French “iPod Law” violates Human Rights

Posted by schiessle on 0

The so-called “iPod law” contains reduced fines for file sharing and forced companies to open their DRM specification to enable competition.

The French Constitutional Council has declared this aspects unconstitutional. The justification: The “iPod law” violated the Human Right of constitutional protections of property.

Mr. Menard, a partner at the Lovells law firm and a specialist in “intellectual property” said: “The Constitutional Council effectively highlighted the importance of intellectual property rights,” and added that Apple Computer and other companies could not be forced to share their copy-protection technology without being paid for it.

Does it sound like a joke? But it’s true. For more information read:

– New York Times: Parts of French ‘iPod Law’ Struck Down (English)
– Golem: iTunes-Gesetz verstößt gegen Menschenrechte (German)

UPDATE: Jacques Chirac, president of France, has signed the law and so it become valid. I don’t know if the French Constitutional Council will stop the law but as long as nothing happens the law is legally valid. Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Poland could be the next countries with similar laws. Source (German): The Inquirer DE.

Interview with DefectiveByDesign

Posted by schiessle on 0

Thanks to Markus from netzpolitik.org i have found this interesting interview with the DefectiveByDesign campaign.

The campaign has received quite a lot of attention in the media. For example the “Bono petition” saw press coverage in more than 115 news papers and news sitest in the USA.

Here a answer from DefectiveByDesign to a probably common question on this topic: “Are those two goals (content protection and consumer protection) compatible with one another?”

DefectiveByDesign: A better word than consumer, to describe me and you, is citizen. So is content protection and the rights of citizens compatible? When we live in a age where all digital works of art and all human knowledge can be transferred at (next to) zero cost, and where the cost of making one more copy is zero. Is it right to be building digital fences and digital handcuffs around this art and knowledge? If, as citizens of a society, we can see the advantages of allowing art and knowledge to flow without impediment, we as citizens will also have reason to find new ways to recompense the artists and knowledge purveyors. In fact, there are more artists working today than ever before, and more of their art is being enjoyed because of technology free from DRM and free of the Big Media gate keepers. The term “Content Protection” is a loaded term, framing the debate with their slant. I would say that this term really describes their attempt to hold back advancing society.

Second draft of GPLv3

Posted by schiessle on 0

After about seven month of discussion and more than 1000 comments through gplv3.fsf.org/comments/ the FSF has published the second draft of the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3 and the first draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 3 which is now designed as a set of permissive exceptions to GPLv3 in accord with section 7.

The main changes in the second draft of GPLv3 are clarifications of the DRM section, a reworked license compatibility section and provisions that specifically allow to distribute programs on certain file sharing networks such as BitTorrent.

For more details look at http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl3-dd2-guide.html

Open letter to Bono (U2) to take a stand against DRM

Posted by schiessle on 0

DefectiveByDesign, a FSF campaign to eliminate DRM, has written an open letter to Bono the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2 to take a stand against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). The group has focused on Bono because of his social activism and leadership in the music industry.
The aim is to collect 10.000 signatures, at which point they will seek an audience with Bono, discuss with him the threats posed by DRM and request that he be the final signer.

Some time ago i have already blogged about a initiative of Canadian musicians against DRM (http://www.musiccreators.ca/). The open letter to Bono could be the first step to achieve something similar in Europe or even worldwide.

You can sign the letter at: http://defectivebydesign.org/petition/bonopetition

License fee for PDF export?

Posted by schiessle on 0

As a GNU/Linux user i’m used to have PDF export in almost every program. With Office 2007 Microsoft finally wants to offer this common feature to their users too.
But it seems like Adobe doesn’t like this idea. As cnet reported Adobe asked Microsoft to remove the PDF export feature or pay a fee for it. Brian Jones from Microsoft has published some information, too.

Adobe promotes PDF as an open standard. But if Adobe now starts to sue competitors they can no longer claim that PDF is an open standard.
What does this mean for all the Free Software applications with PDF export and for the exchange of documents in general? If Adobe starts to sue Microsoft, who will be the next victim?
It would be a big loss for everyone if we can no loger rely on PDF as an open standard.

New license for Sun Java – or just an easier way to distribute some “free beer”

Posted by schiessle on 0

Sun Microsystems announced a more GNU/Linux distribution friendly license during the annual JavaOne conference May 16-19. (reported by desktoplinux.com)

Now it’s possible for GNU/Linux distribution to distribute Suns JDK (Java Development Kit). Debian has already add it to their non-free repository and Ubuntu to mutiverse, a repository mixed with additional Free and non-Free Software.

