The reality is that Open Standards/Open Source will foster competition rater than stop it
This article is spouting a protectionist mantra. How does an open standard take anyones IP away from them? The key is they can't lock you in with their proprietary standard. This is a non-issue. The Mass. state government is not forcing MS to give up their super-secret XML format, they are saying we want an open standard for portability. This goes to the heart more then forcing MS to turn over their formats--it's actually worse for MS as I was recently pointing out to a friend:
The key is to maintain open standards of interoperability. Hence the big fight over MS's proprietary variant of XML vs. OpenDocument in Mass. OD won. MS should implement it--but they see it as a threat to their monopoly, which it totally is. If I am MS, I try to keep the whole open standards thing brushed under the rug. I focus on attacking Linux in public to take attention away from that more important factor. If I lose my proprietary format, if I can't lock it away with a software patent, then ubiquity wins. The OS and even the applications don't matter any more. The customer chooses whatever they like, as long as you have open standards and portability it doesn't matter one bit.
This isn't about IP at all, it is about maintaining a monopoly...
Not trying to sound self-serving but if you want to see articles which were submitted by me but were rejected, check out my Journal.
Maybe not typical of what is submitted and rejected but at least you'll see some of the stories that Zonk refuses to post.
Good idea! Perhaps add a link to that day's stories so your readers can see what drivel you were up against. Just a thought.
How's this for really lame/self-serving? I submitted this post twice, and they both got kicked. I tried submitting it the second time because I thought maybe they just didn't like the wording in the first effort? Nope. Now that I see that bubbles rate as twice-worthy geek news over the IRS vs. Creative Commons, I now know what we're up against...
How about this instead, since it actually is (new as opposed to dup) News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.:
The Creative Commons organization is running their first annual Fall Fundraising Campaign. This isn't simply about raising money, it is necessary to maintain their status as a non-profit organization in the eyes of the IRS.Larry Lessig explains the importance of this effort: 'Today, Creative Commons launches a fund raising campaign. The trigger is some bizarrely complicated requirement of the IRS that nonprofits demonstrate not just support from some large, wise, foundations, but also "public support." So we've got an (urgent) need to demonstrate that support, through, well, [individual] support.' Thus far they have only reached 21% of their stated goal. Over fifty-million objects on the internet link to a CC License. This important work needs to continue unfettered by the IRS or otherwise. Get a button, spread the word.
Yeah, it's NOT on-topic with the soap bubble story, but since WE"VE ALREADY SEEN IT BEFORE perhaps something really important ought to be covered... [sigh]
Wow... did you read anything I wrote in my response? I never suggested anyone roll over and pretend everything is all right with the current "intellectual property" laws. Quite the opposite.
Basically your response to all my questions is simply "screw that", huh? No wonder this situation continues to get worse--no one really wants to discuss these things and come to a fair and balanced compromise.
The RIAA says the Sony DRM rootkit is "OK", and you say "the law sucks so I'm going to download whatever I please" (even if all the stuff the media companies put out is crap, still, you'll show them).
If the voice of reason does not prevail, extremists on both sides of this debate will (YES!) ruin it for the all of us. Put it this way, I don't believe either extreme has the answer, on the one hand you have anarchy, and on the other the police-state. No thanks!
Wow! This conversation is still running. Nothing like touching off a firestorm.;-)
"Do I get to break [a law] just because I disagree with it?"
Let me clear this up for you. "Yes."... Very specifically, I do, in fact, get to break laws that impinge on rights I've already been lawfully given.
I should have phrased it this way, "Do I get to break it just because I disagree with it, without any regard for the consequences of my actions?" The answer of course is still yes. You can always choose your course of action--however you don't get to choose the consequences. Or by so choosing a particular course of action you may be able to reasonably guess the outcome in some situations. In any event, the consequences follow the choice whether you like it or not...
Ok. I recognize that my actions will result in media companies shooting themselves in the foot concerning matters of public opinion, will lose money on the increasingly poor products they put out, and eventually either die in a pool of their own vomit...
See, now there is a paradox that often arises in these conversations--you guys (infringing filesharers) complain as loudly as the rest of us about the pathetic artistic quality of music & movies today, but you still swap them?! What gives? If it is such tripe why do you do it?
...[Content producers will] wise up and take advantage of the concept of free distribution.
