Category Archives: Digital Citizen

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US Government distributes PDF of 9/11 report with DRM

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The 9/11 report is a US government work and therefore is uncopyrighted. It was born into the public domain and should remain there forever. You may deal in the document fully without any restriction due to copyright law.

Some bloggers (Techliberation.com, BoingBoing.net) noticed that the 9/11 report distributed from 9-11commission.gov has Digital Restrictions Management applied—copying a snippet of the report is disallowed in certain PDF readers (such as the Apple and Adobe proprietary PDF readers). Of course, you shouldn’t install proprietary software on your computer; you would use KPDF or some other free software PDF reader. KPDF lets you turn off the DRM in the application preferences, so you can read, print, and copy any part of any PDF document without hassle. It’s not hard to find or make an unencumbered copy of the report without DRM.

Whether the DRM can be circumvented (technically or legally) is a secondary issue here. DRM is inherently a bad idea and we don’t need it, corporate copyright holders have been arguing for it and are trying to convince you that you should want it too. Part of their argument tries to get you to see the world in the most restrictive way: any restriction we can technically impose on others is virtually self-justifying and hardly needs any debate. That state of affairs should not be seen as unavoidable, acceptable, or the default.

Which means more to you: free speech or corporate secrecy?

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Apple has been ordered to pay almost $700,000 (Ars Technica, MacNN) for the legal fees of the reporters it sued to find out who their confidential sources were.

There are lots of Apple users on the Progressive Left, people who claim to value freedom of speech for its own sake. I ask you: Is this the kind of behavior you should reward with your money? Is brand loyalty worth more to you than your freedom of speech?

It’s time to more critically examine at what Apple is doing; go beyond warm fuzzies you might get from their ads.

If you’re having a hard time seeing how this case works in your favor, imagine if Apple made something that mattered more (food, for instance) and was able to keep their industrial design descriptions locked up. The same power Apple tried to claim here is the power other corporations would claim tomorrow if they could. They’d be able to hide a number of problems that could adversely affect the health of everyone who ate that food or worked in that business. The more power you place in corporate hands, the more you need to know what corporations do, plan to do, and the more you realize you need democratic control over corporations.

Bad Vista campaigning in New York

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BadVista.org, an FSFThe BadVista.org campaign logo campaign to “advocate for the freedom of computer users, opposing adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free (as in freedom) software alternatives.” is hosting two actions to coincide with the release of Microsoft Windows Vista in New York City tomorrow at 11am and 2pm.

If you can make it, please do go and help BadVista.org. Sadly, I won’t be able to go, so I’ll look forward to reading about the event.

Update 2007-01-31: BadVista’s messages were well received despite Microsoft’s attempt to corral them into a “free speech zone” like the Democrat and Republican conventions.

British citizens: Please help fight software patents

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If you’re British, please sign this UK government petition to tell the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible before 20 February. If this petition helps you stay clear of the madness Americans have (most likely unknowingly) brought upon themselves, it’s a good thing.

Software patents are government-issued monopolies on ideas used in software development. Software patents hurt software developers in all but the largest patent holding firms (IBM holds the most patents right now) because software patents prevent us from distributing software that implements a number of popular algorithms including MP3 and (at one time) compressed GIF image files which are widely used on the World Wide Web. In order to properly implement support for MP3 you need a program which uses certain ideas that are patented. Without a license, those ideas are off-limits to many software developers—developers in countries which have software patents.

Alternatives which aren’t patent-encumbered, such as Ogg Vorbis (a functional substitute for MP3) and PNG (a functional substitute for GIF), are hard to popularize despite being technically superior. The software most people use most often don’t support these unencumbered formats well if at all.

The chief benefactors of software patents are multinational corporations which are, not coincidentally, the largest patent holders.

If England rejects software patents, British citizens will be safe from losing software patent infringement lawsuits. Anyone can get American patents, so the British citizens and corporations could get American patents and sue Americans for patent infringement. By working to stop software patents, you can help to save yourself.

I’ve mirrored a talk by Richard Stallman about the dangers of software patents (video, audio). Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Quoting the petition:

Software patents are used by convicted monopolists to threaten customers who consider using rival software. As a result, patents stifle innovation.

Patents are supposed to increase the rate of innovation by publicising how inventions work. Reading a software patent gives no useful information for creating or improving software. All patents are writen in a sufficiently cryptic language to prevent them from being of any use. Once decoded, the patents turn out to be for something so obvious that programmers find them laughable.

It is not funny because the cost of defending against nuicance lawsuites is huge.

