08.27.09
Posted in Courtroom, GNU/Linux, Law, Novell, SCO, UNIX at 10:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: SCO’s Trustee may remove the management
THE recent decision about UNIX meant very little when it comes to Linux. Not only does it fail to change SCO’s empty case, but it also neglects the importance of the fact that SCO will be partly managed (and supervised) by an outsider. Heise has some more details that are rather enlightening:
In addition to being in charge of the course of the SCO Group, Cahn is also responsible for securing the rights of its creditors. One subject of interest among the recent Groklaw comments on the case was the removal of the management team and CEO Darl McBride’s loss of power.
Would it not be fascinating to see Darl McBride forced out?
The following new analysis concurs:
NOVELL AND LINUX USERS heard some disappointing news on Monday when the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed four of the lower court’s August 2007 slam-dunk summary judgment decisions in favour of Novell in the SCO v. Novell lawsuit.
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We say there ‘might’ be a jury trial for two reasons.
First, SCO is still in bankruptcy court in Delaware, and Judge Kevin Gross just appointed a Chapter 11 Trustee yesterday to take over full control of the company. The Trustee, former chief US District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Edward Cahn, will now have to decide whether to continue to pursue SCO’s dream of extracting billions from its former course of disastrous, kamikaze litigation and threats against Linux users. Indeed, that decision will be one of his first major obligations, according to the bankruptcy judge’s remarks in his ruling when he decided to appoint a Trustee.
The Trustee could decide that the interests of SCO’s bankruptcy estate and its creditors won’t be well served by pursuing the SCO v. Novell litigation, and may seek to pay Novell all or at least some of what SCO owes it and settle the matter instead, in which case there won’t be a jury trial.
Second, there’s also the fact that SCO is just about totally broke now, having spent most of its – or rather, Novell’s – money on bankruptcy lawyers and chasing several improbable and ultimately unsuccessful financial cliffhanger schemes with a cast of shadowy players.
Along with deciding whether SCO’s programme of anti-Linux litigation has merit and shows promise for benefiting the company’s estate, the Trustee will also have to decide (a) whether SCO can still afford to pursue that litigation, and (b) whether SCO will be able to survive as a viable business and avoid final liquidation in Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
SCO management’s approach was to pin all its hopes on its daft litigation strategy, of course, but that in itself was one of the bankruptcy judge’s main reasons for directing that a Trustee be appointed, thus removing SCO’s management from control.
So SCO is almost back where it started. The effect of the recent ruling is exaggerated as SCO is broke and its most ardent opponents of GNU/Linux may no longer be in control of the company. █
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Posted in FSF, FUD, GPL, Law, Microsoft at 9:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The smears against the GPL need tracing back to their roots
FOR people’s awareness, it seems important to alert that attacks on the GPL have risen in number. These are not the typical attacks and they are accompanied by personal attacks, as stated earlier.
We found out that a PR agency from the United States is sending people semi-personalised press releases about a debate which seems hostile towards the GPL, based on the participants (what’s called a “stacked panel”). Somehow they ended up getting my E-mail address, scooping it from somewhere and then striving to promote this nonsense, which they did. It came from IDG (which relies on Microsoft as a large revenue source [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and also employs Microsoft/Apple investors as writers). IDG is being mentioned in the form of InfoWorld, which also fed this to the news feeds. It was IDG that published and spread an article which was moronic, boldly stating in the headline, “is the GPL irrelevant?”
“It was IDG that published and spread an article which was moronic, boldly stating in the headline, “is the GPL irrelevant?””That was of course a nonsensical contention to start an article with. The GPL is used by most Free/open source software projects and it is by far the most ubiquitous software licence in the world. How does irrelevance come into it?
Attacks on the GPL and anything and anyone associated with it are not news.
Black Duck — with some roots in Microsoft — was funneling in Microsoft-centered code automatically (no filtering) to saturate its pool and then claim a dip in GPL. This deceptive claim is still being parroted today and also today we’ve heard of private stories where similar anti-GPL actions were taken in Europe. Programmers are being pressured by bosses (maybe Microsoft-guided) to abandon the licence, maybe because of all the FUD, some of which comes from Microsoft lawyers [1, 2]. Such dissemination of lies (or myths) about the GPL leads to further misuse and misappropriation, as expressed in the following new story:
A report published Sunday in The New York Times says Aleynikov told FBI investigators that he had inadvertently taken about 32MB of proprietary Goldman Sachs software while taking open-source code that he said can be used freely by anyone.
