• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Linux grows up

During my vacation last week I decided to take a look at Ubuntu’s latest Linux offering and I was pleasantly surprised. I’m happy to say that Linux, as a desktop, has truly grown up. Out of the box I had audio, video, and wireless Internet support without any trouble whatsoever. It had an intuitive and user-friendly interface, something necessary to catch the attention of non-technically savvy users. Additionally, the installation was a breeze. This wasn’t always the case and I finally felt Linux was a real option for the user desktop.

MLAs to go e-way with pre-loaded linux laptops

The MLAs in the State are going e-way like their counterparts in other States, but with a difference. The 141 MLAs in the Kerala Legislative Assembly will be provided with pre-loaded GNU/Linux laptops, giving a clear indication that the State is still bonded to the idea of free software. The Kerala Legislative Assembly website has published the tender for pre-installed open source purchase with Linux Ubuntu certification.

Server

• VISI Selects ParaScale Software Paired With Commodity Linux Servers For Its Soon-To-Be-Launched Cloud Storage Platform

  ParaScale, Inc., a startup company developing cloud storage software solutions, today announced that VISI, a leading Minnesota-based regional provider of enterprise managed hosting services, has selected ParaScale software as the cloud storage platform to enable a transition into cloud services.

Kernel Space

• Metadata Performance of Four Linux File Systems

  This article isn’t so much about benchmarks as a product, but rather it is an exploration looking for interesting observations or trends or the lack thereof. In particular this article examines the metadata performance of several Linux file systems using a specific micro-benchmark. Fundamentally this article is really an exploration to understand if there is any metadata performance differences between 4 Linux file systems (ext3, ext4, btrfs, and nilfs) using a metadata benchmark called fdtree. So now it’s time to eat our dog food and do benchmarking with the recommendations previously mentioned.

Games

• CodeWeavers Releases CrossOver Games 8.0 for Mac and Linux; Adds Support for Snow Leopard OS

  CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announced the release of CrossOver Games 8.0 for both Mac and Linux, available immediately. CrossOver Games allows Windows games to be played on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license. CrossOver Games 8.0 is also designed to run on the latest Snow Leopard OS for Mac PCs.

• Battlefield 2 v1.50 Linux Dedicated Server

  Here’s the Battlefield 2 Dedicated Linux Server (Build 1.5.3153) to host games for version 1.5.

Distributions

• Red Hat announces RHEL 5.4

  The firm called RHEL 5.4 the foundation of its portfolio of virtualisation solutions, adding that it supports a broad ecosystem of hardware and software while also contributing to Red Hat’s vision for the future.

• Red Hat stretches Linux system management tentacle

  Software maker Red Hat has announced the availability of its on-premises systems management product.

• Red Hat stretches Linux system management tentacle

  Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 is the company’s first version of its platform to be based on the open source “Spacewalk” project.

Devices/Embedded

• Hands on with the Nokia N900 and Maemo 5

  Qt will become the API across Nokia devices, which means developers might actually start writing applications for them. Qt is much easier for quick and dirty applications, and proven for heavyweights such as Google Earth, Opera and Skype, where high performance is a necessity.

• Nokia bolsters phone lineup, prices laptop at $820

• Nokia World 09 brings new smartphones, netbooks

Skype buyout wakes up open source vendors

Meanwhile, the developers of FreeSWITCH, an alternative VoIP solution, have been re-emphasising that FreeSWITCH already supports Skype in an update released in August, albeit through a proxy mechanism which uses the Skype client software on Windows and Linux to connect to the Skype network. Whether the new ownership of Skype will see the company become more interoperable with open source in general has yet to be determined.

Integration Watch: Open-source hosts with the most

At the top of the list is the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) at apache.org. It hosts only a few projects, but ones that matter and that frequently have a large following. In my recent interview with ASF president Justin Erenkrantz, he stated, “For a project to apply, it generally requires three active, regular contributors.” Even if it qualifies on that score, it must still go through an incubation and review phase before it becomes a fully accepted project. In exchange, the ASF provides hosting, a legal framework, considerable exposure and undeniable cachet.

Intalio Acquires Webtide, Developer of the Jetty Application Server

Intalio, Inc., The Enterprise Cloud Company, today announced the acquisition of Webtide, the team behind the Jetty open source Java application server.

Business

• Ingres and Interactive Ideas Join Forces to Provide Enterprise Ready Open Source Solutions to the UK Reseller Channel

  Interactive Ideas has maintained a long and profitable partnership with Red Hat for over a decade and has witnessed a steady increase in interest in not only Red Hat solutions, but open source technologies in general.