The UK patent office grants software patents against the letter and the spirit of the law. They do this by pretending that there is a difference between software and ‘computer implemented inventions’.

Some companies waste money on ‘defensive patents’. These have no value against pure litigation companies and do not counter threats made directly to customers.

23rd Chaos Communication Congress video and audio

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The 23rd Chaos Communication Congress (23C3) has ended and videos are available under the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Germany” (BY-NC-ND) license (local copy). They’ve published their videos in Ogg Vorbis+Theora and other formats as well.

One of the highlights is a talk from Prof. Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University on “Code vs. Culture” (audio+video, audio). More links to more videos as I get time.

Appeals to your sanity and your pocketbook.

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Things to consider:

  • Eben Moglen’s appeal for the FSF touches on the recent Microsoft-Novell deal wherein Microsoft says they’ll license their patents to users of Novell’s SUSE GNU/Linux distribution and devices that resist our attempt to make them work for their owners.
  • The easiest time to give up Microsoft Windows Vista is before you can adopt it in the first place. Let the FSF explain why Vista will do you no favors.
  • Defective by Design would like to show you how DRM hurts your interests.

Code v2.0 is out.

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Code v2.0 book coverCode v2.0 is Stanford Law Professor’s revised version of “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace“. This revision was started (in part) on a wiki (a website anyone is allowed to edit) and Prof. Lessig took a copy of the wiki text up through December 31, 2005 then added his own edits.

The Wiki text was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License as is this book.

Share and enjoy.

Questions Please… episode #1 interview

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A new show called “Questions Please…” has distributed episode #1 in Ogg Vorbis format under a license that allows verbatim distribution (“Verbatim copying and distribution of these entire recordings are permitted worldwide without royalty provided this notice is preserved.”). Jonathan Roberts, the host, interviews Richard Stallman, Jeremy Allison and Jeff Waugh in this episode.

There is some exploration of the value of freedom and consideration of ethics in computing, including debunking a common myth about becoming more free by being free to discard your rights. During a discussion of what free software-related wishes the three interviewees had, Stallman noted that he wouldn’t oppose a law prohibiting proprietary software but he chose to take a different path working against proprietary software. Roberts followed up by asking:

Roberts: Do you not think though, Richard, that a law against it [proprietary software] is in many ways restricting those people’s freedoms to—

Stallman: No. That’s basically making a Russell paradox out of freedom. The freedom to give up your freedom, basically, conflicts with the idea of inalienable rights. There’s some rights that are threatened and important, and in order to make sure they continue to exist, they must be inalienable. When people’s right to sell themselves into slavery was abolished, that made society more free because it closed a path by which people became slaves.

Roberts: Okay, yeah, that’s a good point.

Link: Russell paradox.

Apparently two clicks away was two clicks too many.

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Ubuntu GNU/Linux’s Benjamin Mako Hill writes that he’s “perplexed by the recent fracas around the possibility of Ubuntu shipping non-free drivers by default as part of the feisty release goal to bring the bling“. “Feisty” is the codename for the next major release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux and “bring the bling” refers to splashy video effects like making windows shimmer when moved, or spinning the desktop image around. As of the time/date stamp on this post, the Ubuntu Wiki (linked above) says that the proprietary video driver software will be installed by default but won’t be enabled unless the user’s video hardware wouldn’t work without it. None of this discussion seems to get into the proprietary firmware (software uploaded to the computer running on some device) which will be employed as well.

So we’re presented with an opportunity to better understand what Richard Stallman is talking about when he describes the difference in reaction between a free software proponent and an open source proponent. I recommend reading the entire question-answer exchange so as to get proper context, but here’s a small quote:

So if I am offered a choice between a proprietary program which is powerful and reliable and a free program which is not, I choose the free program because that I can do in freedom. I’d rather make some practical sacrifices to reject oppression.

But suppose you want both? Suppose you want freedom and solidarity, and you want powerful reliable software? How can you get it? You can’t get that starting with the powerful, reliable, proprietary program because there is no way you can liberate that program. The only way you can get that, your ideal goal, is to start from the free program, technically inadequate as it may be, because you do have the option of improving it. That is the only path that can possibly ever get you to your ideal situation. Insist on freedom and make the program better.

Ubuntu’s choice is hardly surprising. Ubuntu’s unwillingness to abide by their own philosophy (“Every computer user should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees”) is not new; Ubuntu’s fealty to the open source philosophy is clear (despite any language suggesting that software freedom ranks highly).

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