Bonum Certa Men Certa

Reforming Copyrights and Challenging Copyrights Stigma With Free/Libre Software

Freedom revolutionises not only software

Revolution OS



Summary: How the "Revolution OS" (GNU/Linux) and Free software in general help change perceptions around copyrights

LAST NIGHT when watching "Revolution OS" (again) I was reminded of the connection between software freedom and copyrights, more so than patents. In fact, the movie hardly mentions patents at all. This movie, which is in principle copyrighted and is not free to watch, remains on Google's YouTube. There was no takedown request on the face of it -- probably a conscious decision in fact from the makers of a movie that's centred around Richard Stallman and the FSF's role, with big mentions (but not too big) of Linux. If it wasn't immediately available on YouTube, my wife and I would not have watched it. This is one of those cases where copyright maximalism proves to be counter-productive. Permissive copyright policy leads to free publicity and it helps reaching those who have pricing and availability issues (official link for ordering the DVD). The Internet has changed many things, so laws need to adapt accordingly -- according to people's needs that is.



"Public domain means any use allowed," says iophk about [1], "even distasteful or commercial ones." What we increasingly find is that copyright law changes, and it typically changes to benefit corporations (very rich people), not 99% or more of the world's population. This trend ought to change and it all starts with education because there is plenty of indoctrination out there, even in state-funded schools. At Apple, shows a new article [2], the idea that "copying is theft" gets explicitly promoted. This is wrong. And since Apple has been "shamelessly copying" many other companies, according to Steve Jobs himself, that may simply imply that Apple itself if a "thief", based on Apple's own standards. If lies are manufactured and promoted as "Truth", then justice will never triumph.

Right now there is a struggle between politicians who serve corporations' interests in copyrights (and parrot propaganda [3]) and those who are doing the opposite [4] (yes, they exist, but they are a minority in politics). Earlier this month we saw several stories about censorship using "copyrights" [5,6], where the claims of copyrights themselves were bogus (fraudulent piggybacking on DMCA). This in itself is a breach of human rights and free speech. It's a serious case demonstrating how broken today's copyright laws are, especially Hollywood export like the DMCA.

Last week Red Hat dedicated at least 2 articles to permissive licensing that challenge copyrights [7,8]. OpenSource.com itself has just embraced the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. That's fantastic. It wasn't really surprising, however, because wherever Free software goes there tends to be an atmosphere of sharing and collaboration. The licences on text tend to be liberal and minimally restrictive (usually just attribution is needed).

This leads us to the final case of point. Last week we mentioned a new application called "Popcorn Time". It is basically an application for streaming videos over torrent. Nice idea; friendly to networks (reduces loads on backbones), privacy-preserving, robust, and decentralised. What's not to like?

What's not to like? It's competition for the copyright cartel/monopoly.

Not too shockingly, the developers abandoned the project just days later [9] (reasons not known), but it soon got embraced by other developers [10], only to be portrayed as "Netflix for piracy" by corporate British press the following day [11]. Remember that here in Britain ISPs are now being pushed to block (censor) almost everything which even challenges the status quo on copyrights. Even new sites like TorrentFreak get censored by some ISPs like Sky.

What we really need right now is a challenge to the stigma that torrents are all about copyright infringement, that FOSS is facilitating copyright infringement, and generally that decentralised communication, which makes surveillance difficult for the likes of NSA and GCHQ, is somehow for "terrorists" or "paedophiles", as the copyright cartel wants people to believe.

After the events surrounding Popcorn Time we should become better aware that copyright law -- not just patent law -- remains a serious threat to software freedom. We gave other examples of this before.

According to OpenSource.com, "vague patents" are now under threat again because the SCOTUS is taking another look at them. To quote: "You’ve probably realized this by now, but the Supreme Court is having a very busy term when it comes to patent cases. In Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc.—scheduled for oral argument on April 28—the Court will consider whether to hold vague patents to a more exacting standard." There are other such ongoing cases at the SCOTUS, but when will copyright law, including failures such as the DMCA (widely abused), be challenged at this high level?

