Well, TPB tracker is still online, but torrents are already re-fit with several other open trackers. The massively troublesome central point of failure is fixed even before failing!
I've been thinking about writing some software that will make it easier to run the business, I'm poor and can't afford to buy commercial software for a photo business. However if I spend much tyme programming then I'll want the option to sell the software to other photographers yet prevent them from being able to turn around and sell the software themselves. However as I improve the software I'd like to open the source of older versions.
Why not adapt some FOSS software? Because you want/need the copyright to "protect" you? Is it not better to cooperate with other photographers to develop the software - in that way you might not only get better software, but also get more time to photograph, which seemingly is the point of the whole software thing.
FOSS developers tend to share to reap the benefits of a cooperating group. We collaborate in creating something of a much better quality and feature set than any of us could do on our own. I've contributed quite a lot of code to GPL'ed software, most of it "owned" by commercial vendors. Putting a price on everything is not necessarily the best solution. Don't you ever work together with your neighbours to fix the playground? Do you require ownership of the parts you fix? Do you demand that all neighbours pay a fee, then divide it to the ones working? Where I live, not even all that meet up do work - some are in charge of the barbecue or coffee...
You should also be aware that if you GPL the "old" versions you have, some other people will likely improve on your software and start using it. As your "newest" version is NOT GPL'ed, you cannot apply their patches. So, you will most likely end up with a competing, non-free version. If your program is any good, you will end up with the most expensive and likely worst of the two.
Overture bought the web search based part of FAST (and is now a part of Yahoo!), which was called "alltheweb". The FAST MS is buying largely provides company internal searching (intranet search, or search functionality on web sites).
I was actually positively shocked when I clicked on a "gnumeric" spreadsheet file without having gnumeric installed. Ubuntu presented a "searching for software to open this file" dialog, found gnumeric and let me press "install" right there. It installed and opened the file for me! If that is not hassle free I don't know what would be.
In Norway it has at least been publicly stated by politicians that any kind of digital restriction that requires minimal effort to break is legal to break. Of course, our law is utterly broken as we are at the same time allowed to create back-ups, share at least music with close family and friends and are allowed to convert media into different formats for use on "relevant" equipment. Of course, there has already been large discussions on what is relevant, where the recording industry does not feel an MP3 player is relevant for playing the content of a CD...:-)
I guess these laws are made largely by lawyers, for lawyers - they are the ones driveling in the ambiguities, the unclear lines and the conflicting goals (distribute, use, convert, limit, share, restrict), not to mention the enormous impact of everyone being a criminal or at least some kind of infringing, stealing no-good pirate.
The basic problem is this:
Yes, there is a lock, but the DMCA does not specify encryption, just some technological measure that, in effect, controls access to the system. "Effectively controls" means "in effect controls."
I see more comments about "Effectively control" == "in effect controls". Is this "standard legalese" or something? Why was this ambiguity written into the laws? And I'm just curious, not being difficult.
In Norway we have a similar clause "effektiv beskyttelse", but it is worded as "effective protection", not "in effect". In other words, if you can break it hardly without noticing (hold in shift when adding a CD is a typical example, as is zone-free DVD players), it is legal. Of course, this law came *after* the whole DeCSS shebang.:-)
I happen to buy all my music from eMusic.com, and have for several years. But yes, things change, get over it. Your 1980s plastic not selling for 1980s prices any more? EVERYTHING has changed. Recording studios can largely be replaced by a good microphone and a laptop, CD's cost nothing, and are not even needed. Global distribution is, for all practical purposes, free. There is no "breakage" anymore, not on CDs, not on mp3s.
The Internet is free advertising for artists, it's not something to let you bath in a sea of cocaine with beautiful models until your brain exits through your ear.
Are everybody breaking the rules? Well, the rules are broken.
If removing DRM does not affect music piracy, why would that show that DRM is needed? DRM has never stopped any pirates, hell, the pirates are the ones that *never see* DRM. It's the legitimate customers that *buy* DRM'ed content that are unable to convert/play/copy their content. Kids regard music on the Internet for free, just as it is free to record from the radio. It's called change. Get over it.
