I _HAVE_ to pay my TV license because there is a TV sitting in my house. But for the next 6 months, I will not be on the same continent as my house. Or my TV.
Incorrect. Just owning a TV does not require you to have a licence - unplug it from the antenna and detune it, then you don't need a licence.
I should point out that I have no problem with the licence fee (indeed, I think it is a Good Thing), but I do have a problem of being artificially excluded from a service it funds. That said, as the BBC is doing more and more non-TV things, I think the licence fee should be raised through general taxation (may be done in a similar way to the council tax) - that would reduce the administration costs and (IMHO) be fairer.
I stand by my statement that it is logical from the point of trying to make a business from web streaming in the way that the article describes.
The BBC is not making a business from this though - AFAIK it's a free service with no advertising (although there has been talk of providing a similar service to foreign customers which would include advertising).
Of *course* it's relevent. DVD's aren't playable under Linux legally. DVD's are DRM'd.
The situation with regard to playing DVDs under Linux is ambiguous - the EUCD covers "effective copy protection" and it could very well be argued that CSS could not be considered effective since it was cracked *long* before the EUCD was passed. But in any case, it is still irrelevent because: 1. DVDs *are* playable under Linux (legal or not) 2. The DVDs are not funded through the licence fee - they are funded through the profits of their own sale. The streaming content service, on the other hand, will not generate any revenue and thus will be funded by the licence payers.
I'd atleast like to see some sort of movement, even if it's not entirely perfect, just so long as we move in the right direction.
My problem isn't with the fact that some media company is using DRM, it's with the fact that, as a licence fee payer, I am *required* to pay for a service that I have been artificially excluded from in order to receive an existing service (TV).
Whoa, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. In what way would that be better?
Where does the money come from to buy the rights to distribute these 3rd party programmes over the internet? The TV licence, of course. So why should my TV licence money go towards funding a service that they have artificially restricted so that I cannot access it?
Do you disagree with the BBC selling DVDs too?
No, they are free to do that - I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion.
I can't understand why a DRM Windows-and-Mac-only programmes (atleast to start with) is worse than not having those programmes.
Because they are spending funds on the service which could be better spent on other services which *are* available to everyone.
I don't consider the BBC's content legally mine.
It isn't legally yours. But as a licence payer you do have the right to access any content they are publishing and they have a charter stating that they must make is as widely available to the licence holders as possible.
But this is NOT a TV broadcast, which is the only thing covered by the Charter, but web streaming.
You are incorrect. The TV licencing authority clearly states that web streaming *is* considered to require a TV licence in a number of normal situations.
IP blocking was looked at as a possible means but, as you have pointed out, it is easy to circumvent.
Why is it any different for me to put up a proxy to rebroadcast a web stream rather than rebroadcasting the DVB stream? In both cases I am breaking the law, but in the first case (which will of course be the lowest quality one) they feel the need to use DRM instead of just using the law.
I don't like it either but it is entirely logical
No, it really isn't logical at all - if they were following logic they would be trying to restrict the high quality DVB-T and DVB-S transport streams in the same way since they pose greater risk. However, they are doing the exact opposite - pushing for free to air DVB-S streams (which is clearly a Good Thing).
This is more like the "listen again" feature they've been offering to radio listeners for some time: an extra, not a replacement.
An extra which I am paying for, yet have been explicitly locked out from. I should also point out that I can listen to the "listen again" stuff on Linux (ok, it's not using a Free codec, but it's actually possible to use the service) - why should TV be different?
So they should say Windows, Mac and Linux? Or should that be Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD? Or Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and my toy OS that I wrote in CS class?
Or how about just releasing it in an open format so that everyone can access it...
You have to draw the line somewhere, and whether some people here like it or not, Linux users represent a vanishingly small part of the potential audience. I am happy for the BBC to spend a reasonable amount of money adding useful new features that are available to almost everyone.
I don't particularly want the BBC to spend huge amounts of money developing custom software - they can just use Free file formats and let people use the software that already exists. Also, Windows only has a near monopoly in the desktop segment - other devices, such as PDAs, phones, etc run any number of other operating systems.
highly vocal minority who deliberately chose to go down a different route to most people knowing that this sort of issue was likely and then complain afterwards.
Do you honestly believe that promoting a monopoly desktop is in the public interest? We've seen what that leads to - shoddy expensive products. Doesn't the BBC have a duty to look at the long term rammifications of only supporting a convicted monopolist and locking everyone else out instead of purely focussing on their commercial interests?
Web streaming is NOT covered by the charter nor, therefore, by any funding provided by the government. You licence fee is totally irrelevant to this discussion
This is incorrect - the content they are showing was produced with licence payer's money and they are not generating any additional funds from publishing this in downloadable format. Meanwhile, the BBC website's infrastructure (which _is_ funded by the licence fee) will presumably be used to deliver this content.
We are stuck with their decision - but from a business point of view it make sense.
However, they are not fulfilling their charter, which they are required to do since (as mentioned above) this _is_ indirectly funded by the licence fee.
If they were to stream data around the world they would be breaking the terms of their own broadcasting licence and annoying other broadcasters in other countries.
They do not need to stream data around the world - you can restrict streaming to the UK based on IP address. Sure, people can proxy the connections but that it a classic example of copyright infringement through rebroadcasting, which could be done with the original DVB stream anyway. nothing new here.
Yes, fine, I'd love that too, but the BBC don't own all the rights to everything they show.
