Aaron Wolf’s Techdirt Profile
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About Aaron Wolf
I'm a musician, teacher, and advocate for Free Software, Free Culture, Open Science, etc.
I'm currently founding a new crowdfunding system specifically for Free/Libre/Open works. We will be dedicated to long-term support rather than one-off fund drives.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/wolftune |
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good analogy
That's what the MPAA wants: the ability to carpet bomb anyone sharing works of whatever kind on the internet.
Because sabotaging the past helps present sales
Lots of people like pre-1972 music more than pre-1927 music. Those people might pay for pre-1972 music if forced to, but once they are thinking about spending some $, they might choose to instead go for some post-1972 or even post-2012 music. If you make pre-1972 music public domain, then everyone will have enough free music they like and might not bother paying as much in general for music. It's good for current artists if old music is sabotaged because it'd be harder to compete with the public domain if the public domain were better.
No, I don't support sabotaging the public domain. But this is a reason the maximalists support but will never admit.
Re: "Apple ... devices ... used by adults" -- Hmm, nope, haven't seen THAT.
Do people just automatically report out_of_the_blue's posts?? This comment is perfectly fine and worth restating. Apple is like Disneyland, and childish fantasy world, complete with all the problems and injustices of that sort of controlled environment. Why did people flag this comment?
Re: Re:
NO! Please be aware, .org is a totally open domain NOT restricted to non-profit!
.gov is restricted, .edu is restricted, .coop is restricted. These domains indicate something reliable about the site.
.org, .net, and .gov, and many others are totally open. Do not assume ANYTHING about a .org site.
Re: Re:
Noah, all you are saying is: In the U.S. the government is a significant player in healthcare, and healthcare is insane (as the article shows). Then you conclude: therefore the insanity is caused by the government.
Textbook example of illogical thinking. You have provided no basis to blame the government here. I'm not saying there isn't one, I'm just saying your conclusion is completely unsupported by your premise, especially given that you are replying to someone saying that a complete government-run system in the UK is excellent.
A few years ago, I thought nobody would go this far
I used the public library argument years ago thinking that nobody would say that the public library was bad. So then, what difference does it make if I download vs get from the library? Etc. discuss please.
But now people are taking the bait and digging in instead of questioning their previous positions. This is absurd and scary. I never thought I'd see this.
In other words: What is great is making things worse and thus drawing attention to the problem!
This is like saying, "It's great that we have an obesity epidemic! It gets everyone to start learning about nutrition and the problems with junk food!"
Re: Re: The problem is advertising
What's disrespectful about showing ads?
Nothing *necessarily* except that most of the time, advertising is in fact disrespectful. Ads encourage wasteful consumption, are manipulative, intrusive, create conflicts of interest, etc etc. Ads STINK. A world of ubiquitous advertising is an unhealthy world.
What people want is BOTH Free and no ads. And we can have this actually. The model is Free/Libre software and culture and such.
Practically though, a select portion of ads are perfectly ethical, they are just the tiny minority.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The problem is advertising
Actually, John, you and I agree and we both agree with Mike.
I was not saying anything about who is the customer etc. I was saying that advertising is almost always manipulative and has other problems and so is usually unethical. Ads are usually awful and that's that. The point is that I want a world without these ads. And yes, that world is the world of Free/Libre/Open software and culture, not a world of proprietary paying customers who buy restrictive licenses.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
right, we agree. I just got confused what you were saying because of your multiple negatives "abandoned / nothing / cannot be / revoked"
sheesh. Yeah, we both get it though.
But please do not use the NC restriction!!
Argh, don't suggest the NC restriction. It's not a good thing. It fails to stop exploitation any better than SA and it divides the commons because it is incompatible with truly free licenses!
Summary: you *want* to restrict commercial use, so you use NC. Result: your decision has little or no impact on actual commercial uses, but you seriously hamper non-commercial users who you wanted to support. That's what happens with NC. It's a broken license, don't use it!