Aleynikov, a high-level developer for Goldman Sachs, was arrested by the FBI on July 3 on charges of stealing computer code that automates the firm’s high-volume trading on stock and commodities markets.
As Sam Dean puts it:
The case discussed in the post concerns a Goldman Sachs Group programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, who was arrested–by the FBI, no less–and charged with stealing computer code designed to automate Goldman Sachs’ massive trading business. Aleynikov’s defense was that he was only trying to download open source software governed by the GPL.
The truth — or at least the verdict — remains to be seen, but why is it that the perception of free as "illegal" lives on? █
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Posted in IRC Logs at 8:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
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Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 8:36 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Notable security news
• Defying Experts, Rogue Computer Code Still Lurks
The program, known as Conficker, uses flaws in Windows software to co-opt machines and link them into a virtual computer that can be commanded remotely by its authors. With more than five million of these zombies now under its control — government, business and home computers in more than 200 countries — this shadowy computer has power that dwarfs that of the world’s largest data centers.
• Symantec pulls Norton patch after error reports
Symantec is providing a fix for customers who got error messages after a patch deployment went awry for some Norton users, the company said on Tuesday.
The problem started last Wednesday when Symantec deployed patches for Norton AntiVirus 2009, Norton Internet Security 2009, and Norton 360 v3 via LiveUpdate. Some customers received error messages saying that there was a problem with the Symantec Service Framework.
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Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux, Marketing, Microsoft, Vista 7 at 8:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: “Windows 7 Sins” campaign is well received by most who have already embraced the message, disliked by staunch supporters of Microsoft and/or greed
BASED on the widespread exposure that the “Windows 7 Sins” campaign has received, we consider it to be a great success, better than “Bad Vista” even. It addresses more than just the operating system while earning the chance to pass on an important message to a lot of individuals outside the choir, so to speak.
The preparations for this campaign paid off and SJVN — despite thinking that the message was a little too negative — welcomed the effort.
The FSF (Free Software Foundation) has never liked proprietary software, but for most of its history, it’s focused on singing the praises of free software, and, with some distaste, its near-twin, open-source software. Not anymore. These days, the FSF is spending its time attacking proprietary software, like it did today, August 26th, when it went after Windows 7 in its new Windows 7 Sins: The case against Microsoft and proprietary software.
In our IRC channel, some people expressed satisfaction with the campaign, whereas others thought more humour would have helped soften the message. There are many comments in The Register on an article posted by Microsoft proponent Gavin Clarke. He has spent a lot of time this week promoting Vista 7 by mention, so maybe it’s a balancing act.
“The de facto Microsoft PR people who disguise themselves as journalists did not want to appear as though they were attacking the FSF, but they took other subtle approaches to making a veiled attack.”An attack on the FSF came from Business Week, to whom the FSF seems ‘scary’ for obvious reasons. There are also the “perception management” folks [1, 2] in Slashdot — whose who, as usual, took the time to mock Richard Stallman through spin and cherry-picking (typical techniques for disrepute). The de facto Microsoft PR people who disguise themselves as journalists did not want to appear as though they were attacking the FSF, but they took other subtle approaches to making a veiled attack.
It was also unsurprising to see Mac enthusiasts mocking the FSF, which has never been kind towards Apple, either. Some of this is being addressed at The Source:
Now, as I said it is no surprise that the FSF is engaging in this important effort, but what was a bit surprising was some of the reactions to it.
For example, consider Mr. Matt Asay’s column, where he ignores the entire message of the site and chooses instead to try to paint the FSF as hypocritices for using a CC-No Derivatives license, and then has the laughable audacity to call for more code from the FSF – as if the FSF doesn’t already have a project or two out there – code which he hints is not derivable, a truly foolish red herring to wave about.
Mr. Asay has written many critical pieces about the FSF, the GPL, and related matters recently – it’s a shame that he continues to pretend to be a proponent of Open Source, when it is quite clear he is actually some sort of pro-commerical open-core “fauxpen source” evangelist.
This is the same sort of dishonest dismissal we see from non-Open Source supporters like Business Week, right down to using the same language (both articles deem the effort “silly”). In fact, Mr. Asay endorses the juvenille ranting of the Download Squad’s article in his own writing – a truly vacuous rock to build upon, I should think.
