Discussion February 2008

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

45 participants
43 discussions

Re: Copyright term extension rererevisited?
by Glyn Wintle 15 Feb '08

15 Feb '08

As I remember what was said she was calling for was the option of a _voluntary_ system where users could choose to buy a licence that allowed them to download the content. The Open Rights Group was not arguing for a blanket tariff and said the leaked legislation was wrong. She even said the government should stay out of legislating on this issue for a while Its worth reading ORGs submission to the Gowers review, they where one of the major players in stopping the music industry from extending copy right term, they are not very lightly to be the people to then go and argue that the music industry should be given money for people simply using the internet. The Open Rights Group is the UK equivalent to the EFF in America. Glyn Wintle (Avid Open Rights Group supporter) ----- Original Message ---- From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> To: discussion(a)fsfeurope.org; dgerard(a)gmail.com Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 12:56:57 PM Subject: Re: Copyright term extension rererevisited? "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > May I recommend to all in the UK the openrightsgroup.org mailing list > and wiki for detailed dissection of this sort of thing. ORG is also > getting into the press regularly. Are they worth recommending? Yeah, they get into the press: I heard Becky of the ORG on BBC Radio 4's World at One earlier this week, but she seemed to support collective licensing of ISPs! http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/02/12/government-to-ban-illegal-filesha… Collective licensing of companies is a step towards collective licensing of the whole population through taxation and the establishment of New Enclosures, which should be resisted. Bad ORG. Any ORG members here going to try to correct that? But while apparently not completely friendly, ORG have campaigned against term extension before:- http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Copyright_Term_Extension I didn't find any discussion of this particular event yet, though. Regards, -- MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 - Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder, consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ - Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion(a)fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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Re: Copyright term extension rererevisited?
by Glyn Wintle 15 Feb '08

15 Feb '08

As I remember what was said she was calling for was the option of a _voluntary_ system where users could choose to buy a licence that allowed them to download the content. The Open Rights Group was not arguing for a blanket tariff and said the leaked legislation was wrong. She even said the government should stay out of legislating on this issue for a while. Its worth reading ORGs submission to the Gowers review, they where one of the major players in stopping the music industry from extending copy right term, they are not very lightly to be the people to then go and argue that the music industry should be given money for people simply using the internet. The Open Rights Group is the UK equivalent to the EFF in America. Glyn Wintle (Avid Open Rights Group supporter) P.S. Yahoo mail is screwing up some of my replies to messages :( ----- Original Message ---- From: MJ Ray <mjr(a)phonecoop.coop> To: discussion(a)fsfeurope.org; dgerard(a)gmail.com Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 12:56:57 PM Subject: Re: Copyright term extension rererevisited? "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > May I recommend to all in the UK the openrightsgroup.org mailing list > and wiki for detailed dissection of this sort of thing. ORG is also > getting into the press regularly. Are they worth recommending? Yeah, they get into the press: I heard Becky of the ORG on BBC Radio 4's World at One earlier this week, but she seemed to support collective licensing of ISPs! http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/02/12/government-to-ban-illegal-filesha… Collective licensing of companies is a step towards collective licensing of the whole population through taxation and the establishment of New Enclosures, which should be resisted. Bad ORG. Any ORG members here going to try to correct that? But while apparently not completely friendly, ORG have campaigned against term extension before:- http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Copyright_Term_Extension I didn't find any discussion of this particular event yet, though. Regards, -- MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 - Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder, consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ - Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

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Fwd: [Foundation-l] Licensing tutorials
by David Gerard 14 Feb '08

14 Feb '08

Teaching people what is and isn't a genuine free content licence is one of Wikimedia's biggest headaches ... *anything* anyone has on the subject, please forward it to Erik. (note: Several people from Creative Commons read commons-l, which is the list for Wikimedia Commons, the photo and media repository; people who know lots about FSF free content licences might find it a suitable place to keep an eye on as well. The CC people were enormously helpful with concerns over the CC 3.0 licences, said concerns being the reason for CC 3.01.) - d. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> Date: 14 Feb 2008 20:29 Subject: [Foundation-l] Licensing tutorials To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: kfogel(a)red-bean.com All - could you send me some links - offlist is fine - to useful tutorials that you're aware of on free content licensing? I think there are some pages on Wikimedia Commons that might be useful, if perhaps a bit project-centric. It would just be good to have some URLs to shoot to folks who have heard once of Creative Commons and open source - but really don't have a clue what any of it means, get confused about the commercial/non-commercial distinction, think they can still cut exclusive deals for some types of usage, etc. :-) Thanks, Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Fwd: paying artists (was: Re: Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation) (FSF)
by David Gerard 14 Feb '08