• Openbravo Maps a Shortcut to ERP Implementation

  Enterprises looking for an open source ERP product that can be configured and customized in-house have sometimes looked to Openbravo. However, smaller firms may not have enough IT personnel to devote to such a project. They’re the ones Openbravo is targeting with QuickStart, a new proprietary ERP app built upon OpenBravo’s eponymous OSS version.

Openness

• Wikimedia Commons breaks 5,000,000 files

  Hot on the heels of the recent milestone of 3,000,000 articles on English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons has just lodged its own major milestone: passing the 5,000,000 binary mark. Wikimedia Commons is the vast image, video, sound, illustration (and more) repository of works that can be freely reused by anyone, and perhaps most notably to users is the space where all of Wikipedia’s images are stored. Few would dispute that Wikimedia Commons is the largest single collection of freely reusable images on the internet.

• Are You Ready for Open-Source Hardware?

  According to the Chaos Theory, in a giant system that has lots of interconnections, even the smallest action can have a massive impact. It’s more simply described by the butterfly effect. This theory has taken its toll on the software business, thanks to the rise of open-source software platforms. Today, I learned about a move made by Backblaze, a small San Francisco-based online back-up service that can cause a similar disruption in the storage industry.

Programming

• CollabNet pushes community best practices

  CollabNet announced this morning that it will offer free one-hour audits of existing communities, and has made available the Enterprise Community Management Cook Book, enumerating the best practices for managing open-source projects. For companies seeking an even deeper engagement, CollabNet also announced both an advisory and a management service for corporate communities in need of a shepherd.

Amazon API crackdown neuters book apps

Then Elam noticed a similar problem with an aging Windows app known as Album Art Aggregator, which provided cover art for his collection of ripped CDs. And after a quick web search, he turned up issues with several other Linux apps, including Amarok, a music player for the KDE Linux desktop interface, and Rhythmbox, a music-management app for the GNOME destktop.

As it turns out, all are victims of a recent change to the Amazon.com data API.

Will eBooks Kill Off The Hard-Cover Book?

Arnaud Nourry, CEO of French publishing group Hachette Livre told the Financial Times that pressure from Google’s (GOOG) digital library project and from the move by Amazon (AMZN), Barnes & Noble (BKS) and others into electronic books is forcing publishers to consider drastic price cuts. He thinks one result could be the death of hardback books.

NPR’s Digital Makeover

Yes, that’s the problem. That’s sort of the beauty of a not-for-profit, like ourselves. We’re beholden to no one. No financier. Our gifts come with no strings attached, or we won’t accept them. Nobody is getting rich off of it. It’s a big issue.

NPR Recognizes It Makes Business Sense To Give Up Content Cash Cow And Go Free

It appears that she’s putting this realization to work in other ways, a bunch of readers have been submitting an NPR blog post explaining why it has stopped charging for transcripts of programs, and started offering them for free on its website.

AstroTurf

• EXCLUSIVE: Health Insurance Lobby’s Stealth Astroturf Campaign Revealed

  According to the server-information hub Domaintools.com, the AHIP grassroots outreach website AHIPAdvocacy.org is hosted on a server owned by DDC. Though DDC conceals the hosting of its other websites using a service called DomainsByProxy, ThinkProgress has obtained a list of the domains hosted on DDC servers. A review of this data shows that DDC maintains the grassroots outreach websites for large health insurance companies, but also for big tobacco and Koch Industries:

  – phillipmorrisusaactioncenter.org (Altria)
  – tobaccoissues.com (Altria)
  – kochpac.com (Koch Industries)
  – aetnavotes.com (Aetna)
  – healthactionnetwork.org (WellPoint)
  – humanapartners.com (Humana)
  – ahipadvocacy.org (AHIP)

• Rendon’s Embed Vetting Scandal

  The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that the Pentagon was using one of its favorite public relations firms, the Rendon Group, to produce profiles of reporters requesting to embed with U.S. forces in Afghanistan; that the profiles graded reporters’ past coverage as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative,” sometimes suggesting how to “neutralize” expected negative coverage or how to design embeds to “result in favorable coverage”; and that, in some cases, the profiles prompted military officials to reject reporters’ embed requests

• Online politics reserved for rich

  US civic engagement remains in the hands of the middle-class despite hopes that the internet would democratise political involvement.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Authors Take Up The Tiered Support Models Also

  Another day, another example of content creators embracing the business models we’ve been talking about — and once again, this one is outside of the music industry. Recently we wrote about movie makers picking up on tiered funding offerings, similar to what Jill Sobule has done, and now we’ve got a budding author as well.