See my example here:
blog.wolftune.com/2011/07/brain-parts-song-video.html
Or thorough discussion:
http://blog.okfn.org/2013/01/08/consequences-risks-and-side-effects-of-the-license-modu le-non-commercial-use-only-2/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Wrong. Once a work is CC0, she could publish it again with modifications and a different license, but she can't remove the CC0 from the copy you download today and which you can share with the world unrestricted.
Re:
What nonsense completely divorced from reality. I myself was a fully active participant in fighting these awful bills. I blacked out my site, signed petitions, made calls, and spread the word to others. I also am a critic of Google, do not like their business model, and nothing I did was in any way directed or influenced by Google.
Now go troll somewhere else.
Re: HTTPS
I'm using HTTPS everywhere and Techdirt is HTTPS for me without my doing anything.
Too bad the best is just stopping attacks
Defeating SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA are marvellous and noteworthy. But this just leaves us where we were. What we did was work hard to stop things from getting much worse. Will 2013 possibly be a year where we actually improve things?
What we need is flux/redshift
People laugh and react sometimes to movies, we know we are there as a crowd, it's just that those bright blue lights from cell phones are really distracting.
What we need is flux (see stereopsis.com/flux) for all devices and have that go on in a "cine" mode so the screen is much more dim and red. That will be much less annoying, I guarantee it.
Problem is, Flux is available for iOS but Apple's BS ToS don't allow it, so you have to jailbreak your device. Plus, none of the Android apps to do the same thing are any good. The Android apps all add *red* color universally across the screen, thus making blacks become more red instead of *removing* blue color.
Incidentally, GNU/Linux users should get "redshift" instead.
I really highly recommend this for normal use at night anyway separate from cinema. But the point is: it is the harsh blue tint of these screens that is so annoying whether in a theatre or anywhere else at night. Bad for your eyes, unnatural, and distracting to anyone around you.
The problem is advertising
Services can be just a good otherwise whether paid directly or paid via third-party ads or whatever, sure. The reason this discussion keeps coming up is because people are having a hard time putting words to what they know intuitively: advertising stinks! A world full of product placements and gimmicky sales and all these other junk… Ubiquitous ads are a detriment to our society.
The thing is: a company that accepts a business model of pushing ads in users faces is NOT a company that respects the users. They may have market pressure to still give good service, and they may be a business with mixed feelings that partly respects the users. But real respect means not shoving ads in people's faces.
Now, a non-advertisement-focused business model doesn't mean that the business respects users. They may be just as bad or worse on respectfulness.
The best companies treat users with real dignity, and that means minimal or no ads. But the problems with respect aren't due to the business model. The model is just one reflection of whether or not users are truly respected.
Re: Re: Maybe someone knew you would write an article about this??
Thanks for clarifying about the details in that case. It's still almost an unbelievable coincidence that 1984 would be the example where Amazon demonstrated for the first time that they had the technical capacity to go into your device and delete things unilaterally.
Re: Gee, is there NO way to avoid this risk?
@out_of_the_blue:
By your logic if they next say that copyright infringement is murder (you know, it threatens someone's income which is what they need to survive, so that makes it life-threatening, so you're killing them), and your reply: "well, if you don't want to be charged with murder, just DON'T INFRINGE COPYRIGHT!"
Now, in case you don't get it, I'm using something called reductio ad absurdem. I'm not saying you actually would think this. I'm saying that your argument is equally logical as this absurd example, and I sure hope you aren't so insane that you think even this absurd example is reasonable. Cheers.
Maybe someone knew you would write an article about this??
Like how Amazon showed they could delete Kindle content by deleting "1984" — that *had* to be some insider trying to get the message to the world about the injustice.
Maybe somebody knew that if they screwed with YOUR account, then you'd bother telling the world and bring attention to this problem?
Anyway, ridiculous stuff. I wish we had an open-framework for social networking like we have with e-mail. There should be a way to network via whatever system you want and not have to agree to any particular provider's policies in order to interact with other people in this way.