So don't publish stuff they don't have the rights to on the Internet.
atleast they're moving in the right direction.
I don't consider locking out a load of people from the content they are legally entitled to, but still charging them for it to be "the right direction". Why don't they give a licence fee discount to all those people they have locked out of the service?
The BBC is a useful thing to have around, like schools and hospitals and welfare it's a good thing even if you might not use it personally.
I've got no problem with paying my licence fee so long as I am allowed to access the content. Sadly the BBC seems to be adding artifical restrictions to ensure that I can't access the content without me purchasing an expensive product from exactly one vendor with whome I have ethical problems. This is the same as saying "you can only watch TV on TVs made by Sony" - it completely removes competition from the market and this inevitably leads to an expensive poor quality product.
Also a worry is that the BBC appears to believe that being "platform agnostic" involves only supporting Windows and Mac - no mention of other platforms at all.
I think what's really galling people is that the BBC is using DRM at all.
What's really galling me is that the BBC is adding an artificial limitation which will prevent me (a licence payer) from accessing this content at all since I don't own any Windows machines (and I'm not about to buy Windows just so I can watch this content - which I can most likley download illegally in a platform agnostic format anyway). And of course, licence fee payers can't withhold a portion of their licence in response to the BBC intentionally preventing them from accessing content they have a legal right to.
There is a distinct difference between someone not being able to access the BBC website because they don't own a computer (which is fundamentally required to access a web site) and someone not being able to access some content because the BBC has explicitly excluded them through artificial means (there is no reason to _require_ a user has Windows in order to view videos - other operating systems are equally capable of playing videos).
Then where is all this hardware? How do you plan to capture HDCP content with a "not hard to create rig"?
HDCP was cracked a long time ago - you've been able to buy HDCP strippers for ages. Also, it's better to extract the content at the source - for example, by cracking AACS (again, already done to a great extent).
So an analog copy of a digital file is superior to a *perfect*digital*copy*?
If the analogue copy is of sufficiently high quality that it is indistinguishable from the digital copy to the average person then what does it matter which is technically superior?
Without DRM, you could make a fully perfect copy of an HD movie in less than an hour.
You _could_, and indeed some people would. However, you are also harming the legitimate users:
When I buy music I want to be able to play it on all of my devices and store it on several computers that I (and only I) use. It's increasingly hard to do this with legitimately purchased content, but an illegal copy lets me do all this.
When I buy a video, I want to be able to watch it, fast forward, rewind, copy for personal use, etc. When I put a legitimately purchased DVD in a DVD player I get to set through 5 minutes of unskippable content telling me that I shouldn't be copying it. If I get an illegal copy instead then all that is removed.
Currently, I choose to just ignore the DRM'd content and buy the un-DRM'd stuff. However, if the un-DRM'd content is abolished then the only choices left are to either completely ignore music, video, etc., or illegally copy the content. It's got to the point where (price aside) the illegally copied content is _better_ for the end users than the legitimate content. Even if the illegal copies are marginally lower quality, at least you can actually use them.
The extremely oppressive DRM techniques are only going to work if people can't actually get hold of the un-DRM'd content. And I'm afraid you're *never* going to be able to stop at least one un-DRM'd copy being published. From what I can tell, DRMing content isn't going to stop the professional copyright infringers and will end up pushing people who would ordinarilly be buying the content legitimately towards buying the illegal copies instead.
DRM makes piracy *harder*. Not impossible, just harder, and that's all it takes to be effective.
Completely wrong. If I can't copy the content I just bought I'll just download it instead - someone else will have already posted it online since, as you said, it's not impossible. And as mentioned above, if I'm forced to download illegal content _despite_ having legitimately paid for the content anyway I'm going to be less inclined to pay for it next time.
I'll wait for the whole space folding / gate warping thing, where I can physically step from one spot to another (see: Stargate), thankyouverymuch.:)
Don't mean to burst your bubble but ISTR the StarGate supposidly deconstructed you in a similar way to a teleporter before transmitting you through a wormhole. Oops, my geek is showing:)
If everything works under XP then they have absolutely no incentive to upgrade to Vista. These machines can in some extreme cases keep going for upwards of 7-10 years.
I think we've reached the point where for the majority of users there really is no point in getting a faster machine - back in the 486 era practically *everyone* would benefit from the fastest machine they could get, but now we have far more CPU power and memory than most people are going to need for quite a long time.
This is going to hurt both MS and hardware manufacturers. Most people have never gone out and bought a new boxed OS (although I can believe that the few people who do upgrade the OS are sticking with XP instead of going and getting Vista), but the majority of people just get the latest version of Windows with their new hardware - the problem now is simply that less people are needing to upgrade their hardware, so the number of preinstalled Windows licences being sold is also down.
But still, when people buy a computer from the highstreet, they generally don't say "I want XP" or "I want Vista", they say "I want a computer" and the shop says "here, have this one with Vista on it". The shop may provide an _option_ to have XP preinstalled instead, but the default would be to have Vista, so that's what the customer is going to get unless they specifically ask for XP.
Most companies will upgrade at some point in the next 2-5 years but the fact that they are not buying *NOW* is hurting Microsoft's sales.
I don't think companies have ever embraced the latest Windows especially quickly though. Companies, more than home users, have people who understand that switching costs money and is unnecessary, so they aren't going to buy into the salesman telling them that they should have Vista.
What is the solution? With patents, we may never see Feature X+Y. Without patents, we may never have seen Feature X in the first place. How does the world get Feature X+Y?