14 Feb '08

to list as well. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> Date: 14 Feb 2008 19:43 Subject: Re: paying artists (was: Re: Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation) (FSF) To: Alex Hudson <home(a)alexhudson.com> On 14/02/2008, Alex Hudson <home(a)alexhudson.com> wrote: > I really don't buy into the "they don't have a right to earn a living > unless they can make money on it on their own" arguments that some > people have implied. It is possible to view copyright as a kind of > monopoly, but in a true economic sense, it's nothing of the sort because > equivalent goods and services are available from a range of different > places (in the case of music, perhaps not as many as you'd want, but > still not a true monopoly). This appears to be attempting to argue semantics. The whole point of copyright is to provide an entirely artificial monopoly. The social question then becomes what that is for. Your posts to this list have been largely equivocation; you're now trying to retrospectively redefine your terms. - d.

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How to find volunteer administrators? (Was: RE: Free Web App Co-operative)
by Bogdan Bivolaru 13 Feb '08

13 Feb '08

0) OMG, this idea rocks! I was going to offer a hardware and bandwidth for such a service and start building some sort of community of people sharing resources for a freedom and free-as-in-beer service. I was hoping of building some kind of community, like cluenet.org, to operate the network. 1) As I see it the big problem is not the hardware nor the bandwidth (we can think of a web cluster-like system to operate it, REBOL style http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REBOL ): the problem is finding capable and good-willing volunteers to administrate it. I would offer root access to a computer I own on a internet connection I am responsible for. If that mail server starts sending malware, who will be responsible/liable for charges in justice? Protecting Web and mail servers as free services - such a "honey pot" - from the constant attack of ill-wanting spammers and other malware writers, is like a full day job. Failing to do so can result in bans from accessing the network of different ISP and can even result in having your own ISP disconnect you. How do you approach this initial lack of criteria for selecting volunteers? Freedom software projects require candidate contributors to submit patches for a long time before granting them commit access to the version control repository. They can check the technical abilities of the candidate and let in only the best. What can one do to select volunteer service administrators? 2a) Since all projects running on such a service would be free (both Afero GPL-style and as in free beer) one could hope we will find a web hosting firm to sponsor us hosting space and bandwidth. Just as Atlassian, http://www.atlassian.com/ , offers free licenses of JIRA, a proprietary issue tracking system, to free software developers. Or a relationship like QT/KDE for a service company. They could be in for the PR and providing some kind of "demo" to other clients, running proprietary applications 2b) I could also pay some monthly fees for a BlueHost / Dreamhost account, supposing sharing my account with many people does not violate their Terms of Service. And 500GB hdd space sound like a lot for a few begining network sites. There are also some VPS-hosting options (root access to a virtual machine running your site, but has less hdd space, "only" 1.6 GB) http://eapps.com/Docs/VPSStandardPrices.jsp 3) DNS naming and directory: What about a DNS register? As far as I know there are no free DNS names registrars, right? 4) Do you plan installing Tor as an anonymizer on the network? I guess Tor requires providing services only through SSL/TLS, to avoid eavesdropping, right? Sadly you provided no link where one can read/discuss more on this idea of yours. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Subject: > Free Web App Co-operative > From: > "Jonathan Roberts" <jonathan.roberts.uk(a)googlemail.com> > Date: > Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:28:41 +0000 > To: > discussion(a)fsfeurope.org > > To: > discussion(a)fsfeurope.org > > > Hi, > > I'm currently floating this idea around a few places and thought > people here might be interested. We're trying to get together a small > group interested in starting a hosted web apps co-operative where the > key principles are openness and using entirely free software to build > and run it. > > Initially we're probably going to target e-mail, calendaring and rss > but this is open to discussion. The entire idea is open to discussion > and the purpose of this now is to get together a group interested in > discussing this and taking it forwards. I think it could be > financially very reasonable for a group as small as 10. > > If you're interested in becoming involved with something like this > feel free to reply to this thread or contact me of list. The next step > will be cc'ing together an interested group where will begin figuring > out implementations etc... > > Best wishes, > > Jonathan Roberts > >

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Fwd: Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
by David Gerard 12 Feb '08

12 Feb '08

and again to list. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> Date: 11 Feb 2008 20:29 Subject: Re: Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF) To: Matthias-Christian Ott <ott(a)enolink.de> On 11/02/2008, Matthias-Christian Ott <ott(a)enolink.de> wrote: > "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Er, what? Both are growing in the market, not just in a small world of > > predefined terms. > Come on, loot at it seriously - from the perspective of the average Joe. > He doesn't know what Wikipedia or Free Software is, he just knows that > Wikipedia is his first entry on his google search page. > Do you think he has realised the philosophical dimensions of Wikipedia > or Free Software and believes in it? No, and that's not what the original says either. But nevertheless, out-cooperating is their particular method of out-competing. Wikipedia never set out to out-compete Britannica, it just did. (Wikipedia's goal is *not* to run a hideously popular and expensive website ...) Linux is not out to destroy Microsoft, that will be a completely unintentional side-effect. The end results are sufficient, the philosophical reasons are only useful if you want to understand the truck that just ran over your business. - d.

