorded performances, and then play those recordings instead of stuff they'd have to pay SoundExchange to play. I know you don't agree with this, you've said as much elsewhere. When you say "If you played their songs exclusively and you negotiated deals with them, you could opt out of making payments to SoundExchange." you make it is primarily a matter of political will to create and support culture we can all afford (or even share). For those motivated to play music, I wonder how much help you can get putting together a US-based musical Internet radio station that plays stuff you can share by looking for works under amenable licenses (including some of the licenses published on CreativeCommons.org) or leveraging the gathering talent of sharing-friendly labels that treat artists better than RIAA labels (like Magnatune.com).
Finally, I'm not convinced why I should care about the concerns of broadcasters who take money from their audience, advertisers, underwriters (a term of art I have unrelated problems with), and so on when those organizations don't play what I want to hear under the current fee schedule.
It seems that you and another poster discuss the issue as if only music is broadcast over the Internet (such as public affairs) and that this means anything outside the US. Perhaps that's just the American bias of/..
Freedom often means preventing some choices.
on
Google's Evil NDA
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While I concur with much of your post including the idea that a bad proposal doesn't become better when shared, I take exception to the notion that the heart of freedom is choice.
We need to decide which freedoms are valuable and cut off avenues to prevent people from leveraging conflicting freedoms. For example, freedom from slavery includes disallowing people from becoming enslaved. We are not better off when we can make ourselves slaves by signing away our rights.
I've got my fingers crossed that Apple unveils a new Intel based sub-notebook (that isn't seriously flawed) for about oh, maybe $1000 Canadian, then I can wash my hands of the iBook and it's problems once and for all.
You shouldn't have had to take that computer to anyone but Apple to get it fixed. Whether it's a manufacturing or design defect, it's still a defect on Apple's side and therefore it's Apple's problem to fix. Did you take your computer to a microwave/TV technician because Apple denied you the repair you deserved or were you referred to this unsuccessful technician by Apple? More importantly, why would you choose to business with Apple again after having to handle a problem like this outside warranty repair (or with unsuccessful warranty work)?
Slashdot Mirror
And how is RMS incorrect in his assessment in that essay? You sarcastically say it's "great" and namecall ("Looks like someone is trapped in a small monkeysphere.") but you don't explicate how RMS is incorrect. Finally, it's hard to say RMS is polarizing anything when the open source movement came later and argued that dismissing freedom out of hand is preferable to defending software freedom.
That you can run GCC, GDB, and GNU EMACS on other systems is not the issue at all. The issue at hand has to do with giving credit where credit is due for the work people did and also accurately identifying the political stance of those people. It is right and proper to insist on such credit and note it when it is absent. There is also a technical advantage in properly identifying the major components of an operating system and distinguishing amongst them. There are times when I'm talking about the Linux kernel alone, so it makes sense to talk about "Linux". There are times when I'm talking about GNU regardless of kernel, so I don't need to mention the HURD, the BSD kernel, or the Linux kernel.
Nobody knows what would have happened had things gone differently than they did nor is that a reason to deny giving credit for the work that was actually done. That is a specious argument. What we know is that Linus Torvalds gets exclusive credit for a project he no longer writes exclusively while RMS' work (and the work of the others writing GNU) get no credit at all for writing their programs. Initial authorship is treated hypocritically between RMS and Torvalds. We also know that people tend to associate Torvalds' politics with anything to do involving any OS running atop the Linux kernel, most likely because the name "Linux" brings to mind Torvalds. The GNU portion is left out of many GNU/Linux distributions names (with the notable exception of Debian, one of the more popular distributions on which others are based, and gNewSense).
A major reason to say and write "GNU/Linux" is to remind people that a different philosophy helped make the system we have now; a philosophy that promotes software freedom and social solidarity for all computer users. In terms of history it is also intellectually dishonest to leave out GNU as GNU predates the Linux kernel and the open source movement. There are plenty of good reasons for giving GNU a share of the credit. I doubt you'll be able to posit an argument against giving GNU a share of credit that isn't already covered by that FAQ.