Firstly, you may well have seen feature X even if it couldn't be patented because the inventor wanted to make money off it. There is an increased risk for the inventor if he can't patent it (since his competetors can take his invention and use their market position to push it or undercut him on price), but that doesn't necessarilly prevent the inventor from selling a product containing the feature. The risk is much much lower for large companies since they already have a lot of market leverage.
Secondly, you are making the erronous assumption that a feature couldn't be independently invented by more than one organisation. And this, I think, is the fundamental problem with the patent system - it can't differentiate between someone ripping off someone else's feature and someone independently inventing the same feature with no knowledge of the original. If I independently come up with the same idea as you, why should I be required to pay you a licence fee?
Until then its doomed to rot on the shelves with all the intelligent IT people badmouthing it (which is where most customers get their info from)
No, most customers get their info from the highstreet PC retailers who are pushing Vista as the New Big Thing the everyone should have.
Whatever MS do, their operating systems are guaranteed success because they come bundled on machines - most people will buy whatever they are told is the latest thing. The majority of people don't buy preinstalled machines based on an informed decision of what a specific version of Windows will or won't do for them.
Excuse my ignorance. If they don't make a good faith effort to stop the patent infringement, why doesn't that hurt Microsoft's case? I thought that if you didn't take reasonable measures to resolve your dispute before turning to a lawsuit, then that mistake could be used against your side.
But as previously mentioned, MS doesn't actually want lawsuits - they want FUD.
"The patent system is nolonger about protecting your innovations, it's an arms race -..."
The nature of software and the industry makes that statement true for software, but in other areas it works just fine.
I used to believe that, but increasingly I've come to believe that the whole patent system is flawed for one very simple reason - it can't differentiate between someone copying an invention and someone inventing the same thing completely independently.
If you come up with a new invention, are you supposed to search the patent archives to see if someone else already invented it and pay them a licence fee if they did (even if they haven't actually put their invention to use)?
Patents were there to protect innovators so that going into business manufacturing your product didn't have the risk of a well established company ripping off your design and undercutting you. If your patent covers a large chunk of a product that you are actively selling then the system probably works for that. If it only covers a very minor internal detail or you aren't selling the product anyway then the patent system serves only to hinder other people's innovation by either preventing other people from using something that they independently invented (if they realise it's already been patented and don't want to pay the licence fee), or trap people into paying licence fees once their product is selling (if you didn't realise you were infringing someone's patent).
Fundamentally, I don't see why I should invent something, take the risk of marketting and manufacturing it but have to pay you a licence fee just because you invented the same thing before me but decided not to take a risk and actually sell it (and therefore make your invention widely known).
BTW, for 12-15K you could have an attorney to a patent search.
Yes, because small businesses can really afford to have hundreds of thousands of lines of their code checked for infringement. 15K may not be much to a business the size of Microsoft, but to a small startup business (or indeed, an unpaid Free software developer) it's a lot of cash.
1. Absurd argument. The possibility of proving a patent invalid is a very good means to get off a patent lawsuit, so if Microsoft find this prospect so concerning, what's to say that whoever they sue won't be able to discredit the patents? Only makes sense if such a lawsuit is fought entirely in private, with no possibility of a leak on slashdot or groklaw saying "Here's a Microsoft patent, how valid is it?"
Which is exactly why MS won't sue anyone - as soon as they disclose their patent to any third party they lose the leverage they need in their FUD campaign. That's not to say they might not extract licence fees out of people - they can threaten to sue someone (without disclosing their patents), and some people will settle without ever going to court.
and all deployments of it must cease to exist (possible if that software is produced by a few parties who can contact all their customers, not really practical for Linux)
I think it's very practical for Linux - you don't need to care whether you're infringing or not until MS invoice you for the licence fee. And once MS ask for the licence fee you can upgrade your systems to the new non-infringing version and tell them to go screw themselves. Seems that MS can't win. Remember, MS is threatenning to sue the end users, not the distributors (who might be held responsible for recalling all the infringing products).
or it's not so fundamental, in which case it's doubtful how innovative the patent is in the first place.
Most patents aren't innovative - that doesn't stop you strong-arming a licence fee out of someone who can't afford to defend themselves though. MS is in a much weaker position if their patents were out in the open and publically shown to be invalid months before they started trying to extract licence fees.
But again, I must reiterate - I don't think MS are in it for the licence fees, they are trying to create FUD and scare people out of switching away from Microsoft based systems. Once they start actually suing people their leverage will probably quickly evaporate, so they aren't going to do that.
And a handy "bounce message" function that essentially tells automated spam systems to sod off.
Sending bounce messages is considered extremely harmful since they are sent to an address that is almost certainly forged (i.e. _you_ are spamming an innocent third party with your bounce messages). If you are going to reject spam messages then you need to do it at SMTP delivery time, which is something only your MTA can do, never your MUA.
Additionally, you should be rejecting forged mail if there are SPF records available at delivery time anyway.
being a linux programmer i wouldnt want my software being a part of the ones that make deals with M$
You can word the licence you release under however you want, you can even put in a clause specifically excluding any distributor who has made a deal with MS. However, then the licence ceases to be Free.
It seems that you should look at a more generic licence which still allows the 4 freedoms but is also incompatible with aspects of these deals. For example, the GPL 3 looks like it will be incompatible with this sort of patent protection deal, since it requires any patent protection to be extended to *all* users of the software, not just a small subset.