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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy - and Their Open Source Alternatives
by David Gerard 12 Feb '08

12 Feb '08

Useful link to put on blogs, give to friends, etc: http://whdb.com/2008/the-top-50-proprietary-programs-that-drive-you-crazy-a… (They say "open source" but talk about it in terms of freedom, so that's good enough for me!) - d.

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FSFE Newsletter
by Free Software Foundation Europe 12 Feb '08

12 Feb '08

January has been a month full of activity both on the grassroots community level and in broad topics like Free Software legal infrastructure. The local Fellowship groups in Berlin and Duesseldorf are very active, and Duesseldorf's Fellowship is planning to expand to nearby cities in the coming months. Meanwhile, FSFE and gpl-violations.org have been deepening their partnership to ensure fair use of Free Software licences in the European area. This is a great time to get more involved with FSFE and the Fellowship, especially if you are interested in fostering local activities for like-minded Free Software enthusiasts or new members of our community. You can find tips on getting active here: http://fsfeurope.org/contribute. Shane, FSFE Zurich office 1. GPL-violations.org and FSFE's Freedom Task Force plan future interaction 2. NLnet continues to support FSFE's Freedom Task Force 3. Berlin Fellowship meeting and talk 4. Duesseldorf Fellowship meeting and planning future events 5. FSFE meeting in Göteborg, Sweden 6. SELF Open Documentary Contest FORTHCOMING EVENTS 7. Richard Stallman Speech about Free Software Philosophy and History in Berlin, 2008-02-18 8. Preparation for FOSDEM, Brussels, 2008-02-23 and 2008-02-24 9. "Standards and the Future of the Internet" Conference, Geneva, 2008-02-26 10. Secure shell speech at Duesseldorf Fellowship, Duesseldorf, 2008-02-27 1. GPL-violations.org and FSFE's Freedom Task Force plan future interaction On the 31st of January representatives from gpl-violations.org and FSFE's FTF met in Berlin to discuss the future of licence compliance in the European area. Harald Welte and Armijn Hemel discussed the perspective of the successful gpl-violations.org project, while Shane Coughlan represented FSFE. Dr. Till Jaeger attended one of the sessions and brought his considerable legal knowledge to the conversation. GPL-violations.org and FSFE's FTF have agreed to work closely together to ensure fair use, understanding and responsibility in the use of Free Software licences. http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2008/02/02/#20080202-gplviolations-meeti… 2. NLnet continues to support FSFE's Freedom Task Force The initial phase of the FTF was possible thanks to support by the Netherlands based philantropic organisation NLnet foundation. Today the FTF's legal and technical networks cover sixteen European countries, have over seventy members and include contacts from the USA, Canada, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan. The FTF delivers training courses in Switzerland in cooperation with Digicomp, in Sweden with Internet Academy and in The Netherlands with ATComputing. Now, after just over twelve months of continual growth, NLnet is providing a second round of financial support to this innovative legal project. http://fsfeurope.org/news/2008/news-20080118-01.en.html 3. Berlin Fellowship meeting and talk The Berlin Fellowship Group met at the Newthinking Store as usual and featured a talk from Hannes Hauswedell about the free BSD operating systems. Discussion centred around BSD variants as alternative Free operating systems, description of the various BSD variants and the policies that the BSD projects have regarding Free Software adoption. If you would like to join in the fun, please note that the Berlin Fellowship meets every second Thursday in the month at the Newthinking Store, Tucholskystr. 48 in 10117 Berlin. 4. Duesseldorf Fellowship meeting and planning future events The Duesseldorf Fellowship met as usual and discussed future plans. This included a highly interesting and constructive discussion about having a booth at the Labour's Day 1. May at Duesseldorf. The Fellowship will share their booth with other organisations. Chaosdorf e.V. (the local CCC group, http://www.chaosdorf.de) may attend. The Fellowship also planned meetings in other cities like Cologne and Roermond/NL to intensify the contact to other Fellows. Get in contact with the Duesseldorf Fellowship: rk(a)office.fsfeurope.org 5. FSFE meeting in Göteborg, Sweden The Swedish team of the FSFE organised a small meeting for those interested in the FSFE activities on the 28th of january. Some of the issues discussed focused around publishing the videos recorded during FSCONS in december, and generally around video editing and mastering. 6. SELF Open Documentary Contest The SELF (Science, Education and Learning in Freedom) project has announced a SELF Open Documentary Contest where individuals and companies are invited to "create a documentary about the creation of free knowledge and education in the digital era". The contest runs until the end of may 2008, and the winners will be presented during a SELF conference in Spain in july 2008. http://www.selfproject.eu/contest FORTHCOMING EVENTS 7. Richard Stallman Speech about Free Software Philosophy and History in Berlin, 2008-02-18 On Monday 18. February at 19:00 Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the FSF, will give a speech at the mediacentre - Atrium, Johannisstrasse 20, in 10117 Berlin-Mitte. He will talk about the history and philosophy of Free Software. The Berlin Fellowship group will have a small booth there and inform visitors about the local groupd and FSFE's work in Germany and Europe. Admission starts at 18:30. The entrance fee is 5 EUR. 8. Preparation for FOSDEM, Brussels, 2008-02-23 and 2008-02-24 Many in FSFE are getting ready for FSFE's 7th trip to FOSDEM. Like previous years, FSFE has been given a large stall just inside the main entrance. FOSDEM is one of the year's two largest Free Software events where FSFE's members, friends, and employees can meet each other and the free software community. It's also an opportunity to buy t-shirts and other FSFE material, and to join the Fellowship of FSFE - which we launched at FOSDEM 2005. If you're at the event or nearby, drop in an say hi! FOSDEM is very much a community focussed event, with no entrance fee, but you can donate if you like. http://fosdem.org/2008/ 9. "Standards and the Future of the Internet" Conference, Geneva, 2008-02-26 Shane Coughlan, the coordinator of FSFE's Freedom Task Force, will host a breakout session discussing licensing issues at the "Standards and the Future of the Internet" Conference being held in Geneva, Switzerland, during the 26th and 27th of February. The conference will be hosted at the International Conference Centre and confirmed speakers include Vint Cerf, Carlo Piana, Thomas Vinje and Jeremy Allison. 10. Secure shell speech at Duesseldorf Fellowship, Duesseldorf, 2008-02-27 Patrick Haehnel will hold a talk at the Duesseldorf Fellowship on the 27th of February. The title of his speech is "Forget the Swiss Army Knife! - Secure Shell - tips'n'tricks." You can find a full list of forthcoming events here: http://fsfeurope.org/events/events.html You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters here: http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html Copyright (C) FSFE. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

