You COULD use a magnet to separate the metal from the rest but not all metals are magnetic and this will STILL leave you with a mess of non-metal that would take a legion to sort by hand.
I wholly agree with your post, but I have one addition/correction. It is in fact possible to separate out non-magnetic metals from the waste stream (or in fact anything that conducts), using a clever device called an eddy current separator. It uses a varying magnetic field to induct an eddy current in any conducting bits of trash, which in turn creates an EM field. The two fields repel, and the conductive part is flung away from the non-conductive thrash. Here's a link to a company that makes them with a bit more explanation.
It's not the post-PC era, it's the post written-word era. Yes, Slashdot TV included.
Language is all about pattern recognition. To use correct spelling and grammar, you have to be able to spot your mistakes. You need to train your mind to do that by reading a lot. Nowadays, rather than reading the newspaper's science section, people watch TED videos on the Internet; rather than reading a book they go watch a movie or play a video game, and rather than reading and writing several page paper letters to their friends, they talk to them on the phone. And so, after all this listening instead of reading, their writing starts to resemble speech.
To me, it seems that the key problem is not with the lack of proper grammar or formality in communication though. I'm more worried about the underlying issue of a lack of understanding, and a lack of thinking things through properly and precisely. Perhaps that's simply because today's world is so complicated that in many situations a carefully thought out course of action is not going to be much better than "whatever seems right at the moment", but that's scarcely any consolation...
I'll be the last to say that Google can do nothing wrong (and avoid using their services as much as I can for privacy reasons), but it's things like this that in my eyes put them a step above their competition ethically. Do we see Facebook do this? Microsoft? Apple? Same thing with withdrawing from China rather than censoring on behalf of their government, and a bunch of other examples.
Corporations aren't people, but as Google demonstrates, they can occasionally show their human face.
I think the reason for the SFLC's advice regarding having to reveal th key is that Canonical distributes updates directly. Here's the scenario:
1. The OEM sells a PC with Ubuntu preloaded and the BIOS locked. 2. The user buys the PC and then updates GRUB2 to a newer version supplied from the Ubuntu repositories. It'll install fine, because it's been signed by Canonical, and the Canonical key is in the BIOS. 3. User wants to modify GRUB2. They get the sources from Canonical, modify, recompile, and try to install. The computer won't boot, because their modified version is missing a signature.
This means that Canonical is violating the Tivoisation clause in the GPLv3. Canonical is redistributing GRUB2 to the user, and the licence won't let them do that unless they also provide the user with everything they need to be able to change GRUB2 and load it onto their computer just as they're doing with the original they were given. Since Canonical can't unlock the BIOS (only the OEM can), the only way they can fulfil those requirements is by giving out their key.
This same ISP offers HBO for €15 per month as an add-on to their TV subscription, no other pay-TV channels required. There does appear to be a delay, but they're claiming it's often no more than a day.
Tell that to those, what, 160 million people in the US who are downloading music.
Listen, I'm perfectly happy not downloading any music, or buying a new computer when I don't need one, or buying expensive designer clothes, or getting a cell phone with two colour screens, a camera, MMS, GPRS and twenty-two different kinds of Java games. I have CDs that get better the more you listen to them, an Athlon 1700 XP that will be fast enough for years to come, clothes that keep me warm and look decent, and a Nokia 3310 (because I couldn't buy anything more simple when my old phone broke).
But look around you for a moment. Look at the majority of the people, not just your smart and tech-savvy friends, but ordinary people. They buy this crap. The marketing and the products.
I'm not saying that it's an excuse. As I said, what he did was illegal and wrong. But did you read the article? He had this cool new preview of his favourite OS, and he was so excited about it he wanted to show it to his friends. So excited about it that he didn't think of the consequences. He should have, definitely. But I can't say I don't understand where he's coming from. And I do think part of that excitement was induced by Apple itself.
You know, this is an example of a bigger problem. Companies have got incredibly good at getting people to want their products. They've got the psychology down. People want, no, need this cell phone, this music, these movies, these clothes, this Tiger OS, and it's all thanks to the marketing departments.
The problem is, the same companies are paying minimum wages, and lobbying for tax cuts, so that these customers don't have the money to pay for these products. Or, as in this specific case, they're simply not yet available. But people need them.
