Archive for: Tech Politics
- February 4, 2010 10:14 pm
Of all the terrible ideas I’ve heard of how to “revolutionize the internet” or “make it a safer place”, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie has far and wide the worst idea. His idea calls for “internet driver’s licenses” to be required by law so that the shroud of secrecy and anonymity would be no more. Regardless of your personal beliefs, anonymity and the act of speeking your mind with a faceless, nameless identity is a basic right if we so choose to act upon it.
Craig Mundie’s idea is something close to a “knee jerk” reaction — a total over-reaction to a common problem with an extreme solution. Even more disturbing however is this seemingly educated man comparing the internet to a car, saying that much the same as those wishing to drive a car need a drivers license, those looking to fully engage in online content and comment accordingly need a similar license.
Stupid, stupid stupid! I hope to god this guy doesn’t become the leader of anything important…
Slashdot > Interesting People
I’ll admit, there are some pretty sick, twisted, and downright disturbing games out there. But that’s just the thing — they’re games. Games are meant to take you into a realm of fantasy. A place outside of laws, science, and yes, even morals. Unfortunately as of late, video games such as Grand Theft Auto and Modern Warfare 2 have been getting a bad rep for their unlawful plots and seemingly sinister undertones. Several countries are now moving to enact laws that would ban violent video games with one such country being Brazil. Valdir Raupp, a Brazilian senator has pushed forward his own bill that would make the sale, purchase, storage, and transportation of any outlawed games punishable by up to 1-3 years in prison.
There’s only one problem I see with this growing anti-violent game crackdown: Video games are increasingly singled out, yet are there not many more times the amount of violent movies, books, magazines, advertisements, etc? Why aren’t they being banned or regulated…?
- November 18, 2009 9:14 am
Many people wouldn’t make it through life if it weren’t for music. It feeds the soul. Why am I rambling about music again? Because I like music and the laws that govern music, licensing, copyrights, etc. are so backwards in this country it’s disgusting. Maybe, just maybe my voice along with many others will show the world how truly corrupt these types of organizations are.
Case in point: Bo Diddley’s restaurant in St. Cloud, Florida. The big stink simply deals with your usual greedy licensing company thinking they own everything with a musical note in it. The real kick in the pants is that unlike many other bars and karaoke joints, Bo Diddley’s doesn’t cover much licensed/popular music at all. Aside from a few songs here and there, most of the artists and songs performed at the venue are original creations. So you can understand the surprise and frustration the owner of not only Bo Diddley’s, but also several other local live music restaurants felt when they received several letters from one of the three, big North American licensing companies all demanding several years of back payment on live music licenses for covering licensed music…
- The three companies: Broadcast Music Inc. ( The American Society of Composers), Authors and Publishers, and SESAC
The final kick-in-the-back-of-the-head-when-you’re-alread-down moment is that there is no legitimate or fair way for any of the licensing companies to track or even know how much each establishment plays licensed music so that an appropriate fee can be negotiated. For all anyone knows, they could be paying roughly hundreds to thousands of dollars to a company that has absolutely no right or claim over it.
It’s really sad how backwards, unimaginative, and “crabby because artists are realizing they don’t need some washed up middleman” middleman are destroying music.
It’s a very compelling and thought provoking article. For it’s entirety, head on over to The SC Times
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You may remember a man by the name Nicolas Sarkozy. He is the French President whom has been extremely vocal in his support for a “3-Strikes” law in France. The first time he was first seen pushing the law, he was found to have violated the very laws he lobbied for by using a song created by MGMT at a political rally. The only problem was of course MGMT didn’t grant him permission to associate their works with his agenda. The end result — a €30,000 payment to MGMT courtesy of Mr. Copyright’s pockets.
It appears however that Nicolas “Copyright” Sarkozy is at it again. After taking another strong political stance by again lobbying for a French 3-strikes rule, Mr. Copyright himself has been found to have unlawfully reproduced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52-minute documentary ‘A visage decouvert: Nicolas Sarkozy’. The reason for the alarm? The producer of said documentary has to date shipped a mere 50 copies. Whoops! Hmmm. A politician thinking he’s above the law (or merely trying to hide his own hypocrisy)…I’m shocked.
Per Boing Boing:
The French satirical investigative journalism weekly “Le Canard Enchaîné” reveals that our holier-than-thou presidency is in fact a pirate’s lair. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the presidential audiovisual services produced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52 minutes documentary “A visage découvert : Nicolas Sarkozy”…
It is even more appalling that we are dealing with repeat offenders : last spring, while the Hadopi law was discussed, U.S. music duo MGMT received €30,000 as a settlement for a copyright infringement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party who used one of its songs at a political rally without permission. Those who led the charge against Internet users are not the most respectful of copyright.
How does this make you feel? Angry at the blatant disregard politicians have for their own laws. Do you ooze anger at the obvious double standards imposed on us by those in power?
Boing Boing > Serendipity
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The way in which any human being can manipulate, copy, and redistribute digital files has made our entire society from music, to books, to games stand up and take notice. Some have embraced technology and started new innovative services or produced new products while others have tried to hamper it. Perhaps the most widely mis-used aspect of technology is companies trying to push the idea that in this digital age, no one really owns their purchased goods anymore. Instead, we merely license or rent goods. Of course, this is completely ridiculous and sadly many cases of patent infringement/IP infringement have been battled in the courtroom with the big guys in suits often winning. However, the tides may be changing (albeit slowly) as the case involving Autodesk and Timothy Vernor in which the accuser is claiming the defendant is breaking the law by reselling legally purchased, used versions of AutoCAD on eBay. The outcome isn’t what you’d expect — the judge sided with Timothy Vernor…
Apple has long been known for their closed ecosystem that their products live within. While it has some major pluses such as tight integration among products being a top feature, 3rd party support and “outside” services are greatly restricted. Along these lines, the App Store follows this iron grip approach that Apple has become known for. Even still, the App Store is the undisputed champ when it comes to mobile application market. Though, the closed ecosystem is starting to show it’s true colors and problems.