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RE: Boycott Trend Micro
by Sam Liddicott 12 Feb '08

12 Feb '08

The argumentof that website seems to be to boycott Trend Micro because it uses software patents whiich are all bogus. The argument is to weak to take beyond those who already opose software patents. The counter argument is that they are doing their best to work legitimately in a broken system and any 3rd party is bound to conclude that a differing of opinion on software patents (a matter they had not considered before) hardly warrants a boycott. I think a stronger and clearer case needs making that on that website. If the patent claim is clearly abusive within the patent framework then something should be made of that, boycotts are more effective when a clear moral case can be made rather than a political one. So widely aceptable (portable) moral reasons need enumerating. Sam -----Original Message----- From: Ciaran O'Riordan <ciaran(a)fsfe.org> Sent: 10 February 2008 20:17 To: discussion(a)fsfeurope.org Subject: Re: Boycott Trend Micro > http://www.scriptumlibre.org/Boycott_Trend_Micro This seems like a very good idea. I'd like to blog this and forward it to a few lists. Before I do, does anyone have any comments on this? (Seems like a clearly good idea to me, but it never hurts to ask for comments before assisting negative campaigns.) -- Ciarán O'Riordan (+32 477 36 44 19) \ Support Free Software and GNU/Linux http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ Join FSFE's Fellowship: http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ http://www.fsfe.org _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion(a)fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion

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Re: Freedom or Copyright? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
by Carsten Agger 11 Feb '08

11 Feb '08

Matthias-Christian Ott wrote: > Matthias Kirschner <mk(a)fsfe.org> wrote: > >> Yavor Doganov informed me, that Richard Stallman published a new version >> of his article "Freedom or Copyright" >> <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-copyright.html>. I await your >> cmments :) > > Generally speaking I share Richard Stallman's opinion, but I'm not sure > whether Copyright was a good idea. But you can't alter the past and now > it's time to abolish such laws, because they inhibit a more effective > production by factitious stringency and therefore allow everyone to > take part in cultural development. If copyright is abolished, then there's no more GPL. What about that? br Carsten -- http://www.modspil.dk

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Discussion February 2008