But in so doing they have gained a lot of bad feeling in the Free software community. And these companies do need the community's support - Red Hat, etc. have their roots in the Free software world and understand this. Novell on the other hand is a well established propriatory software company who has jumped into the Free software world and I don't think they yet fully understand how important it is to not piss off the community.
Yes, they are - as are several million other patents, and you have absolutely no idea what sort of patent you are alledgedly infringing so good luck trying to find the right needle in the haystack.
Aren't things like Ubuntu/Red Hat open source?
Yup, which makes it incredibly easy for any patent holder to find infringing code (these days it really is impossible to write any software without infringing someone's patent - the only thing that protects the propriatory vendors is that closed code is much harder to examine for infringements).
How hard is it for M$ to say "Look at patent 5,656,565 and lines 1-3,000 of kernel.c. This is a violation of our IP rights.
Very easy. However, they have said that they won't disclose which patents are being violated because: 1. The Free software community would be able to discredit the patents (e.g. provide evidence of prior art, show the code isn't infringing, etc). 2. The Free software developers would be able to remove the offending code.
Microsoft doesn't want to licence the patents, they are simply using them as a FUD campaign to scare people away from switching to Linux - if the patents are discredited or the offending code is removed they have lost all their leverage.
To people not in the know, this is perceived as a big risk - if you switch to Linux then MS has threattened to sue you. Of course, to those of us who can see what's going on it's obvious that MS can't possibly sue anyone because: 1. That would involve disclosing the patents. 2. MS doesn't seem at all confident that it's patents are valid since the cited reason for not disclosing them is that they would be discredited. 3. MS themselves will certainly be infringing a large number of patents held by organisations who have a vested interest in Free software (IBM, the Open Invention Network, Sun, etc.) - firing off lawsuits at Free software users will almost certainly invite retaliation from those patent holders.
The patent system is nolonger about protecting your innovations, it's an arms race - everyone is infringing everyone else's patents anyway (since it's practically impossible to produce any code which isn't infringing) and whoever holds the least patents is crushed since they cannot retaliate to any threats. The whole patent system needs to be abolished - it once served a useful purpose, but these days the merits are far outweighed by the abuses.
You've failed. OSS should never be your product only your tool. Selling OSS is not a sustainable business model.
Indeed you are correct that Free software can't be a product in it's own right. You are selling the services that surround the Free software - for example, the service of providing a pre-installed server, the customer support, etc. However, my point is that you have developed a tool on which to base those services. But now your competition also has access to that tool, and can provide similar services to you. Yeah, their services may not be as good (maybe they don't bother bug-fixing and just leave that to you and then take your fixes, so their customers end up with slower responses to their problems), but if they are a well established company it may take a lot of disservice before their customers decide they need a better deal.
A good example might be an enterprise grade linux distribution. Red Hat, for example, provide RHEL. Their business model is selling the support contracts for RHEL, but in order to do so they must expend a lot of resources developing the underlying system that they are supporting, and thre is nothing stopping any other company - Oracle, for example - taking their work and selling support services for a slightly lower price. Oracle would have much lower running costs since they aren't having to do any real development work - they just take whatever Red Hat does and rebrand it. Maybe they do their own bug fixes, maybe they don't bother, but either way they can signficantly undercut Red Hat.
Of course, Red Hat is a well established company with a good reputation so most people would buy from them. But imagine if they were a small start-up - now the well established company can base the services it's selling on your work and they have the marketting power to retain their customer base since noone has ever heard of your company.
(I should point out that I am a big supporter of Free software - I'm just playing devil's advocate here)
When commercial developers release code as open source they do so with a motive of making money. You're not going to make money directly from OSS. You make money using OSS and getting free improvements from others and interoperability with other tools is the main benefit.
This covers the case where you are taking an existing Free project and modifying it. What is the motivation between releasing a new project, that your business is responsible for creating, under a Free licence - there is no guarantee that you will receive any free improvements from others since noone may decide to take advantage of the Free licence?
The GPL insures you get those improvements and the competition does not grab all your code, and start a closed fork of it.
Lets say you are a start-up company trying to break into a market that's dominated by one or more well established propriatory companies. You base your product on Free software which allows a more rapid development and you release all your code and have a product that's much more advanced than the competition's.
How do you protect yourself from the competition taking your work and using it for themselves whilest using their established market position to maintain their large customer base - you have put development resources into the project and your competition is benefitting more than you.
Sure, you'll get any improvements they make, but they have a well established reputation and they have just delivered that shiny new product (which you wrote). From the customers' point of view, why would they buy their solution from a relatively unknown business rather than a more well established one that is offering a comparable (the same) product? When answering this question, remember that the customers may not know or care how the Free software system works.
There are tough choices to be made when balancing the wish to contribute code to the Free software community against the need to protect your business.
the software is protected by copyright law. Without a license agreement, nothing else gives you the right to use that software. That's why the GPL works for example... without agreeing to the GPL's terms, you have no right to use the software.
That is incorrect - copyright law does not prevent you using some software, it only prevents you from distributing it. Thus, you can happilly use GPL'd software without agreeing to the GPL - you just can't distribute it.
The fundamental difference between EULAs and distribution licences such as the GPL is that a distribution licence grants you rights which you would otherwise not have whereas an EULA revokes rights you would normally have. This is what may make EULAs unenforcable - if you didn't agree to the EULA then you are not bound by it's restrictions and proving that you agreed to the EULA is quite difficult. If MS thinks you are breaking the EULA then surely they need to prove that *you* agreed to it - how can they show that your nextdoor neighbour didn't click the "Agree" button instead? Or how can the prove that you didn't patch the code to swap the text on the "agree"/"disagree" buttons before clicking "disagree"?
