Topic: More open source rhetoric from the EU

[toasty0]

"We're fundamentally opposed to DRM. We think it's a dead end for society," Greve said, adding all software should be free to use and that artists could be paid for their films and music by a general 'taxation' on Internet connections.

"Web access could come with a cultural flat fee," he said.

"Software patents are clearly a menace to society and innovation. We like this to be more explicit. The basic idea is that if someone patents software, he loses the right to use free software. It's like a patent retaliation clause," [EU Free Software president] Greve said.

Wowser, Bowser, talk about taxation for art run amok!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9225821/#storyContinued

[Nemesis]

DRM - Don't like it.

Software patents - in their current form - don't like them

His cultural tax - don't like it.

CNet has a slightly different article.

It is not currently certain whether clauses opposing software patents and digital rights management will actually make it into GPL 3, Greve said.

"These are things that are being tossed around, but whether, how and in what form it will take place, we don't know," he said. "Even (GPL author) Richard Stallman hasn't sat down to work it out yet."

The next version of the GPL is also expected to offer improved compatibility with other free-software licenses and improved internationalization.

Based on the 2 artcicles it appears that currently they are thinking that if you use your software patents to attack a project you would lose your right to distribute that project.  I think that part was inspired by The SCO Group.  They have attacked Linux (not directly with patents) and continued to distribute Linux. 

[Nemesis]

Richard Stallman the author of the GPL is American and the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.  By all accounts a brilliant programmer and fanatic.

[Sarek]

I disagree with them on DRM although I think that it is being abused in the US.  Artists have a right to be paid for their work just like everyone else and have the right to charge whatever they want.  To put a fee on internet access in order to pay the artist not only smacks of socialism, but is unworkable.  Should the  director of Gigli get paid the same as the director of Mystic River?   Do programmers get paid by the line regardless of the quality of their code?

I can sympathize with them on software patents but I don't agree with their method.  Someone should be able to protect their rights in court without retaliation.  What is needed is legislation making software patents unenforceable.

[toasty0]

I disagree with them on DRM although I think that it is being abused in the US.  Artists have a right to be paid for their work just like everyone else and have the right to charge whatever they want.  To put a fee on internet access in order to pay the artist not only smacks of socialism, but is unworkable.  Should the  director of Gigli get paid the same as the director of Mystic River?   Do programmers get paid by the line regardless of the quality of their code?

I can sympathize with them on software patents but I don't agree with their method.  Someone should be able to protect their rights in court without retaliation.  What is needed is legislation making software patents unenforceable.

So movie stars, writers, directors, and musicians should get paid a royalty for their labors, but programmers should work for little or nothing...or worse, a government mandated amount?

[Sarek]

I disagree with them on DRM although I think that it is being abused in the US.  Artists have a right to be paid for their work just like everyone else and have the right to charge whatever they want.  To put a fee on internet access in order to pay the artist not only smacks of socialism, but is unworkable.  Should the  director of Gigli get paid the same as the director of Mystic River?   Do programmers get paid by the line regardless of the quality of their code?

I can sympathize with them on software patents but I don't agree with their method.  Someone should be able to protect their rights in court without retaliation.  What is needed is legislation making software patents unenforceable.

So movie stars, writers, directors, and musicians should get paid a royalty for their labors, but programmers should work for little or nothing...or worse, a government mandated amount?

How did you get that?  People should get paid whever the market will bear.   If it were up to me I'd eliminate royalties.  There may have been some justification for them in the past but I'm not sure that the need is as great today.

[Bonk]

Proprietary software cannot be validated, and is therefore of limited value.

[toasty0]

Proprietary software cannot be validated, and is therefore of limited value.

Schrödinger's cat

[E_Look]

Be careful; Schrödinger's cat implies some measure of culpability.

[Nemesis]

Copyright law was designed to allow the creators of a work of art to profit from it for a limited time, has anything come out of copyright in the U.S. while you have been alive?  Effectively with constant retroactive extensions to copyright law copyright has been made perpetual.  Then you get to  DRM and and EULAs.  Copyright law gives specific rights to those who own the copyright and specific rights to those who own the individual copy.  DRM and EULAs try to take away rights from the owner of the copy.  EULAs typically try to say you don't even own the copy even though you recieved a bill of sale when you bought it. 

Copyright has even been revised to the point where if I take an 19th century bible fix some spelling and punctuation errors I can then publish it with a current copyright under my own name.  That is a travesty. 

Why should a copyright owner by way of EULAs and DRM be able in essence to write their own laws? 

Now on to software patents.  Software is already protected by copyright and should not gain a 2nd layer of protection.  Either copyright or patent not both. 

