Democracy is a wonderful invention, for if you gather enough stupid people in the same place, they will end up making so many dumb decisions that they eventually destroy themselves. It is the extension of Darwinism from nature into society.
My mother and I decided that the free “movie” tickets we received those months ago should not go to waste — you know the ones that require Windows? Anyway, since I do have a lap top with Windows preinstalled on it (I would rather assfuck a snail than pay money for Windows, pardon the french) we figured we might as well hook it up to my monitor/speakers and watch some movies.
So she came over and, cunningly, she brought her knitting… stuff, with her. For various reasons, the rest of this post is in bullet form. Enjoy!
I occasionally reflect upon my hatred towards Microsoft Windows. I mean, people do use it, and there has to be a reason. Sometimes, a friend of mine decides to switch over to linux, saying they’ve “had enough!”, and I help them out. But inevitably, they will come to a point where they think “Dude, this is just too much work. I’m thinking of installing Windows again,” and I always tell them the same thing: “Yeah, do so. You should use what feels best for you.” One thing is abundantly clear, however, and that is that I personally cannot use Windows. It’s following a philosophy that I can understand, but never agree with. The philosophy of “handling stuff for me”. This philosophy works great for an absolute beginner, but not so great for a person with a tiny bit of adventurism in them. Try to “play around” with Windows and you will kill Windows. And I’m completely ignoring things such as virii and worms and trojan horses and whatever have you. The way I see it, those will come to linux as well, when linux has a big enough player base. What I do believe though, is that it will take an idiot to get a virii in linux, and it will be more about fooling people than it will be about brute-forcing one’s way into another person’s operating system, as is the case with Windows.
Security holes exist in both places, and I remember one time when some Windows advocate said in response to an article, “Where are the linux people now?” Well, my answer to that question is, “We’re somewhere else, not giving a shit,” because the blown-up “security holes” mentioned in that article were for specific pieces of software. It’s a much bigger deal when a security hole applies to every single computer running a particular operating system (i.e. a kernel flaw), and you will find very few of those in linux. Unpatched, that is.
In any case, there you have it, my Windows experience for the year. And believe me, I am not looking forward to a second one. Those movie tickets I got (I have like 6 of them) will remain unused. If you find something at sf-anytime.com that you’d like to see, let me know, and I’ll get you a code, but you better hurry — they expire on new years, GMT+1.
I read a FAQ earlier about intellectual property (by the pro-IP lads), in which a question was exactly similar to this:
“Q: Is it legal to say the word ‘foo’ while chopping another human being to little pieces with an axe?”
“A: No, it absolutely isn’t!”
I mean… I can say that anything and everything is illegal if I word it right and quote the wording just so.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/19/us_space_policy/
Space = the 51st state? Lovely. Want some fries with that megalomania, Mr. President?
Yesterday was “valvaka”, which I guess translates to “election wake” for the Swedish government the next 4 years. Me? I was sleeping. The thing was meant to happen at 11 pm and I usually go to bed around 10. So why bother, eh? Today, I woke up confused. They say the blue (I guess those would be the liberals) won, but other reports say the social democrats had more votes. I’d check, but you know, I’d need to install Flash to do that, and Flash as we’ve already concluded, does not like me. (And let me clarify that the feeling is quite mutual.)
Anyfuckingway, I looked out the window and this was Kalle’s place at 7 in the morning, September 9th:
Pretty foggy, huh?
When I signed up for my new ISP, I received 3 movie tickets as a thanks. That’s pretty nice. However, the movie tickets turned out to be movie tickets for “viewing movies online.” I.e. a movie industry move to tackle those pesky downloaders.
Unfortunately I don’t have Windows.
Unfortunately for them.
If they expect a consumer to support their business (i.e. not download stuff from the ‘net) and purchase their products, they had better try harder than this. The movie site which provides the movies (sf-anytime.com) dismisses its linux users indifferently, saying DRM technology is unsupported on the platform and thus, the linux users can go fuck themselves. Using their hard earned movie tickets, perhaps. The same, by the way, goes for the Mac users. Yessir, you wanna be legal and watch movies from home, you better be using Microsoft Windows. “With all the doubts of crystal clear,” as Peter Murphy puts it.
So I contacted my ISP, saying I would like reimbursement for the 3 tickets I got. They did reimburse me, a whooping $2 US or similar. (Though in their defense, those tickets are still valid — I just have to go to some funny friend who’s dumb enough to run Windows.) Gotta give it to them, though. I definitely didn’t expect them to give me anything at all.
Conclusively, the message from the Music and Movie Industry is clear. Download stuff online, as you have no other option. “Buy the DVD,” you say? Well, sure, but that, too is borderline illegal. The encryption algorithm for DVD playback has already visited court on one occasion, and who knows when that whale resurfaces. “Buy Windows,” you say, and I shall steeple my fingers and snicker.