Apple as of late has been seeking out patents for technologies and “features” on mobile devices that will give carriers abilities to limit features as they see fit. On one hand, the carriers have every right to control what goes on using their network. However, on the other, we all know carriers will use new “DRM-like” technologies to further restrict users from features that should be free and instead treating them to the ‘ol nickel and dime approach. The most recent and apparent example being the whole AT&T/iPhone MMS debacle — a feature available to everyone was restricted. Of course AT&T had a decent reason being their network sucks and they had to prepare for the onslaught. However features such as tethering are routinely locked up. Carriers see it as a separate feature that needs to be charged extra for. But it’s easy to conclude that if you’re already paying a fee for *unlimited* data, then it shouldn’t matter how or how much data you access. These are again completely different issues that could take pages to explain and debate. But the fact of the matter remains, the path that Apple and the mobile ecosystem is going down doesn’t look too friendly for the consumer. The rules and benefits are only helping the companies. Doesn’t this frighten you in the slightest?
Slashdot
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- September 23, 2009 5:23 am
Remember the small saga that has been going back forth between Apple, Palm, the Pre, and iTunes? The whole Pre/iTunes syncing issue has been bantered back and forth by the two companies with each successive software update enabling/disabling one of the Pre’s most highly talked about launch features. Apple of course doesn’t like Palm hiding behind a mask, or in this case falsely identifying their device with Apple’s own USB vendor ID. Palm on the other hand has abysmal music syncing software and knows it, hence the vendor ID trickery with iTunes.
Apple’s heavy hand cause Palm to run crying to the USB Implementers Forum (IF) with a letter of disapproval. They claim that Apple is stifling innovation by misusing the USB standard to prevent forward thinking technologies and instead control current ones. However, the response they received from the USB-IF is hardly what they were expecting I’m sure. It goes on saying:
- September 22, 2009 5:40 am
Net Neutrality as any geeks battle cry in this age of ever increasing digital walls, unfair business practices, and innovation stifling bills abound. So it comes with no surprise that many a geek were ecstatic when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed new net neutrality rules that stated the internet and the pipes that flow to and fro should be unbiased. That is, internet providers both wired and wireless can’t discriminate between what can and can’t move between said pipes. As expected, there are opponents. Several Republican senators such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R. Texas), John Thune (R., S.D.), Sam Brownback (R., Kan.), David Vitter (R., La.), Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), and John Ensign (R., Nev.) immediately moved forward stating their disapproval and general concern that an open internet will somehow “impede investment and innovation”. (Read: we’re getting mad $$ from various companies in this market…don’t touch our dollars yo). Such bias and mindless responses are common from government as 99% of these so called “servants of the public” are anything but as they don’t have a clue about anything digital nor do they care about anything but their own pockets. Not to mention, anyone who falls with this BS excuse for not keeping the internet unbiased and open is just as stupid themselves. Moving on, AT&T (surprise surprise) had something negative to add as well saying:
(We) AT&T would be very disappointed if [the FCC] has already drawn a conclusion to regulate wireless services despite the absence of any compelling evidence of problems or abuse that would warrant government intervention
AT&T’s statements can be immediately discredited. Really. Empty promises and continual disappointment highlights their existence. Again, AT&T is probably supporting several if not all of these senators with a few dollars. Whats sad is that this grand government we have is so full of one sided people taking bribes from big corporations turning them into nothing more than an extension of those respective companies. It’s not right but there isn’t any hope of change anytime soon. So we must continue on voicing our disapproval.
Of course, if these companies wouldn’t have spent the last decade sitting on their asses and instead actually over built their networks, they’d be in a much better position now. To fight against an open and freely flowing internet is against everything that the internet was intended for. What exactly is the internet? **See “Internet Manifesto far right and slightly down
Digital Daily
- September 18, 2009 11:28 am
While the ongoing drama surrounding the Google Voice/Apple App Store fiasco has been relatively quiet these last couple weeks, that doesn’t mean stuff has died down. Oh no…not in the slightest. Remember how Apple claimed a couple weeks ago that they hadn’t approved the Google Voice app but hadn’t exactly rejected it either and that they were merely studying it? Well, a fair amount of you aren’t stupid or three years old and could clearly see Apple was up to something or hiding the truth. Well wouldn’t you know it (surprise surprise) Apple lied. They were hiding the truth. It’s worth noting that it wasn’t just any mindless App Store employee that rejected Google Voice. They reserved a rejection of this magnitude for Phil Schiller himself. On July 7th, Google Voice got the official rejection from Apple/Schiller via phone. What’s even more telling is that this July 7th rejection follows a previous event from April 10th in which Apple rejected Google Latitude. The reason for Google Latitude’s rejection was because it “offers new features not present on the preloaded maps application”.
You read that right. Google Latitude was rejected for offering “new features” and Google Voice was rejected for “duplicating features”. So if you can’t duplicate already present features and you can’t add new features, what the hell is anyone supposed to do? Seems Apple has an obvious case of malice, double standards, stupidity, and all out problem on their hands as now it’s coming out that this was all a big lie. Obviously the reasoning for Google Latitude is ridiculous as thousands of apps in the app store “add new features”. The only questions left are if AT&T had any involvement (most likely) and what will the FCC think of this new development and lying behind the scenes?
RT the hell out of this folks!
Source: Engadget, WSJ
