Category Archives: Digital Citizen

Information about the blog.

Software patents getting mainstream news critique

Posted on by

It’s nice to see software patents getting mainstream criticism. You as a computer user, regardless of what you do with the computer, are adversely affected by software patents—patents on algorithms used in computer software. The op-ed rightly points out the solution: end software patents. We don’t need them and they chiefly serve to give control over computer software to the largest patent holders (invariably a few multinational corporations such as IBM).

A relatively minor issue I have with the op-ed is objecting to software patents on the basis of “innovation”. I find the “innovation” argument not entirely convincing because I think it gives way to debating how many should be allowed to innovate rather than framing the issue around ensuring everyone has the freedom to make their computer do as they wish. Once we frame the debate on the basis of “innovation” our software freedom can be marginalized away. I would not like to give ground to any argument that says if 50% more corporations or wealthy individuals had permission to express themselves freely on the computer, that would be “enough innovation” and we could get on with making minor tweaks to the patent system to make this happen. The patent system is fundamentally broken when it comes to computer software because it directly interferes with people making their computers do what they want. The call for increased innovation doesn’t strongly enough emphasize that you deserve freedom to make your computer do as you wish.

Continue reading →

More attention finally paid to coltan wars

Posted on by

Coltan is a metallic ore which is refined into a power that is used in computers. Coltan production doesn’t get much public attention, just the things it helps make possible. John Perkins touched on the subject in his interview on today’s Democracy Now! (losslessly compressed audio, audio, video, transcript). Here’s an excerpt of what Perkins said about the Congo and coltan miner exploitation.

The whole story of Africa and the Congo is such a devastating and sad one. And it’s the hidden story, really. We in the United States don’t even talk about Africa. We don’t think about Africa. You know, Congo has something called coltan, which probably most of your listeners may not have even heard of, but every cell phone and laptop computer has coltan in it. And several million people in the last few years in the Congo have been killed over coltan, because you and I and all of us in the G8 countries demand low — or at least we want to see our computers inexpensive and our cell phones inexpensive. And, of course, the companies that make these sell them on that basis, that “Oh, here, mine’s $200 less than the other company.” But in order to do that, these people in the Congo are being enslaved. The miners, the people mining coltan, they’re being killed. There’s these vast wars going on to provide us with cheap coltan.

And I have to say, you know, if we want to live in a safe world, we need to be — we must be willing, and, in fact, we must demand that we pay higher prices for things like laptop computers and cell phones and that a good share of that money go back to the people who are mining the coltan. And that’s true of oil. It’s true of so many resources that we are not paying the true cost, and there’s millions of people around the world suffering from that. Roughly 50,000 people die every single day from hunger or hunger-related diseases and curable diseases that they don’t get the medicines for, simply because they’re part of a system that demands that they put in long hours, and they get very, very low pay, so we can have things cheaper in this country. And the Congo is an incredibly potent example of that.

It’s unusual for DN! to discuss topics of direct relevance to computer users, but any ethical computer movement will be compelled to more closely examine where we get the inexpensive computers we enjoy today and work to make sure the prices remain higher and the money goes to the workers.

How’s your proprietor treating you?: Apple’s latest downgrade.

Posted on by

There’s more to the Apple-EMI deal than the mainstream press cares to tell.

Background

EMI is a record label. Apple Computer, a nascent audio distributor, wants to compete in EMI’s market via the iPod, iTunes music program, and iTunes Music Service (iTMS). iTMS only works with the iPod. EMI recently agreed to distribute tracks via iTMS without Digital Restrictions Management—technological restrictions that keep users from doing things they want to do with their legally-obtained tracks. Users don’t want digital restrictions, so EMI and Apple are offering DRM-free tracks at a 30% higher price than the same track with DRM. With Apple’s Digital Restrictions Management users had to work around the restrictions. One popular method was to burn their iTMS tracks to an audio CD then copy (or “rip”) those tracks back to the computer in some form that offered no encumbrance (MP3 was a popular choice for this). Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been busy:

