Patrick’s Rants

If you’ve been following what the recording industry cartel has been doing to people (running roughshod over the legal system, extorting funds from paralyzed individuals, dead people, grandmothers and little children) you will – no doubt – enjoy this sliver of hope and sanity offered by a judge in Florida.
Recording Industry vs. The People

In a surprising move against the music industry a judge has ruled against the RIAA.

The entire ruling is available in PDF format.
Just having files on your computer is not considered infringement if we follow this ruling. Making copies of your CDs to play on your computer and your MP3 player will not be considered infringement. And it shouldn’t be. There is a concept of fair use that consumers have been able to fall back on. If I buy a CD I can listen to it in my car, on my MP3 player and I can make copies for backup purposes. Note that I wrote, “if I buy a CD”. I don’t personally (nor by extension do any of my family members) download music that I haven’t paid for unless the creators have made it available. Nor do we trade CDs or any of the other stuff that is explicitly illegal. The fair use stuff I’m going to keep doing.

This is why some people call it Digital Restrictions Management:
Don’t bother to try listening to your music on another computer. You don’t own it, you don’t have the right to play it, Bill Gates gets to decide when, where and how you listen to music you bought rented from him.
And in case you didn’t follow the links in the story, Major League Baseball isn’t without its own faults.
I want my music, my movies, my entertainment unlocked and available for me to play when where and how I want. I will not buy restricted or encumbered music.

The State of New Jersey was going to send some voting machines to Ed Felten to check out. The voting machine company, Sequoia Voting System sent him an email threatening to “protect their intellectual property rights” which you can read on Felten’s blog Freedom To Tinker.

The Brad Blog goes into more detail, even encouraging the readers to contact the New Jersey Attorney General to impress upon her the importance of elections that are open, error free and not subject to being subverted. Here’s my email:

I understand that your office has declined to order testing of electronic voting machines manufactured by Sequoia Voting Systems. Based upon reports available across the internet, Sequoia machines have errors that may affect election outcomes. These machines need to be verified to ensure that democracy is not subverted. Your state, as most states, has open records laws. We should expect no less from our voting machines; that our vote is counted by observing the proper operation of the voting machines.

Anyone else notice all the discounted TV shows and movies out on DVD this last week or so? Wal-Mart has pallets of movies for $1.00 (they’re a bit out of the main stream, but still $1.00). Target is selling fairly popular movies for $5.00, $7.50 and $10.00. TV series are going for $9.99 per season for some shows.

Music CDs still seem to be on the high end – well above $10.00 for even the “unknown” artists. Still, that’s cheaper than $9,500.00 per song that the music industry attorneys would have you believe that songs are worth for you to copy them to your iPod.

I wonder what would happen to music sharing if the price of CDs actually came down to a reasonable range? CDs tend to be less than an hour of music (of arguable quality) and all the $7.00 Christmas music CDs should tell you that anything priced two to three times as much is way out of line.

You know Congress has gone too far when they start writing laws that allow ordinary citizens to lose their computers in favor of music and movie studios. That’s apparently what some pending legislation offers; the chance for grandma to lose her computer over alleged “file sharing”. Grandma doesn’t have to be convicted of anything, just accused by the movie and record studios. Forget making a backup copy of your movies or a CD that you want to listen to on your iPod, you’re a criminal now and your computer can be seized and auctioned. Your rights are being melted away in favor of Steam Boat Willie. Either you smile while Mickey slips you the his
“mickey” or you write to your Congressman and I mean now. Unfortunately I have these the unconvicted “slippery Dick” Rick Renzi (not running for re-election, but not man enough to step out of the way of someone who might do some good) and John McCain as my representatives. Shout out to John Conyers, man of the people. Man up John, you work for us, not Mickey Mouse. It’s time to protect our rights against oppression before the uprising takes you out.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1298
http://judiciary.house.gov/newscenter.aspx?A=887
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9829826-38.html

The Associated Press has a story on the Bull Shit – er Business Software – Alliance and its bullying tactics titled, Software Group Targets Small Business. This again points out that the rules are terribly broken in favor of software companies. If you buy a music CD (another topic) then you own that music CD. You can sell it, give it away or burn it in protest when Garth Brooks decides to stop making CDs because they can be *gasp* sold to someone else in a second hand store – and poor Garth’s kids will have to go without dinner.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If you buy a box set of Microsoft’s latest operating system, XP (because who would want to buy that abomination Vista?) and install it on a computer that you have sitting around (another reason to not buy Vista – that thing’s a hog on computers older than three months) and then you forget about it. If that computer happens to be in a business setting you are at risk of being “audited” by the BS squad. They come in, look at your Certificate of Authenticity labels that you dutifully put on the outside of the computer case. They look at your hologram protected Microsoft CD and your faded Best Buy receipt and decide that you “stole” the software from Microsoft and now you have to pay up big. You were legal but your receipt faded so you couldn’t prove that you didn’t heist a case of CDs or that you didn’t buy the CD from someone else who stole it. So you must have broken the law, or someone else did in the process. There’s a name for people like you Captain Sparrow and that’s pirate. Don’t bother with innocent until proven guilty, this is the BS squad you’re dealing with. I did find it interesting that the money extorted by the BSA does not go to the companies that are allegedly wronged by your criminal activities, such as Microsoft in this case, it goes back into the BS squad’s budget. Like a rouge regime, the money is used to pay for more goons to extort more money.

