Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> An end run round copyright laws?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | What Linux has done for operating systems, the Internet should do
> | for content, a prominent lawyer and activist urged Tuesday.
The RIAA and MPAA have some huge lobbying power. I don't know that
advocating the proliferation of "Open Source" movies, documentaries,
and entertainment designed to compete directly with the heavily funded
and heavily promoted projects of the RIAA and MPAA members is the
brightest idea.
Remember that Napster was originally intended to be a place where
club-bands could put recordings of their original works as mpegs to
promote themselves. There are thousands of club-bands throughout the
world, and many of those bands have at least a few talented
songwriters.
Where Napster got into trouble was when they refused to engage in any
responsibility or accountability for copyrighted works being ripped
from commercial CD-ROMs and published by well-meaning but ill-informed
"publishers" who were "sharing" (publishing) their content with a few
(thousand) friends. Napster didn't even bother to inform them that
this was illegal, that they could be arrested, and that they could face
up to 5 years in prison per copyrighted work, possibly to be served
consecutively. Even when the RIAA pointed out that CD-ROMs are issued
under a personal use license (which is usually printed in very small
print near the copyright notice) and that even Disk Jockeys at clubs
have to negotiate terms with authorized representatives such as ASCAP
or BMI, they continued to tell the public and their subscribers that
there was nothing with sharing your content with a few thousand
friends.
Lessig is correct though. Millions of excellent authors publish their
works through blogs, forums, newsgroups, and other internet publishing
media that would never be able to get the funding, publicity, and
political connections to have their works published in print.
One could easily argue the QUALITY or POPULARITY of these works. This
is really not that relevant, since sites like google can match
interested readers to relevant content. A document might only be
published to a few hundred readers, but when it's the RIGHT few hundred
readers, it can have an extraordinary impact. Linux started because
Linus posted a short article to a small newsgroup (comp.os.unix?), and
asked what was probably less than 200 readers on that particular day,
to take a look at a kernel he had been working on as a hobby. Yet
today, as a result of that short message to the RIGHT small group of
people, Linux is now installed on hundreds of millions of desktops and
laptops and hundreds of millions of servers (including appliances,
LPARs, and blade cluster nodes).
Had Linus not been able to get that message from Yugoslavia to the
United States, and other "western" countries, it's unlikely that Linux
would have been the phenomenon that it has become.
There are numerous sites of women who have posted pictures of
themselves on the Internet, some such as Jenny McCarthy (?) have been
downloaded by millions of people all over the world. But there have
also been news photos and videos that would have been censored by the
mainstream national media, which were available "on demand" via the
internet at a time when it actually had a huge impact and made a huge
difference.
How many people made home movies of the World Trade center collapse,
which were first published on local and personal web sites, and were
eventually shown on national television? Some of those videos would
have never been shown on the national media if they hadn't shown up on
the web site first (National security issues, evidence seizure), but
instead we had ALL of the different views, including the shot of the
plane banking just before it crashed into the building, obviously
trying to cause the maximum possible damage to the building (and
possibly saving the lives of those below who would have been instantly
trapped in an inferno of flaming jet fuel.
> | [...]
> |
> | Stanford Law School professor Lessig noted that Department of Justice
> | lawyers attacking Microsoft for its Windows monopoly fixated on IBM's
> | vanquished rival, OS/2. But Linux showed that decentralized,
> | nonproprietary operating systems were viable, he said.
They focused on that because they had a clear line of provable
evidence. IBM had detailed records of their interactions with
Microsoft, the interactions between the PC division and the OS/2
division, and even communications with the new CEO, Lou Gerstner.
Furthermore, there were court records which could have been unsealed in
a criminal case against certain Microsoft executives, which made
Microsoft much more cooperative in providing their own records of the
events around Windows 95 and OS/2 Warp.
Red Hat had also approached a number of OEMs and had offered them very
generous terms, but the chain of evidence and the chain of custody for
that evidence was not a clear-cut or dramatic. In the OS/2 scenario,
they had direct evidence of fraud, extortion, blackmail, sabotage, and
obstruction of justice.
Remember that the goal in the DOJ case was not to prove specific
claims, but to establish a pattern of conduct which demonstrated that
Microsoft had illegally obtained it's monopoly, had illegally
maintained it's OS monopoly, had illegally extended it's monopoly, and
that the only way to eliminate this monopoly was to break Microsoft
into at least 3 different business units.
Unlike the AT&T Antitrust case, in which AT&T was willing to accept
divestiture in exchange for the right to go into the computer business
(which at the time was mainly IBM's baby), Microsoft was being offered
nothing and was asking for nothing in exchange for divestiture.