Expecting DRM removal to have *any* impact on piracy is strange, but my guess is that the number of support calls and customer trouble will be reduced.
Well, last DVD I bought first required me to select language for the copyright warning, then watch the stupid warning, then a menu comes along, and I must select to start the movie. The XVid DVD just plays. Plain and simple. I put it in, and it plays. No commercials. No warnings. No waiting around for two minutes in order to even get the darn thing playing for the kids.
I'm sorry, but a DVD have far worse usability for me than an XVid file from BitTorrent.
Oh come one, always with the burn/rip cycle. Incredible that you also didn't mention the very simple and convenient "virtual CD drive" thingy. If you buy a CD that doesn't play in your car, just rip/burn and you're good to go! Even more convenient, you can buy CD that doesn't play, just order the same CD from another country! If that doesn't play either, just buy the CD very easily on iTMS and burn it! It's all just so convenient!
Buy, download, burn, rip, convert, burn - these are not good ways of putting MP3's on my car stereo.
Fortunately I have eMusic - they treat me as a customer, wanted as a customer, not wanted as a (potential) criminal or terrorist. With eMusic, I download and burn. Or download and copy. They even let me download the *tracks I bought* as many times as I want. No backup required for my music.
iTMS is a pile of s**t. Expensive, DRM and no backup! And iTunes is ugly.
When using Windows, I spend a lot more time dismissing unnecessary dialogs and trying to figure out whether to click "yes" or "no" on a confusingly-worded confirmation dialog. (Like I said, this is largely cultural, but I put a lot of blame on Microsoft for this since they set an exceedingly bad example in their own OS - it's not uncommon for me to have to read a warning from the OS itself two or three times to figure out exactly what Windows is trying to say.) I don't know about OS X, but as a Linux user, I am surprised at how hard dialogs in Windows are to understand. Using Gnome, I automatically read the buttons, as they will typically say something about the effect of pressing one. For example, a "Are you sure you want to delete this file?" confirmation dialog will have buttons that says "Cancel" and "Delete". When using Windows, I read "Yes" "No", and immediately wonder, "Yes what?" I then have to read the dialog, and figure out exactly what it means, praying there is no negation in the question.:-)
Apple have an iTMS shop in Norway, thus coming under Norwegian law - they sell a product that is made specifically to refuse competition. By opening their DRM for licensing (for fair prices, which will also be enforced in the EU), users would be able to buy other players. The "free market" thing you know.
Saying that users can "just burn to a virtual CD, rip and encode" is total crap, and is NOT something any normal user can do, will do or is interested in doing. Blaming the DRM on the record companies is wrong, the EU does not refuse DRM, they just refuse a company to forcefully limit competition.
eMusic also provides clean VBR mp3's and sell to the whole world. Only a very few tracks are limited to northern America, and there is no DRM. Also, I like the fact that I can download the songs I bought as many times as I like, so I don't need to back them up. Also, they treat me like a wanted customer, not some criminal.
I'm using the eMusicJ java client, which is very fast and stable. It runs excellent on my Ubuntu box. It's a lot faster too, as it downloads multiple songs simultaneously.
Dr
Most (or all?) modern Linux distributions have IPv6 enabled by default, and if memory serves med right, so does Vista. In other words, a lot of computers will be fairly ready for dual-stack operation out of the box. Administering IPv6 can be shitloads easier than IPv4, as nodes auto-configure and no DHCP is required (at least as long as you still have DHCP for DNS info running on v4). On XP (and even 2000), I think it is only a question of running "ipv6 enable" or something, which could probably be done by a login script, even though I'm not quite so sure about the IPv6 support of those systems, but I think it works quite fine in dual-stack setups. It was among other things, impossible (or at least difficult) to configure an IPv6 address as a DNS server due to a limitation of 4 "boxes" with a "." in between.:-)
Of course, firewalls that work on IP ranges would probably need some updating, but I would expect any setup with advanced IP based rules on user-machines with personal firewalls is a setup from hell to administer. However, as you suddenly get shitloads of address space, you could define different subnets for different computers, e.g. run your servers on a different subnet from you user-pcs.
