Author: john

Copyright to restrict competition

A recent remark from the Microsoft VP of the Windows Media division reveals copyright’s growth into an anti-competitive tool:

The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out “hobbyists” and other entities that Microsoft doesn’t want to have to trouble itself with.

Essentially, the licensing of their copyrighted Digital Rights Management is knowingly being used to keep developers from developing innovative uses based on their product.
Yes, this is perfectly within their rights under the law. But one has to wonder how this is “promoting progress for the useful arts.”
Old school Microsoft might have realized that these hobbyists were just the types that used to drive advancing the features of their product (even if was through buy-outs).

Friedman on Civil Society in the Middle East

I don’t always agree with NY Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, but in a piece today on Addicted to Oil he made a brief, but very insightful remark about the development of civil society in the middle east:

The mosque became an alternative power center because it was the only place the government’s iron fist could not fully penetrate. As such, it became a place where people were able to associate freely, incubate local leaders and generate a shared opposition ideology.
That is why the minute any of these Arab countries hold free and fair elections, the Islamists burst ahead.

So the theory goes, in a repressive society which does not allow much in the way of freedom of speech, ideas will begin to flow in the places where government power is weak. Absent an open coffee house or town hall, civil society may begin to form around a more closed and perhaps radical place of worship. This really highlights the importance of place in the creation of publics.
Perhaps this is why China is going to such great lengths to control speech on the Internet.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Song sites face legal crackdown

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Song sites face legal crackdown
It was only a matter of time before the public education of copyright law required that people start being thrown in jail. I guess you have to break a few eggs…
What is even more interesting is that this article is about lyric and guitar tabulature posting. The actual market value of these printed materials is evidentally irrelevant when compared to the audacity of fans putting in the work of listening to someone’s music and putting in the effort to transcribe the lyrics or guitar chords.
One might think that there was a rule that brute-force (not carbon) copying like this was a fair use; but they’d be wrong.