Like copyrights patents have been extended.  Originally you had to patent a specific design.  For example the classic mouse trap could have been patented and the more recent glue traps would not violate the patent because the method is entirely different.  Now with software patents you patent the underlying concept.  You patent the concept of mousetrap and ANY mouse trap violates the patent.  You don't even have to provide an acutual design just a description of the concept.

Finally there does not seem to be anything built into patent law to penalize those who apply for patents that they should have known to be invalid.  As an example of this the Microsoft FAT patent.  Patent law currently allows you to apply for a patent even if a product implementing the patent has been on the market for up to 1 year.  The FAT patent was for the DOS file system which had been on the market for 15-20 years by Microsoft when Microsoft applied for the patent.  They used that patent to try to get payment from digital camera makers and flash card makers.  Some paid up until someone fought it and won.  But Microsoft was not penalized for a patent that violated a very basic part of patent law.  A part that they were obligated to research and present to the patent office on application.  Microsoft and/or their lawyer should have been penalized for this.  But as far as I know the only penalty was the revocation of the patent.  They didn't even have to give back the money they were paid for use of the (invalid) patent.

Insomnia makes me talkative. 

[Dash Jones]

I disagree with them on DRM although I think that it is being abused in the US.  Artists have a right to be paid for their work just like everyone else and have the right to charge whatever they want.  To put a fee on internet access in order to pay the artist not only smacks of socialism, but is unworkable.  Should the  director of Gigli get paid the same as the director of Mystic River?   Do programmers get paid by the line regardless of the quality of their code?

I can sympathize with them on software patents but I don't agree with their method.  Someone should be able to protect their rights in court without retaliation.  What is needed is legislation making software patents unenforceable.

So I take it you are against the RIAA then...seeing that the RIAA literally sometimes stops an artist from publishing an artists work even if no one publishes it anymore...

In addition to sometimes actually charging the artist to publish the music...

And sometimes not paying any royalties or trying to find ways to get out of paying the artists ANY money.

That's why artists have to get paid by doing concerts where the real money is...if they relied on the RIAA policies...they'd all be broke.

Ironic how it's the RIAA that cries the loudest though.

[prometheus]

Richard Stallman the author of the GPL is American and the founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.  By all accounts a brilliant programmer and fanatic.

He is... He invented EMACS...

I think a fairer way than taxation would be to give people ten years to profit from intellectual property, and then have it enter the public domain...  If you take Dark Side of the Moon as an example, Floyd would have seen it enter the public domain in the early 80's and would have already made more money than you'd need to last a lifetime from it...  Then after this, everyone can benifit...

[prometheus]

I disagree with them on DRM although I think that it is being abused in the US.  Artists have a right to be paid for their work just like everyone else and have the right to charge whatever they want.  To put a fee on internet access in order to pay the artist not only smacks of socialism, but is unworkable.  Should the  director of Gigli get paid the same as the director of Mystic River?   Do programmers get paid by the line regardless of the quality of their code?

I can sympathize with them on software patents but I don't agree with their method.  Someone should be able to protect their rights in court without retaliation.  What is needed is legislation making software patents unenforceable.

So I take it you are against the RIAA then...seeing that the RIAA literally sometimes stops an artist from publishing an artists work even if no one publishes it anymore...

In addition to sometimes actually charging the artist to publish the music...

And sometimes not paying any royalties or trying to find ways to get out of paying the artists ANY money.

That's why artists have to get paid by doing concerts where the real money is...if they relied on the RIAA policies...they'd all be broke.

Ironic how it's the RIAA that cries the loudest though.

Exactly why they are faced with their current dilemma where everyone is downloading mp3's with no moral qualms at all...  The copyright laws pertaining to art are a dishonest, farsical, totalitarian, reactionary joke...

[Nemesis]

So I take it you are against the RIAA then...seeing that the RIAA literally sometimes stops an artist from publishing an artists work even if no one publishes it anymore...

In addition to sometimes actually charging the artist to publish the music...

And sometimes not paying any royalties or trying to find ways to get out of paying the artists ANY money.

That's why artists have to get paid by doing concerts where the real money is...if they relied on the RIAA policies...they'd all be broke.

Ironic how it's the RIAA that cries the loudest though.

The RIAA is an organization that represents the mainstream music publishers not the artists.  Much of what you blame the RIAA for is actually the fault of the individual record companies.  The problem is that the whole music industry in its current form is corrupt.   Unfortunately when a star gets big enough like Madonna or the Beatles they form their own company which proceeds to act towards other musicians just as corruptly.