I guess old, incompatible hardware is a showstopper, but then again, they are showstoppers in moving from 100mbit to gigabit as well.:-)
It's no problem to run a computer with dual-stacks, as is expected to be done. I'm running a dual-stack computer right now, with all traffic going to IPv6 hosts routed over IPv6 and the rest over IPv4.
The good thing about this is a smooth transition, and I get to have a real IPv6 address (actually a subnet) for my computers. Even if IPv4 is behind NAT, I can still be reached over IPv6.
The benefit should be that IPv4 can be used for (seemless) compatibility while IPv6 can allow applications like P2P, voice and video can be sent directly between computers on IPv6.
Regardless of how much child porn is floating on the net, I for one do not want to sponsor any of my resources to the spreading of child porn. At least with non-anonymous P2P networks, I can decide how my own disk and network connection should be used.
Of course, people will move to anonymized networks if "driven" to it by *AA (be it to share movies, "illegal" documents or remixed political commercials). Hopefully "scambled" networks will do enough to ensure that nobody gets in real trouble, while letting the users stay in control of their networks.
Windows users are used to the "just click the.exe to install", then press "ok" until it has completed. Linux users typically install software through (authenticated) package systems. Ubuntu will for example cry out loud if you install packets that are not "approved" by the Ubuntu organization.
In other words, the way people install Linux software would make them stay away from most bad software (including cracks and other ways to hose a computer due to saving a few bucks). Linux is, in this respect, a lot more secure than windows.
Oh, and you do of course also get security updates for the software you just installed. I've only seen the red "important update pending" notice in Firefox running on Windoze computers.
Re:The problem is implementation rather than desig
on
Buy Vista or Else
·
· Score: 1
Ubuntu doesn't show those messages by default, but you can allways press a key or something to see them. Also, if something hangs for a while (say network), the graphical loader will dissapear and you will see exactly what happens.
That is the kind of stuff I really like about Ubuntu (and Gnome) - be easy to use for those that don't care, but be powerful for power users at the same time.
Well, the people that actually are bothered by DRM are their customers. These customers obviosly bought the product. The "criminals" you are talking about didn't buy the product, they downloaded it. They are NOT affected by DRM. So even though many people are described as criminals, these are NOT THE SAME PEOPLE as the customers.
But of course, if you want to re-sell the same product over and over again, hold the power to "recall" products at will (with no reinbursement) and control the player market, DRM is what you're looking for. However, it will probably make the "customer" group smaller and the "criminals" group biggger.
The biggest thing Bittorrent has going for it, is that a central authority that you trust, is listing legit files, with descriptions, etc. With Gnutella/Kazaa, you don't have any assurance, hence the problem with fake files.
TSN is not a distributed index, it is a social network. This means that you will search for resources among your friends and their friends. With this search system, you should not be getting fake files, as those spreading it is not likely your friend. If they were your friends, they likely won't be after they start sending fake files.:-)
The paper "Improving semantic routing efficiency" will be presented at the MobiQuitous 2005 conference in San Diego in July and describes the preference and reputation system in TSN in detail.
Creating ever more efficient ways to communicate does not imply that whan is being communicated needs to be illegal. BitTorrent does an incredible job sharing legal files. The Socialized.Net provides an efficient way to search for files. Of course, TSN also provides other services, such as bookmark sharing and serverless instant messaging.
Allowing people to easily share data is a good thing, even though some might misuse it. As long as the service is not anonymous, it is clearly not made to facilitate illegal activities, something Bram has said all along.
If you read the post carefully it says the web interface of the daemon. This is a web interface on a process running on your own computer. So, it's supposed to be "localhost".:-)
If the link doesn't work, you have to (download and) start the daemon.