Absolutely, that is the logical and proper conclusion. On my machines I run nothing but free software. I see no point in distinguishing between proprietary software when it comes my software freedom and related issues such as privacy; there's nothing preventing a drawing program from silently indexing my system and sharing a copy of that index with the proprietor (which can then be passed on to who knows whom in a way I'd have no technical means to stop or examine).
Linus Torvalds didn't write today's entire Linux kernel either, he has long aggregated portions of the kernel from plenty of contributors. Credit for creation of software isn't going to get you anywhere in this debate. RMS initially wrote GNU EMACS, GDB, and GCC, three incredibly influential and useful programs among many others. RMS wrote GCC for freedom; it's not much of a stretch to infer he wrote other GNU programs for freedom as well. Yet under the specious creation argument all of RMS' work deserves no credit for GNU and we're supposed to call the entire operating system consisting of GNU running with the Linux kernel "Linux" thus granting exclusive credit to a project egotistically named after its initial author, Linus Torvalds (and thus bringing to mind Torvalds' politics). I think the GNU/Linux naming FAQ adequately addresses every argument which ultimately results in denying GNU even a fair share of credit.
But you don't seem to realize why RMS differs. So do compare that ESR essay to "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software" which, among other things, asks you to consider what is being proposed by the two movements and to give each movement their due. The free software movement isn't just about making software (in fact a lot of people in the free software community aren't programmers at all). The way you frame the issue, it seems that everyone getting along is fine so long as we all choose to call everything "open source" and toss aside the pursuit of freedom and social solidarity that are at the heart of the free software movement (and which the open source movement was built not to talk about).
I favor mentioning a browser that respects my software freedom over those that don't (Opera, MSIE). This is the chief reason why I'll continue to run Firefox and Konqueror even if Opera flawlessly implements all CSS3 selectors.
If you're an American, you're jumping to hypocritical conclusions. For all I know the grandparent poster is Swedish and is not in violation of Swedish law, merely recommending a Swedish website that works for a lot of people. America took a stance not too far removed from what you're describing when it allowed commercial publishers to publish Dickens' works (and many others) without sending him money. If I recall correctly, Dickens didn't like this at all and said as much in his writings. This issue of copyright violation is nowhere near as clear cut as it would need to be for your assessment to be fair.
You should tell that to the distribution establishment which, at least for corporate music associated with the RIAA, distributes money such that the popular artists get paid quite well and the lesser-well-knowns (which greatly outnumber the popular) often enter stifling debt to their label. The wealthy know the rule quite well: get paid first. Then if something remains, that can be spread in some fashion to whomever is left.
I'm guessing you meant to say "buy whatever media you like". If so, perhaps you should tell the "Save Internet Radio" proponents that and see what they make of it. That could be quite an interesting exchange.
They don't all let you redownload what you purchased, but even if they did it would be no real security because it's a policy that can change. There's nothing stopping any of these distributors from changing policy to restrict redownloading. Thus if you want to be sure you can play the audio you bought at any time on any device, you should make the effort to transcode each track into something portable and lossless (if you're not already buying such files) so the quality doesn't further degrade in the transcoding process. FLAC makes a great choice for this.
What backing do you offer for this claim? Other posters on /. seem to be taking it as fact with nothing standing behind it.
The rest of what you're getting at is really no different from any other non-free software—the proprietors set the allowable limits of development via development kits.
Lossless would be more useful in the future—I might want to archive the recordings in a format I know I'll be able to play/transcode to something else later on (FLAC is ideal for this).
You're not just paying more for something you might not hear, you're also paying more for embedding personal data in the track. According to ArsTechnica Apple embeds customer information in the DRM-free tracks too. Customers didn't get that when they bought wax cylinders, records, or tapes, nor do customers get that when they buy CDs. Customers can easily resell all of the older media without divulging personal information (theirs or anyone else's). I doubt most people leveraging their first-sale right by selling their iTunes tracks want to distribute anyone's personal information along with it. But maybe Apple has this covered: as George Hotelling learned, it's harder to sell one's iTunes tracks than it needs to be.
And now it appears that the new iTunes version will not let you "convert the music you've bought -- even "DRM-free" songs sold at a 30 percent premium -- into MP3s that will play on your iPod" when you rip the CD with iTunes. I believe most MacOS X users manage their audio tracks exclusively with iTunes from ripping and uploading to a portable digital audio device, to searching and playback. I could do the same thing with Rhythmbox on a free software OS (minus the digital restrictions management and personal data embedding, of course) if I weren't so finicky about processing the ripped WAV file with other programs before I encode with FLAC.