• Movie studios again demand HDTV disabling powers from FCC

  Even the MPAA now concedes that its bid for selectable output control could force some consumers to buy new home theater gear. What we still don’t have is a reasonable estimate on whether the 11 million figure bandied about is accurate. Nor do we know what the Genachowski FCC thinks about this mess.

• Despite Winning $675,000, RIAA Fears Defendant is File Sharing

  The Recording Industry Association of America took the offensive Tuesday against a college student whom a jury concluded in July must pay $675,000 for file sharing 30 songs.

• Distributions
• Devices/Embedded

Kids in Austin, Texas Need More Penguins

Ken’s health has taken a bit of a turn and even though he will be stubborn and continue to push himself too hard, it would be better for more people to pitch in with Komputers4Kids. I don’t know if that is still the official name, but the job is still the same– collect donations of good used computers of recent vintage, install Linux on them, make sure everything works, and deliver and set them up.

Microsoft Losing its Grip on UK Small Businesses?

Put another way, according to this survey few small business in the UK intend upgrading to Windows 7 soon; the majority want to move to solutions independent of the operating system, to those based on the browser; and fully a third of the companies are using Firefox, not Internet Explorer, for that purpose.

That adds up to a bunch of headaches for Microsoft if those results are mirrored across the whole of the UK, because it suggests some fairly seismic shifts are underway in the small business sector, and that the company is failing on multiple fronts.

Google

• Is there a ChromiumOS to go with ChromeOS?

  In a recent report on TechCrunch, it was noted that modifications were being made to the Chrome browser which hint that the forthcoming ChromeOS will use the browser as the application launcher. Details also reveal that the developers at Google are extending the status bar to include an application launching control, a clock and battery indicator.

• Google Chrome OS to Feature Single Sign-On for Chrome Browser

  Blogger Lee Mathews of Download Squad recently found a reference to Chrome OS in the source code of Chromium, the open source project that serves as the testing grounds for Google’s Chrome web browser. In the code, a line references something being called the “Chrome OS login manager.” Essentially, this login manager will function as a single sign-on (SSO) cookie which will simultaneously log you into all Google services including things like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, etc.

• More Chrome OS clues – and it’s sure sounding like a bootable browser

Desktop

• Windows And Linux Users Get Another Great VM Option

  This week, for the first time in nearly three years, Parallels updated (and renamed) Workstation.2.2. The new release, dubbed Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows and Linux, offers some features that should make it very interesting to both personal and small-business PC users.

• Easily Install Fonts In Ubuntu With FontMatrix

  Several unique features of FontMatrix include: -

  * Label fonts with multiple tags
  * Activate or deactivate fonts base on tag(s)
  * Install entire folders of fonts with one click
  * Preview font before deciding to install/activate
  * Select similar fonts (as long as PANOSE information is provided)

Kernel Space

• Linux Unified Kernel (Longene) 0.2.4.1 released!

  On 31st August, 2009, the new version of Linux Unified Kernel (Longene) 0.2.4.1 is released. In this release, we updated the kernel patch and module based on Linux 2.6.30, so it will support more features that the new kernel brings. Meanwhile, we fixed some bugs in registry management, process management and synchronization in the previous version (0.2.4).

  In this release, both source code package and binary packages are provided for some popular distributions, like Redflag 6, Fedora, Ubuntu.

• Con Kolivas returns with a new scheduler

  Con Kolivas, who worked on desktop interactivity issues in the past before storming off in 2007, has posted a new scheduler called BFS. “It was designed to be forward looking only, make the most of lower spec machines, and not scale to massive hardware. ie it is a desktop orientated scheduler, with extremely low latencies for excellent interactivity by design rather than ‘calculated’, with rigid fairness, nice priority distribution and extreme scalability within normal load levels.”

• Linus Torvalds in Live Streaming from LinuxCon

  The Linux Foundation will be holding its first LinuxCon conference from September 21 through 23 in Portland, Oregon. Linus Torvalds and Mark Shuttleworth will be among the speakers, and Linux Pro Magazine Online will do a live stream, free for the keynotes.