And if they do, will you pay for this convenience? How do you propose that they make money off of the content they produce if they suddenly become so enlightened and embrace your concept of 'free'? Where is the balance in this discussion? Are you seriously suggesting that the majority of file-swappers would suddenly start paying for the content they are enjoying now by infringing on the legal rights of others? If that is the case, stop downloading and start purchasing now. iTunes? Oh but that is locked away, can't have that. Besides the quality isn't perfect (as opposed to the MP3s that are generally encoded at 128k bitrate I suppose?). CDs? DVDs? Until the recent Sony debacle, CDs were generally not encumbered with DRM, what is the excuse for NOT buying them and choosing instead to infringe and download the works for free? DVDs? Oh, you can't play them on your linux boxen? Sure you can. Linspire offers a licensed player, that argument doesn't hold up any more. Asserting your moral superiority over unjust laws? Fine, but there are always consequences to such actions--they make not affect you directly but why should you care in that case?
And I recognize that, in the process, these media companies will go so far as to place illegally subversive software into their products that will affect only their most inept - and most suggestable - customers.
Nice display of arrogance. It simply bolsters my previous point--as long as it doesn't affect you, why should you care? Right?
"You obviously have a sense of entitlement & superiority over the rest of us, that somehow you have a right to take (for yourself) & post (for others to take) non-redistributable copyrighted software/music/movies."
Nonredistributable? Seems pretty redistributable to me. Just copythe data and send it off. Easy peasy. Oh, and you're forgetting books.
Legally non-redistributable. So many rational discussions break down into petty arguments over semantics--what is the point of that? You seem reasonable enough to have known what I meant. You simply chose to ignore the point in favor of being fractious.
Post, by the way, is a misnomer. Most FS clients don't bother with that step. If you're downloading it, the portions you have are available to others.
Again, you avoid the actual subject of the discussion with semantics. Post, host, distribu
These are books! Not paper books (...which I love...) but effective books: an entire dictionary, access to google, and even Wikipedia [snicker]
Your point is valid. I don't recall the storage capacity of these things but I'll bet (for example) they could hold a sizeable chunk of Project Gutenburg in them (among other educational materials). And, they will be able to expand the list of books if they can get access to USB CD/DVD drives. One $100 laptop with 1,000 books in it is going to go a lot further for a kid then $100 worth of dead tree editions...
Adding facility in each town to attach these to a Moodle server might also be beneficial, fwiw...
...but it is obvious that even the large readership of the slashdot community is either ill informed, indifferent, or uncertain about this issue. Even the article posted at 230am has more activity! This should frighten you!... Should the day come when borders and binding structure is imposed upon the Internet, we will all have truly lost the most important medium for communcation, commerce, and culture ever created.
Thank you for your on-topic post! It is appalling that their hasn't been more discussion on the issue considering how important to us it is, individually & collectively.
Doc has a great quote from Larry Lessig in his article on the second front of this battle, the copyfight. The extremists in that front are not Lessig & Creative Commons (as many entities would have us believe) but the:
...copyright extremists of the Sonny Bono school, which favors extension of copyright to "forever less one day". In... [the other front of the] debate the radicals are the carriers. We need to fight them, just as Larry and crew need to fight the copyright extremists: by re-framing the subject.
This war to keep the net free (as in unrestricted access to content) is being fought on two fronts and both should be considered equally important, IMO. The writing on the wall regarding copyright issues has been there since the Copyright Term Extension act hit the legislative fan. The carrier front was announced to the masses right here just a couple weeks ago, and (in general) summarily dismissed--I think most of us thought the SBC guy was just plain nuts since we're all already paying for connections. I'm very glad to see this articl by Doc Searls laying out issues of both battlefronts. He closes that right now is the time for us to act on these issues, and he's absolutely correct.
Are we members of EFF? I don't necessarily agree with every position they take but at least they keep me informed on what subversive anti-free-internet proposals are working their way through congress, and how I can help stop them. May I suggest the following actions based on Docs article:
We have to support the organizations fighting for our freedoms.(Five bucks right now towards Creative Commons isn't going to kill anybodys budget. If you can afford to access the internet, you're probably NOT destitute. If you blog post a button for them.)
We have to be freedom fighters and do what we can (i.e. call our reps & senators) to assist in this cause.
If we sit back and assume that the freedoms we enjoy on the internet today are just going to go on forever, without taking any action to ensure this happens, then we have already lost, haven't we?
They don't NEED a system that requires a platoon of Unix uber-geeks to configure and maintain it.
You're right, and they WON'T need them either. RH wouldn't be my first choice for a noob distro but I'm sure that they will have it working right out of the box.
Sorry you are really tired of folks wanting to afford these users every opportunity to learn with these computers--even down to the OS level, but I think it is quite an elitist opinion to say that all they should do with them is homework. Please tell me why they would need a computer simply for "reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic" in the first place. Paper, books, and pencils worked fine for many of us when we were kids for those purposes. Maybe these kids should be given the opportunity to move into this century with the rest of us technologically? Kids are pretty bright, they like to know how things work. Give them that chance.