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I _HAVE_ to pay my TV license because there is a TV sitting in my house. But for the next 6 months, I will not be on the same continent as my house. Or my TV.
Incorrect. Just owning a TV does not require you to have a licence - unplug it from the antenna and detune it, then you don't need a licence.
I should point out that I have no problem with the licence fee (indeed, I think it is a Good Thing), but I do have a problem of being artificially excluded from a service it funds. That said, as the BBC is doing more and more non-TV things, I think the licence fee should be raised through general taxation (may be done in a similar way to the council tax) - that would reduce the administration costs and (IMHO) be fairer.
I stand by my statement that it is logical from the point of trying to make a business from web streaming in the way that the article describes.
The BBC is not making a business from this though - AFAIK it's a free service with no advertising (although there has been talk of providing a similar service to foreign customers which would include advertising).
Of *course* it's relevent. DVD's aren't playable under Linux legally. DVD's are DRM'd.
The situation with regard to playing DVDs under Linux is ambiguous - the EUCD covers "effective copy protection" and it could very well be argued that CSS could not be considered effective since it was cracked *long* before the EUCD was passed. But in any case, it is still irrelevent because:
1. DVDs *are* playable under Linux (legal or not)
2. The DVDs are not funded through the licence fee - they are funded through the profits of their own sale. The streaming content service, on the other hand, will not generate any revenue and thus will be funded by the licence payers.
I'd atleast like to see some sort of movement, even if it's not entirely perfect, just so long as we move in the right direction.
My problem isn't with the fact that some media company is using DRM, it's with the fact that, as a licence fee payer, I am *required* to pay for a service that I have been artificially excluded from in order to receive an existing service (TV).
Whoa, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. In what way would that be better?
Where does the money come from to buy the rights to distribute these 3rd party programmes over the internet? The TV licence, of course. So why should my TV licence money go towards funding a service that they have artificially restricted so that I cannot access it?
Do you disagree with the BBC selling DVDs too?
No, they are free to do that - I don't see how this is relevant to the discussion.
I can't understand why a DRM Windows-and-Mac-only programmes (atleast to start with) is worse than not having those programmes.
Because they are spending funds on the service which could be better spent on other services which *are* available to everyone.
I don't consider the BBC's content legally mine.
It isn't legally yours. But as a licence payer you do have the right to access any content they are publishing and they have a charter stating that they must make is as widely available to the licence holders as possible.
But this is NOT a TV broadcast, which is the only thing covered by the Charter, but web streaming.
You are incorrect. The TV licencing authority clearly states that web streaming *is* considered to require a TV licence in a number of normal situations.
IP blocking was looked at as a possible means but, as you have pointed out, it is easy to circumvent.
Why is it any different for me to put up a proxy to rebroadcast a web stream rather than rebroadcasting the DVB stream? In both cases I am breaking the law, but in the first case (which will of course be the lowest quality one) they feel the need to use DRM instead of just using the law.
I don't like it either but it is entirely logical
No, it really isn't logical at all - if they were following logic they would be trying to restrict the high quality DVB-T and DVB-S transport streams in the same way since they pose greater risk. However, they are doing the exact opposite - pushing for free to air DVB-S streams (which is clearly a Good Thing).
This is more like the "listen again" feature they've been offering to radio listeners for some time: an extra, not a replacement.
An extra which I am paying for, yet have been explicitly locked out from. I should also point out that I can listen to the "listen again" stuff on Linux (ok, it's not using a Free codec, but it's actually possible to use the service) - why should TV be different?
So they should say Windows, Mac and Linux? Or should that be Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD? Or Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD and my toy OS that I wrote in CS class?
Or how about just releasing it in an open format so that everyone can access it...
You have to draw the line somewhere, and whether some people here like it or not, Linux users represent a vanishingly small part of the potential audience. I am happy for the BBC to spend a reasonable amount of money adding useful new features that are available to almost everyone.
I don't particularly want the BBC to spend huge amounts of money developing custom software - they can just use Free file formats and let people use the software that already exists. Also, Windows only has a near monopoly in the desktop segment - other devices, such as PDAs, phones, etc run any number of other operating systems.
highly vocal minority who deliberately chose to go down a different route to most people knowing that this sort of issue was likely and then complain afterwards.
Do you honestly believe that promoting a monopoly desktop is in the public interest? We've seen what that leads to - shoddy expensive products. Doesn't the BBC have a duty to look at the long term rammifications of only supporting a convicted monopolist and locking everyone else out instead of purely focussing on their commercial interests?
Web streaming is NOT covered by the charter nor, therefore, by any funding provided by the government. You licence fee is totally irrelevant to this discussion
This is incorrect - the content they are showing was produced with licence payer's money and they are not generating any additional funds from publishing this in downloadable format. Meanwhile, the BBC website's infrastructure (which _is_ funded by the licence fee) will presumably be used to deliver this content.
We are stuck with their decision - but from a business point of view it make sense.
However, they are not fulfilling their charter, which they are required to do since (as mentioned above) this _is_ indirectly funded by the licence fee.
If they were to stream data around the world they would be breaking the terms of their own broadcasting licence and annoying other broadcasters in other countries.