For many artists going on tour is a disaster.  The typical contract lets the record label control bookings and expenditures while guaranteeing the label a specified percentage profit.  They can overspend and leave the artist owing millions to them.  That way the artist can only leave bankrupt or if another label is willing to front them the money to pay their debts.  Only after contract expiration and bankruptcy can most artists begin again.  Unfortunately that leaves the record company owning the artists work to that date.  Taken as part of the debts owed in the bankruptcy.  They have to start over.  They can't include their popular songs in concerts or on album collections.  This of course leaves fans disappointed as most of them don't understand why.

The RIAA also misrepresents piracy to the press.  For example when Napster was at its peak the RIAA cited massive declines in sales.  The sales were in one category - cassette singles.  No one was buying cassette players any more they were moving to CD.  CD sales were skyrocketing.  Music industry sales peaked with Napster and faded with Napsters demise.

The problem is that if online sales become the common way to buy things there is nothing preventing a company like Apple from selling for independent artists as well.  Right now it costs a lot to create a song but even a small band can raise the money.  To self publish a CD is too high priced in any volume.  To get it air play is next to impossible.  Most record stores won't even talk to the independent.  But put things online and the labels ability to lock in artists and control them can't be bypassed.   The artist could go directly to the public.  Word of mouth can be very effective on the internet.  If minipayments like 10-25 cents were to become practical many garage bands could distribute directly to the fan base.  The record labels know that once this happens they are dead.

It will happen but expect the RIAA to fight it tooth and nail and try to get laws put in place to block it.  DRM is just a tool of control.  To control the artists as well as the customer.

Look up the fights about internet broadcasting.  Behind it all is the RIAA.  They can't risk that you and I will get used to listening to internet broadcasts because independents could band together and create a broadcast system which would give them the air play the current system blocks.

[Nemesis]

He is... He invented EMACS...

Back when he (Richard Stallman) was at MIT he was part of a large group of programmers there who were also friends.  One of them came up with the idea to start a company and everyone was in favour of it and wanted to back him.   He dithered around until one group of them said to heck with it and went out and started a company with a venture capitalist.  The rest then formed their own company (with the original creator of the concept) on a shoe string budget.  Stallman stayed behind.  His whole group of friends broken up unable even to talk to one another because of company secrets.  To put it mildly he was unhappy with the situation. 

The big budget company had a deal with the university where MIT got the source code.  Which meant Stallman got the code.  For one year he took the total output of a team of brilliant well funded programmers, analyzed and created functional duplicates without duplicating code and passed it on to the other team in a form that matched their project.  Then he left to form the Free Software Foundation and work on GNU.  GNU was supposed to be a whole OS but eventually it was only lacking a kernal when along came a student called Linus Torvalds who wrote a kernel.. the rest is well known history.  The Linux kernel plus the GNU tools was a viable Unix clone.

Even the programmers whose work he was duplicating and who objected to it were stunned that he could do it at all.  You see unlike the two teams he had to work alone.  No one to look over his shoulder and find his defects no one to talk to when he hit a road block but alone he replicated functions that it took a powerhouse team to create.  Admittedly he had the advantage of not having to come up with the idea or prove it worked but he was only one man with a full time job as well.

A brilliant programmer indeed.  Fanatic as well.  Hopefully he won't go too far with the GPL 3.  The GPL 2 (which he wrote) is the foundation of the whole open source software movement.  BSD has a part but the GPL is the mainspring that drives it.

[Nemesis]

Now on to the BSA. 

Link to full article

But while the losses due to software copyright violations are large and serious, the crime is certainly not as costly as the BSA portrays. The association’s figures rely on sample data that may not be representative, assumptions about the average amount of software on PCs and, for some countries, guesses rather than hard data. Moreover, the figures are presented in an exaggerated way by the BSA and International Data Corporation (IDC), a research firm that conducts the study. They dubiously presume that each piece of software pirated equals a direct loss of revenue to software firms.

To derive its piracy rate, IDC estimates the average amount of software that is installed on a PC per country, using data from surveys, interviews and other studies. That figure is then reduced by the known quantity of software sold per country-a calculation in which IDC specialises. The result: a (supposed) amount of piracy per country. Multiplying that figure by the revenue from legitimate sales thus yields the retail value of the unpaid-for software. This, IDC and BSA claim, equals the amount of lost revenue.

Note the two serious flaws.  Flaw one they assume that all software will be paid for at retail prices.  How many office suites and OSs for example are included in the bundle with the hardware at reduced prices?  How much is in the form of site licenses with companies?  More than half?  Then again it allows nothing for free software.  If a computer uses a free or cheap linux they still get calculated in as if they were a full retail priced OS.  What is the retail price for a full windows install again?  The same for other free software like OpenOffice.org. 