People care about avoiding lawsuits and yet it looks like one of the major suppliers of MP3 players recently lost a large patent infringement lawsuit earlier this year to the tune of billions of dollars (no doubt an appeal is pending). If the patent holder isn't paid off, the patent holder has the power to create a huge hassle for lots of ordinary people who will turn to their proprietor and ask why they didn't charge enough money to pay for the requisite licensing fee (or why a loyal customer would be left to the ravages of the lawyers). Just ask Apple about Paul Heckel's ability to get an undisclosed sum from them over patents that were allegedly infringed in Hypercard (or so says Heckel and his patent lawyer). People do not benefit from living a life where they are spared the harsh reality -- the US patent system as it pertains to software -- that exists for so many others. Lashing out at people for making you aware of that reality won't help people avoid these dangers.
As for software not being political, that has never been the case. Any activity involving multiple people is political; computer software is no exception. Only the naive believe they can divorce themselves from politics. While it can be unpleasant learning that computer-related work is filled with political ugliness you were unaware of; learning that the lives of others is more harsh than you knew. But it's worth knowing so that you can better understand how things really work, behave ethically in accordance with your newfound knowledge, and sleep easier.
No, "open source" is not about software freedom and it never was. The open source development methodology has to do with writing more reliable software, more quickly, and at lower cost. To understand why this misses the point the free software movement raises, consider this excerpt from "Why "Open Source" misses the point of Free Software":
I'm glad open source proponents use the GNU GPL and help secure software freedom for the users of those programs, I'm also glad open source proponents work together with free software activists on a variety of issues. I'm even glad that people go into depth on how to make money and license software under free software licenses (most notably: the GPL and LGPL). But these business-oriented discussions are not the most critical issues—human rights for software users and building community are more substantial issues. The open source movement was defined in part to get away from the "freedom talk" free software activists engage in, thus it's no surprise that when some people talk about "open source" they're not calling attention to freedom very much. Some open source proponents, such as Eric Raymond, want to talk about what the two groups have in common which means often talking about only the open source movement's values. The organization founded to champion open source's values, the Open Source Initiative, has considerable work to do to reframe the debate such that software freedom is an important part of that movement, assuming they want to make that a goal in the first place.
In late February Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.52B patent infringement suit against Microsoft over 2 patents which cover something in MP3 (neither is included in the Frauenhofer license which Microsoft paid for). Microsoft may get this reduced or overturned. But don't let a Microsoft "victory" fool you: the structure of patent law doesn't allow for the safety you speak of; that structure is designed to create the ambiguity which places all software users and developers in jeopardy (be it the jeopardy of being sued, losing the exclusivity patents ostensibly create, or the jeopardy of losing a patent infringement lawsuit). I remain unconvinced that delivering the ability to use most popular free software codecs is any more risky than MP3.
In an interview with Wired magazine IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian claims Alcatel-Lucent should have dealings only with Frauenhofer but I think she mainly says this because she's speaking for the desires of businesses distributing MP3 players, not the realities of patents. That one-stop MP3 license shopping would make businesses comfortable dealing with software patents. But Apple, another major MP3 licensee, knows all too well the danger to their customers if a patent holder isn't properly paid off (or their patents avoided entirely). Richard Stallman tells the story of Paul Heckel's patents when Heckel's lawyer told him his patents may have covered something in Apple's Hypercard:
As more MP3-related patent holders come out of the shadows, more companies risk being similarly exposed as organizations that don't do all the research they need to do to resolve these issues (and such research is impossible to completely do). This places their users at risk. Any such patent holder could have Apple over a barrel just like Heckel did. While this could certainly happen for any kind of program we know that the known patent holders of ideas implemented in free codecs aren't charging anyone for any use, even commercial use.
The free market is neither really free nor is it what you're making it out to be. In the free market we also see monopolies where there is no alternative to switch to and business behavior which indicates businesses which do not have to "respond to the buyer every single day". It's sad that American memory is so short in regard to the recent corporate scandals (Worldcom, Enron, Exxon, etc.) which dominated the headlines and the lack of structural change that resulted from those scandals. In software, all software proprietors are monopolists; when you choose proprietary software you're giving control of your computer and your data to a monopolist, trusting that that master won't hurt you. This has proven to be an unwise choice.