Intellectual Monopoly as a whole ("Revolution OS" sparingly uses the term "Intellectual Property") is a real problem; it is all about protectionism and it retards society.

Related/contextual items from the news:


  1. Sweden Invokes Little-Known 'Perpetual Copyright' Clause Against Mercedes Ad
    Sweden has invoked a previously-unknown “Perpetual Copyright” clause against carmaker Mercedes-Benz, who recited a public-domain work by the poet Boye in a recent ad. The legal threat was brought by the Swedish Academy, which is tasked with overseeing the clause. This has severe chilling effect on culture even 70 years past an artists’ death.


  2. Copying is theft of hours and hours of struggle, says Apple’s Jony Ive
    In a detailed interview with the Sunday Times, he said, “Copying is theft … what’s copied isn’t just a design, it’s thousands and thousands of hours of struggle. It’s only when you’ve achieved what you set out to do that you can say, ‘This was worth pursuing.’ It takes years of investment, years of pain.” The sharp views on copying followed when he was indirectly asked about its competitor (read: Samsung) mimicking the work of his team.


  3. Lawmakers Get Caught Parroting Copyright Lobby


    Last year Finland wrote history after it became the first country to vote on a "fairer" copyright law, crowd-sourced by the public. Now that the vote is near, several lawmakers have warned against the disastrous effects of the proposal, by parroting a memo handed to them by the copyright lobby.
  4. Digital Rights and Dismal Governments - Senator Scott Ludlam


  5. Time to Punish DMCA Takedown Abusers, WordPress Owners Say


  6. Chilling Effects DMCA Archive is 'Repugnant', Copyright Group Says


    If it wasn't for the Chilling Effects DMCA clearing house the actions of those abusing the DMCA would go largely unreported. Still, the Copyright Alliance doesn't like the site, this week describing the information resource as "repugnant" to the DMCA. Unsurprisingly, Chilling Effects sees things differently.


  7. Recording open culture songs
    My friend Mary, a folk singer, stopped by to visit spontaneously this evening. "What are you up to?" she inquired.

    "I'm recording a music video for a new folk song," I explained. "The Firefox Phone was announced last week, so I need to compose a song about it."



  8. Opensource.com now using Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license
    Opensource.com is now using the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license as our preferred license for all original content. You are still responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site.


  9. Popcorn Time Is Dead
    Hollywood won. The open source project called Popcorn Time is dead after just four days. It’s not really surprising.

    “Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives,” reads the website and a post on Medium.


  10. Popcorn Time Is Back


    YTS developer Jduncanator told TorrentFreak that they are in a better position from a copyright standpoint because it’s built on their API. “It’s as if we have built another interface to our website. We are no worse off managing the project than we would be just supplying the movies. It’s our vision at YTS that we see through projects like these and that just because they create a little stir in the public, it doesn’t mean they are shut down.”


  11. Popcorn Time: 'Netflix for piracy' back up and running after going open-source


    Popcorn Time's closure lasted just two days, with the site allowing users to watch movies free online being picked up by other developers.


Recent Techrights' Posts

The FSF Board and FSF Beard
So the FSF's Board has grown
Law Firms Facing the Consequences for Patently Abusive Litigation on Behalf of Microsoft Employees Who Got Arrested for Strangulation and Had Done Even Worse Things
Having spent 1.5 years bullying me with patronising letters on behalf of Microsofters, last week they got served a massive bill and, in effect, lost the Hearing
LLMs Breaking Everything
Computing and the Net became a playground for scammers and "bros", like people who "invented" fake currencies and also try to tell us that LLMs spewing out things will have some real value
 