OSX is a fine operating system! I will be happy to add a partition for it when it is released fo AMD64. As for these $100 PC's and the intended purposes (learning) let's afford them an open system that they can use (with a mutitude of apps) and hack around in the OS if they want to. I would be of the same opinion if Gates offered a free Windows-variant.
This is F***ed!!! This is not a user ready OS. The closest thing I've seen to a user-ready Linux Distro is KNOPPIX, which worked on all of the above except the last one, for which I suspect wireless drivers are just not available (Broadcom G series PCI).
Yeah, I could do something arcane to insert the windows drivers. THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION!!! THIS IS A F^&*ing HACK!
OS X just works for me. It allows me to do work, rather than debug arcane hardware conflicts.
OOOOOOOooookkkkk.... I don't see how this was related to anything I posted so I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me or someone else? I don't think RH is the right distro for these anyway myself. SuSE, Mandriva, or K/Ubuntu would be much better choices for beginners, IMHO (again, if they will run on these things).
Wouldn't you say that OSX just works for you because it is optimized for precisely the HW it runs on, whereas Linux can be installed just about anywhere--sometimes with no problems, sometimes with problems when dealing with arcane HW?
How do you know it would "just work" on these particular machines?
Nevermind, I have no interest in a Linux vs. FreeBSD, er OS X flamefest. If it works for you that is just wonderful!
Err... how would the intended recipients pay for the 'commercially available software'? With a FOSS distribution they can not only learn about what makes a computer work but they will get a nice selections of applications that they can run on it out of the box.
Read TFA. It says Jobs offered free copies. They wouldn't have to pay for it.
Well fine then if it comes with all the applications they could ever want/need because the intended recipients sure aren't going to be able to buy any of the commercial software for it. Did you miss that part in my post or something?
Plus, OS X comes with a bunch of applications (PDF viewer, etc.) already bundled. And then, there's NeoOffice (the OpenOffice port to OS X). I think they might be short-sighted in turning down an OS with two decades of development behind it just because it doesn't meet the "tinker" quotient. Do the kiddies this is supposed to help care if they can tinker? If so, Darwin is available to give them the source to all but the GUI.
Ack! Don't be so elitist, maybe these "kiddies" will want to tinker with the internals of the OS at some point in their education careers. Personally, I would think Ubuntu or OpenSuSE would be a fine choice (if either will run on these things). Better beginner distros then RH, IMO...
Next you'll see people cutting and pasting without attribution! Heavens to betsey.
LOL
Hey! At least I blockquoted it, and it was the only really relevant part of the whole article anyway. Think how much time I saved everybody (since no one ever RTFA anyway!)
So they declined a world-class OS with commercially available software because the designers (who are not the intended users) wanted something they could tinker with. Makes sense to me....
Err... how would the intended recipients pay for the 'commercially available software'? With a FOSS distribution they can not only learn about what makes a computer work but they will get a nice selections of applications that they can run on it out of the box.
Was Jobs going to throw in an Office suite too? I suppose you could say that they can add the OSS apps in and that would be true, still, the commercially avaiable apps are not really feasible...
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
I think that the DMCA probably *does* trump "fair use", since the DMCA was passed AFTER the idea of fair use was created by the courts. IANAL, but that's the way I think the law works.
Hmm, I hope not but I'm (gladly) not a lawyer either--I think IP law is interesting but it's quite the mess, isn't it?
This says NOTHING about right or wrong, merely about the nearly orthogonal concept of lawful or unlawful. Read that carefully. Legal doesn't mean right. Illegal doesn't mean wrong. OTOH, illegal is a bit dangerous, and should generally be avoided for that reason...
Absolutely! I very much agree on that point. Legal does not necessarily equal right in a moral/ethical sense. I have tried to avoid all this as an ethical issue from the beginning but haven't done a very good job it seems (or why else does ethics keep coming up?) Breaking copyright law is simply breaking copyright law, whether or not I think it's right or wrong does not matter a bit. I've been attempting to focus on the fact that companies & government use infringing P2P as an excuse to further their control over the consumer--a legal club they're using to beat us all over the head with...
The bit about Sony's EULA, though, is quite interesting. The EULA is the reason I originally switched from MSWind to Linux, and I would never be willing to agree to such an EULA. It's worse than a rootkit, because I can get rid of a rootkit, but if I agree to an EULA, I can never get rid of having agreed to it.
Some here believe that EULA have no real enforcability. I think the BSA would disagree with that position...
....because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do it.....
When a person buys something they expect to be able to use it as they want. A car maker has no right to specifiy where I drive the car I bought from them or what brand of gas I use. In the same way, when I BUY a CD or DVD I want to be able to watch or listen whenever, wherever and on whatever playback device I like. The maker of the disk has NO rights to tell me otherwise, any more than the maker of a coffee brewer has the right to tell me that all coffee has to be made before 8 am only in my own house. So yes, I CAN do these things and I WILL do them, regardless of the fervent dreams of the content providers to use the laws and courts to control how I use their products. I will however not provide copies of their wares to to others.