Update (2006-08-20): I emailed my ISP telling them that my mother is in the exact same situation, and she, too, got the $2. Cute. (But to be honest, it’s actually not $2. It’s $1.39 according to the current exc. rates.)
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=6b3af6c9
Which other company would decide to not support newer hardware in this fashion? Adobe can go fuck themselves.
Stop using YouTube.
Stop using Google Video.
If you do that, I’ll give you $5. No seriously, I will.
- “More than a decade of hard lobbying by two powerful trade groups, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has convinced U.S. lawmakers and law enforcement officials that it’s worth using America’s muscle to protect movie and music interests abroad. Now, lawmakers are calling the trade groups, asking what else Congress and the government can do for the entertainment industry.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/14/AR2006061402071.html
Allow me to repeat that. It is worth using America’s muscle to protect movie and music interests abroad.
Allow me to clarify that. By “America’s muscle”, we cannot presume anything other than “American military power”, at best used as a threat, and at worst used to murder people. Taking lives over movies and music.
How hilarious is that? It’s quite hilarious, lemme tell ya.
Right up until they start dropping nukes over my head. After all, I committed the mortal sin of being in the same country as some guy who has an unhealthy obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, 24, or whatever else there is (or was) the so called entertainment industry spews out these days. (Speaking of that, this gives a kind of Romanesque, Gladiatorish meaning to the word entertainment, doesn’t it?)
I’ve kind of felt that this whole thing has been steadily ascending toward war. War, over movies. What’s left of us in the future won’t know whether to laugh or cry when they look at the dumb shit being produced today and compare it to the devastation that will befall us over that same, dumb, mass-produced shit.
The following is a message written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation in 1994. I stumbled upon it on my computer and was struck by how well written it is, as well as how important a message it bears even today, 12 years later.
Pardon the lengthiness.
The copyright system grew up with printing–a technology for mass production copying. Copyright fit in well with this technology because it restricted only the mass producers of copies. It did not take freedom away from readers of books. An ordinary reader, who did not own a printing press, could copy books only with pen and ink, and few readers were sued for that.
Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright. That’s the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright. Consider these four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA):
* Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.
* Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.
* Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.
* Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA’s request) of people such as MIT’s David LaMacchia, not for copying software (he is not accused of copying any), but merely for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.
All four practices resemble those used in the former Soviet Union, where every copying machine had a guard to prevent forbidden copying, and where individuals had to copy information secretly and pass it from hand to hand as “samizdat”. There is of course a difference: the motive for information control in the Soviet Union was political; in the US the motive is profit. But it is the actions that affect us, not the motive. Any attempt to block the sharing of information, no matter why, leads to the same methods and the same harshness.
Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to control how we use information:
* Name calling.
Owners use smear words such as “piracy” and “theft”, as well as expert terminology such as “intellectual property” and “damage”, to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public–a simplistic analogy between programs and physical objects.
Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects are about whether it is right to take an object away from someone else. They don’t directly apply to making a copy of something. But the owners ask us to apply them anyway.
* Exaggeration.
Owners say that they suffer “harm” or “economic loss” when users copy programs themselves. But the copying has no direct effect on the owner, and it harms no one. The owner can lose only if the person who made the copy would otherwise have paid for one from the owner.
A little thought shows that most such people would not have bought copies. Yet the owners compute their “losses” as if each and every one would have bought a copy. That is exaggeration–to put it kindly.
* The law.
Owners often describe the current state of the law, and the harsh penalties they can threaten us with. Implicit in this approach is the suggestion that today’s law reflects an unquestionable view of morality–yet at the same time, we are urged to regard these penalties as facts of nature that can’t be blamed on anyone.
This line of persuasion isn’t designed to stand up to critical thinking; it’s intended to reinforce a habitual mental pathway.
It’s elemental that laws don’t decide right and wrong. Every American should know that, forty years ago, it was against the law in many states for a black person to sit in the front of a bus; but only racists would say sitting there was wrong.
* Natural rights.
Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have written, and go on to assert that, as a result, their desires and interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone else–or even those of the whole rest of the world. (Typically companies, not authors, hold the copyrights on software, but we are expected to ignore this discrepancy.)
To those who propose this as an ethical axiom–the author is more important than you–I can only say that I, a notable software author myself, call it bunk.
But people in general are only likely to feel any sympathy with the natural rights claims for two reasons.
One reason is an overstretched analogy with material objects. When I cook spaghetti, I do object if someone else takes it and stops me from eating it. In this case, that person and I have the same material interests at stake, and it’s a zero-sum game. The smallest distinction between us is enough to tip the ethical balance.
But whether you run or change a program I wrote affects you directly and me only indirectly. Whether you give a copy to your friend affects you and your friend much more than it affects me. I shouldn’t have the power to tell you not to do these things. No one should.