• Accelerating X with Gallium

  So with a Gallium driver, besides OpenGL, OpenGL ES and OpenVG you’ll get X11 acceleration. I’m specifically saying here X11 because after implementing Exa we’ll move to accelerating Xv, which will give us a nice set of ops which are accelerated in a typical X application.

Applications

• 5 Great opensource games for Linux

  Here are 5 Nice opensource games for Linux , I installed the games on ubuntu and they did work fine, I liked more Supertux perhaps because is similar to super mario bros one my favorite games, the rest of the games are nice ones also with nice music and good graphics, in general nice ones to play them in your free time, I advise you to try them and don`t forget to share with us your opinion about thee games.

• Building Linux Audio Applications 101: A User’s Guide, Part 1

  I have purposefully avoided any discussion of GUI-based tools. There are some very nice GUI-based development tools and utilities for Linux, but for present purposes I have chosen to target the lowest common denominator of programming environments, the Linux command line (a.k.a. the terminal prompt). Regardless of flavor, size, or shape, all Linux distributions include command-line access to the system. And if you’ve never worked at a Linux console command-line, have no fear: If you can enter your name in a login dialog you can enter and execute commands at the terminal prompt. The power is in your hands.

• Ultimate Download Management guide for Linux

  When I got started with Linux, The one thing I couldn’t find was good download managers. but today we have plenty of them, in fact what we have on Linux is simply better than Adware/Shareware download managers on Windows.

  Downloading in Linux is not limited to using Wget, KDE KGet or Gwget or cURL now..

  In this guide, I’m going to tell you the various ways for good and reliable download management on Linux, for every type of download you can ever do.

Desktop Environments

• Grants, bounties and free software

  The GNOME community has had mixed results with bounties and grants, so when Funambol community manager Stefano Maffulli contacted me about a GNOME grant and said they’d had success using grants for Funambol, I thought it’d be interesting to learn more about the program.

Distributions

• Noteworthy PCLinuxOS updates (Aug 23rd – Aug 29th 2009)

  Another week has come and gone. Here are the noteworthy updates from the past week.

• Red Hat Family

  • Red Hat Catalyst Program: VARs Gain Complete ISV Solutions

    Regardless, Red Hat seems serious about building an open source applications ecosystem that rivals traditional closed-source stacks from Microsoft and Oracle.

  • Dell @ the Red Hat Summit This Week

• Fedora

  • Boog, the desktop bugzilla client for Fedora

    From the project page “Boog is a desktop and command line bugzilla client that aims to provide a very easy and simple interface for end users to file bug reports. We aim to built some intelligence into the client. We will collect the Fedora version and component version information, hardware details, log output, SELinux status and other details depending on the component the user chooses to file a bug report against.”

  • Fedora from an Ubuntu point of view

    I’m impressed by Fedora. It’s familiar and friendly, with a well defined and complete appearance. Delta RPMs are a great idea – especially as we consider that not everyone has a fast internet connection (Sony wants to take this on board, as I wait here for another massive system update on PS3). Encryption is very welcome as is SELinux. On the downside, the installation licensing limits the distributed applications and yum is still comparitively slow.

• Ubuntu

  • Ubuntu Netbook Remix UI Gets Tweaked Again

    Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Alpha 4 brings another Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface redesign. The colors has been lighted, the menus now dynamically resize to allow more of the background to be seen and launcher animations have returned.

  • Openbravo on Ubuntu Server Edition: ERP Sales Will Take Time

    Meanwhile, Ubuntu Server Edition 9.10 – set to debut in October — includes several cloud enhancements that could further improve Ubuntu’s appeal beyond the desktop. In the meantime, Canonical is working with training centers to expand the support network for Ubuntu Server Edition.

  • TechBoard 2009

    Thank you to everyone who voted in the Tech Board election, which came to a result last night. We had 84 votes from 130 eligible voters. The new Tech Board in reverse alphabetical surname order is:

    * Matt Zimmerman
    * Mark Shuttleworth
    * Scott James Remnant
    * Martin Pitt
    * Kees Cook

Devices/Embedded

• Kindle DX Impressions

  Kindle today is actually from O’Reilly who provide DRM-free content. The Kindle DX supports PDFs really well, but I put my O’Reilly books on there using the .mobi format which works better and is searchable, zoomable etc.

  [...]

  So all in all, a pretty rocking device and I am tickled pink to have one on our coffee table.