I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree with you on this position! In fact, that has been the whole point from the beginning (as sidetracked as I may have gotten once in a while)--I do not want anyone telling me what I can do with the things I bought and own, and I do not want the freedoms I now (legally) enjoy taken away from me (or anyone else here) by power-hungry special interests.
There can be NO agreement unless both parties agree, can be identified, certified and are qualified to enter such legal agreements.
Your view certainly sounds reasonable to me. I hope you are right. However in a different light a company such as Microsoft certainly seems to put a lot of stock in the whole EULA thing. What do they know that we don't? Or are they just blowing smoke too?
That would be walking into a store, making a copy of the stuff inside without damaging anything, then walking out.
Bit different, no?
Ethically or technically? Technically, of course not but ethically you are still taking a production produced by an artist who expects to be compensated. No difference, right?
At any rate, my issue with infringing P2P use isn't about ethics (although the conversations tend to slide that way most of the time). My repeated point on the matter is that the powers that be (RIAA/MPAA/Legislators) use this action to add fuel to their power-grabbing fire. They point to this and punish all of us for it. There is no denying this--and the Sony EULA & audio CD rootkit issues are prime examples. They want to force us to do what they want us to do with what we own, and are doing so in reckless disregard for their customers. This is a terrible trend that needs to be questioned and dealt with, IMO.
And I agree, I enjoy having things EASILY accessed on my computer than in DVD form. Make it a better goddamned product and I'm likely to buy it. I get more (even ignoring price) from downloaded things. Hell, I downloaded a CD once because I forgot the original one at home without ripping it. I suppose that's horribly wrong too.
No, I personally don't think that is 'horribly wrong' at all. The individual that you are downloading it from is of course breaking the law by distributing the copyrighted material, however you already own the original & media-shifting is applicable under fair use, AFAIK (INL). How would you be wrong in downloading what you already paid for? Ethically & technically I don't think you would. What is the difference between say downloading it (media-shifting it) from your own server or from somewhere else? You paid for the original right? You're not downloading something that you don't already have the right to use, correct? I guess the worst that you would be doing is encouraging the infringing individual to keep posting non-redistributable copyrighted materials.
I agree that the media companies should respond to the wishes of their customers. Customers who are aware of how easy technology has made their lives. They should develop methodologies of distribution that capitalize on these advantages and then most of this bickering over P2P filesharing would probably end. Generally, I believe you are correct. The majority of us aren't freeloaders and will pay for the productions that we enjoy. Supply & demand... The demand is not being met. The backlash from some consumers is infringing P2P useage. The response to that from the media folks so far has been to attempt to gain power over the consumer instead of trying to provide them with the product they want. This is a mistake on their part, but they won a large chunk of power with the DMCA and that fuels their desire for more. Infringing P2P use by consumers is the excuse they use to further their efforts...
I don't think that licencing in itself is intrinsically bad. Look at the sorts of rights we're entitled to with "Licenced, not sold" videogames from the 1990s: you're licencing the right to use the game, so you're permitted to make a backup to permit you to use that licence in the event the original is destroyed, you can obtain a replacement for a nominal disk-creating charge from the manufacturer, and so on.
Agreed. Licensing is not always evil. Creative Commons being my favorite example.
Imagine being licenced a song in that sense- actually buying, with the CD, the right to listen to Rob Dougan's Furious Angels, no matter what you do to the original media, no matter what format you change it into, no matter where you acquire a CD or MP3 or WMA or OGG of it. That's what intellectual property should mean in this day and age - not some physical object but the IP in all its abstractness. With the DRM systems that exist, it should be entirely possible to track the usage "Rights" of the customer.
I don't want to be tracked, thanks.
There's real potential there, but the reality we get is that we're licenced the limited right to listen to the music on the specific physical media which we purchased, and nothing more. Want to listen to it on your MP3 player? Pay for it again. CDs stolen? Pay for it again. We don't actually have Digital Rights to Manage, we're just buying a single, intractable commodity item when we buy a CD.
And that is why this recent example of attaching an EULA to an Audio CD is such a dangerous precedent. Previously, you bought a CD and you pretty much could do whatever the heck you wanted to with it.
Now, I see folks here saying that this Sony EULA for CD audio is basically smoke & mirrors but is it? Where's an intellectual property lawyer when you need one? As for me, I'm not buying any CD with an EULA attached to it. If by accident I do, it's going back to the store. I posed the question earlier, does the DMCA trump fair use? Now I ask, can EULA that impose restrictions beyond the scope of copyright (see the link above) trump fair use too? I don't think so, but I don't know...