The daemon runs on your local computer. Port 8002 is the web interface. So, if you cannot reach your own computer on port 8002, your daemon is not running.:-)
Maybe I don't know enough about how BT works but does it do any sort of coordination to make sure the file stays availible if the seed nodes go offline? In particular I thought the tracker needed to have a reference to some seed node which will have the full file. So if you really want to eliminate the necessity of having a server for a file it would seem you would need to build logic into the network that guarantees a certain level of redundancy for files of a certain popularity.
BitTorrent is a protocol to transfer files. You can easily implement something on top of it to control replication (we have a test system like this running, and we'll GPL it when it has been completed). But BT does nothing of the sort.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, TPB tracker is still online, but torrents are already re-fit with several other open trackers. The massively troublesome central point of failure is fixed even before failing!
Why not adapt some FOSS software? Because you want/need the copyright to "protect" you? Is it not better to cooperate with other photographers to develop the software - in that way you might not only get better software, but also get more time to photograph, which seemingly is the point of the whole software thing.
FOSS developers tend to share to reap the benefits of a cooperating group. We collaborate in creating something of a much better quality and feature set than any of us could do on our own. I've contributed quite a lot of code to GPL'ed software, most of it "owned" by commercial vendors. Putting a price on everything is not necessarily the best solution. Don't you ever work together with your neighbours to fix the playground? Do you require ownership of the parts you fix? Do you demand that all neighbours pay a fee, then divide it to the ones working? Where I live, not even all that meet up do work - some are in charge of the barbecue or coffee...
You should also be aware that if you GPL the "old" versions you have, some other people will likely improve on your software and start using it. As your "newest" version is NOT GPL'ed, you cannot apply their patches. So, you will most likely end up with a competing, non-free version. If your program is any good, you will end up with the most expensive and likely worst of the two.
Doc
Overture bought the web search based part of FAST (and is now a part of Yahoo!), which was called "alltheweb". The FAST MS is buying largely provides company internal searching (intranet search, or search functionality on web sites).
/Doc
I was actually positively shocked when I clicked on a "gnumeric" spreadsheet file without having gnumeric installed. Ubuntu presented a "searching for software to open this file" dialog, found gnumeric and let me press "install" right there. It installed and opened the file for me! If that is not hassle free I don't know what would be.
/dr
In Norway it has at least been publicly stated by politicians that any kind of digital restriction that requires minimal effort to break is legal to break. Of course, our law is utterly broken as we are at the same time allowed to create back-ups, share at least music with close family and friends and are allowed to convert media into different formats for use on "relevant" equipment. Of course, there has already been large discussions on what is relevant, where the recording industry does not feel an MP3 player is relevant for playing the content of a CD... :-)
/dr
I guess these laws are made largely by lawyers, for lawyers - they are the ones driveling in the ambiguities, the unclear lines and the conflicting goals (distribute, use, convert, limit, share, restrict), not to mention the enormous impact of everyone being a criminal or at least some kind of infringing, stealing no-good pirate.
In Norway we have a similar clause "effektiv beskyttelse", but it is worded as "effective protection", not "in effect". In other words, if you can break it hardly without noticing (hold in shift when adding a CD is a typical example, as is zone-free DVD players), it is legal. Of course, this law came *after* the whole DeCSS shebang.
I happen to buy all my music from eMusic.com, and have for several years. But yes, things change, get over it. Your 1980s plastic not selling for 1980s prices any more? EVERYTHING has changed. Recording studios can largely be replaced by a good microphone and a laptop, CD's cost nothing, and are not even needed. Global distribution is, for all practical purposes, free. There is no "breakage" anymore, not on CDs, not on mp3s.
The Internet is free advertising for artists, it's not something to let you bath in a sea of cocaine with beautiful models until your brain exits through your ear.
Are everybody breaking the rules? Well, the rules are broken.
Just get over it.