• Nokia’s Free Software bullshit and insults in Maemo

  There’s a wiki page in Maemo explaining why there are some proprietary software. That page needs to be passed by the bullshit filter, like I said in my comment, Nokia is far from being friendly to Free Software. They’re actually quite aggressive and strongly lobby for the legalization of software patents in Europe. Don’t be fooled by the sugar coating, they are not your friend. So what is in the wiki page after you pass the bullshit filter?

  * Brand We think that “open source” reduces our brand value
  * Differentiation Proprietary software is much better, just use it
  * Legacy We don’t want to be shamed by the garbage we forcefeed upon you
  * IPR & licensing issues Software Patents are good, just buy the freaking licenses from us.
  * Security Since we sell dangerous products, we take your freedom away so you don’t make the mistake of getting proof they’re crap (like their batteries, which the phones must know the limits of)
  * Third party Just accept that we know best and choose from the best

A Question of Community Values

One of the core differences between open source and traditional software development is the role of the community. For companies employing the latter, it’s essentially a resource to be strip-mined; for those using the former, it’s a resource to be tended like a garden of rare orchids.

4 Resources for the Powerful Inkscape Open Source Drawing Tool

Among advanced open source graphics tools, GIMP has a lot of fans, and there are many free online resources available for it, but if you’re looking for a drawing and illustration tool that can compete with Adobe Illustrator and is especially good for logos and splashy still graphics, give Inkscape a try.

Design Challenges, Service Week, Drumbeat, TestSwarm, AMO update, extension tutorials, and more…

In this issue…

* Two new Design Challenges
* New Mozilla.org website
* Mozilla Service Week: Sept 14-21
* Mozilla Drumbeat: topics, overview + forum
* Labs: TestSwarm alpha open
* New addons.mozilla.org updates

VoIP

• Skype Dials New Owner… And Open Source

  The first piece of news involves eBay selling most of Skype to private investors, as reported by The New York Times. But a separate, smaller piece of news could also have big implications for Skype and its channel partners. Skype for Digium Asterisk — the open source IP PBX — is officially available for download.

• Digium and Skype Enable Free and Low-Cost Calling through any Asterisk-based PBX

  “Digium has been using Skype for Asterisk for the past few months while the product has been in development,” said Danny Windham, CEO of Digium. “We created Skype accounts such as Digium Sales and Digium Support—a convention I suspect many companies will quickly adopt. Now, our customers all over the world can call us for free using Skype and our Asterisk PBX processes the inbound call just like it would a normal call. This is going to save Digium and our customers a lot of money.”

FSF/GNU/FSFE/SFLC

• FSF internship – working with GNU MyServer

  My internship is now over but still there are things to be done, both for my GUI application and for GNU MyServer. I’m going to continue contributing to GNU Myserver and I hope my code will be useful for others.

• Announcing GNU GRUB 1.97 beta1

  I hereby announce the release of GNU GRUB 1.97 beta1. This is the first of the beta releases that will lead to 1.97.

• Lets work together.

  Lets make our diversity in the GNU/Linux community a positive point and work together to promote GNU/Linux as a whole. It is an excellent concept that keeps growing and flourishing. Tolerance of each other and acceptance of new users is essential. Peace, love and Linux.

• The human face of the FSFE

  There is an interview series with Fellows — Smári McCarthy, Timo Jyrinki, Myriam Schweingruber are the last three — that illustrates really well the range of people involved in Free Software across Europe.

  [...]

  Anyway, the human face of FSFE: the fellows. See the Berlin group on the 10th of September, Wien or Helsinki or one of the other groups — or start one up yourself. Heck, I’m going to have to arrange something in the Netherlands now. How does October 28th sound?

• Episode 0×15: Steve Holden of the Python Software Foundation

  # Steve has been using Python since version 1.5, which was released in 1998. (08:15)
  # Steve was previously the chairman of Sun UK User Group, and was also involved with DECUS. (10:40)

Misc.

• Frances Pinter on the (Academic) Value of Sharing

  So much of academic output is now available on the web, and when you talk to academics they are not 100 percent happy with how difficult it is becoming to find their works. They are looking for tools; a digital means of selecting, filtering, and ranking the materials they are using and recommending. We are actually in a period of transition where we are still relying on the old, but wanting to experiment with the new. People like myself who spend a lot of time with the open access crowd can kind of forget there are a lot of academics who aren’t so vocal, who are primarily interested in producing their content, getting materials in front of their students, and getting their promotion and their recognition for work that they produce.

