Egregious abuses of copyright law

For those of you that don’t read Slashdot, which is probably a relatively small number. There is an article, linking to this Wired Blog about notetaking in class. I’ll let you decide how you feel about this on your own, but I am as equally troubled by the profiting off of students who are too lazy to go to class. Yes, it is a good market, but college is expensive enough as is, and I fail to see how this long drawn out argument will directly help students learn.

-Eddie

The downsides of Open Source Software

Recently I was asked to drop some songs into a Philips Gogear m3 player for my cousin. I’m going to imply that all the music was acquired legally, for various reasons. For this blog post, you will see why I make the implication.

After assesing the physical state of the player, I figure it would be a simple drag and drop via USB. Mounting the drive proved troublesome and I got this output from dmesg | tail

[17180988.752000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.772000] SCSI device sde: 3951360 512-byte hdwr sectors (2023 MB)
[17180988.776000] sde: Write Protect is off
[17180988.776000] sde: Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[17180988.776000] sde: assuming drive cache: write through
[17180988.776000] sde: sde1
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sde
[17180988.780000] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[17181002.176000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value
[17183741.120000] FAT: Unrecognized mount option “flush” or missing value

Some research showed that there was a program called OpenGoGear, to help with these sorts of issues. I tried to install the .deb file and there was an issue extracting the file. My next attempt to install from source gave me a dependency issue. An attempt to fix the dependency showed I needed ANOTHER, uninstalled library. At this point I gave up because dependency hell is not for me.

And then I plugged in the brand spanking new ipod-mini-touch-screen-video-toaster-in-a-pocket. My computer was unable to figure out what to do with this player. FAIL. If hardware companies want my money (and for that player, it requires lots of it), then I need a reasonable guarantee that it will be compliant with my software. Attention Apple: It’s an mp3 player. It lets you play music. Not the arm codes for a nuclear device. There is no harm in taking 3 days out of a 6 month development cycle to guarantee that your players are Linux friendly. Get over yourselves.

And then I see this gOS system being sold at Wal-Marts all over the United States. It’s an Ubuntu derivative, but that doesn’t make it Ubuntu. From my understanding, it has many non-free components out of the box. Also, it was my understanding that Canonical was in talks with Wal-Mart to get Ubuntu installed on the computers, but it appears that one didn’t go through. So, we have a tiny, tiny company profiting from a (in all likelihood, deliberate), deployment of Linux to a large retailer where the demand far outweighs supply. We can expect this company to grow by leaps and bounds however.

And in the news, I read about the MPAA using Xubuntu to run toolkits on university networks and sniff out p2p traffic. Tax dollars should not be spent to support the MPAA’s business model, versus that of technology’s pursuit of enabling content to the people. Legal or otherwise. Of course, when 60 million Americans are using p2p, then the issue becomes not ‘is there downloading?’ but ‘how do we fix this?’ I am proud of my stance against the MPAA because it seems obvious to me that there is no possible way their organization can fix what they perceive to be a problem.

The problem extends beyond p2p and downloading. It extends to the very spirit of software libre. Simply using GNU/Linux is not enough to change the world’s mind about computing. Look at the struggle of the community between mp3 support and freedom. It is obvious that those who believe in the fundamental awesomness of computing are not the ones who necessarily dictate the direction computing will take. Because the MPAA uses toolkits to protect proprietary content and formats, they are violating the spirit of free and open source software, regardless of which distribution they developed their software on. “Show us the code” is not enough, because the implications and implementation of the code are what matter. The code may be the most basic part of the computer, but the latter is what will vibrate through society, which is what makes the MPAA’s actions so unsavory, and why I am proud to oppose their actions. I don’t care what organization you belong to, when you take my hard work and effort to support an open and free society, and use it for a restrictive action, I will stand against you.

My final point is this: If you develop open source/free software/copy left content, there is no guarantee that the uses will be ones you agree we. Law and opinion are thankfully two different fields, with some overlap, but in this case, I would like to see more freedom and less protectionism.

-Eddie

The future

I’m wondering if all the talk of blanket/universal licenses, the internet, piracy, blah blah blah will one day create a culture of information sharing in which the user has too much access and doesn’t know what to do with it?

-Eddie

/me laughs out loud

This article has to be one of the worst piece of garbage I have ever read. This is neither a good piece of journalism, a strong and logical personal opinion, or a LEGAL basis for doing using proprietary software

This is the fact that to play a DVD or use WMA/WMV files I have to install codecs that are technically illegal to use.

Why is it illegal to use, Mr. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME? Why does your article bitch and moan about this point without asking any hard hitting questions? Does it have something to do with restrictive licensing, the fight for open formats and free software? Giant media corporations who consolidated their power while manipulating politicians/the law to protect their backward ass way of ‘entertaining’ the masses? Region encoding?

Mark Shuttleworth said something along the lines of “I would love to work with Microsoft but I can’t because of their current stance on DRM.” Okay, so this quote is close to anything he said, but you get the general idea.

Free software is great in isolation, but as soon as you have a situation where you’re trying to integrate it with modern proprietary file formats, the idea falls apart at the seams.