News

  • The latest version of the iTunes program breaks the ability to convert the music you’ve bought — even “DRM-free” songs sold at a 30 percent premium — into MP3s that will play on your iPod.—when you rip the CD with iTunes (as opposed to some other audio CD ripper program), EFF says that iTunes 7.2 breaks “the “buy-burn-rip-to-MP3″ workaround has been the primary way to start with a 99 cent iTunes download and end up with an unrestricted MP3 that will play” anywhere. Anyone using the proprietary iTunes program to manage their music will probably be bitten by this “upgrade” soon because Apple makes it easy to switch to the latest version of their software. If iTunes were free software—software that respects a user’s freedom to share and modify the program—there would be a community eagerly hacking an improved version of iTunes that didn’t have these restrictions. This community would allow even non-technical users to switch to using a version of the program that allowed copying music to their iPods as they like.
  • Boing Boing tells us that “EFF’s technologists have found a hidden block of data in the new iTunes tracks”—it holds customer data. When you transfer an iTunes Music Service track, legally or illegally, you’re also distributing someone’s name and address. This didn’t happen with other forms of audio media: people who bought wax cylinders, vinyl records, audio tapes, or mass-produced audio CDs could get the audio without worrying about inadvertently passing along copies of someone’s personal information (possibly their own) when they leveraged their right of first sale. This right is the backbone of everyday events like garage sales, used CD stores, and library sales. But Apple probably has you covered: as George Hotelling learned the hard way, it’s needlessly difficult to sell an iTMS track without divulging personal info.

More reading: EFF’s essay on the dangers of Digital Restrictions Management “The Customer is Always Wrong”.

Collaboratively responding to a call for infinite copyright term

Posted on by

I was working on my own response to the recent Mark Helprin op-ed in the New York Times when I learned that Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and blogger, maintains a wiki where a response is being edited. There are some uniquely American aspects to this discussion (such as the unconstitutionality of an infinite term of copyright) but the access to culture and the promise to be able to build on culture are not uniquely American. Ironically, while Helprin gives no value to the public domain, another supporter of his argument draws great value from the public domain: the Disney corporation, a chief supporter of increase copyright term, makes a great deal of money by making movies out of stories in the public domain. This doesn’t draw too sharp a line between Disney and their proponents because Disney can afford to pay for any license that company wants.

If you’re looking for more discussion on why the term of copyright should not be extended I direct your attention to the Prof. Jonathan Zittrain’s talk and the subsequent discussion. Like many such discussions, this one came about in part because corporate copyright holders (this time record labels and popular wealthy artists) are pressuring government (this time British) for more copyright power. In time, these same people and organizations will pressure American government for “harmony” in the term of copyright (a scam that is brought out to increase copyright power). They play countries off each other because it has a history of working, despite growing opposition including an increasingly media-aware public that knows they’re getting a raw deal.

Making copyright last forever can be thought of as a huge increase in the term of copyright, so the discussions about increasing the term of copyright are apropos. Copyright already lasts too long and one can argue it’s already infinite in term through repeated exploitation of the “limited Times” language in the US Constitution. Helprin celebrates exploiting renewable retrospective copyright extension and Justice Breyer’s dissent in Eldred v. Ashcroft points out that “The present extension will produce a copyright period of protection that, even under conservative assumptions, is worth more than 99.8% of protection in perpetuity (more than 99.99% for a songwriter like Irving Berlin and a song like Alexander’s Ragtime Band).”). Giving copyright holders more exclusion power is neither necessary nor a good idea.

May 25, 2007: Day of action against Gonzales and DRM

Posted on by

DefectiveByDesign.org is mounting a day of action against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and digital restrictions management (“DRM” framed from the point of the user) when Disney releases their new movie:

On Monday, Gonzales called on Congress to enact a sweeping new bill entitled the “Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007” (IPPA) that would amongst other things:

  • Increase penalties for circumventing a DRM scheme
  • Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright
  • Permit more wiretaps for investigating copyright violations
  • Add penalties for “intended” copyright crimes

This proposed legislation is a result of Hollywood’s lobbying, serving their special interests at the expense of the public good. As we have seen, thanks to the recent events like the Digg revolt, the public have turned against DRM. The illegal hex code that can be used to remove the DRM from HD-DVD can now be found on over a million web pages.

This is Hollywood’s attempt to scare us all into accepting DRM. Now is the time to take action!

On Friday May 25th, around the world, Disney will release “Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End”, a movie about a diverse community coming together to fight the far reaching and oppressive East India Trading Company to preserve their freedom loving lifestyle (sound kind of familiar?)

If you’d like to get a yellow hazard suit to protest at your local theater, Defective by Design can help.

Support Ogg Vorbis and your own freedom

Posted on by

The Free Software Foundation has started a new campaign to convince people to support Ogg Vorbis with PlayOgg.org. Other formats (such as MP3, AAC, and many others) are patent-encumbered or only available with proprietary software. You shouldn’t have to lose your freedom to control your computer just to play audio and video.

