Free Software News

News surrounding the free software world.

August 2009

August 5

No Freedom To Tinker: Arrested For Modding Legally Purchased Game Consoles

This is hardly a new issue, but it's still troubling every time we hear a story like this. For years, there's been a fight over whether or not it should be legal to modify a legally purchased game console. Those in favor of the right point out that if you've legally bought something, you should always be free to tinker with it. That's just common sense. Those against it say that modifying a gaming console is done mainly to play pirated games or to cheat, which can cause problems for legit players. I find the latter responses unpersuasive, as those are technological or business model issues that can be solved in other ways, rather than a legal issue. But, thanks to that good old DMCA, that's now how the law works. Instead, we get stories about students getting arrested for "jailbreaking" a video game console. Full Story

Copyright Conundrum: Was 'Public Domain' Music Silenced On YouTube?

But the bigger issue may be how this (once again) shows how out of sync copyright law is with what people think is reasonable or fair. If you found out a piece of music was in the public domain, it's natural to assume that a recording of that same piece of music is in the public domain. And to make things more confusing, that's absolutely true (in the US at least) of a photograph of a public domain painting. But making a new recording of a public domain song? Bam. A new monopoly created. Unfortunately for Guertin, the track he used probably is not in the public domain, even if the music is (yes, that's confusing). That's why, these days, it's probably more reasonable to search out Creative Commons-licensed music than public domain music -- because you can't be as sure whether the PD part covers the recording as well as the music. To some of us, that seems like a problem with current copyright laws, while others appear to view it as a feature. Full Story

Petition for a DRM-free Kindle=

Holmes sez, "After Jeff Bezos's public apology for the remote deletion of books, Amazon still has total control over peoples' virtual libraries-- a kind of control that has no place in a free society. The Free Software Foundation is calling them out, joining with readers, academics, librarians and authors (including Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and BB's own Cory Doctorow) in a petition against Amazon's ebook DRM. The petition opens: 'We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon's are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon's use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.'" Full Story

August 4

Group Calls On Amazon To End Kindle DRM

The Free Software Foundation has launched an online petition to convince Amazon.com to drop its use of digital rights management (DRM) technology on its Kindle. Full Story

August 4

Group Calls On Amazon To End Kindle DRM

The Free Software Foundation has launched an online petition to convince Amazon.com to drop its use of digital rights management (DRM) technology on its Kindle. Full Story

DivX lands two more Hollywood studios

Continuing its slow march to acceptance in Hollywood, DivX Inc. has persuaded two more studios -- Paramount and Lionsgate -- to use its compression and antipiracy technologies on the movies they make available for downloading.Full Story

August 3

Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain

The Associated Press -- which thinks you owe it a license fee if you quote more than four words from one of its articles -- doesn't even care if the words actually came from its article. They'll charge you anyway, even if you're quoting from the public domain. I picked a random AP article and went to their "reuse options" site. Then, when they asked what I wanted to quote, I punched in Thomas Jefferson's famous argument against copyright. Their license fee: $12 for an educational 26-word quote. FROM THE PUBLIC FREAKING DOMAIN, and obviously, obviously not from the AP article. Full Story

Reasons Why Copyright On Art And Music Could Be Deemed Unconstitutional

I've often discussed the original constitutional reasoning behind patents and copyright law, specifically the phrase we all know in Article 1, Section 8: The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; From this, I still believe it's quite clear that if copyright or patents are used in a way that does not "promote the progress" of those things, then it is unconstitutional to use copyright or patent law in that way. Full Story

GNU Emacs 23.1 Provides Anti-Aliasing

Emacs, the extensible editor of the GNU project, is available in version 23.1. The release adds countless modernizations to the traditional program, such as font anti-alising and support for D-Bus and zeroconf. Full Story

Tenenbaum Dinged $22,500 Per Song; $675,000 Total

After admitting flat out yesterday that he downloaded and distributed songs using file sharing software, and that he lied about it, there wasn't a question of whether or not Joel Tenenbaum would be found guilty. In fact, the judge even said that the question wasn't even at issue. The only thing the jury had to work out was how much the damages would be, and they didn't take long at all, awarding $22,500 per song, or a total of $675,000. While a lot less than what the Jammie Thomas jury awarded, it's still a hefty chunk of change. Full Story

Exploding iPods

Apple attempted to silence a father and daughter with a gagging order after the child’s iPod music player exploded and the family sought a refund from the company. The Times has learnt that the company would offer the family a full refund only if they were willing to sign a settlement form. The proposed agreement left them open to legal action if they ever disclosed the terms of the settlement. Full Story

At the expense of GNU/Linux

This article is based on a true story. The names have been changed to protect the individuals involved. It all occurred in a government department where an IT lady had a great idea about converting their computers to GNU/Linux. Let's call her Gillian. Gillian was assigned to research GNU/Linux and found out that it would meet all the needs her department required and could be easily used instead of Microsoft Windows. Full Story

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July 2009

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