Free Software News
News surrounding the free software world.
Contents
- 1 News
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2 August 2009
- 2.1 August 3
- 2.2 Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain
- 2.3 Reasons Why Copyright On Art And Music Could Be Deemed Unconstitutional
- 2.4 GNU Emacs 23.1 Provides Anti-Aliasing
- 2.5 Tenenbaum Dinged $22,500 Per Song; $675,000 Total
- 2.6 Exploding iPods
- 2.7 At the expense of GNU/Linux
- 3 July 2009
- 4 June 2009
- 5 May 2009
- 6 April 2009
News
August 2009
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
July 2009
Fee Software new For July 2009
June 2009
Free software news for June 2009
May 2009
Free software news for May 2009
April 2009
Free software news for April 2009