They do not need to stream data around the world - you can restrict streaming to the UK based on IP address. Sure, people can proxy the connections but that it a classic example of copyright infringement through rebroadcasting, which could be done with the original DVB stream anyway. nothing new here.
Yes, fine, I'd love that too, but the BBC don't own all the rights to everything they show.
So don't publish stuff they don't have the rights to on the Internet.
atleast they're moving in the right direction.
I don't consider locking out a load of people from the content they are legally entitled to, but still charging them for it to be "the right direction". Why don't they give a licence fee discount to all those people they have locked out of the service?
The BBC is a useful thing to have around, like schools and hospitals and welfare it's a good thing even if you might not use it personally.
I've got no problem with paying my licence fee so long as I am allowed to access the content. Sadly the BBC seems to be adding artifical restrictions to ensure that I can't access the content without me purchasing an expensive product from exactly one vendor with whome I have ethical problems. This is the same as saying "you can only watch TV on TVs made by Sony" - it completely removes competition from the market and this inevitably leads to an expensive poor quality product.
Also a worry is that the BBC appears to believe that being "platform agnostic" involves only supporting Windows and Mac - no mention of other platforms at all.
I think what's really galling people is that the BBC is using DRM at all.
What's really galling me is that the BBC is adding an artificial limitation which will prevent me (a licence payer) from accessing this content at all since I don't own any Windows machines (and I'm not about to buy Windows just so I can watch this content - which I can most likley download illegally in a platform agnostic format anyway). And of course, licence fee payers can't withhold a portion of their licence in response to the BBC intentionally preventing them from accessing content they have a legal right to.
There is a distinct difference between someone not being able to access the BBC website because they don't own a computer (which is fundamentally required to access a web site) and someone not being able to access some content because the BBC has explicitly excluded them through artificial means (there is no reason to _require_ a user has Windows in order to view videos - other operating systems are equally capable of playing videos).
HDCP was cracked a long time ago - you've been able to buy HDCP strippers for ages. Also, it's better to extract the content at the source - for example, by cracking AACS (again, already done to a great extent).
So an analog copy of a digital file is superior to a *perfect*digital*copy*?
If the analogue copy is of sufficiently high quality that it is indistinguishable from the digital copy to the average person then what does it matter which is technically superior?
Without DRM, you could make a fully perfect copy of an HD movie in less than an hour.
You _could_, and indeed some people would. However, you are also harming the legitimate users:
Currently, I choose to just ignore the DRM'd content and buy the un-DRM'd stuff. However, if the un-DRM'd content is abolished then the only choices left are to either completely ignore music, video, etc., or illegally copy the content. It's got to the point where (price aside) the illegally copied content is _better_ for the end users than the legitimate content. Even if the illegal copies are marginally lower quality, at least you can actually use them.
The extremely oppressive DRM techniques are only going to work if people can't actually get hold of the un-DRM'd content. And I'm afraid you're *never* going to be able to stop at least one un-DRM'd copy being published. From what I can tell, DRMing content isn't going to stop the professional copyright infringers and will end up pushing people who would ordinarilly be buying the content legitimately towards buying the illegal copies instead.
DRM makes piracy *harder*. Not impossible, just harder, and that's all it takes to be effective.
Completely wrong. If I can't copy the content I just bought I'll just download it instead - someone else will have already posted it online since, as you said, it's not impossible. And as mentioned above, if I'm forced to download illegal content _despite_ having legitimately paid for the content anyway I'm going to be less inclined to pay for it next time.
I'll wait for the whole space folding / gate warping thing, where I can physically step from one spot to another (see: Stargate), thankyouverymuch. :)
:)
Don't mean to burst your bubble but ISTR the StarGate supposidly deconstructed you in a similar way to a teleporter before transmitting you through a wormhole. Oops, my geek is showing
If everything works under XP then they have absolutely no incentive to upgrade to Vista. These machines can in some extreme cases keep going for upwards of 7-10 years.
I think we've reached the point where for the majority of users there really is no point in getting a faster machine - back in the 486 era practically *everyone* would benefit from the fastest machine they could get, but now we have far more CPU power and memory than most people are going to need for quite a long time.
This is going to hurt both MS and hardware manufacturers. Most people have never gone out and bought a new boxed OS (although I can believe that the few people who do upgrade the OS are sticking with XP instead of going and getting Vista), but the majority of people just get the latest version of Windows with their new hardware - the problem now is simply that less people are needing to upgrade their hardware, so the number of preinstalled Windows licences being sold is also down.
But still, when people buy a computer from the highstreet, they generally don't say "I want XP" or "I want Vista", they say "I want a computer" and the shop says "here, have this one with Vista on it". The shop may provide an _option_ to have XP preinstalled instead, but the default would be to have Vista, so that's what the customer is going to get unless they specifically ask for XP.
Most companies will upgrade at some point in the next 2-5 years but the fact that they are not buying *NOW* is hurting Microsoft's sales.
I don't think companies have ever embraced the latest Windows especially quickly though. Companies, more than home users, have people who understand that switching costs money and is unnecessary, so they aren't going to buy into the salesman telling them that they should have Vista.
What is the solution? With patents, we may never see Feature X+Y. Without patents, we may never have seen Feature X in the first place. How does the world get Feature X+Y?
Firstly, you may well have seen feature X even if it couldn't be patented because the inventor wanted to make money off it. There is an increased risk for the inventor if he can't patent it (since his competetors can take his invention and use their market position to push it or undercut him on price), but that doesn't necessarilly prevent the inventor from selling a product containing the feature. The risk is much much lower for large companies since they already have a lot of market leverage.