Public involvement makes American government better and municipal wi-fi need not be privatized to be real or good. I'd much rather have some degree of democratic control over it than to hand it over to a private tyranny where I am at the mercy of an organization where profit means more than my welfare.
There doesn't need to be a conspiracy, one can achieve the same ends with many businesses pushing for the same thing—business managers believe that MP3 is a file format where one can pay off all the right people and organizations then go about doing business. Hence, businesses believe they should favor MP3 over Ogg Vorbis.
This is, of course, an invalid line of reasoning because all of the patent holders are not known. In fact, in February 2007 Alcatel-Lucent won a $1.5B judgment against Microsoft for patent infringement. Whether Microsoft successfully appeals the decision or not, the lesson is there to be learned: so long as software patents exist every programmer in patent-encumbered countries are threatened by them.
In the interest of clarity: Are you describing what some call "flex time" where workers get credit for working whenever they work and are in the clear with management so long as they fulfill their weekly work hours? Or are you saying that telecommuting ought to be a message to one's boss that one is willing to work whenever management says to work? The former seems quite reasonable for self-starters, the latter is unreasonable for any worker. I'd work my hours and produce good results. I'd make appointments with clients and meet them in person, on the phone, or online as the client prefers. But I would become unavailable outside those hours because businesses aren't charities and I expect to be paid for my labor. Even if I'm still in possession of the work-supplied laptop and telecommunication device during my vacation, I can go on vacation and not work.
Then until CNN decides to either place the recordings into the public domain (the only way to impose no restrictions) or pick a CC license and retain copyright, it's too early to celebrate.
Furthermore, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, one must be careful which CC license is chosen. Gone are the days when all CC licenses featured a common baseline of permissions/freedoms. One might recall the recent C-SPAN licensing on Congressional floor coverage (and related footage) where the licensing terms were so vague nobody could be clear of exactly what they were getting.
You've repeated the myths of capitalism well, but not addressed how that justifies letting people grow sick and die from preventable illness. Who said society needs the best researchers doing this work? I'd rather have some researchers working on anti-malaria drugs for the poor than rich pharmaceutical corporations deciding that the would-be customers are too poor to pay for any anti-malaria drug thus never doing anything (even the little R&D they haven't yet foisted off onto the public sector) to make the anti-malaria drugs available. Under the capitalist system people are left sick and dying from preventable illness because those with the money place huge investment into drugs we don't really need (like Viagra).
The system you defend is horribly broken when viewed from the perspective of treating people's illnesses. It values investment over the health care people need. It tries to defend setting up a "modest retirement fund" despite evidence to the contrary where corporations are allowed to pull stock shenanigans and spend people's retirement money (like what happened with Enron, and various accounting frauds in Worldcom, Tyco, and other corporations). The only system of reward capitalism recognizes is money despite that after a certain amount of income people want more than just money. They want to know they're doing something good in the world.
So why not have a different system to make these drugs, one which we all pay for and is owned by nobody where none of the fruits of research and development are anyone's "property". This way we can get the work done, pay people to do it, and distribute what everyone needs on a basis of how sick you are, not how much you can afford to pay. I remain unconvinced that privatizing medical needs is a good idea, just as I remain convinced that privatizing firefighting was a good idea (thankfully reversing that work has been done).
The fees for licensing might not exist, depending on what one plays. As I understand it, there is a lot of music to be played under licenses that allow sharing and cost no money. I hate to keep bringing up the same example repeatedly, but Magnatune.com lets you download anything from their catalog under a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial rebroadcast in any medium (in a brief peek I saw some classical music licensed under the BY-NC-SA v1.0, US English version). I don't work for Magnatune nor do I benefit from mentioning them at all; they are doing what I think others could do as well and I believe their catalog will greatly benefit anyone looking to put together an Internet radio station of their own. Getting tracks from them is negotiating a deal with someone sufficiently empowered to license it to you.