We hereby repeat the claim that the campaign has been successful. It upset only those whom the FSF ought to have expected to upset. The message did not fall on deaf ears. Vista 7 is failing. █
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Posted in Hardware, Microsoft at 7:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Another manager jumps ship shortly before next-generation Zune appears
ZUNE is one of Microsoft’s most spectacular stories of failure in recent years. There is a certain sense of pride at Microsoft which prevents the firm from conceding this game to Apple, but it seems like a matter of time before Zune ends up with the fossils. Analysis of the Zune has been largely negative recently. The head of the team quit and it took ages to find a replacement for him. Another key manager has just left, even before the next-generation product saw the light of day.
Zune exec bails ahead of player’s upcoming HD launch
Microsoft’s Zune general marketing manager has quit the firm.
Why did he leave at this particular stage? It’s not entirely clear, not based on anyone’s words anyway. He is about to join the copyright cartel (Universal), based on the Wall Street Journal. Other coverage of this names some names.
The WSJ’s sources say that Stephenson will be named Chief Marketing Officer of Interscope Geffen A&M Records sometime after Labor Day, reporting to Chairman Jimmy Iovine.
These are the people who are believed to have lobbied the UK government to attack sharers with great prejudice. Stephenson essentially moves from one bad company that obeys the copyright cartel right into the copyright cartel itself. █
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Posted in News Roundup at 6:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNOME Foundation are targeting higher women’s participation in the community. The first step is a “mini-summit” on “Women in Free Software.”
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What does your home computer lab look like? Do you have a dedicated office, a corner of the living room, a lounge-in-bed setup? Maybe you’re set up more like an old-fashioned terminal server, with a big workstation in a closet and several remote PCs. Maybe you have whittled your computing herd down to a single sleek laptop.
Every time I help a friend with their Mac or Windows computer it’s a good reminder of how restricted those platforms are. Every little thing is a big hairy deal, and the only flexibility you have is do you want to pay through the nose now or later, and how many times do you want to hear “No, you can’t do that”?
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So here’s the problem: Apple is essentially a hardware company, yet fancy hardware becomes irrelevant when all you need is something simple which can run a browser. Why would an enterprise spend $2499 on a Mac Pro or $1499 on an iMac that looks like a table lamp when a $200 Linux netbook will run Firefox or Safari just as well? These days netbooks come in white, anyway,
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Linux is a real world option these days. It is free and legal to download, use and redistribute. It has come a long way to becoming more user friendly and compatible with lots of hardware out there. Not only that, but gives you more control over your system and many fixes are simple editing of text files using the command line. While this intimidate mosts, they need to get over it… the command line is the isht when X windows wont start.
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The Tender Demands Ubuntu 9.04 Preloaded & Ubuntu compatible / Certified Laptops as Requirements
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July 2009 saw the successful launch of ForLinux’s first LPI Level II certification course since the release of the new objectives. At the end of the 7 training days, the external delegates had successfully achieved 100% pass rate.
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The creative parent, using Ubuntu Linux, wrote a program commanding his CD-ROM tray to repeatedly eject and then pull back in. Connecting the tray to his baby’s car seat with a piece of string, macjonesnz effectively created a continuous baby-rocker.
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It has a working accelerometer and a finger-friendly Linux user interface; it’s pretty much a mini tablet with a keyboard attachment. The hardware and Software are both fully open source, it runs a custom version of Linux as its interface called Touch OS.
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1. Linux is free, as in “freedom”
I’ve worked in IT for almost a decade and a half, and I’m still occasionally shaking my head at how incredibly much effort goes into complying with software licenses. Where I used to work, just figuring out how many users were using what (particularly how many Windows Terminal Server users we had) so that we didn’t get sued by someone ended up eating up an incredible amount of man hours — man hours which could have been much more constructive doing more productive practical work, like handling support tickets and managing the actual software itself.
Privately, however, I run Slackware Linux for my primary platform, OpenOffice.org for documents/spreadsheets, and a wide variety of other open source applications. And not only do I not have to worry and fret over whether or not I’m up-to-date on all my Linux licenses, I’m actively encouraged by the makers of my Linux distribution of choice to share it with others.