Long-time readers of Digital Citizen know that I host and steer people to multimedia encoded in free formats (Ogg Vorbis for general-purpose audio, FLAC for archival-quality audio, Speex for compressed versions of human speech, and Theora for video). I also work with others (such as News from Neptune) to help them host their media in free formats.

There are a number of programs for various operating systems to play all of these kinds of files. The audio files can be played with portable digital audio players too. So you don’t have to give up portability to keep your freedom when you’re on the road. The FSF has some instructions on acquiring and installing VideoLAN Client, a popular all-purpose media player and media sharing program.

More places you can go to get audio in Ogg Vorbis format (and licensed to share):

  • Jamendo—considerable variety, lots of French music
  • Magnatune—a wide variety of genres of music
  • Kahvi—easygoing electronic music
  • Pandora—Classical music

British Citizens: Tell MPs to not extend copyright term in UK

Posted on by

Seventy MPs have now signed an Early Day Motion calling for retrospective extension to the term of copyright. Despite much evidence to the contrary and a study which concludes that “The European Commission should retain the length of protection on sound recordings and performers’ rights at 50 years.” and the ruckus raised the last time the term of copyright was at issue (remember the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in the US and the related US Supreme Court case Eldred v Ashcroft?), it looks like copyright term extension is going again.

Longer terms of copyright around the world are used as excuses for American copyright extensions—harmonization is the word used for this scam. It’s a scam in two respects: it’s never “harmonized” to exactly the same length and copyright term is always “harmonized” upwardly. So Americans have even more reason to help keep their friends and family from a worse copyright regime.

The Open Rights Group has more details including the 70 MPs that signed on to support copyright term extension and a pointer to a great talk and panel discussion on the topic (local copies of the Jonathan Zittrain talk and the debate that followed). I particularly enjoyed the analysis in the discussion period. I’ll see about converting the video to Ogg Vorbis+Theora.

We can’t recommend hardware that doesn’t support our freedom.

Posted on by

AMD owns ATI, a computer videocard manufacturer. Recent ATI videocards have no free software drivers. The proprietary ATI driver which works with a typical GNU/Linux system is poor quality and as a result many users have problems with it. At the Red Hat summit going on right now, an AMD representative discussed the situation and Tom Calloway blogged about it:

An executive VP from AMD gave a keynote this morning, and he talked up open source and committed to making the ATI driver “better”.

We don’t need the driver to be “better”, Mr. AMD, we need the driver to be “free”. You make it free. Free your specs. Free up a little of your manpower to answer technical queries from developers. Free Dave Airlie from his NDA restrictions. Free your existing code.

You make it free. We’ll make it better. Everyone will benefit.

Calloway has the right message; software freedom will lead to improved code quality. If ATI supported our freedom we could change our position from recommending against ATI hardware to telling people which ATI videocards to buy, just like we tell people which Intel hardware to look for in their next machines as a direct result of Intel’s stance supporting free software. On a related note, consider what ATI spokesperson Henri Richard is reported to have said and the skeptical reaction recorded on Christopher Blizzard’s blog.

The situation Calloway describes here bears an eerie similarity to something we’ve heard before.
Continue reading →

More OLPC progress

Posted on by

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is progressing and the folks at OLPC have put together another video with interviews of the people behind the project.

If you’re unfamiliar with their work, you can search for “OLPC” on this blog and find their other video.

As before, the new video is licensed to to share under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 2.5 license (local copy).

DRM is merely a foot in the door

Posted on by

I’m not convinced that any of the large publishers want to stop unauthorized copying, really. I think digital restrictions management (a far more honest expansion for DRM as it focuses on the effect for the largest group of people–the users) is merely the latest means to an end: getting more power and money from those who believe large publishers want to stop unauthorized copying.

Consider this from the venture capitalist’s perspective: if any of them are foolish enough to believe that DRM could work (if only it were implemented in the correct way), foolish enough to believe that a computer can discern intent (and thus distinguish between a copy made for an approved purpose versus a copy made for any other purpose), there’s a business willing to take that money and build a shoddy DRM system.

Congress has been quite willing to give copyright holders more power on the logic that they must do something to stop unauthorized copying; even at the expense of free speech, interoperation, and competition (see the Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

The large publishers are doing the majority of the talking when it comes to lobbying Congress for increased monopoly power.  Even if you’re a copyright holder sympathetic to the concerns about unauthorized copying, should you let them speak for you?