If removing DRM does not affect music piracy, why would that show that DRM is needed? DRM has never stopped any pirates, hell, the pirates are the ones that *never see* DRM. It's the legitimate customers that *buy* DRM'ed content that are unable to convert/play/copy their content. Kids regard music on the Internet for free, just as it is free to record from the radio. It's called change. Get over it.
Expecting DRM removal to have *any* impact on piracy is strange, but my guess is that the number of support calls and customer trouble will be reduced.
Ah, now I get it - that's where the Evil bit went! They can pry my MythTV boxes from my dead, cold fingers. Dr
Well, last DVD I bought first required me to select language for the copyright warning, then watch the stupid warning, then a menu comes along, and I must select to start the movie. The XVid DVD just plays. Plain and simple. I put it in, and it plays. No commercials. No warnings. No waiting around for two minutes in order to even get the darn thing playing for the kids. I'm sorry, but a DVD have far worse usability for me than an XVid file from BitTorrent.
Oh come one, always with the burn/rip cycle. Incredible that you also didn't mention the very simple and convenient "virtual CD drive" thingy. If you buy a CD that doesn't play in your car, just rip/burn and you're good to go! Even more convenient, you can buy CD that doesn't play, just order the same CD from another country! If that doesn't play either, just buy the CD very easily on iTMS and burn it! It's all just so convenient! Buy, download, burn, rip, convert, burn - these are not good ways of putting MP3's on my car stereo. Fortunately I have eMusic - they treat me as a customer, wanted as a customer, not wanted as a (potential) criminal or terrorist. With eMusic, I download and burn. Or download and copy. They even let me download the *tracks I bought* as many times as I want. No backup required for my music. iTMS is a pile of s**t. Expensive, DRM and no backup! And iTunes is ugly.
Apple have an iTMS shop in Norway, thus coming under Norwegian law - they sell a product that is made specifically to refuse competition. By opening their DRM for licensing (for fair prices, which will also be enforced in the EU), users would be able to buy other players. The "free market" thing you know.
Saying that users can "just burn to a virtual CD, rip and encode" is total crap, and is NOT something any normal user can do, will do or is interested in doing. Blaming the DRM on the record companies is wrong, the EU does not refuse DRM, they just refuse a company to forcefully limit competition.
eMusic also provides clean VBR mp3's and sell to the whole world. Only a very few tracks are limited to northern America, and there is no DRM. Also, I like the fact that I can download the songs I bought as many times as I like, so I don't need to back them up. Also, they treat me like a wanted customer, not some criminal.
I'm using the eMusicJ java client, which is very fast and stable. It runs excellent on my Ubuntu box. It's a lot faster too, as it downloads multiple songs simultaneously. Dr
Most (or all?) modern Linux distributions have IPv6 enabled by default, and if memory serves med right, so does Vista. In other words, a lot of computers will be fairly ready for dual-stack operation out of the box. Administering IPv6 can be shitloads easier than IPv4, as nodes auto-configure and no DHCP is required (at least as long as you still have DHCP for DNS info running on v4). On XP (and even 2000), I think it is only a question of running "ipv6 enable" or something, which could probably be done by a login script, even though I'm not quite so sure about the IPv6 support of those systems, but I think it works quite fine in dual-stack setups. It was among other things, impossible (or at least difficult) to configure an IPv6 address as a DNS server due to a limitation of 4 "boxes" with a "." in between. :-)
:-)
Of course, firewalls that work on IP ranges would probably need some updating, but I would expect any setup with advanced IP based rules on user-machines with personal firewalls is a setup from hell to administer. However, as you suddenly get shitloads of address space, you could define different subnets for different computers, e.g. run your servers on a different subnet from you user-pcs.
I guess old, incompatible hardware is a showstopper, but then again, they are showstoppers in moving from 100mbit to gigabit as well.
It's no problem to run a computer with dual-stacks, as is expected to be done. I'm running a dual-stack computer right now, with all traffic going to IPv6 hosts routed over IPv6 and the rest over IPv4.