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Linux can be a telephone or a mainframe. It can be a television or a toaster. It can be text only or graphical. Linux even fights amongst itself as to which process, distribution, text editor, graphical manager, et al. reigns supreme. How many of you have giggled over the flame wars between the gooey generals and command line commanders? How many times have there been arguments about Linux being easy/hard to use?
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Desktop
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If you aren’t buying a new machine, look seriously at Linux. Linux is more user friendly than Windows, even if you have a slight learning curve there. Believe me, it’s worth it. I first tried Linux after many terrible experiences with Windows Vista, and even though it took a little work at first, I don’t regret the switch.
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On the whole, Linux is a completely viable solution for small and mid-size businesses. It also has found a place in understanding and willing large businesses.
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I’ve noticed that Windows and Mac OS X is trying to be like Linux right now –fast and resource efficient. On the other hand, Linux on the desktop is still polishing its user-interface perhaps to be like Windows or Mac OS X.
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The testing for this article was very simple. We performed clean installations of Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04, and 9.10 (using a daily LiveCD from 2009-08-25) on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9, Samsung NC10, and a Lenovo ThinkPad T60. Once the installation was complete, we installed Bootchart and that was the only change made to any of the distributions. After that and a few reboots later, we had our Bootchart numbers and then proceeded to test the next Ubuntu release in the same fashion.
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Server
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Executives at SiCortex – which makes an energy-efficient, MIPS-based, massively parallel Linux super with 5,832 cores and rated at 8.1 teraflops – have refused to comment on the asset sales or the state of its business.
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Kernel Space
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Some updates include a large patch for the btrfs file system which tunes the file system to achieve greater performance. It is also noted that in this release btrfs will be less memory hungry and the SSD mode has been improved. Early benchmarks comparing both standard and SSD modes have shown the early implementation of SSD mode to be less than ideal. I am interested to see this improvement, especially as Flash-based SSDs increase in usage and popularity.
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Applications
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Exaile is a music manager and player for GTK+ written in Python. It incorporates automatic fetching of album art, lyrics fetching, artist/album information via Wikipedia, Last.fm scrobbling, support for many portable media players including iPods, internet radio such as shoutcast, and tabbed playlists. It is kind of a Gnome Amarok (If I may call it that…).
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Ever tire of laying out a sheet of address labels in OpenOffice.org or Word templates when you’re in a hurry? Karl Fogel’s LabelNation may be able to help. It is a small free software tool that whips out printer-ready label layouts from the command line. All you do is put the addresses in a plain text file and run LabelNation; the output is a standard PostScript file. And it’s not just fast; as a command-line tool it is easily integrated into scripts or other automated workflows.
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The Bordeaux Technology Group released Bordeaux 1.8.2 for Linux today. Bordeaux 1.8.2 adds support for Apple’s QuickTime 6.5.2 Player, IrfanView 4.25 the extreamly popular image viewer and editor. This release aslo bundles in Cabextract, Wget and Unzip to remove external dependencies.
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OpenShot is an new non-linear video editor similar in feature set to ‘Windows Movie Maker’ or Apple’s ‘iMovie’.
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With the integration of the Telepathy framework into GNOME, most distributions are dropping the old instant messaging favorite Pidgin, for the new upstream application Empathy. It’s a reminder of the important role that distributions play in making choices for us all.
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Games
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We’ve got a treat for you PC, Mac and Linux gamers. Game developer S2Games have kindly given us Beta keys for a new fantasy real-time strategy game titled Heroes of Newerth, debuting on the PC later this year.
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Old school games have always been fun, yet simple and easy to play. They may not have the best of the graphics but you can surely enjoy a trip down memory lane!
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Here is how you can play those old, free games on your Linux machine. There are various emulators available for Linux, let us look at them one by one.
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Linux Outlaws
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MP3 – 1 hour 20 minutes 49 seconds, 37.0 MB, Ogg Vorbis version here — you can also download all our episodes in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format from the Outlaw Archives.
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I want to make an announcement, admittedly a slightly redundant one now that everyone has already had a go (Popey & Tony), but damn it I’m going to say it anyway. As we mentioned on a recent episode of Linux Outlaws, we’ve been discussing the idea of holding a barcamp event in conjunction with the Ubuntu UK podcast.
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Having an arsenal of penetration testing tools at the ready — without having to actually install any of them — is without question a major time-saver for information security pros. That’s why BackTrack is so popular.
