Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [ Darth Chaos ] on Friday 19 January 2007 18:39 \__
>
> > I've already seen this shitty stuff reported on Infowars. Banning
> > downloading would kill the Debian-based OSes which rely on apt-get or
> > the GUI-based apt-get front-ends. I guess the criminal elite wants to
> > force us to go to the computer store and spend $500 on MS Office XP
> > instead of downloading OpenOffice.org for free.
>
> I'm sure they'll have a very prominent (and _pro_) lobbyist then.
>
> Bear in mind that, not only does it hinder exchange of information (usually
> truth you don't find in government- corporation-backed media), but it will
> also hinder exchange of code. The icing on the cake is that it kills
> third-party software like Firefox. It's like taking the software (and music)
> industry 15 years back... to the days of shrink-wrapped S/W.
>
> Vista now fits on a DVD with a lot of prebundled stuff (it's Ultimate with
> bits artificially disabled), so it packs a lot of stuff which benefits just
> one company. Then again, it can also be downloaded (not the torrent way).
> Could Microsoft ever use music (RIAA/MPAA) as an excuse to killing exchange
> of free software?
Hell, Microsoft could use the availability of Windows torrents (and
thus the obviously illegal distribution of various versions of Windows
from 3.1 up to Vista) as an excuse to kill the exchange of free
software. ISOHUNT.com was recently shut down. True, there was illegal
distribution of copyrighted software and movies and music, but there
are some who allow their music or movies to be distributed over
BitTorrent for non-profit purposes. (In fact, filmmaker Alex Jones
allows his documentaries on DVD to be freely copied and distributed for
"non-profit education purposes".)
I remember a month or two ago, Paul Watson of prisonplanet.com wrote an
article that said "RIAA legal ruling could shut down the internet".
Well, I replied to that article (on Watson' and Jones' MySpace pages
and on my own personal MySpace blog) and said that there was an
underlying factor to this article...the impact such a legal ruling
would have on GNU/Linux and free open-source software. If you shut down
the internet, Linspire would have to go out of business because they
would lose their meal ticket (the CNR Gold subscribers). Xandros would
have to go out of business (relies on apt-get and Xandros Networks).
Ubuntu would have to go out of business (relies on apt-get and
Synaptic/Adept). All software would be extremely-overpriced proprietary
software. No more GIMP for free...you would have to pay $500 for
Photoshop. No more OpenOffice.org for free or StarOffice for $60...you
would have to pay $500 (plus the eventual annual renewal fees) for MS
Office. No more Amarok or Rhythmbox or even Lsongs...you would have to
either use the included Windows Media Player or pay for iTunes (which,
in this case, would probably retail for about $60). No more Google
Picasa or F-Spot or Lphoto...you would have to pay hundreds of dollars
for one of the proprietary photo management tools from Adobe or Corel
or even Apple.
If Microsoft uses anything as an excuse to kill the exchange of free
software, it will be "the possibility that someone could illegally
download a copy of Windows".
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