The second reason is that people have been told that natural rights for authors is the accepted and unquestioned tradition of our society.
As a matter of history, the opposite is true. The idea of natural rights of authors was proposed and decisively rejected when the US Constitution was drawn up. That’s why the Constitution only permits a system of copyright and does not require one; that’s why it says that copyright must be temporary. It also states that the purpose of copyright is to promote progress–not to reward authors. Copyright does reward authors somewhat, and publishers more, but that is intended as a means of modifying their behavior.
The real established tradition of our society is that copyright cuts into the natural rights of the public–and that this can only be justified for the public’s sake.
* Economics.
The final argument made for having owners of software is that this leads to production of more software.
Unlike the others, this argument at least takes a legitimate approach to the subject. It is based on a valid goal–satisfying the users of software. And it is empirically clear that people will produce more of something if they are well paid for doing so.
But the economic argument has a flaw: it is based on the assumption that the difference is only a matter of how much money we have to pay. It assumes that “production of software” is what we want, whether the software has owners or not.
People readily accept this assumption because it accords with our experiences with material objects. Consider a sandwich, for instance. You might well be able to get an equivalent sandwich either free or for a price. If so, the amount you pay is the only difference. Whether or not you have to buy it, the sandwich has the same taste, the same nutritional value, and in either case you can only eat it once. Whether you get the sandwich from an owner or not cannot directly affect anything but the amount of money you have afterwards.
This is true for any kind of material object–whether or not it has an owner does not directly affect what it is, or what you can do with it if you acquire it.
But if a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and what you can do with a copy if you buy one. The difference is not just a matter of money. The system of owners of software encourages software owners to produce something–but not what society really needs. And it causes intangible ethical pollution that affects us all.
What does society need? It needs information that is truly available to its citizens–for example, programs that people can read, fix, adapt, and improve, not just operate. But what software owners typically deliver is a black box that we can’t study or change.
Society also needs freedom. When a program has an owner, the users lose freedom to control part of their own lives.
And above all society needs to encourage the spirit of voluntary cooperation in its citizens. When software owners tell us that helping our neighbors in a natural way is “piracy”, they pollute our society’s civic spirit.
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
The economic argument for owners is erroneous, but the economic issue is real. Some people write useful software for the pleasure of writing it or for admiration and love; but if we want more software than those people write, we need to raise funds.
For ten years now, free software developers have tried various methods of finding funds, with some success. There’s no need to make anyone rich; the median US family income, around $35k, proves to be enough incentive for many jobs that are less satisfying than programming.
For years, until a fellowship made it unnecessary, I made a living from custom enhancements of the free software I had written. Each enhancement was added to the standard released version and thus eventually became available to the general public. Clients paid me so that I would work on the enhancements they wanted, rather than on the features I would otherwise have considered highest priority.
The Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity for free software development, raises funds by selling CD-ROMs, tapes and manuals (all of which users are free to copy and change), as well as from donations. It now has a staff of five programmers, plus three employees who handle mail orders.
Some free software developers make money by selling support services. Cygnus Support, with around 50 employees, estimates that about 15 per cent of its staff activity is free software development–a respectable percentage for a software company.
Companies including Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments and Analog Devices have combined to fund the continued development of the free GNU compiler for the language C. Meanwhile, the GNU compiler for the Ada language is being funded by the US Air Force, which believes this is the most cost-effective way to get a high quality compiler.
All these examples are small; the free software movement is still small, and still young. But the example of listener-supported radio in this country shows it’s possible to support a large activity without forcing each user to pay.
As a computer user today, you may find yourself using a proprietary program. If your friend asks to make a copy, it would be wrong to refuse. Cooperation is more important than copyright. But underground, closet cooperation does not make for a good society. A person should aspire to live an upright life openly with pride, and this means saying “No” to proprietary software.
You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software. You deserve to be able to learn how the software works, and to teach your students with it. You deserve to be able to hire your favorite programmer to fix it when it breaks.
You deserve free software.
Copyright 1994 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted without royalty as long as this notice is preserved; alteration is not permitted.
Richard is mad. Richard is very, very mad. Why? Let’s get to why in a moment.
Richard owns a store chain with shops worldwide. It’s an immensely popular store because Richard has managed to obtain a worldwide monopoly on the distribution of bananas — don’t ask the narrator how, or why, Richard managed such a feat, but he did, and here he is — mad, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment.
Richard’s many many stores contain boxes and boxes of bananas of various flavor and sorts, for Richard indeed has the monopoly to distribute all kinds — African bananas, Kenyan bananas, American bananas, Swedish bananas, big bananas, small bananas, and so on.
