Máirín Duffy recently won a Nook Tablet device in a contest. Her difficulty working within the restrictions of modern-day e-books are telling and interesting reading. Do what the ads for reading devices never tell you to do: Consider what freedoms … Continue reading
Some years ago I attended a talk at “Ebertfest”, movie reviewer Roger Ebert’s annual movie festival held in Urbana, Illinois. The talk was held in the Illini Union’s Pine Lounge by the now late MPAA chief Jack Valenti. Valenti used … Continue reading
Freedom is participation in power.Marcus Tullius Cicero Wikipedia’s summary of Carrier IQ rootkit events to date: In November 2011, researcher Trevor Eckhart claimed that Carrier IQ was logging information such as location without notifying users or allowing them to opt … Continue reading
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon.com is starting a digital book lending service; readers will be able to download a copy of a book and keep it on their reading device for as long as they want before “returning” … Continue reading
In or around October 26, 2011, Apple released source code to their software (called “ALAC”) for compressing and decompressing audio without any loss of audio quality. Apple chose the Apache License version 2.0 for this code which includes a patent … Continue reading
Background On October 6, 2011, one day after Steve Jobs died, Richard Stallman (rms) posted his reaction to Jobs’ death: Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has … Continue reading
Juan Rodriguez posted his dissatisfaction with the Free Software Foundation’s tactics in recent free software campaigns. This is a response to that post, but I thought it a good opportunity to raise awareness of various FSF posts and positions for … Continue reading
Ars Technica reports that on August 28, 2011 Wal-Mart will close its online music store where Wal-Mart sold many DRM-encumbered music tracks. DRM is properly defined as “Digital Restrictions Management” because of its effect on the user, as you’ll see. … Continue reading
FreePress.net, a media reform organization, occasionally sends out emails and hosts feedback campaigns where they ask people to contact someone in an organization which is doing something wrong. In many situations their publicity efforts are right-minded and centered on drawing … Continue reading
Magnatune, a music label where you can download and share all of the tracks in their entire catalog, has struck a deal with the Library system of Ann Arbor, Michigan so that library system’s 107,801 registered cardholding patrons can login … Continue reading