A third potential flaw is educational software.  Heavily discounted or even free at times but no mention of allowance is made for those copies. 

So just how much software piracy is there?  Some, maybe a lot, but far less than the BSA claims.

[Bonk]

Proprietary software cannot be validated, and is therefore of limited value.

Schrödinger's cat

Right, but I can write a program that will function as desired today, as determined by direct observation, but will fail tomorrow, therefore requiring continual validation, which is of course impractical. I need the source code to validate an application. (the failure of application code can just as easily be unintentional... Y2K  , easter egg spillovers...)

[toasty0]

Proprietary software cannot be validated, and is therefore of limited value.

Schrödinger's cat

Right, but I can write a program that will function as desired today, as determined by direct observation, but will fail tomorrow, therefore requiring continual validation, which is of course impractical. I need the source code to validate an application. (the failure of application code can just as easily be unintentional... Y2K  , easter egg spillovers...)

A side note: Bonk, man you rock! In all the debates I've participated in about software validation and open source you are the first who understood exactly what I menat by those two words. Kudos to you!

[prometheus]

He is... He invented EMACS...

Back when he (Richard Stallman) was at MIT he was part of a large group of programmers there who were also friends.  One of them came up with the idea to start a company and everyone was in favour of it and wanted to back him.   He dithered around until one group of them said to heck with it and went out and started a company with a venture capitalist.  The rest then formed their own company (with the original creator of the concept) on a shoe string budget.  Stallman stayed behind.  His whole group of friends broken up unable even to talk to one another because of company secrets.  To put it mildly he was unhappy with the situation. 

The big budget company had a deal with the university where MIT got the source code.  Which meant Stallman got the code.  For one year he took the total output of a team of brilliant well funded programmers, analyzed and created functional duplicates without duplicating code and passed it on to the other team in a form that matched their project.  Then he left to form the Free Software Foundation and work on GNU.  GNU was supposed to be a whole OS but eventually it was only lacking a kernal when along came a student called Linus Torvalds who wrote a kernel.. the rest is well known history.  The Linux kernel plus the GNU tools was a viable Unix clone.

Even the programmers whose work he was duplicating and who objected to it were stunned that he could do it at all.  You see unlike the two teams he had to work alone.  No one to look over his shoulder and find his defects no one to talk to when he hit a road block but alone he replicated functions that it took a powerhouse team to create.  Admittedly he had the advantage of not having to come up with the idea or prove it worked but he was only one man with a full time job as well.

A brilliant programmer indeed.  Fanatic as well.  Hopefully he won't go too far with the GPL 3.  The GPL 2 (which he wrote) is the foundation of the whole open source software movement.  BSD has a part but the GPL is the mainspring that drives it.

I'd be inclined to let him be fanatical...  The newer ports of Linux and GNU are just fantastic, and the only reason they are not on all of my PC's is that I need some running Windows to use my legacy hardware...

On the other hand, I decided to shell out for a copy of XP in the intrests of being honest, build 2600, and was informed after a couple of formats that I was no longer allowed to activate it.  I now have to use a hacked version of the OS, but feel that since I have a genuine copy of it, I am doing nothing wrong...  Microsoft are an appalling company...

[Nemesis]

I'd be inclined to let him be fanatical...  The newer ports of Linux and GNU are just fantastic, and the only reason they are not on all of my PC's is that I need some running Windows to use my legacy hardware...

As far as I know he has never worked on the Linux kernel though I suspect most of the GNU tools have a basis in his work.  Emacs and GCC definitely.  So long as his fanaticism does not cause problems he is welcome to it.  However he is in a position to screww up the GPL v3.0 and I hope his fanaticism is held in check for that.  He did a rather brilliant job on versions 1 and 2.

On the other hand, I decided to shell out for a copy of XP in the intrests of being honest, build 2600, and was informed after a couple of formats that I was no longer allowed to activate it.  I now have to use a hacked version of the OS, but feel that since I have a genuine copy of it, I am doing nothing wrong...  Microsoft are an appalling company...

That deactivation of legitimate copies is one of the reasons I refuse to buy XP or later until they take it off.

On the legal and free software thread at the top of this forum I listed several LiveCD distributions of Linux.  They boot and run off the CD so you can use Linux and leave your windows machine undisturbed.  An innovation Microsoft has not yet copied but should.  Being able to create a bootable Windows CD with all your anti virus and anti spyware tools along with any recovery tools you have would be a great Windows improvement.

Link to a google search on using the Knoppix Live CD for Windows repair.

There are also Live DVD versions as well.