The good thing about this is a smooth transition, and I get to have a real IPv6 address (actually a subnet) for my computers. Even if IPv4 is behind NAT, I can still be reached over IPv6.
The benefit should be that IPv4 can be used for (seemless) compatibility while IPv6 can allow applications like P2P, voice and video can be sent directly between computers on IPv6.
Regardless of how much child porn is floating on the net, I for one do not want to sponsor any of my resources to the spreading of child porn. At least with non-anonymous P2P networks, I can decide how my own disk and network connection should be used.
Of course, people will move to anonymized networks if "driven" to it by *AA (be it to share movies, "illegal" documents or remixed political commercials). Hopefully "scambled" networks will do enough to ensure that nobody gets in real trouble, while letting the users stay in control of their networks.
Windows users are used to the "just click the .exe to install", then press "ok" until it has completed. Linux users typically install software through (authenticated) package systems. Ubuntu will for example cry out loud if you install packets that are not "approved" by the Ubuntu organization.
In other words, the way people install Linux software would make them stay away from most bad software (including cracks and other ways to hose a computer due to saving a few bucks). Linux is, in this respect, a lot more secure than windows.
Oh, and you do of course also get security updates for the software you just installed. I've only seen the red "important update pending" notice in Firefox running on Windoze computers.
Ubuntu doesn't show those messages by default, but you can allways press a key or something to see them. Also, if something hangs for a while (say network), the graphical loader will dissapear and you will see exactly what happens.
That is the kind of stuff I really like about Ubuntu (and Gnome) - be easy to use for those that don't care, but be powerful for power users at the same time.
Go Linux!
Well, the people that actually are bothered by DRM are their customers. These customers obviosly bought the product. The "criminals" you are talking about didn't buy the product, they downloaded it. They are NOT affected by DRM. So even though many people are described as criminals, these are NOT THE SAME PEOPLE as the customers.
But of course, if you want to re-sell the same product over and over again, hold the power to "recall" products at will (with no reinbursement) and control the player market, DRM is what you're looking for. However, it will probably make the "customer" group smaller and the "criminals" group biggger.
Just my 2 cents.
The biggest thing Bittorrent has going for it, is that a central authority that you trust, is listing legit files, with descriptions, etc. With Gnutella/Kazaa, you don't have any assurance, hence the problem with fake files.
:-)
TSN is not a distributed index, it is a social network. This means that you will search for resources among your friends and their friends. With this search system, you should not be getting fake files, as those spreading it is not likely your friend. If they were your friends, they likely won't be after they start sending fake files.
The paper "Improving semantic routing efficiency" will be presented at the MobiQuitous 2005 conference in San Diego in July and describes the preference and reputation system in TSN in detail.
Dr.
Creating ever more efficient ways to communicate does not imply that whan is being communicated needs to be illegal. BitTorrent does an incredible job sharing legal files. The Socialized.Net provides an efficient way to search for files. Of course, TSN also provides other services, such as bookmark sharing and serverless instant messaging.
Allowing people to easily share data is a good thing, even though some might misuse it. As long as the service is not anonymous, it is clearly not made to facilitate illegal activities, something Bram has said all along.
Dr.
If you read the post carefully it says the web interface of the daemon. This is a web interface on a process running on your own computer. So, it's supposed to be "localhost". :-)
If the link doesn't work, you have to (download and) start the daemon.
Dr.
The daemon runs on your local computer. Port 8002 is the web interface. So, if you cannot reach your own computer on port 8002, your daemon is not running. :-)
Dr.
Maybe I don't know enough about how BT works but does it do any sort of coordination to make sure the file stays availible if the seed nodes go offline? In particular I thought the tracker needed to have a reference to some seed node which will have the full file. So if you really want to eliminate the necessity of having a server for a file it would seem you would need to build logic into the network that guarantees a certain level of redundancy for files of a certain popularity.
BitTorrent is a protocol to transfer files. You can easily implement something on top of it to control replication (we have a test system like this running, and we'll GPL it when it has been completed). But BT does nothing of the sort.
Dr.