.....But what about the rest of those who may not be as technically adept.....
That's easy! They just download a non encrypted version from the internet put there by a very technically adept person. No laws, rules or draconican punishments have ever prevented people from getting what they want. Prohibition and the failed war on drugs are two examples.
Certainly true, but just because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do it.
If the content providers make their stuff available for reasonable prices and in a convenient format, they will find out that most peole are willing to pay for it. The iTunes music service is a showcase for my point. Since Apple was forced to provide some DRM for the content, they chose to do one that is not too intrusive. However, I think that if there were NO DRM whatsoever on the iTunes music store, the number of downloads therefrom would not be significantly less.
This I fully agree with. Supply & demand. RIAA/MPAA have missed that boat for certain...
Media companies will try to get consumers to believe that such "agreements" are binding, but they all know that they are not unless each CD comes with a piece of paper you SIGN just like a sales contract for a car might. Therefore standard copyright law is all that applies to these CDs as it does to other CDs that don't have that crap "agreement". Making copies for others of *any* copyrighted work is illegal whether there exists a EULA or not.
Arguments such as the above have been postulated previously. Are there references that can be provided to demonstrate that EULA are of no effect? What does that do to Creative Commons licensing of copyrighted works? No one signs anything in those instances. Could a content producer come back and sue someone for remixing a work even though he or she had distributed the work with a CC license initially?
With regards to copying copyrighted works as always being illegal: that can't be right. Timeshifting has not been outlawed yet, and fair use lets me make back up copies among other things, AFAIK.
Thank you for the links, I will definitely look further into the concepts mentioned in those articles. I recall reading about the SPP on previous occasions. Stephen King tried that approach with an on-line book once, I wonder how it worked out (because at the moment I do not recall).
Compensation in monetary form is not always necessary (which is why I am a big fan of Creative Commons--it should NOT be an all or nothing game [ALL rights reserved or Public Domain]. I don't like extremes in this arena. Creative Commons provides the middle ground between the polar opposites here.) Now, I will say yes, I currently hold that if you're sustained by your work as an artist or performer then of course some methodology needs to be in place to make it worth your while to give you incentive to continue. Copyrights can provide that, but clearly you demonstrate that they may be viable alternatives to this approach...
Slashdot Mirror
Without a way to deliver that to them I think the modern term for using such a weapon is "suicide bombing".
Oh we wouldn't have to get that extreme, we'll just send it through the Stargate...
This article is spouting a protectionist mantra. How does an open standard take anyones IP away from them? The key is they can't lock you in with their proprietary standard. This is a non-issue. The Mass. state government is not forcing MS to give up their super-secret XML format, they are saying we want an open standard for portability. This goes to the heart more then forcing MS to turn over their formats--it's actually worse for MS as I was recently pointing out to a friend:
This isn't about IP at all, it is about maintaining a monopoly...
http://www.o3magazine.com/o3issue1.torrent
Seriously... this is so the way to go to avoid getting /.'d...
Maybe not typical of what is submitted and rejected but at least you'll see some of the stories that Zonk refuses to post.
Good idea! Perhaps add a link to that day's stories so your readers can see what drivel you were up against. Just a thought.
How's this for really lame/self-serving? I submitted this post twice, and they both got kicked. I tried submitting it the second time because I thought maybe they just didn't like the wording in the first effort? Nope. Now that I see that bubbles rate as twice-worthy geek news over the IRS vs. Creative Commons, I now know what we're up against...
Bet you can guess who kicked it the first time...
How about Techdirt as well? You see Techdirt stories being picked up by /. on an an increasing basis...
How about this instead, since it actually is (new as opposed to dup) News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters.:
Yeah, it's NOT on-topic with the soap bubble story, but since WE"VE ALREADY SEEN IT BEFORE perhaps something really important ought to be covered... [sigh]Basically your response to all my questions is simply "screw that", huh? No wonder this situation continues to get worse--no one really wants to discuss these things and come to a fair and balanced compromise.
The RIAA says the Sony DRM rootkit is "OK", and you say "the law sucks so I'm going to download whatever I please" (even if all the stuff the media companies put out is crap, still, you'll show them).
If the voice of reason does not prevail, extremists on both sides of this debate will (YES!) ruin it for the all of us. Put it this way, I don't believe either extreme has the answer, on the one hand you have anarchy, and on the other the police-state. No thanks!
Enjoy your warez while they last.
"Do I get to break [a law] just because I disagree with it?"
Let me clear this up for you. "Yes."... Very specifically, I do, in fact, get to break laws that impinge on rights I've already been lawfully given.