Well this is true, but you forgot to ask why again! Proprietary file formats are defective by design. How can you expect free software and non free software to have a tea party and pass cookies while Microsoft spreads FUD about GLPv3 and Gobuntu is getting rolled out? Software doesn’t work in that real. There will never be a lolcats picture that says ‘Im in ur Linux, playing ur .mp3s. I don’t think I know anyone that WANTS to support proprietary garbage, non free file formats or DRM. It’s more than just licensing costs, which themselves are a major issue.

For me, this is a pretty good reason to keep giving my money to Microsoft (or Apple, I’ve started giving money to Steve Jobs lately) rather than making a switch to Linu

This line takes the cake however. LET’S GIVE OUR MONIES TO LARGE CORPORATIONS WHO RESTRICTED OUR CHOICES FROM THE START, FOR THE PURSUIT OF MASSIVE WEALTH BECAUSE THEY WILL ALLOW US THE GIANT BENEFIT OF ALLOWING US TO CONTINUE TO USE DRM. Give me a fucking break. Are you serious. ‘Thank you masta, for not beating me’ is how I read this. Look at the massive failure of Windows Vista, of trying to use old Windows file formats (we ALL remember the nightmare that was the WordPerfect file fomat), of the recording industry suing it’s fans because the fans wont pay them enough.

No thank you. I refuse to perpetuate the cycle of broken software and outdated business models.

-Eddie

Music/GPL

I saw this article about Q101, a local “radio rock” station somewhere. I say radio rock, because that is the only general styles of rock which they play, and exclude many other good styles, not because I got hit in the head and forgot how to use syntax. NOTE: This article is somewhat slanted and slanderous, which seems to distract from the overall message.

In short,

This is bad news

In a conversation with my buddy Justin, he told me that he was running Windows Vista, blah blah. Of course he got it as free as in cost.

This is from MSDNAA, the M$ project to provide M$ software to universities for minimal (reduced) cost. Then they can tweak the code slightly, but of course it is NonGPL. Worse yet, this is a partnership they have with my old college, which runs windows exclusively. I know this because their servers always failed.

My response is not a real response. It is a question. Where is the Linux/Ubuntu equivalent. Why isn’t RedHat or Canotical not setting up similar programs? If there are, and I’m not aware, let me know. I sign up for the promotion of freedom in all it’s forms.

“MSDN provides the easiest and most inexpensive way to get the latest M$ software…” Give me a break. Here is why I use Linux: It works. The architecture/commands are logical. It’s free. It’s free. The community rocks when I have an issue. It’s free. It’s free.

In other news, Flourish is around the corner and Admiral_Chicago is coming in for the conference.

Keep it free. -Eddie

chicagolug(.org)

Jim C. and I rocked the Chicago gnu/linux meeting today, representing Chi-Ubuntu you could say.

Needless to say, it was alot of fun, the information was overwhelming and Linux is great.

The rest of you Chi-Ubuntu Loco/Ubuntu-IL members are welcome to come.  And by that, I mean that the group is disgruntled with Nixternal’s lack of attendance.

Did I mention I love the RIAA?

In response to this release from them.

One point I notices right away was this quote: “Moreover, our focus on university students is not detracting from our continuing enforcement efforts against individuals using commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) accounts to engage in this same behavior. Indeed, we have asked ISPs to participate in the same new process that we have implemented for university network users.”

Isn’t that a conflict of interests? Since when have the lawyers of major record labels been in the business of regulation of the Internet. Although everything is fair is corporate business though. I don’t see a trade group having real legal status to sue people however. Is this being done in civil court, where the admission of evidence is weaker? This is why civil court cases, such as the O.J. murder trials differ from criminal murder trials. Anyone see the issue here?

Later:

Some Honesty…

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching House, md. with my brother, checking out all sorts of shoes, baby sitting, concerts (anti-flag killed it, Explosions in the sky tomorrow), midterms and dodging the police all day and night.

That stuff is no joke, and it’s the most serious skateboarding action you will find.

x-chat kind of sucks. I am going to the Chicago GNU/Linux LUG on Saturday with Jim, if those are the plans. Anyone else going? Anyone going to Flourish?

I’ll go back to sucking at being a geek in a few days.

“Eddie, if you’re so smart… why do you say the stupidest things I’ve ever heard?”

Will Crespo is a good buddy of mine and makes skateboarding a million times better than sitting indoors on a computer.

It’s spring! Time for the revolution!

I just installed a 50 gig kubuntu 6.10 partition, time to go play with it.

Suckers Intl. Has Gone Public…

Microsoft wants photo DRM

I’m not even going to blog about this one, seeing as how obviously bad of an idea this is. Instead I’ll just quote Dillinger Four.

“I’m so sick that we’re surprised/ Everytime we’re shown that power corrupts/ Thump our chests at the man on the screen/ Cursing the green/ Tell ourselves that enough is enough…

Another day/ Another dollar/ Another way to live with a life so intolerable”

-Fireside Chat from the album Situationist Comedy

“We’ll take what’s left and we’ll sell it/ As little souvenirs, of what before was here/ You know once we’ve done it and we’ll do it, we’ll do it again”

-Music Is None of My Business from the album From God.

Great band, terrible company.