So everyone who have hoped that Sun will go some steps toward a Free Software Java is probably disappointed, nothing happens. Sun Java is still as non-free as it was before, they just made it easier to distribute this non-Free Software.
The only positive thing i can see is now that Sun Java is in Debians non-free repository maybe some Debian Developers will have a better contact to Sun and maybe they can convince Sun in the long term to get Sun Java into the main repository which would cause a Free Software license for Sun Java. As you can read in the Towards Java Libre thread on the debian-java mailing list it seems like there are already first discussions torward a free Sun Java.

It seems like Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) was really happy about this step, "This is the most substantial step we’ve seen yet towards building a stronger relationship between the Java world and the free software world". I can’t see a stronger relationship between Java and Free Software, caused by the new license of Sun Java. Sun Java is still useless for the Free Software world. It’s GNU Classpath together with the free Java VMs and compilers like gcj, kaffe, SableVM and others which builds a stronger relationship between the Java world and the Free Software world.
Mark continues, "It’s clearly a move in recognition of the importance to Sun of the work of the free software community, and will go some way towards increasing the adoption of Java by free software projects". I just hope that this doesn’t mean that more Free Software will fall into the Java Trap.

“World Intellectual Property Day” – Canadian musicians say “Not in Our Names”

Posted by schiessle on 0

April 26th was the "World Intellectual Property Day" (German). Brigitte Zypries, minister of justice of Germany, said "We need a better sense of right and wrong for ‘intellectual property’" and announced that the protection of ‘intellectual property’ will be the main focus when Germany will held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2007.

At the same time Canadian musicians like Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan or Sloan say "Not in Our Names". The "Canadian Music Creators Coalition" (CMCC) will ensure that lobbyists for major record labels and music publishers are not the only voices heard in debates about Canada’s copyright laws and other key cultural policy issues (press release).

The CMCC is united under three key principles:

  • Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
  • Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
  • Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

I think this is a great campaign and i hope musicians from other countries will recognize it and follow the Canadian musicians with similar campaigns.

girl code

Posted by schiessle on 0

girlcode

Bringing Free Software to the masses

Posted by schiessle on 0

I have found this interview of Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation. He described his work as "to get the message of free software outside the hacker world":

When you ask people about free software they should instinctively believe in free software. Just like people say ‘I recycle my cans,’ but don’t understand the process behind it, you don’t need to have read the GPL or been a programmer to understand that a computer should be under your control. The typical computer user can’t change the software, but then again my mum can’t change what the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank is doing, but these issues still matter to her.

For Peter Brown this is the right time to get the message out about Free Software to the non-Hacker world:

This is the perfect time to get the message out about free software as you have a confluence of situations – there is a growing realisation among the general public that certain CDs won’t play in your CD player, or you can’t play them in your computer. Then we have the upcoming release of [Microsoft’s Windows] Vista, which has DRM up to its gills.

It is time to show a contrast. GPL v3 is the first stake in the ground against DRM. For the first time someone has said, ‘that’s it, we’re stopping it’.

Furthermore the FSF plans a campaign against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) after the second draft of GPLv3 sometime in June and will even employ a professional campaigner for this job.

The campaign will target three important areas:

  1. Developers need to know that their freedom to tinker is at stake. With DRM it can happen that you get an device with Free Software on it and if you change the software, the device won’t work any more. Tivo is an example of such a device.
  2. Telling the wider world of non-Hackers that they shouldn’t be handing over the keys of their home to strangers. In the future home entertainment systems will be able to tell what you’re watching and how many times you watch a video. This monitoring infrastructure is really scary and will cause a large loss of privacy.
  3. Telling device manufacturers ‘do you want to have control over your destiny, or do you want content providers to have control over your destiny?’

Is a free DRM better than a non-free DRM?

Posted by schiessle on 0

On the first Open Mind Commons (OMC) Workshop Sun Microsystems released two draft specifications for Digital Restrictions Management (DRM): DReaM-CAS (Conditional Access System) and DReaM-MMI (Mother May I) and a free (as in freedom) prototype implementation of the DReaM-CAS conditional access system.

So far it isn’t anything special that the industry works on DRM systems. Maybe it’s new that they try to create a DRM standard based on Free Software, but i don’t consider it as an advantage to use Free Software to restrict users freedom.

For me the news become interesting when i read a comment by Lawrence Lessig:

"In a world where DRM has become ubiquitous, we need to ensure that the ecology for creativity is bolstered, not stifled, by technology. We applaud Sun’s efforts to rally the community around the development of open-source, royalty-free DRM standards that support "fair use" and that don’t block the development of Creative Commons ideals."

I was really astonished, this sounds like Lawrence Lessig has given up his fight against DRM and for a "Free Culture" and has resigned to the fact that our future will be an opaque culture full of restrictions. It is particularly interesting because Lawrence Lessing is on the board of directors of the FSF and the EFF which has already published a press release against Suns Open Mind Commons DRM.