I think most people know that getting stuff illegally is wrong in some sense. But the companies have got their customers hooked and needy, and the customers can't afford the product. And technology has made it very easy to get the product in a way that does not bring the company any profit. There is a lot of psychological pressure on people to get stuff, and the "this is wrong" barrier does not stand up to it. Especially if everyone is doing it.
Companies see it differently. They see people who download their product instead of buying it. They see behaviour they do not want. And just as the Marketing department controls what people do, they've chosen the Legal department to control what people don't do.
In this case, they got these kids all worked up, they were big Mac fans, and they just needed to get a glimpse of Tiger. They couldn't resist Apple's marketing. So they went for it in the only way possible, and now they're getting sued.
Was wat he did illegal? Yes, he did violate the NDA (and didn't read it, which was stupid to boot). Was it wrong? Maybe. But was it his fault?
There is a difference between protecting the function of a program, and the expression of that function in the form of source code or binaries.
The first would be getting a (software) patent, so that everyone else is not allowed to use or sell implementations of the same functionality (but they can still copy the source if there is no copyright or the licence allows it, think LAME and Thomson's MP3 patents).
The second is done by copyright, which says you can't copy, but doesn't forbid using or selling the exact same functionality, as long as you have your own implementation (recently, OpenBSD's BSD-licenced CVS clone).
On of the provisions in the proposed European Patent Directive says that expressions of inventions can not be patented (that is, you can patent the algorithm, but not the C program the implements it). That makes sense, since that is already covered by copyright (and of course the pro-patent guys are using this clause to pretend that the Directive does not allow software patents, which is nonsense).
Anyway, it seems like the court is saying that they should have patented this rather than copyrighted it. Yes, it happens to be in software, but apparently the court feels that it's more of a technology that happens to have a bit of software in it, than an expression of creativity, thus it should not be copyrighted. If copyright is not in the picture, then the DMCA is irrelevant, hence the ruling against Lexmark.
I don't think this will affect any GPLled works, since they are "pure" software, they're not part of a hardware device. I think LinuxBIOS would be a bordeline case though. But IANAL.
This is intriguing. IBM seems to get it. A bunch of people create free software, which IBM then takes and sells.
Not really. A bunch of people create free software. IBM sells hardware and services, and it needs a software infrastructure for that. It could develop its own (and has, in the past), but it's much more efficient to cooperate with others who are in the same situation.
If you have n companies who all need the same software to deliver their core business, then all of them could develop such software in-house and spend x million dollar on it, or they could develop it together (protected from each other by the GPL) and spend x/n million dollars each. They can still compete (and make money) on their core business, while spending less. Everybody wins.
And the funny thing is that creating this means of cooperation between producers of software was never RMS' intention, his concern was the rights of users. Go figure:).
...and get in all sorts of financial and political trouble with the EU for not implementing a Directive. I'm not sure that this will really work in practice.
Oh, and strictly speaking there are no European laws. What we call a European law is an agreement between EU governments to change their laws to work according to a certain specification, if you wish. That's why it's called a Directive.
So, if a government wants to do something unpopular, they lobby for it in the EU, and then create a Directive. Then they implement that directive in local law, and when the people complain, they blame the EU for it. That allows them to work against the people and for big corporations without taking the blame.
On the other side, having a single currency and free trade of people and goods is really useful, and it does help the economy a lot. You win some you lose some I guess.
I was doing the old WTF? as I was reading each of these comments. The only thing "wrong" with the Napster technique is that people are abusing a free trial period. There is nothing unethical in dumping the output of a piece of software to any device you like. If someone sends you a Word file that they wrote, and you dump its contents to a PostScript, that is NOT unethical behavior.
Let's see, Napster sells you a subscription service. The idea behind that service is that you can listen to the music as long as you pay the monthly fee (or for free for a limited time). Now you save the music to your hard disk, stop paying the fee, but keep listening. How is that not unethical?
Your analogy is flawed. If someone sends you a Word document they typically mean for you to save it and read it whenever you want. In that case, it doesn't really matter whether you save it in a different format.
As for obeying wrong laws, if a law is wrong it should be overthrown. Spend your time writing your political representative instead of downloading MP3's. And don't start about civil disobedience. If you want to do that, take you laptop down to the police station and start making copies of CDs for anyone who asks. Get arrested, and raise a stink in the media to get your politician's attention so they can change the law. Laws aren't much use if everyone gets to decide for themselves whether to obey them or not.
And every time someone new tries to use the same code, they can't, since the old account previously registered with that code is still activated. So, it won't work that way.