The DOJ was not able to prove that Microsoft illegally obtained the
monopoly, due primarily to lack of supporting evidence in the form of
direct testimony and supporting documentation (findings of fact,
findings of law), but they were able to prove that Microsoft had
illegally maintained and extended their monopoly and were ordered to
stop doing that (Appeals Court decision). Judge Jackson tried to get
Microsoft to settle, warning them that he was about to order their
divestature, but Microsoft was trying to bait the judge into an act
which would have him taken out of the picture as biased. Judge Jackson
finished his final draft of his final ruling and granted an interview
with a reporter in which he stated that in his legal opinion Bill
Gates, Steve Ballmer, and several other Microsoft executives were
criminals and should be tried as criminals based on their testimony in
this case.
It's quite likely that Judge Jackson didn't want to establish a formal
legal precedent in which the courts could unilaterally order the
divestiture of publicly held companies in a manner which could be
damaging to investors in many circumstances (possibly including this
one). After all, the investors were not the criminals, and Microsoft
was widely held by mutual funds, pension funds, and other annuities
which would have been seriously comprimized in the face of a hap-hazard
divestature. The impacts would have been as bad as the collapse of
Enron and WorldCom put together and twice that. It's quite likely that
Judge Jackson deliberately granted that interview precisely because he
did not want this final judgement to stand as the law of the land, to
be used against other companies who were accused of being monopolies by
their competitors.
It's rather ironic that 99% of the information Microsoft has been
ordered to disclose, the protocols used between Microsoft clients and
Microsoft servers, So that non-Miccrosoft clients can talk to the
servers, and non-Microsoft servers can talk to Microsoft clients, is
actually documented in IETF specifications (which are required to be
sufficiently complete to make possible implementation by a college
undergraduate), implemented in Open Source and published under licenses
which permit both OSS and commercial implementations, and even
Microsoft's implementations are based on OSS code, but Microsoft has
merely added trivial "enhancements" which it refuses to disclose except
under the terms of a strict nondisclosure agreement that prevents the
"Signator" from ever implementing OSS software again.
What is Microsoft hiding? Perhaps that they used some GNU code?
Perhaps that their "enhancements" were really "back doors" used to spy
on end-users and corporate networks? Perhaps that their "enhancements"
were the very doors through which malware was being installed and was
able to circumvent corporate security measures?
> | [...]
> |
> | Linux has demonstrated that it's possible to build operating systems
> | and software that lets customers bypass Microsoft's control. The
> | Creative Commons, Lessig hopes, will do the same in letting people
> | exchange content without reliance on entrenched media powers.
> `----
Nicholas Negroponte wrote an excellent book called "Being Digital"
which predicted that online publishing would ultimately do an "end-run"
around traditional publishing.
Ironically, the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky story broke, not as a Mass
media scoop, but as a bulletin board discussion in the MSNBC web site.
MSNBC then covered the discussion on the board, quoting some opinions
posted by remarkably well-informed individuals posting from anonymous
IDs.
FDR could keep the fact that he needed a wheelchair out of the press
for 14 years, but Bill Clinton couldn't keep it out of the press that
"the underwear slipped". Remember, the big "lie" that Bill told in
court was when he stated that he did not have direct physical contact
with primary sexual organs for the purpose of sexually stimulating the
person being touched (a primary requirement for the legal definition of
sexual relations). Clinton had an underwear fetish and only liked to
feel the underwear, therefore no direct physical contact.
Under 12 hours of interrogation and repeated threats of being sent to a
DC jail where the local hookers would be told she was the president's
"girl friend" (I think a different term was used), she finally
admitted, only for a moment, that the underwear might have slipped.
Of course, after 12 hours of interrogation by 12 well-trained FBI
interrogators and special prosecutor interrogators, she would probably
have admitted that she had SHOT the president of that's what they
wanted her to say.
The critical element was keep it from the public that she had
practically raped the president, who had said no repeatedly (according
to her testimony in the senate), and that her repeated aggressive
sexual advances were ultimately too much for him to resist.
The claim that this testimony in open court during the Paula Jones
trial would have resulted in a bigger settlement for Paula Jones was
completely bogus. But the carefully controlled flow of information
made it possible for the house to vote for empeachment.
Keep in mind that I'm no big fan of Bill Clinton. He should have been
empeached for shutting down the government, for violating the civil
rights of noncustodial parents (what he called "dead beat dads", for
allowing the Ruby Ridge massacre, for the religeous persecution of the
Branch Dividians, and for attempting to treat his wife as a cabinet
member without getting some formal recognition of that role from
Congress.
But Impeaching the President because a harried and harassed 24 year old
girl being threatened by 12 professionally trained interrogators while
being denied a lawyer she requested the minute they flashed their
badges said the Undewear slipped? That just made the Republican party
look rediculous. Especially in the light of the activities of George W
Bush. He sure isn't the man his father was.
Bush has his own long list of crimes, but I won't go there this time.
(But I'm not making my annual donation to the Republican party either).
> http://news.com.com/An+end+run+round+copyright+laws/2100-1025_3-6105805.html
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