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Last week it was reported by LWN and a few other Linux news sites that Foresight Linux may employ a change of direction…that is, create a spinoff project that places the Conary package manager onto a Fedora Linux base.
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Red Hat Family
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It will be difficult for Oracle to compete against Red Hat as it contributes only 3.3 percent as compared to 12.3 percent of Red Hat to the Linux kernel.
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The rumors, of course, are nothing new. We have been speculating about a possible pairing between Red Hat and IBM or Oracle for almost three years. (When Oracle launched its own support of Linux back in 2006, we wondered if it wasn’t a ‘beat ‘em down and take ‘em out’ strategy from the coldhearted Larry Ellison.) And when the rumblings surfaced again earlier this year, we did some
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Yes, you heard it right — among the other cool features in F12 Alpha, you can now take a look at Moblin directly in Fedora proper, regardless of your hardware platform.
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Debian Family
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Ubuntu
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10 Ubuntu Themed Wallpapers for your Ubuntu desktop.
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Ubuntu 9.10’s proposed splash and log-in screens have, once again, undergone minor revisions.
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Dear Ubuntu fans, we are proud to announce that, as of this morning, Canonical added a brand-new X-based boot splash, which will be present in the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) operating system, due for release on October 29th. xplash is the package in charge of the new boot splash and it is a userspace software that uses the X interface to draw a splash screen at boot before the desktop loads. See the video below to see it in action! Softpedia is once again the first website to offer you a preview of the new artwork, which will probably be present in the final release of Ubuntu 9.10.
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I should add that while we were fishing for suggestions for the first Linux distro to take a look at, we got a lot of suggestions for PCLinuxOS. On any given day I don’t get a lot of email, so I’m still not sure what that was about. Regardless, while the decision was to use Ubuntu, it wasn’t made in absence of considering any other distributions. Depending on the reception of this article, we may take a look at other distros.
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Canonical
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Well, those are the plans at least. As you can see from the screenshots, right now the Ubuntu Software Store is quite basic and really does not deliver anything new to the Ubuntu package management stack besides a simplified user-interface. The main screen provides icons for different areas (Accessories, Education, Internet, Office, etc…) while there are basic search capabilities, a list view when looking at packages in a specific area or the search results, and then a basic individual package view. Obviously, there is a whole lot of work left to be done before Ubuntu 9.10 rolls around and even more is ahead for future releases. Look for the Ubuntu Software Store to appear in Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 5.
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Next week (31 August through 3 September) VMorld 2009 kicks off in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. For the second year, Canonical has a booth to demonstrate Ubuntu’s virtualization and cloud computing capabilities.
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SimplyMepis
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Mepis has a mature graphical installer, a clean (if not cutting-edge) look, and it works well with its parent distro, Debian. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, you can do no wrong with Mepis.
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Our Windows user ended his two hour session with little or no problems to speak of. The layout and navigation took awhile to get used to but he was navigating comfortably after an hour or so.
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SimplyMEPIS 8.0.10 has been released, and it is as usual very good. I’ve been pleased and impressed with MEPIS for quite some time now, and despite a few small problems on my various computers, I continue to feel that way. MEPIS is a solid, well developed derivative of Debian, and it has an active, helpful and knowledgeable community for support
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Octagon Systems announced a ruggedized mobile computer for police, taxi, medical, trucking, transit system, and mesh security network applications. The Linux-ready Fleet Core computer offers an Intel Atom N270, GPS, and gigabit Ethernet, and provides fanless operation over a -25 to 70 deg. C temperature range, says the company.
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Someday, in the not-too-distant-future, the Web will likely function more like an operating system than the current collection of disassociated sites. With a Web OS, Web applications will communicate with each other, you will sign on to use services and applications just once and you will be able to easily back up data from one site onto another.
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The Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d NAS server, based on EMC’s AX line of low-end arrays, runs on Linux and can be set up in in a few minutes via four mouse clicks, according to the company.
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Netbook users will have a better audio experience with these features included in their Linux-based OS systems. From listening to music to watching streaming movies to chatting with family to protecting the speakers from damage, netbooks need features, such as an equalizer, compressor, limiter, AEC and NS, to improve the audio quality and experience.
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A group of OpenBSD developers have joined in the AerieBSD project. A new distro is being prepared whose likeness to OpenBSD is unmistakable.