What would be nice is if Blizzard made it possible to disable the account, freeing the CD key for use by whomever you sold the game to.
Well, they give you the right in the EULA, which is silly, since you already have that right under the First Sale Doctrine. However, giving you the right is something else than giving you the ability (and that is wrong in the "article" as well. I doubt that EULAs give you any abilities, they give you rights).
So, Blizzard do not take away your First Sale Doctrine rights, they just make them useless. Pwned I'd say.
Fortunately, the submitter got the right conclusion:
So here's a warning to everyone out there; be very careful if you are thinking about buying a used copy of World of Warcraft. You may have a complete and legitimate set of all the game materials, but you will not be able to play it.
if RMS had integrity and self-respect, he wouldn't have tried to change linux to GNU/linux.
You know, maybe you are right. If Linus hadn't started Linux, we would now be running GNU/Hurd instead of GNU/Linux. If RMS hadn't started GNU, we would be using BSD (and they would have needed to write a compiler).
So from this point of view, putting that/Linux behind the GNU is a compromise, a kind of recognition towards Linus for being a great guy and helping to popularise free software. One might argue (though I wouldn't agree, I'm fine with GNU/Linux) that RMS should strive to have the OS simply called GNU instead.
Personally, I prefer to look at distributions as OSes. So there is the Red Hat operating system, which include GNU and Linux and Apache and Mozilla and X.org and so on. Debian happens to be based on much of the same software, but I'd still consider it a different OS, with different tools and a different community. Perhaps the FSF should make a totally free distribution/OS of its own and call it GNU...
2) There is a complete confusion of licensing ("open-source") with development practice ("commercially built").
Yes, but every time RMS says that we should talk about proprietary versus free software rather than open source versus commercial, he gets laughed off the stage as a communist hippy zealot...
As to your question of who gets to choose our rights:
Congress
Courts
President
Who gets to put these clowns in that position of power: the voter.
And who gets to decide whom these voters vote for? The media. And who gets to decide what laws Congress passes? The corporations and their lobbyists. Anyway, this still doesn't really tell us what the best solution is, let alone what is "right", just who is supposed to make that decision.
What prompted me to post a reply was the blind assumption that it should not be allowed to sell "information products" that can not be backed up. That may well be a valid opinion, but I've never actually seen any arguments for it other than "it is my right to make backups".
But does that mean that the RIAA does not have the right to try and sell a product that does not allow that? If someone wants to sell a "CD" that noone can play, should that be illegal?
Oh, and the point of copyright is that you may have a copy that is your property, but that you do not have the right to copy it.
Public demand? Public RIGHTS. We have the right to make backups of our owned discs and put them into a format that is portable. The media continues to fall for the tricks being implemented by the MPAA's PR machine. I suggest that they refrain from spreading the misinformation created by the corporations PR machine as it does nothing but continue to erode the freedoms we are entitled to.
I'm sorry, I'm not that familiar with the US constitution. Which amendment is that?
What I'm trying to get at, who decides who should have what rights? Should we have the right to backup our DVDs? Or, if we forget to backup our DVDs and they break, copy the DVD of a friend if they happen to have a copy of the same movie? And if our copy was the last, are we entitled to a new copy of a different movie of the same studio? What about the freedom of movie producers to determine what product they sell?
Obviously, the RIAA and MPAA are saying that they should decide who has those rights (and the DMCA gets them quite a lot), and that they should have everything and their customers nothing. And their customers are screaming about that, and claiming that they should have everything and the RIAA and the MPAA nothing.
The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle. We need to change the legal infrastructure to support the most effective market. Whether that means making copy protection obligatory or forbidden or neither is a question I'll gladly leave to the reader.
But people care much more for popularity than for quality. They'd rather have the latest Britney Spears in DRMmed mono WMV than $unknown_band's latest in unencumbered 4-channel Ogg Vorbis. And they're not going to get the latest Britney Spears unless her record company trusts the format. Hence, not MP3, and not the evil open source Ogg Vorbis. I bet WMV is cheaper to licence than AAC.
Wait a minute...you are one of those "troll" things I heard about aren't you? I'm on to you! Attempting to trick innocent newbies like me into checking for dupes eh? On Slashdot? Ha!
I'm not buying it. I'm going to call the karma police.