Secondly, you are making the erronous assumption that a feature couldn't be independently invented by more than one organisation. And this, I think, is the fundamental problem with the patent system - it can't differentiate between someone ripping off someone else's feature and someone independently inventing the same feature with no knowledge of the original. If I independently come up with the same idea as you, why should I be required to pay you a licence fee?
Until then its doomed to rot on the shelves with all the intelligent IT people badmouthing it (which is where most customers get their info from)
No, most customers get their info from the highstreet PC retailers who are pushing Vista as the New Big Thing the everyone should have.
Whatever MS do, their operating systems are guaranteed success because they come bundled on machines - most people will buy whatever they are told is the latest thing. The majority of people don't buy preinstalled machines based on an informed decision of what a specific version of Windows will or won't do for them.
Excuse my ignorance. If they don't make a good faith effort to stop the patent infringement, why doesn't that hurt Microsoft's case? I thought that if you didn't take reasonable measures to resolve your dispute before turning to a lawsuit, then that mistake could be used against your side.
But as previously mentioned, MS doesn't actually want lawsuits - they want FUD.
"The patent system is nolonger about protecting your innovations, it's an arms race -..."
The nature of software and the industry makes that statement true for software, but in other areas it works just fine.
I used to believe that, but increasingly I've come to believe that the whole patent system is flawed for one very simple reason - it can't differentiate between someone copying an invention and someone inventing the same thing completely independently.
If you come up with a new invention, are you supposed to search the patent archives to see if someone else already invented it and pay them a licence fee if they did (even if they haven't actually put their invention to use)?
Patents were there to protect innovators so that going into business manufacturing your product didn't have the risk of a well established company ripping off your design and undercutting you. If your patent covers a large chunk of a product that you are actively selling then the system probably works for that. If it only covers a very minor internal detail or you aren't selling the product anyway then the patent system serves only to hinder other people's innovation by either preventing other people from using something that they independently invented (if they realise it's already been patented and don't want to pay the licence fee), or trap people into paying licence fees once their product is selling (if you didn't realise you were infringing someone's patent).
Fundamentally, I don't see why I should invent something, take the risk of marketting and manufacturing it but have to pay you a licence fee just because you invented the same thing before me but decided not to take a risk and actually sell it (and therefore make your invention widely known).
BTW, for 12-15K you could have an attorney to a patent search.
Yes, because small businesses can really afford to have hundreds of thousands of lines of their code checked for infringement. 15K may not be much to a business the size of Microsoft, but to a small startup business (or indeed, an unpaid Free software developer) it's a lot of cash.
1. Absurd argument. The possibility of proving a patent invalid is a very good means to get off a patent lawsuit, so if Microsoft find this prospect so concerning, what's to say that whoever they sue won't be able to discredit the patents? Only makes sense if such a lawsuit is fought entirely in private, with no possibility of a leak on slashdot or groklaw saying "Here's a Microsoft patent, how valid is it?"
Which is exactly why MS won't sue anyone - as soon as they disclose their patent to any third party they lose the leverage they need in their FUD campaign. That's not to say they might not extract licence fees out of people - they can threaten to sue someone (without disclosing their patents), and some people will settle without ever going to court.
and all deployments of it must cease to exist (possible if that software is produced by a few parties who can contact all their customers, not really practical for Linux)
I think it's very practical for Linux - you don't need to care whether you're infringing or not until MS invoice you for the licence fee. And once MS ask for the licence fee you can upgrade your systems to the new non-infringing version and tell them to go screw themselves. Seems that MS can't win. Remember, MS is threatenning to sue the end users, not the distributors (who might be held responsible for recalling all the infringing products).
or it's not so fundamental, in which case it's doubtful how innovative the patent is in the first place.
Most patents aren't innovative - that doesn't stop you strong-arming a licence fee out of someone who can't afford to defend themselves though. MS is in a much weaker position if their patents were out in the open and publically shown to be invalid months before they started trying to extract licence fees.
But again, I must reiterate - I don't think MS are in it for the licence fees, they are trying to create FUD and scare people out of switching away from Microsoft based systems. Once they start actually suing people their leverage will probably quickly evaporate, so they aren't going to do that.
And a handy "bounce message" function that essentially tells automated spam systems to sod off.
Sending bounce messages is considered extremely harmful since they are sent to an address that is almost certainly forged (i.e. _you_ are spamming an innocent third party with your bounce messages). If you are going to reject spam messages then you need to do it at SMTP delivery time, which is something only your MTA can do, never your MUA.
Additionally, you should be rejecting forged mail if there are SPF records available at delivery time anyway.
being a linux programmer i wouldnt want my software being a part of the ones that make deals with M$
You can word the licence you release under however you want, you can even put in a clause specifically excluding any distributor who has made a deal with MS. However, then the licence ceases to be Free.
It seems that you should look at a more generic licence which still allows the 4 freedoms but is also incompatible with aspects of these deals. For example, the GPL 3 looks like it will be incompatible with this sort of patent protection deal, since it requires any patent protection to be extended to *all* users of the software, not just a small subset.
others have: Novel, Xandros, Linspire
But in so doing they have gained a lot of bad feeling in the Free software community. And these companies do need the community's support - Red Hat, etc. have their roots in the Free software world and understand this. Novell on the other hand is a well established propriatory software company who has jumped into the Free software world and I don't think they yet fully understand how important it is to not piss off the community.
aren't patents on the public record?