Links 22/06/2025: Giving Up on Smartphones and 'Jaws' at 50
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Furniture Construction and Bubble for Comments
Links for the day
Links 22/06/2025: Windows TCO Tales and YouTube Getting More Hostile to Users
Links for the day
New Report From the EPO's Staff Representatives in The Hague (LSCTH) Reveals Many Unsolved Issues
Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) wrote to staff just before the weekend
Links 22/06/2025: More Slop Lawsuits (Copyrights) and "America’s Oligarch Problem"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/06/2025: Gigantic Toolchest and Annoying Bots
Links for the day
The Calling
Persist and persevere, justice will come your way
So Far Every BetaNews 'Article' is LLM Slop, So BetaNews is Officially Just a Slopfarm
They just don't seem to value what they have
IBM Rumour: Mass Layoffs (RAs) Lists Being Made for Consulting, With Effect in July 2025
Bogus companies with no viable products and no world-leading (in their field) staff are doomed to perish
Links 21/06/2025: Data Breach With 16 Billion Passwords, Dutch Government Recommends Children Under 15 Stay off TikTok and Instagram
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/06/2025: Notes about Typst (and LaTeX) and Opos
Links for the day
Microsoft's Competition Tactics: Sabotage GNU/Linux Installs, Block Chrome
Edge is dying
1989: Free Software as "Open" Software (OSI Didn't Coin "Open Source", It Also Predates Linux)
"One man's fight for Free software"
The Microsoft OOXML Modus Operandi: Throw 1,000 Pages of Other People's Work for a Judge to Read Ahead of a One-Hour Meeting
No time to discuss this - that's the point
Formalities Officers (FOs) at the EPO Are in Trouble, Reveals Internal Report
We already know, based on an HR pattern we saw at IBM and elsewhere, that reallocating roles can be prerequisite for dismissal and those who do so expect many to resign anyway
The Web is Slop and FUD, Let's Go to Gemini Protocol
Lupa sees self-signed capsules at 92.4%
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 20, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 20, 2025
Links 21/06/2025: Phone Bans for Concerts, Tensions in Taiwan Strait
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/06/2025: Spoilers, Public Yggdrasil Node, Changes to AuraGem Search
Links for the day
"Six years of Gemini!"
From gemini://geminiprotocol.net
Gemini Links 20/06/2025: Summer Updates and Hardware Failures
Links for the day
Links 20/06/2025: Google Shareholder Sues Google and Google Sued for Defamatory Slop ('Hey Hi') Word Salads ('Summaries')
Links for the day
Linux Journal Might Have Become the Latest Slopfarm Targeting "Linux", the Trends Are Concerning for Dying News Sites
They tarnish the Web with junk and then die
On "Learning to Code"
quality may suffer, plus things get bloated
Quick Points Regarding This Week's Court Hearing
it paves the way for us to squash all the SLAPPs from Microsofters
Common Mistake: Believing Social Control Media Will Document Your Writings/Thoughts and Search Engines Like Google Will Help You Find These
Many news sites wrongly assumed that posting directly to Twitter would be acceptable
The Manchester Bees and This Hot Summer
We have had a fantastic week so far this week
Gemini Protocol Enters Its Seventh Year, Growth Has Accelerated!
Maybe in June 20 2026 there will be over 3,500 active capsules?
Mastodon and the Fediverse Have an Issue: Liability for Content (Even in Other Instances) and Costs
self-hosting is the only logical path forward
Why Microsoft and Its 'Hey Hi' (Slop) Frenzy Fail While Sinking in Deep, Growing Debt
Right now, like Twitter around the time it was sold to MElon, "open" "hey hi" is a big pile of debt with a lot to pay for that debt (interest payments)
Europe is Leaving Microsoft, the Press Coverage Isn't Sufficiently Helpful
The news is generally positive, but the press coverage leaves so much to be desired
Slopwatch: Linuxsecurity, BetaNews, and Linux Journal
slippery slope
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 19, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 19, 2025
Gemini Links 20/06/2025: Gemini Protocol Turns 6!
Links for the day