1. Yes, advertising should be more clear about what you are actually paying for. But that is not a problem with the licence, it's a problem with the advertising. I imagine you subscribe to some music service, and in doing so sign a contract. I don't think failing to read a contract before signing it should mean that you don't have to abide its terms.
2. That's a problem with that specific licence then. As for it being negotiable, I'm sure you could send them a letter to negotiate. They probably wouldn't give you what you want, but that's another thing. Besides, last time I downloaded a Linux kernel I didn't get to negotiate either.
3. Fine, but that's still a problem with the advertising, not with licencing in general.
4. That's an interesting point. If you deal in "pure" intellectual property (ie, no physical representation but pure information) then you have to deal in licences. That means that you can't sell these rights to minors. On the other hand, the same goes for cell phone contracts, and many minors have a cell phone. It's just that their parents need to sign the form. The same could work for a music download service.
Okay, that's a loop hole I hadn't realised. You can buy your copy second-hand, and thus avoid doing business with the copyright owner. However, that only goes for physical items. IANAL, so I don't know whether a downloaded WMA would constitute a physical item.
In an ideal world, DRM would not exist, and people would not infringe upon other people's copyrights. As it is, the people in general are pulling towards completely ignoring copyright altogether, and the media companies are pulling towards extending it with all sorts of other rights. In practice, the people are winning, in the legal arena, the media companies are winning. The problem is that that second battle is the really important one, and noone will care about it until it affects the first. Introducing DRM everywhere would bring that about.
But you are not at a grocer, you are downloading music from a music service that you paid for to get. Did you sign a contract for your cell phone subscription? Cable modem? Insurance?
"Intellectual property" is not like physical property. That is why copyright infringement is not theft. Did you ever read the small letters on a CD you bought? It says "All rights reserved". You are not buying any intellectual property at all when you buy a CD. Just a piece of plastic. Copyright does not forbid you to play it, but it does forbid you to copy it, save for fair use.
When you want to download a song but not get any intellectual property, then you have a copy of the song, but no right to copy it, just like with a CD (again, save for fair use). If you do want that right, then you have to get yourself a copyright licence.
As for implicit or explicit licence, I see no problem with requiring someone to (digitally, and verifiably) sign an EULA before downloading or installing a program. I wouldn't do it probably, but who am I so tell others what kinds of contracts they can enter in? And whether to do it electronically or on paper?
No, a physical disc is not a licence. But we are talking about the successor of that physical disc, which is presented here as a downloadable bunch of data.
Now, in the old days, you bought a record, and put it on your record player, and you played it. No problems, and consumers had nothing to do with copyright, because they never copied music. Copyright just governed the publishers, and it was designed for that, and it worked. What copying or deriving the public did do, excerpts, satire, and so on, was covered by fair use clauses.
However, these days, copying is no longer done by publishers alone. I buy a CD, pop it in my PC, rip it, copy the content to my laptop, and listen to it while I'm working. Many people want to share music with their friends via the Internet.
So, copyright licences, which were once simply business deals between content creators and content publishers, are now something that the consumer is getting involved in. Maybe that means that the copyright laws must be changed.
Now about the DMCA, yes it is a bad law. It is rediculous that when I play a DVD I bought in the video shop, in the DVD drive that I bought in the computer shop, using a program that I downloaded with permission from its author, I am breaking the law. But the problem is the law, now how it is implemented in technology. What we need to do is not not implementing the law in our technology, what we need to do is to get rid of it altogether. For that, we need popular support, and for that we need to convince people that it is a bad law. Showing people the results hands-on seems to me like a good way of achieving that.
Slashdot Mirror
You COULD use a magnet to separate the metal from the rest but not all metals are magnetic and this will STILL leave you with a mess of non-metal that would take a legion to sort by hand.
I wholly agree with your post, but I have one addition/correction. It is in fact possible to separate out non-magnetic metals from the waste stream (or in fact anything that conducts), using a clever device called an eddy current separator. It uses a varying magnetic field to induct an eddy current in any conducting bits of trash, which in turn creates an EM field. The two fields repel, and the conductive part is flung away from the non-conductive thrash. Here's a link to a company that makes them with a bit more explanation.
It's not the post-PC era, it's the post written-word era. Yes, Slashdot TV included.
