a beautiful and “important service announcement”

Flattr (or more precisely, the email I received from them today) now seems to say something like, “if you feel you contribute, then let people shower you…even pennies, if they are so generous”. If one (or a corporation of) artist(s) and/or engineer(s) believes they contribute, they’d be wise to allow themselves flattery. Hell, even if you make things you don’t believe contribute, you might as well with this change:

we decided to drop any rules that made the service restrictive or outright complicated

And “you“ want to put him and his helpers in jail?

p.s. I think one more restriction should be waived. Payment. It would be good to be able to flattr things for zero money and/or ideally, with an “appreciate” count (e.g. “like”, “+1″, etc.). What if we can’t afford even pennies at some time of our life, yet want to contribute by showing a way of support by tally?

p.p.s. If you (or “you”) liked this post, you can flattr it here. If you like this (more than 5 years now!) blog in general, you can flattr it here.

Kindle books’ latest antifeature: Lendle

A group of developers want us to believe they’ve made a wonderful new technology that “allows” digital books to be “lent”. With digitized works, the key advantage is the ability to easily make and distribute many copies at essentially no extra cost. A new antifeature (dubbed “Lendle“), aims to make books behave like physical artifacts (it is essentially an antifeature built on top of the Kindle books’ DRM antifeature). That is, while your book is being “lent” you no longer have access to your copy. Users should reject regressive technology that restricts the ability to share by copying.

For those thinking of chiming in with a, “but this will help people lend books and stop piracy” argument, here’s another perspective.

a national anthem for Canad-arr!

With this news, I thought I’d propose an alternative anthem:

O Canad-arr!
Our rights and Internet
True law reform of patents we shall get
Through peer to peer we seed and leech,
The bandwidth broad and free
From far and wide,
O Canad-arr, share your files with glee
Courts keep our net neutral and free
O Canad-arr, share your files with glee
O Canad-arr, share your files with glee

and how freedom can work

Check out “WHY DRM DOESN’T WORK“.

Note that step #6 (which is closely coupled to step #5) is required for DRM to have its intended effect. I recommend running a Free system (e.g. GNU) and if you must, skip straight to step #20.

More of the above will encourage the popularity and development of services (for example) that offer win-win possibilities. Such services are examples of how freedom can work.

dear lily, adjust your sails

I hadn’t heard of Lily Allen until her thoughtless, ranting, anti-filesharing babble went mainstream. I also hadn’t heard of Dan Bull.

the sting of ‘All Rights Reserved’

A) Often, one has an ethical obligation to share

yet

B) One has a legal burden not to

say no to culture widgets

Doug Johnson asks Kindle questions. While I think it’s responsible (not paranoid) to voice concern over censorship, a more pointed reason why I’m so fanatically anti-DRM is that its objective is to keep individuals from sharing and creating society’s culture and knowledge. As Chomsky notes (6:52):

The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another – whose conception of themselves – the sense of value is just “how many created wants can I satisfy?”

In its current form, the Kindle is nothing but an attempt to package culture, turn it into “content”, and satisfy the wants of those who may otherwise be tempted to behave in a socially cooperative way. Say no to culture widgets!

i HAD to OPIne

Nate Anderson at Ars has an article labeling the drafted “HADOPI” law as “anti-P2P”, but it’s much worse. The law not only attacks p2p activities of the wired citizenry, but threatens to cut computer users off from Internet access entirely. If citizens are perceived to be sharing unauthorized works, a 3-strikes-you’re-censored response would take effect. While it’s impossible to imagine any justified trade-off in this approach, what’s proposed is insulting:

In return, French DVDs will appear a couple of months closer to their theatrical release date and music and movie groups will have to drop much of their DRM. Global music trade group IFPI thinks this is a wonderful trade-off.

So in exchange for Global Business Interests at the expense of freedom, digitized French works will be released sooner and stripped of the already ineffective technical restrictions known as DRM. If that isn’t une escroquerie, what is? “Wonderful trade-off” indeed. Beyond the imbalanced nature of this “deal” are other disasterous consequences. The law would require

home Internet users to install certain approved security software and to secure their networks.

Want to create a community of Internet users that share a public commons of bandwidth? Too bad. Doing so would prevent the recording industry from spying on your activity to peg you a “pirate”. Here, the “secure network” doublethink is language of Orwellian stature. It’s no wonder too, why ISPs might wish to support this measure. A legal measure preventing the sharing of bandwidth only serves their interests.

Finally, the insanity of this law is revealed through the handling of users who seek to share information using public wireless access points. To protect corporate media’s 20th-century business modelthe artists, this perceived problem will be taken care of using a “solution” that’s “simple”:

such hotspots would offer only a “white list” of approved websites.

Since the ability to spy on you is lost at the coffee shop or local library, the technology itself shall be declared guilty in advance and on your behalf. Vive la censure!

e-textbooks, DRM, and vendor lock-in for schools

Discussion over e-textbooks and hardware/software to read them has started at our school. Links to information regarding Amazon’s Kindle and CafeScribe were suggested to begin some research. Below is my response. I would appreciate hearing thoughts from other educators:

I want book readers too. Though, we need to be wary of jumping into hardware and software that risks vendor lock-in and implements DRM. Depending on its implementation, DRM is often going to be inappropriate for schools. For instance, if the file and application prevent students from sharing and working with the data in a flexible way (i.e. copy/pasting to and from other devices/apps if they so choose), it hinders learning opportunities. Avoiding vendor lock-in and using open formats is desirable for schools.

For more info:

DRM

Vendor Lock-in

Open Formats

Right now, Amazon’s Kindle supports most of its files using a DRM-encumbered, proprietary file format (AZW) and forbids users from sharing or putting books on other devices according to its terms of service. CafeScribe looks interesting but locks users into either Windows or Mac at this time and is proprietary. They might offer a platform independent implementation in the future, but in order to use now means vendor lock-in at both the application and operating system level.

Back The TRUCK UP: buying v downloading

In a recent post on Jefferson, etc. I linked to a video that I had thought I’d seen before and then, upon further review, found out that it wasn’t what I thought it was. Confused? Yeah, me too.

The video I linked to is not properly contextualized to my post. When I posted, I thought I was linking to a video claiming “downloading” unauthorized copies is “stealing”. Instead, I unwittingly linked to a different video claiming “buying” unauthorized copies is “stealing”.

WHOA!

This is a HUGE difference. While it’s still absurd to think of buying unauthorized recordings as “stealing” (perhaps “complicity” if I knowingly do it), I understand why some may get angry and wish to call the sellers “pirates” who “steal”.

Check these videos (one & two) out. They are very, very different. And just to add to the confusion, the one that says “downloading” in the youtube title is the one that plays as “buying” while the youtube title claiming “crime” is the one that plays as “downloading”.