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Take a look at what Tristan says about “The API cycle”. Yes, we do want APIs to be open and useful. But we also want independence and free agency for everybody in a given category’s ecosystem. I fear that some APIs — especially ones that lock us into dependency on commercial intermediaries that may fail — are also a breed of fauxpen. And we’ll learn big lessons about that as soon as some big commercial tree on which millons depend — one with an “open API” — fails to grow to the sky.
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The BSA won’t tell you that the best way to avoid software piracy is to use software that cannot, by definition, be pirated. Then again, the BSA also won’t tell you that a disgruntled ex-employee decided to make your life miserable by giving them a call.
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I expect Oliver and me to summarize and extend on this work in a journal article (and upon Jacob’s special request, we’ll try to get boilerplate comments and headers removed from the comment line counting 
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1. Firefox is not perfect software, but its vulnerabilities are fixed in a considerably shorter amount of time. Many new users are curious – is Mozilla Firefox safe? Updates are released immediately, not on a monthly schedule, and clock in at fewer than 10 MB. Users are notified automatically and prompted to install the update with a single click. The update process doesn’t take more than a minute on a modern computer.
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The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), demanding records from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) policy of searching laptops at border crossings without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
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The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has put out a campaign designed to raise awareness of the privacy implications of Facebook’s developer platform. It’s focusing specifically on the popular “quiz” applications, like “Which Cocktail Best Suits Your Personality?” and “Which Wes Anderson Movie Character Are You?” These are largely one-time-use apps that many a Facebook user clicks on and tries out with little concern.
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Censorship/Web Abuse
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The Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to keep the Internet free of increased user fees based on heavy Web traffic and slow downloads.
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If you recall, last year a Belgian activist got everybody riled up with an incorrect rumor that Canadian phone companies Telus and Bell Canada were planning to start charging customers extra to access certain websites.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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As book publishers are starting to struggle with the same business model issues facing the music industry and others, it seems at least one publisher has come up with a unique “reason to buy” — though, it may be slightly out of your price range. johnjac points us to the news about the $1 million wine book.
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Peermusic, Warner/Chappell and Bug Music filed copyright infringement lawsuits today against two businesses exploiting unlicensed lyrics for profit through their operation of four Web sites.
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Mininova has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.
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I got a call this afternoon from Michel Ishakian, the Deputy Chief for IT Policy and Budget at the Administrative Office of the United States courts. She assured me that they have no problem with counsel using RECAP (discussed here) and that the language sent out by the Northern District of Georgia (see my update to my previous post) is the only language that she disseminated for publication.
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Earlier this year, a number of our users complained about their experience on the receiving end of a DMCA complaint. Much commentary at the time focused on claims that we were removing blog posts at the behest of music labels, that we were not notifying users, and that we weren’t providing users with any recourse if they were linking to the music with permission.
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We realize this birthday present isn’t for everyone—we’d hope most of you never receive a complaint. But music bloggers are a large segment of our users—and we know that for those who’ve received one or more DMCA complaints in the past, this may have been a frustrating experience. Please take care to remove the offending content once notified of the complaint—once you do, you can republish the original post so your audience will continue to have access to the other content contained in the post.
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THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, which used to cover the world red, has decided to outsource decisions about who can get broadband to the music and film cartels.
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Although the RIAA suggests outrageous losses due to digital pirates, other research has pointed out that piracy has an insignificant effect on CD sales. From the musicians perspective, it takes the sale of about 500,000 CD’s for most artists to break even. By making their music available for free, some musicians believe it is beneficial. Once a listener has heard and appreciated the artist’s music, he may be more willing to buy future work. However, consumers who consider music piracy to negatively affect musicians and music companies in terms of profit will be less likely to engage in music piracy.
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The purpose of copyright — on musical recordings, or anything else — is simple: to encourage writing and art. That’s a desirable goal, but there are limits to what it can justify. Stopping people from sharing noncommercially is just too much. If we wish to promote music in the age of computer networks, we must choose methods that fit in with what we want to do with music, and that includes sharing.
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Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) shareholders have unanimously given the thumbs up to the firm’s plans to buy The Pirate Bay.
Kevin Foreman, General Manager at RealNetworks 01 (2004)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
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Posted in Finance, Novell at 5:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Not surprisingly:
Novell Inc. on Thursday posted a slightly worse-than-expected decline in revenue for its fiscal third quarter, as product sales of identity and security management and systems and resource management software each fell sharply.
More details will be posted tomorrow.
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