Language is all about pattern recognition. To use correct spelling and grammar, you have to be able to spot your mistakes. You need to train your mind to do that by reading a lot. Nowadays, rather than reading the newspaper's science section, people watch TED videos on the Internet; rather than reading a book they go watch a movie or play a video game, and rather than reading and writing several page paper letters to their friends, they talk to them on the phone. And so, after all this listening instead of reading, their writing starts to resemble speech.
To me, it seems that the key problem is not with the lack of proper grammar or formality in communication though. I'm more worried about the underlying issue of a lack of understanding, and a lack of thinking things through properly and precisely. Perhaps that's simply because today's world is so complicated that in many situations a carefully thought out course of action is not going to be much better than "whatever seems right at the moment", but that's scarcely any consolation...
I'll be the last to say that Google can do nothing wrong (and avoid using their services as much as I can for privacy reasons), but it's things like this that in my eyes put them a step above their competition ethically. Do we see Facebook do this? Microsoft? Apple? Same thing with withdrawing from China rather than censoring on behalf of their government, and a bunch of other examples.
Corporations aren't people, but as Google demonstrates, they can occasionally show their human face.
I think the reason for the SFLC's advice regarding having to reveal th key is that Canonical distributes updates directly. Here's the scenario:
1. The OEM sells a PC with Ubuntu preloaded and the BIOS locked.
2. The user buys the PC and then updates GRUB2 to a newer version supplied from the Ubuntu repositories. It'll install fine, because it's been signed by Canonical, and the Canonical key is in the BIOS.
3. User wants to modify GRUB2. They get the sources from Canonical, modify, recompile, and try to install. The computer won't boot, because their modified version is missing a signature.
This means that Canonical is violating the Tivoisation clause in the GPLv3. Canonical is redistributing GRUB2 to the user, and the licence won't let them do that unless they also provide the user with everything they need to be able to change GRUB2 and load it onto their computer just as they're doing with the original they were given. Since Canonical can't unlock the BIOS (only the OEM can), the only way they can fulfil those requirements is by giving out their key.
This same ISP offers HBO for €15 per month as an add-on to their TV subscription, no other pay-TV channels required. There does appear to be a delay, but they're claiming it's often no more than a day.
Listen, I'm perfectly happy not downloading any music, or buying a new computer when I don't need one, or buying expensive designer clothes, or getting a cell phone with two colour screens, a camera, MMS, GPRS and twenty-two different kinds of Java games. I have CDs that get better the more you listen to them, an Athlon 1700 XP that will be fast enough for years to come, clothes that keep me warm and look decent, and a Nokia 3310 (because I couldn't buy anything more simple when my old phone broke).
But look around you for a moment. Look at the majority of the people, not just your smart and tech-savvy friends, but ordinary people. They buy this crap. The marketing and the products.
I'm not saying that it's an excuse. As I said, what he did was illegal and wrong. But did you read the article? He had this cool new preview of his favourite OS, and he was so excited about it he wanted to show it to his friends. So excited about it that he didn't think of the consequences. He should have, definitely. But I can't say I don't understand where he's coming from. And I do think part of that excitement was induced by Apple itself.
The problem is, the same companies are paying minimum wages, and lobbying for tax cuts, so that these customers don't have the money to pay for these products. Or, as in this specific case, they're simply not yet available. But people need them.
I think most people know that getting stuff illegally is wrong in some sense. But the companies have got their customers hooked and needy, and the customers can't afford the product. And technology has made it very easy to get the product in a way that does not bring the company any profit. There is a lot of psychological pressure on people to get stuff, and the "this is wrong" barrier does not stand up to it. Especially if everyone is doing it.
Companies see it differently. They see people who download their product instead of buying it. They see behaviour they do not want. And just as the Marketing department controls what people do, they've chosen the Legal department to control what people don't do.
In this case, they got these kids all worked up, they were big Mac fans, and they just needed to get a glimpse of Tiger. They couldn't resist Apple's marketing. So they went for it in the only way possible, and now they're getting sued.
Was wat he did illegal? Yes, he did violate the NDA (and didn't read it, which was stupid to boot). Was it wrong? Maybe. But was it his fault?
No way.
The first would be getting a (software) patent, so that everyone else is not allowed to use or sell implementations of the same functionality (but they can still copy the source if there is no copyright or the licence allows it, think LAME and Thomson's MP3 patents).
The second is done by copyright, which says you can't copy, but doesn't forbid using or selling the exact same functionality, as long as you have your own implementation (recently, OpenBSD's BSD-licenced CVS clone).