I should have phrased it this way, "Do I get to break it just because I disagree with it, without any regard for the consequences of my actions?" The answer of course is still yes. You can always choose your course of action--however you don't get to choose the consequences. Or by so choosing a particular course of action you may be able to reasonably guess the outcome in some situations. In any event, the consequences follow the choice whether you like it or not...
Ok. I recognize that my actions will result in media companies shooting themselves in the foot concerning matters of public opinion, will lose money on the increasingly poor products they put out, and eventually either die in a pool of their own vomit...
See, now there is a paradox that often arises in these conversations--you guys (infringing filesharers) complain as loudly as the rest of us about the pathetic artistic quality of music & movies today, but you still swap them?! What gives? If it is such tripe why do you do it?
And I recognize that, in the process, these media companies will go so far as to place illegally subversive software into their products that will affect only their most inept - and most suggestable - customers.
Nice display of arrogance. It simply bolsters my previous point--as long as it doesn't affect you, why should you care? Right?
"You obviously have a sense of entitlement & superiority over the rest of us, that somehow you have a right to take (for yourself) & post (for others to take) non-redistributable copyrighted software/music/movies."
Nonredistributable? Seems pretty redistributable to me. Just copythe data and send it off. Easy peasy. Oh, and you're forgetting books.
Legally non-redistributable. So many rational discussions break down into petty arguments over semantics--what is the point of that? You seem reasonable enough to have known what I meant. You simply chose to ignore the point in favor of being fractious.
Post, by the way, is a misnomer. Most FS clients don't bother with that step. If you're downloading it, the portions you have are available to others.
Again, you avoid the actual subject of the discussion with semantics. Post, host, distribu
These are books! Not paper books (...which I love...) but effective books: an entire dictionary, access to google, and even Wikipedia [snicker]
Your point is valid. I don't recall the storage capacity of these things but I'll bet (for example) they could hold a sizeable chunk of Project Gutenburg in them (among other educational materials). And, they will be able to expand the list of books if they can get access to USB CD/DVD drives. One $100 laptop with 1,000 books in it is going to go a lot further for a kid then $100 worth of dead tree editions...
Adding facility in each town to attach these to a Moodle server might also be beneficial, fwiw...
Thank you for your on-topic post! It is appalling that their hasn't been more discussion on the issue considering how important to us it is, individually & collectively.
Doc has a great quote from Larry Lessig in his article on the second front of this battle, the copyfight. The extremists in that front are not Lessig & Creative Commons (as many entities would have us believe) but the:
This war to keep the net free (as in unrestricted access to content) is being fought on two fronts and both should be considered equally important, IMO. The writing on the wall regarding copyright issues has been there since the Copyright Term Extension act hit the legislative fan. The carrier front was announced to the masses right here just a couple weeks ago, and (in general) summarily dismissed--I think most of us thought the SBC guy was just plain nuts since we're all already paying for connections. I'm very glad to see this articl by Doc Searls laying out issues of both battlefronts. He closes that right now is the time for us to act on these issues, and he's absolutely correct.
Creative Commons is having a fund raiser and the response has been woefully lacking thus far. It's not even so much about money. They could lose their non-profit status if they can't show support from individuals!
Are we members of EFF? I don't necessarily agree with every position they take but at least they keep me informed on what subversive anti-free-internet proposals are working their way through congress, and how I can help stop them. May I suggest the following actions based on Docs article:
If we sit back and assume that the freedoms we enjoy on the internet today are just going to go on forever, without taking any action to ensure this happens, then we have already lost, haven't we?
You're right, and they WON'T need them either. RH wouldn't be my first choice for a noob distro but I'm sure that they will have it working right out of the box.
Sorry you are really tired of folks wanting to afford these users every opportunity to learn with these computers--even down to the OS level, but I think it is quite an elitist opinion to say that all they should do with them is homework. Please tell me why they would need a computer simply for "reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic" in the first place. Paper, books, and pencils worked fine for many of us when we were kids for those purposes. Maybe these kids should be given the opportunity to move into this century with the rest of us technologically? Kids are pretty bright, they like to know how things work. Give them that chance.
OSX is a fine operating system! I will be happy to add a partition for it when it is released fo AMD64. As for these $100 PC's and the intended purposes (learning) let's afford them an open system that they can use (with a mutitude of apps) and hack around in the OS if they want to. I would be of the same opinion if Gates offered a free Windows-variant.
Yeah, I could do something arcane to insert the windows drivers. THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION!!! THIS IS A F^&*ing HACK!
OS X just works for me. It allows me to do work, rather than debug arcane hardware conflicts.
OOOOOOOooookkkkk.... I don't see how this was related to anything I posted so I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me or someone else? I don't think RH is the right distro for these anyway myself. SuSE, Mandriva, or K/Ubuntu would be much better choices for beginners, IMHO (again, if they will run on these things).