To distribute the data, perhaps there's some sort of cooperative model which would let the listeners take on some of the load of rebroadcasting. Ideally, one would visit a website and without any setup or programming skill they could simultaneously listen to the station and share it with others. Would this would cut down on the transmission costs to the point where a consumer-grade "broadband" Internet connection work? This line might be inexpensive enough that many people already have they Internet connection they need to do the job. Some hosters could help drive down the cost of the station further still—Dreamhost.com has very inexpensive hosting packages with high bandwidth quotas and lots of storage. Depending on how one defines an Internet radio station, a playlist with a bunch of track files could qualify. Maybe you could run a program that concatenates tracks together creating a seamless audio stream.
One of the terms I've been throwing around in a fast and loose way is "Internet radio station". Jamendo.org, kahvi.org, and Magnatune.com are labels which each stream all of their catalog on-demand and gratis (with varying levels of quality and in various formats—Jamendo and kahvi can use high quality Ogg Vorbis files and Magnatune lets one download 128kbps MP3s with an automated announcer on the end of each track). Are they radio stations? Magnatune calls their playlists radio stations and I can't see why they aren't.
Then these people should be taught about software freedom so they don't fall prey to the traps of proprietary software—the monopoly you speak of doesn't just exist for the hardware.
Perhaps I was unclear in my response. I'll try to be more clear. I think the drive to stop this new fee schedule is problematic for a few reasons.
Show me, don't tell me: Opponents of the new fee schedule say the new fee schedule will kill outlets currently open to alternative (for lack of a better term) musical artists. When I listened to US radio (both terrestrial and over the Internet) I found these alternative artists weren't being played; the stations I heard were playing mainstream musical tracks I could hear anywhere. I had no easy way to hear these alternative artists on US radio even under the old fee schedule. So for me the battle to hear alternative musical artists has already been lost.
The claim is overbroad: Fee schedule opponents (including the place you pointed me to) set up sites and promotional drives asking me to help "Save Internet Radio" because "The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger.". My reaction to reading this is to say: no, it's not in danger. There are plenty of Internet radio broadcasters outside the US who aren't affected by this fee schedule at all. When I listen to Internet radio I listen to public affairs from outside the US, so I'm turned off (if you'll pardon the pun) by the overbroad language used by the fee schedule opponents. I think it's important to more clearly lay out the group of people who are adversely affected by the more expensive fee schedule.
Work with those who don't treat you badly instead of those who do: I think it's not too much to ask broadcasters to negotiate deals with artists who hold their own copyrights to their recorded performances, and then play those recordings instead of stuff they'd have to pay SoundExchange to play. I know you don't agree with this, you've said as much elsewhere. When you say "If you played their songs exclusively and you negotiated deals with them, you could opt out of making payments to SoundExchange." you make it is primarily a matter of political will to create and support culture we can all afford (or even share). For those motivated to play music, I wonder how much help you can get putting together a US-based musical Internet radio station that plays stuff you can share by looking for works under amenable licenses (including some of the licenses published on CreativeCommons.org) or leveraging the gathering talent of sharing-friendly labels that treat artists better than RIAA labels (like Magnatune.com).
Finally, I'm not convinced why I should care about the concerns of broadcasters who take money from their audience, advertisers, underwriters (a term of art I have unrelated problems with), and so on when those organizations don't play what I want to hear under the current fee schedule.
It seems that you and another poster discuss the issue as if only music is broadcast over the Internet (such as public affairs) and that this means anything outside the US. Perhaps that's just the American bias of /..
While I concur with much of your post including the idea that a bad proposal doesn't become better when shared, I take exception to the notion that the heart of freedom is choice.
We need to decide which freedoms are valuable and cut off avenues to prevent people from leveraging conflicting freedoms. For example, freedom from slavery includes disallowing people from becoming enslaved. We are not better off when we can make ourselves slaves by signing away our rights.
You shouldn't have had to take that computer to anyone but Apple to get it fixed. Whether it's a manufacturing or design defect, it's still a defect on Apple's side and therefore it's Apple's problem to fix. Did you take your computer to a microwave/TV technician because Apple denied you the repair you deserved or were you referred to this unsuccessful technician by Apple? More importantly, why would you choose to business with Apple again after having to handle a problem like this outside warranty repair (or with unsuccessful warranty work)?