I have a thought about keeping track of what you legally installed (and just who those disks belong to once you buy them in the store). How about use the unique serial number on the CD to track ownership? I mean, if you can only install software on one machine then the serial number issued by the company that produces the software should suffice right? How about the Certificate of Authenticity? That tells you that the software you are buying is genuine. It doesn’t tell the goon squad, but maybe it should. The other option is to never use software that comes from BS members. It’s a little tough in some cases, but it can be done. If you haven’t read them here are some stories of people who have jettisoned Microsoft from the pirate ship:
City of Largo Linux success
and a follow-up
Ernie Ball 2002 story
Ernie Ball, 2003 story
And there are plenty more… so back off goon squad. Treat your customers with respect instead of a small country that you can invade and pillage. Oh wait, you don’t know how to do that.

In an interesting, albeit extreme, view of copyright law, John Tehranian writes INFRINGEMENT NATION: COPYRIGHT REFORM AND THE LAW/NORM GAP. In the article he describes the typical day of mythical “John” who manages to rack up millions of dollars in potential penalties on a daily basis just by doing the little things that many of us do. While I don’t have a problem with anything that I write be copyrighted as soon as it’s in a “tangible form” (such as this blog) I do have a problem with copyright lasting for well over a hundred years. Does anyone really care enough about my opinions that they should be protected until I have great great grandchildren? And at that point, shouldn’t someone have just removed this blather from the web?

There’s an idea:
Killing the RIAA: Is “stealing” music the same as supporting music? – TECH.BLORGE.com

In an equine bowel ejection titled Fair use is not a consumer right Patrick Ross (No relation. I’m not related to that starfish fellow, either if you must know) argues that telling “consumers” that they have a fair use right to things that they buy or watch is simply not true. You, consumer do not have the right to make back up copies of your music or your software nor do you have the right to show your movies to your friends without paying an admittance fee to the movie studio. And the movie studios have every single right to tell you to stop stealing their movies. That’s why there is an FBI warning at the beginning of movies that you own – to stop your inner thief. And no one, no one has the right to tell you that you have a right to make backup copies. He argues that you have an “affirmative defense” of your legal use of your movies, so that when they sue you – and they will – you have a defense.

If he wasn’t hard enough to swallow in the comments is this little gem, a horse apple if you will,

Good column!

I write my own music. I can disseminate and dipose of it as I see fit. Because you may purchase one of my tunes does not give you all of my rights – I retain the overwhelming balance/bundle. In other words – you are privileged to play my music because I say so, not because you have a right to.

Nope. I can play your music because I have a copy of it. You have the right to make additional copies and to sell those copies. It’s that simple. You retain the right to make copies for sale.

The whole fair use debate is specious. It is designed to promote a culture of poaching and freeriding. Copyright holders should not be ashamed to defend against this freerider culture – they seek to take your fruits with recompense.

The so-called “Fair use debate” centers around what I’m allowed to do with my CD once I buy it. Can I burn a copy so that my original stays pristine. I have four kids. They’re hard on CDs. Wipe your mouth, there’s still a little steaming manure clinging to your lip.

Taken to the extreme, who’s going to want to produce original work if it can’t be protected; if through expansive fair use “rights” a person who had little to do with your creation and risk can outright steal what you’ve sweated over?

The answer – no one. Not even Larry Lessig or Ed Balck.

Like the Tidy Bowl Man on a bad Bermuda vacation this argument is circling the drain here. Fair use says I can take your post, interject my comments and turn it into a new copyrighted work. I can also make backup copies of my CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes (do I still have those?) etc. I’m not selling them or giving them to my friends, I don’t buy ripped copies, I don’t sit in the movie theater with my video camera. You seem to think that when I say “Fair Use” I mean I want you to make music that I don’t have to pay for and that I’m a freeloader. <sniff> <sniff> Check your shoe, I think you stepped in something.Horse Apple comment

Oh… I commented here cause it’s more fun and I don’t have to register to spew my opinion.