Prof. Eben Moglen, head of the Software Freedom Law Center, gives another must-not-miss talk on software freedom with hosted services (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and other third-party services run on behalf of their users), colloquially known as “the cloud” (a purposefully vague reference to hosting services somewhere else, a virtual place that contains your data). [...]
“Sita Sings the Blues” is an independently produced movie that is widely legally copied on the Internet. Writer/director/producer Nina Paley released “Sita” under a license that allows sharing (and far more, actually, but the details of how much more are beside the point of this article). Sita is also for sale on her [...]
Cory Doctorow is an award-winning author of many books. He simultaneously distributes his work online at no charge and commercially through traditional book vendors. He also knows what DRM means for the reader/listener. Now he’s up for two Hugo awards, perhaps the most prestigious science fiction award.
What does this have to do [...]
Marie-Monique Robin’s “The World According to Monsanto” is one of the most important recent documentaries because it exposes one of the most well-organized and dangerous corporations and because of Robin’s clearly conveyed research.
This documentary aired in France on 11 March 2008 but I doubt it will show up in the US. Monsanto advertises widely [...]
The Wall Street Journal conducted a test in which three groups of consumers were shown coffee and in a separate test they were shown t-shirts. In each test the group was told the products were “ethically produced”, a second group was told the products were made under unethical conditions, and a third group (the [...]
The Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently released “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister“, a competition show where five candidates competed to become the crowd favorite. The show is licensed to share. There’s been some buzz about it online (1, 2) and for good reason: their take on DRM is right-headed
While plenty of TV networks have [...]
The New York Times’ review of Dell machines featuring the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution is a recent illustration of the problems one faces confusing price and freedom, then deciding that freedom (the more important of the two) isn’t worth talking about.
But why would anyone want to use Linux, an open-source operating system, to run a PC? [...]
Tristan Rhodes describes the pitch and allure of the open source movement perfectly and simultaneously (perhaps inadvertently) describes why that pitch has so little allure to those who frame the issue in terms of price:
What is the main benefit of open source?
The short answer is that open source reduces the cost of software. It is [...]
She likes the largest multinational corporations and disfavors the smaller ones. Cory Doctorow on Marybeth Peters is illuminating:
Marybeth Peters, the US Register of Copyrights, has come out in favor of the controversial 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying “it did what it was supposed to do.” The DMCA makes it possible to sue companies [...]
Democracy Now! made a typical error when describing the latest Microsoft antitrust violation fine. Here’s how DN! put it on today’s show:
In business news, Microsoft has lost an anti-trust appeal before Europe”s second highest court and has been ordered to pay a record $690 million fine for abusing its dominance in computer operator systems. [...]
GNU Software Freedom Law Center FSF blogs Electronic Frontier Foundation Nina Paley