Wouldn't you say that OSX just works for you because it is optimized for precisely the HW it runs on, whereas Linux can be installed just about anywhere--sometimes with no problems, sometimes with problems when dealing with arcane HW?
How do you know it would "just work" on these particular machines?
Nevermind, I have no interest in a Linux vs. FreeBSD, er OS X flamefest. If it works for you that is just wonderful!
Read TFA. It says Jobs offered free copies. They wouldn't have to pay for it.
Well fine then if it comes with all the applications they could ever want/need because the intended recipients sure aren't going to be able to buy any of the commercial software for it. Did you miss that part in my post or something?
Plus, OS X comes with a bunch of applications (PDF viewer, etc.) already bundled. And then, there's NeoOffice (the OpenOffice port to OS X). I think they might be short-sighted in turning down an OS with two decades of development behind it just because it doesn't meet the "tinker" quotient. Do the kiddies this is supposed to help care if they can tinker? If so, Darwin is available to give them the source to all but the GUI.
Ack! Don't be so elitist, maybe these "kiddies" will want to tinker with the internals of the OS at some point in their education careers. Personally, I would think Ubuntu or OpenSuSE would be a fine choice (if either will run on these things). Better beginner distros then RH, IMO...
LOL
Hey! At least I blockquoted it, and it was the only really relevant part of the whole article anyway. Think how much time I saved everybody (since no one ever RTFA anyway!)
Err... how would the intended recipients pay for the 'commercially available software'? With a FOSS distribution they can not only learn about what makes a computer work but they will get a nice selections of applications that they can run on it out of the box.
Was Jobs going to throw in an Office suite too? I suppose you could say that they can add the OSS apps in and that would be true, still, the commercially avaiable apps are not really feasible...
You can't modify OSX so they want to go with a free OS that's, well... Free. Open. Hackable. So they can use it and learn what makes it tick.
Hmm, I hope not but I'm (gladly) not a lawyer either--I think IP law is interesting but it's quite the mess, isn't it?
This says NOTHING about right or wrong, merely about the nearly orthogonal concept of lawful or unlawful. Read that carefully. Legal doesn't mean right. Illegal doesn't mean wrong. OTOH, illegal is a bit dangerous, and should generally be avoided for that reason...
Absolutely! I very much agree on that point. Legal does not necessarily equal right in a moral/ethical sense. I have tried to avoid all this as an ethical issue from the beginning but haven't done a very good job it seems (or why else does ethics keep coming up?) Breaking copyright law is simply breaking copyright law, whether or not I think it's right or wrong does not matter a bit. I've been attempting to focus on the fact that companies & government use infringing P2P as an excuse to further their control over the consumer--a legal club they're using to beat us all over the head with...
The bit about Sony's EULA, though, is quite interesting. The EULA is the reason I originally switched from MSWind to Linux, and I would never be willing to agree to such an EULA. It's worse than a rootkit, because I can get rid of a rootkit, but if I agree to an EULA, I can never get rid of having agreed to it.
Some here believe that EULA have no real enforcability. I think the BSA would disagree with that position...
When a person buys something they expect to be able to use it as they want. A car maker has no right to specifiy where I drive the car I bought from them or what brand of gas I use. In the same way, when I BUY a CD or DVD I want to be able to watch or listen whenever, wherever and on whatever playback device I like. The maker of the disk has NO rights to tell me otherwise, any more than the maker of a coffee brewer has the right to tell me that all coffee has to be made before 8 am only in my own house. So yes, I CAN do these things and I WILL do them, regardless of the fervent dreams of the content providers to use the laws and courts to control how I use their products. I will however not provide copies of their wares to to others.
I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree with you on this position! In fact, that has been the whole point from the beginning (as sidetracked as I may have gotten once in a while)--I do not want anyone telling me what I can do with the things I bought and own, and I do not want the freedoms I now (legally) enjoy taken away from me (or anyone else here) by power-hungry special interests.
Your view certainly sounds reasonable to me. I hope you are right. However in a different light a company such as Microsoft certainly seems to put a lot of stock in the whole EULA thing. What do they know that we don't? Or are they just blowing smoke too?
Bit different, no?
Ethically or technically? Technically, of course not but ethically you are still taking a production produced by an artist who expects to be compensated. No difference, right?
At any rate, my issue with infringing P2P use isn't about ethics (although the conversations tend to slide that way most of the time). My repeated point on the matter is that the powers that be (RIAA/MPAA/Legislators) use this action to add fuel to their power-grabbing fire. They point to this and punish all of us for it. There is no denying this--and the Sony EULA & audio CD rootkit issues are prime examples. They want to force us to do what they want us to do with what we own, and are doing so in reckless disregard for their customers. This is a terrible trend that needs to be questioned and dealt with, IMO.