On of the provisions in the proposed European Patent Directive says that expressions of inventions can not be patented (that is, you can patent the algorithm, but not the C program the implements it). That makes sense, since that is already covered by copyright (and of course the pro-patent guys are using this clause to pretend that the Directive does not allow software patents, which is nonsense).
Anyway, it seems like the court is saying that they should have patented this rather than copyrighted it. Yes, it happens to be in software, but apparently the court feels that it's more of a technology that happens to have a bit of software in it, than an expression of creativity, thus it should not be copyrighted. If copyright is not in the picture, then the DMCA is irrelevant, hence the ruling against Lexmark.
I don't think this will affect any GPLled works, since they are "pure" software, they're not part of a hardware device. I think LinuxBIOS would be a bordeline case though. But IANAL.
Not really. A bunch of people create free software. IBM sells hardware and services, and it needs a software infrastructure for that. It could develop its own (and has, in the past), but it's much more efficient to cooperate with others who are in the same situation.
If you have n companies who all need the same software to deliver their core business, then all of them could develop such software in-house and spend x million dollar on it, or they could develop it together (protected from each other by the GPL) and spend x/n million dollars each. They can still compete (and make money) on their core business, while spending less. Everybody wins.
And the funny thing is that creating this means of cooperation between producers of software was never RMS' intention, his concern was the rights of users. Go figure :).
...and get in all sorts of financial and political trouble with the EU for not implementing a Directive. I'm not sure that this will really work in practice.
So, if a government wants to do something unpopular, they lobby for it in the EU, and then create a Directive. Then they implement that directive in local law, and when the people complain, they blame the EU for it. That allows them to work against the people and for big corporations without taking the blame.
On the other side, having a single currency and free trade of people and goods is really useful, and it does help the economy a lot. You win some you lose some I guess.
Let's see, Napster sells you a subscription service. The idea behind that service is that you can listen to the music as long as you pay the monthly fee (or for free for a limited time). Now you save the music to your hard disk, stop paying the fee, but keep listening. How is that not unethical?
Your analogy is flawed. If someone sends you a Word document they typically mean for you to save it and read it whenever you want. In that case, it doesn't really matter whether you save it in a different format.
As for obeying wrong laws, if a law is wrong it should be overthrown. Spend your time writing your political representative instead of downloading MP3's. And don't start about civil disobedience. If you want to do that, take you laptop down to the police station and start making copies of CDs for anyone who asks. Get arrested, and raise a stink in the media to get your politician's attention so they can change the law. Laws aren't much use if everyone gets to decide for themselves whether to obey them or not.
What would be nice is if Blizzard made it possible to disable the account, freeing the CD key for use by whomever you sold the game to.
So, Blizzard do not take away your First Sale Doctrine rights, they just make them useless. Pwned I'd say.
Fortunately, the submitter got the right conclusion:
So here's a warning to everyone out there; be very careful if you are thinking about buying a used copy of World of Warcraft. You may have a complete and legitimate set of all the game materials, but you will not be able to play it.
Indeed, just don't buy it. Problem solved.
You know, maybe you are right. If Linus hadn't started Linux, we would now be running GNU/Hurd instead of GNU/Linux. If RMS hadn't started GNU, we would be using BSD (and they would have needed to write a compiler).
So from this point of view, putting that /Linux behind the GNU is a compromise, a kind of recognition towards Linus for being a great guy and helping to popularise free software. One might argue (though I wouldn't agree, I'm fine with GNU/Linux) that RMS should strive to have the OS simply called GNU instead.
Personally, I prefer to look at distributions as OSes. So there is the Red Hat operating system, which include GNU and Linux and Apache and Mozilla and X.org and so on. Debian happens to be based on much of the same software, but I'd still consider it a different OS, with different tools and a different community. Perhaps the FSF should make a totally free distribution/OS of its own and call it GNU...
Yes, but every time RMS says that we should talk about proprietary versus free software rather than open source versus commercial, he gets laughed off the stage as a communist hippy zealot...
What prompted me to post a reply was the blind assumption that it should not be allowed to sell "information products" that can not be backed up. That may well be a valid opinion, but I've never actually seen any arguments for it other than "it is my right to make backups".
Oh, and the point of copyright is that you may have a copy that is your property, but that you do not have the right to copy it.
I'm sorry, I'm not that familiar with the US constitution. Which amendment is that?