Yes, they are - as are several million other patents, and you have absolutely no idea what sort of patent you are alledgedly infringing so good luck trying to find the right needle in the haystack.
Aren't things like Ubuntu/Red Hat open source?
Yup, which makes it incredibly easy for any patent holder to find infringing code (these days it really is impossible to write any software without infringing someone's patent - the only thing that protects the propriatory vendors is that closed code is much harder to examine for infringements).
How hard is it for M$ to say "Look at patent 5,656,565 and lines 1-3,000 of kernel.c. This is a violation of our IP rights.
Very easy. However, they have said that they won't disclose which patents are being violated because:
1. The Free software community would be able to discredit the patents (e.g. provide evidence of prior art, show the code isn't infringing, etc).
2. The Free software developers would be able to remove the offending code.
Microsoft doesn't want to licence the patents, they are simply using them as a FUD campaign to scare people away from switching to Linux - if the patents are discredited or the offending code is removed they have lost all their leverage.
To people not in the know, this is perceived as a big risk - if you switch to Linux then MS has threattened to sue you. Of course, to those of us who can see what's going on it's obvious that MS can't possibly sue anyone because:
1. That would involve disclosing the patents.
2. MS doesn't seem at all confident that it's patents are valid since the cited reason for not disclosing them is that they would be discredited.
3. MS themselves will certainly be infringing a large number of patents held by organisations who have a vested interest in Free software (IBM, the Open Invention Network, Sun, etc.) - firing off lawsuits at Free software users will almost certainly invite retaliation from those patent holders.
The patent system is nolonger about protecting your innovations, it's an arms race - everyone is infringing everyone else's patents anyway (since it's practically impossible to produce any code which isn't infringing) and whoever holds the least patents is crushed since they cannot retaliate to any threats. The whole patent system needs to be abolished - it once served a useful purpose, but these days the merits are far outweighed by the abuses.
You've failed. OSS should never be your product only your tool. Selling OSS is not a sustainable business model.
Indeed you are correct that Free software can't be a product in it's own right. You are selling the services that surround the Free software - for example, the service of providing a pre-installed server, the customer support, etc. However, my point is that you have developed a tool on which to base those services. But now your competition also has access to that tool, and can provide similar services to you. Yeah, their services may not be as good (maybe they don't bother bug-fixing and just leave that to you and then take your fixes, so their customers end up with slower responses to their problems), but if they are a well established company it may take a lot of disservice before their customers decide they need a better deal.
A good example might be an enterprise grade linux distribution. Red Hat, for example, provide RHEL. Their business model is selling the support contracts for RHEL, but in order to do so they must expend a lot of resources developing the underlying system that they are supporting, and thre is nothing stopping any other company - Oracle, for example - taking their work and selling support services for a slightly lower price. Oracle would have much lower running costs since they aren't having to do any real development work - they just take whatever Red Hat does and rebrand it. Maybe they do their own bug fixes, maybe they don't bother, but either way they can signficantly undercut Red Hat.
Of course, Red Hat is a well established company with a good reputation so most people would buy from them. But imagine if they were a small start-up - now the well established company can base the services it's selling on your work and they have the marketting power to retain their customer base since noone has ever heard of your company.
(I should point out that I am a big supporter of Free software - I'm just playing devil's advocate here)
When commercial developers release code as open source they do so with a motive of making money. You're not going to make money directly from OSS. You make money using OSS and getting free improvements from others and interoperability with other tools is the main benefit.
This covers the case where you are taking an existing Free project and modifying it. What is the motivation between releasing a new project, that your business is responsible for creating, under a Free licence - there is no guarantee that you will receive any free improvements from others since noone may decide to take advantage of the Free licence?
The GPL insures you get those improvements and the competition does not grab all your code, and start a closed fork of it.
Lets say you are a start-up company trying to break into a market that's dominated by one or more well established propriatory companies. You base your product on Free software which allows a more rapid development and you release all your code and have a product that's much more advanced than the competition's.
How do you protect yourself from the competition taking your work and using it for themselves whilest using their established market position to maintain their large customer base - you have put development resources into the project and your competition is benefitting more than you.
Sure, you'll get any improvements they make, but they have a well established reputation and they have just delivered that shiny new product (which you wrote). From the customers' point of view, why would they buy their solution from a relatively unknown business rather than a more well established one that is offering a comparable (the same) product? When answering this question, remember that the customers may not know or care how the Free software system works.
There are tough choices to be made when balancing the wish to contribute code to the Free software community against the need to protect your business.
the software is protected by copyright law. Without a license agreement, nothing else gives you the right to use that software. ... without agreeing to the GPL's terms, you have no right to use the software.
That's why the GPL works for example
That is incorrect - copyright law does not prevent you using some software, it only prevents you from distributing it. Thus, you can happilly use GPL'd software without agreeing to the GPL - you just can't distribute it.
The fundamental difference between EULAs and distribution licences such as the GPL is that a distribution licence grants you rights which you would otherwise not have whereas an EULA revokes rights you would normally have. This is what may make EULAs unenforcable - if you didn't agree to the EULA then you are not bound by it's restrictions and proving that you agreed to the EULA is quite difficult. If MS thinks you are breaking the EULA then surely they need to prove that *you* agreed to it - how can they show that your nextdoor neighbour didn't click the "Agree" button instead? Or how can the prove that you didn't patch the code to swap the text on the "agree"/"disagree" buttons before clicking "disagree"?