• ‘Bloggers’ vs ‘Audience’ is over? or, Will the word ‘blogger’ disappear?

  Blog is just one of many technical ways to convey information. I think the phrase “Blogger Jones” will go away. But sometimes it is important to state how one got the information. So, one may say “Jones blogged it”, or “I got this from Sally via e-mail”, or “as Neal wrote in his 1996 book”, or “Anne told me over dinner last night”, or “in Jim’s op-ed in WaPo yesterday”, or “via Dave on Twitter”, or “Elizabeth texted me”, or “Bill posted on Facebook”, or “Chris told me over the phone a minute ago”. All of those media channels are useful for various purposes.

• Google Translate now speaks 51 languages

  We spend a lot of time thinking about how information travels around the globe. After all, there are Googlers living and working in dozens of countries — and we’re pretty sure our products are used in many more. So we’re familiar with the need to translate information across borders, and we’ve been working hard to build the technology to enable you to do just that.

• A New Way to Backup from Gladinet: Cloud-to-Cloud

  However, with Gladinet’s new cloud backup feature, currently only available for Google Docs, you can backup your files from Google’s cloud to someone else’s, whether that’s Amazon, Box.net, EMC, or whatever else you choose.

Programming

• New tendentions with C popularity: returning to the roots?

  The look into Tiobe index may give quite a surprising results if we pay attention into that is happening during the latest year. Java seems no longer declining, Python and C# are also kind of stable but we clearly observe the growth of C language popularity. It is even not C++ but a plain C.

• Finding conferences

An Engineer to Run Japan

It seems the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) smoked the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in today`s national election, ending the LDP`s five decade rule over Japan.

How much of the EU’s data will the UK lose?

That’s OK for us Brits, of course, we’re used to it. Ever since the records of 25 million child benefit claimants went AWOL, we’ve become inured to our personal data turning up in the strangest of places, including roundabouts, train carriages, laptops stolen from the boots of cars and disks going missing from secure sites in Iowa City.

Intellectual Monopolies

• Copyright’s Creative Disincentive

  Tucows is participating in the ongoing Canadian copyright consultation. We will be making a formal submission and I will be appearing at the final round table tomorrow (Tuesday, September 1, 2009) in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

  We are big fans of government embracing the Internet in order to better get input from its citizens to help with the legislative process. While the methods have evolved, the submissions tend to be very formalistic. By lawyers for lawyers. To try and evolve that we have commissioned an original piece by the brilliant David Weinberger discussing the fundamental misconception in linking copyright to creativity. This piece will form the bulk of our submission and follows.

• Is Creative Commons Good for Copyright?

  When CC founding board member Lawrence Lessig announced in 2007 he was retiring from the intellectual property debate to focus on ethics, we wrote the “issues [related to possible strategic errors in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case] are minor compared with the good Lessig has done and the enormous effort he has spent in trying to get it right and make things equitable. Lessig has put his energy and his money where his mouth has been, and right or wrong, we respect and thank him for that.”

• Bad Idea Redux: Revisiting The Music Tax

  I was going to ignore this, but people keep submitting it. A student blogger for ZDnet has decided that he’s solved the RIAA’s problems: just tax every internet connection at $1 per month. This is, of course, unworkable and unwise for a variety of reasons. First, the recording industry would laugh (and laugh and laugh) at the idea that $1 from every internet connection would come close to covering what it (falsely) considers to be “losses” from file sharing. Remember, this is the same recording industry that’s continually trying to raise the price per song downloaded to over $1. But, more importantly, there are so many problems with a music tax idea, that it’s taken up multiple posts here.

• Why digital is good for music

  Greg Kot: There is a part of the music industry that is dying as a result of what’s happening on the Internet. But I think a new industry is being born, a grassroots industry.

• No wonder the major record labels are in trouble

  Amazingly, all this can all be done digitally in literally minutes at a fraction of the cost. Since 2005, the entire Canadian music industry has led the world in moving to a total digital workflow. That industry has virtually eliminated the use of CD Pros to promote new music to radio stations, internally within the labels, and to other destinations with great savings of time, effort, and money.

• Europe Pushing For An Orphan Works Law Also

• Copyright Reform Made Easy

  As readers of this blog will have noticed, I’m not a big fan of intellectual monopolies like copyright or patents. For the former, I’d prefer a return to the original term of 14 years, or even less. But even I recognise that this is not going to be easy to achieve in the short term, so until there’s an outbreak of mass sanity, we need a stopgap solution.