What I'm trying to get at, who decides who should have what rights? Should we have the right to backup our DVDs? Or, if we forget to backup our DVDs and they break, copy the DVD of a friend if they happen to have a copy of the same movie? And if our copy was the last, are we entitled to a new copy of a different movie of the same studio? What about the freedom of movie producers to determine what product they sell?
Obviously, the RIAA and MPAA are saying that they should decide who has those rights (and the DMCA gets them quite a lot), and that they should have everything and their customers nothing. And their customers are screaming about that, and claiming that they should have everything and the RIAA and the MPAA nothing.
The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle. We need to change the legal infrastructure to support the most effective market. Whether that means making copy protection obligatory or forbidden or neither is a question I'll gladly leave to the reader.
But people care much more for popularity than for quality. They'd rather have the latest Britney Spears in DRMmed mono WMV than $unknown_band's latest in unencumbered 4-channel Ogg Vorbis. And they're not going to get the latest Britney Spears unless her record company trusts the format. Hence, not MP3, and not the evil open source Ogg Vorbis. I bet WMV is cheaper to licence than AAC.
Wait a minute...you are one of those "troll" things I heard about aren't you? I'm on to you! Attempting to trick innocent newbies like me into checking for dupes eh? On Slashdot? Ha!
I'm not buying it. I'm going to call the karma police.
1. Yes, advertising should be more clear about what you are actually paying for. But that is not a problem with the licence, it's a problem with the advertising. I imagine you subscribe to some music service, and in doing so sign a contract. I don't think failing to read a contract before signing it should mean that you don't have to abide its terms. 2. That's a problem with that specific licence then. As for it being negotiable, I'm sure you could send them a letter to negotiate. They probably wouldn't give you what you want, but that's another thing. Besides, last time I downloaded a Linux kernel I didn't get to negotiate either. 3. Fine, but that's still a problem with the advertising, not with licencing in general. 4. That's an interesting point. If you deal in "pure" intellectual property (ie, no physical representation but pure information) then you have to deal in licences. That means that you can't sell these rights to minors. On the other hand, the same goes for cell phone contracts, and many minors have a cell phone. It's just that their parents need to sign the form. The same could work for a music download service.
In an ideal world, DRM would not exist, and people would not infringe upon other people's copyrights. As it is, the people in general are pulling towards completely ignoring copyright altogether, and the media companies are pulling towards extending it with all sorts of other rights. In practice, the people are winning, in the legal arena, the media companies are winning. The problem is that that second battle is the really important one, and noone will care about it until it affects the first. Introducing DRM everywhere would bring that about.
"Intellectual property" is not like physical property. That is why copyright infringement is not theft. Did you ever read the small letters on a CD you bought? It says "All rights reserved". You are not buying any intellectual property at all when you buy a CD. Just a piece of plastic. Copyright does not forbid you to play it, but it does forbid you to copy it, save for fair use.
When you want to download a song but not get any intellectual property, then you have a copy of the song, but no right to copy it, just like with a CD (again, save for fair use). If you do want that right, then you have to get yourself a copyright licence.
As for implicit or explicit licence, I see no problem with requiring someone to (digitally, and verifiably) sign an EULA before downloading or installing a program. I wouldn't do it probably, but who am I so tell others what kinds of contracts they can enter in? And whether to do it electronically or on paper?
Now, in the old days, you bought a record, and put it on your record player, and you played it. No problems, and consumers had nothing to do with copyright, because they never copied music. Copyright just governed the publishers, and it was designed for that, and it worked. What copying or deriving the public did do, excerpts, satire, and so on, was covered by fair use clauses.
However, these days, copying is no longer done by publishers alone. I buy a CD, pop it in my PC, rip it, copy the content to my laptop, and listen to it while I'm working. Many people want to share music with their friends via the Internet.
So, copyright licences, which were once simply business deals between content creators and content publishers, are now something that the consumer is getting involved in. Maybe that means that the copyright laws must be changed.
Now about the DMCA, yes it is a bad law. It is rediculous that when I play a DVD I bought in the video shop, in the DVD drive that I bought in the computer shop, using a program that I downloaded with permission from its author, I am breaking the law. But the problem is the law, now how it is implemented in technology. What we need to do is not not implementing the law in our technology, what we need to do is to get rid of it altogether. For that, we need popular support, and for that we need to convince people that it is a bad law. Showing people the results hands-on seems to me like a good way of achieving that.