And I agree, I enjoy having things EASILY accessed on my computer than in DVD form. Make it a better goddamned product and I'm likely to buy it. I get more (even ignoring price) from downloaded things. Hell, I downloaded a CD once because I forgot the original one at home without ripping it. I suppose that's horribly wrong too.
No, I personally don't think that is 'horribly wrong' at all. The individual that you are downloading it from is of course breaking the law by distributing the copyrighted material, however you already own the original & media-shifting is applicable under fair use, AFAIK (INL). How would you be wrong in downloading what you already paid for? Ethically & technically I don't think you would. What is the difference between say downloading it (media-shifting it) from your own server or from somewhere else? You paid for the original right? You're not downloading something that you don't already have the right to use, correct? I guess the worst that you would be doing is encouraging the infringing individual to keep posting non-redistributable copyrighted materials.
I agree that the media companies should respond to the wishes of their customers. Customers who are aware of how easy technology has made their lives. They should develop methodologies of distribution that capitalize on these advantages and then most of this bickering over P2P filesharing would probably end. Generally, I believe you are correct. The majority of us aren't freeloaders and will pay for the productions that we enjoy. Supply & demand... The demand is not being met. The backlash from some consumers is infringing P2P useage. The response to that from the media folks so far has been to attempt to gain power over the consumer instead of trying to provide them with the product they want. This is a mistake on their part, but they won a large chunk of power with the DMCA and that fuels their desire for more. Infringing P2P use by consumers is the excuse they use to further their efforts...
Agreed. Licensing is not always evil. Creative Commons being my favorite example.
Imagine being licenced a song in that sense- actually buying, with the CD, the right to listen to Rob Dougan's Furious Angels, no matter what you do to the original media, no matter what format you change it into, no matter where you acquire a CD or MP3 or WMA or OGG of it. That's what intellectual property should mean in this day and age - not some physical object but the IP in all its abstractness. With the DRM systems that exist, it should be entirely possible to track the usage "Rights" of the customer.
I don't want to be tracked, thanks.
There's real potential there, but the reality we get is that we're licenced the limited right to listen to the music on the specific physical media which we purchased, and nothing more. Want to listen to it on your MP3 player? Pay for it again. CDs stolen? Pay for it again. We don't actually have Digital Rights to Manage, we're just buying a single, intractable commodity item when we buy a CD.
And that is why this recent example of attaching an EULA to an Audio CD is such a dangerous precedent. Previously, you bought a CD and you pretty much could do whatever the heck you wanted to with it.
Now, I see folks here saying that this Sony EULA for CD audio is basically smoke & mirrors but is it? Where's an intellectual property lawyer when you need one? As for me, I'm not buying any CD with an EULA attached to it. If by accident I do, it's going back to the store. I posed the question earlier, does the DMCA trump fair use? Now I ask, can EULA that impose restrictions beyond the scope of copyright (see the link above) trump fair use too? I don't think so, but I don't know...
That's easy! They just download a non encrypted version from the internet put there by a very technically adept person. No laws, rules or draconican punishments have ever prevented people from getting what they want. Prohibition and the failed war on drugs are two examples.
Certainly true, but just because you can do a thing does not necessarily mean you should do it.
If the content providers make their stuff available for reasonable prices and in a convenient format, they will find out that most peole are willing to pay for it. The iTunes music service is a showcase for my point. Since Apple was forced to provide some DRM for the content, they chose to do one that is not too intrusive. However, I think that if there were NO DRM whatsoever on the iTunes music store, the number of downloads therefrom would not be significantly less.
This I fully agree with. Supply & demand. RIAA/MPAA have missed that boat for certain...
Arguments such as the above have been postulated previously. Are there references that can be provided to demonstrate that EULA are of no effect? What does that do to Creative Commons licensing of copyrighted works? No one signs anything in those instances. Could a content producer come back and sue someone for remixing a work even though he or she had distributed the work with a CC license initially?
With regards to copying copyrighted works as always being illegal: that can't be right. Timeshifting has not been outlawed yet, and fair use lets me make back up copies among other things, AFAIK.
Compensation in monetary form is not always necessary (which is why I am a big fan of Creative Commons--it should NOT be an all or nothing game [ALL rights reserved or Public Domain]. I don't like extremes in this arena. Creative Commons provides the middle ground between the polar opposites here.) Now, I will say yes, I currently hold that if you're sustained by your work as an artist or performer then of course some methodology needs to be in place to make it worth your while to give you incentive to continue. Copyrights can provide that, but clearly you demonstrate that they may be viable alternatives to this approach...