Richard’s customers were at first satisfied with his service. The bananas were out in clear sight and the customers could pick and choose the best and the fresh. However, this lead to a very annoying issue, at least in Richard’s eyes…
The rotten fruit remained. The bad fruit remained. Even the bananas with such a simple flaw as a little fur on the edge remained. For many a day, Richard pondered how to counter this problem, and how to manage to sell the rotten fruit also, for, in his eyes, the millions he raked in on the fresh fruit nigh on outweighed the losses he made for the rotten fruit he had to throw away!
And one day it came to him — and the very next day as customers trickled in to get their bananas, they were met with quite an extraordinary surprise…
The bananas were boxed! Each bunch was in a separate, non-transparent, plastic-wrapped box labeled with its origin and flavor. Now customers suddenly couldn’t pick and choose between the individual fruits anymore. They had to go for the flavor and origin that they thought might suit their tastes and then hope for the best.
Some customers came home with a box filled with only 3 or 4 good bananas and the rest simply went in the trash. Some came home with a single banana that was fresh and all the others bad. Some even came home with boxes filled with rotting, decaying fruit. Needless to say, customers were upset, but what could they do? They had the choice of no bananas, or Richard’s bananas, and, banana-loving folks as they were, they swallowed their pride and went on with it.
Years passed, and Richard raked in the big bucks. More shops opened all over the place, and the banana prices soared. Customers with all-bad boxes were given the option of returning their boxes — presuming they hadn’t removed the protective plastic covering the box that is, and while some of the more daring customers accusingly pointed out that there is no way to check the state of the bananas without opening the box, and no way to open the box without removing the protective plastic wrapping, most of them seemed content with this obvious robbery. The bananas weren’t that expensive, anyway, and they could always try again tomorrow and hope for a better, fresher result that time.
However, a most unpleasant circumstance had developed. All over the world, illegal groups had started buying bananas, planting the seeds and producing their own bananas. And worst of all, they gave bananas away for free, to anyone who wanted one! Not only were they planting banana trees illegally, but they were planting banana trees of every single kind, and all of these banana trees were directly derivative of Richard’s own harvest. Since Richard owns a monopoly on bananas, this thus was a most illegal endeavour; thievery in fact, and thus the reason for his anger.
These banana-pirates producing their own bananas off of his are causing his winnings to drop substantially. Of course they are! If people can get bananas for free, why would they buy them? The only thing keeping Richard afloat is the fact most people don’t know where to go to get illegal bananas, but Richard knows it’s only a matter of time before his industry collapses in upon itself and falls apart.
But he, being the fighter he is (I mean, he managed to get a monopoly on bananas, for crying out loud; you bet he’s a fighter for pulling such a feat off — sort of like patenting “water”), won’t give up without a fight. So he calls to the aid of the governments of the individual countries, preaching to them, pouring his entire soul into charismatic speeches about property rights; and the governments, teary-eyed, set it upon themselves personally to invest some of their police force’s time into finding these banana pirates, “and to hell with the unsolved murder cases!” one of the prominent ministers exclaim with unabashed excitement, his enthusiasm not at all colored by the shiny bills that found their way into his pocket somehow.
So a few years pass, but Richard realizes that the illegal banana business has only increased in intensity. The police investigations are for the most part fruitless (pardon the pun), as the illegal banana pirates are cunning about covering their tracks. So Richard decides it’s time for the bigger tools. He calls again upon the governments of the countries of the world, preaching throughout the night about the need for surveillance and the need to ensure that citizens behave themselves — and to ensure that no illegal bananas plantations take place, as an afterthought.
The government leaders, mightily impressed with this for-humanity, for-the-world exclamation, realize that Richard’s foremost wish is the good of mankind, and solemnly they agree. And to hell with integrity.
This story is obviously not real, but it’s reflecting a very real situation that is occuring in the world right now. It is hopefully a humorous story that will make you think about what is going on, especially with the Record Industry of America, persecuting the very fans whom are the foundation of the industry they are attempting to protect.
How many times haven’t you bought a movie or a music album which turned out to be incomprehensibly, unthinkably, unbelievably bad? To the point where you, for the remainder of your life, will even be embarrassed about the fact you made the purchase in the first place? The rampant, illegal pirating of movies and music out there began for a reason — and it’s not exclusively “people are cheap thieves”. I may be wrong, but I am of the firm belief that humans prefer to not break the law. They prefer to be law abiding citizens, paying for their cartons of milk and their loaves of bread, paying their taxes and being in general on the light side. But despite this, more people download stuff illegally than not. And while this occurs, many artists, from whom the products being stolen originated, are making statements about what THEY think, which seems to differ greatly from what the record label companies think.
My take on things is that there are a lot of things wrong with the music and movie industries right now, and these wrongs have a truckload of side effects. One of these side effects is the intensity of illegal sharing of music and movie products.
Update: Coincidentally, the next post in his blog contains a quote from a person named Richard. Judging by the content, it should be clear that it is not the same person in any way, shape or form.
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