Yesterday, in the Viacom v. Google litigation, the federal court for the Southern District of New York ordered Google to produce to Viacom (over Google's objections):(Fortunately this ruling appears to be illegal, but you can easily imagine that less-rich companies couldn't afford to appeal.) Time to log out of YouTube and start using Tor.all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party websiteThe court’s order grants Viacom's request and erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users. The VPPA passed after a newspaper disclosed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. As Congress recognized, your selection of videos to watch is deeply personal and deserves the strongest protection.
Debian Etch will include a browser called “IceWeasel,” which is simply Firefox rebranded with open source artwork, whereas Ubuntu Feisty will include a browser called “Firefox” which is a little bit pregnant.
— Mark Pilgrim again. "A little bit pregnant" here is code for "a little bit non-free". (Apparently Firefox isn't free software because it contains non-free artwork; you can distribute it without the non-free artwork, but then you're not allowed to call it Firefox. That's what Debian is doing.)
Mark Pilgrim's recent rants about Creative Commons noncommercial licenses inspired me to read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, which is linked from said rant.
I found an HTML e-book version of it, which is apparently more or less identical to the version published in book form. Right down to the copyright notices. Yup, it even says "Copyright © Lawrence Lessig, 2004. All rights reserved." It is of course his copyright, but the second part is incorrect, because the book is licensed under CC-BY-NC, which allows noncommercial distribution provided you give the author credit. So his right to restrict distribution is not entirely reserved. It gives the other boilerplate copyright messages as well: "no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored ... or transmitted ... without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book" (of course the CC license constitutes permission, so this clause has little effect and is rather misleading) and most laughable:
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
I've not read the book yet, but I gather it criticises the lack of creativity caused by the current draconian copyright regime and talks about alternatives, including CC. So the fact that it has a copyright notice of this sort strikes me as very, very bizarre.
From Groklaw, an extract from the Free Software Foundation Europe's statement on Microsoft's recent fine:
"If we are to believe Microsoft's numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. ... For users, this should be a shock: Microsoft apparently does not know the software that controls 95% of all desktop computers on this planet. Imagine General Motors releasing a press statement to the extent that even though they had 300 of their best engineers work on this for two years, they cannot provide specifications for the cars they built."
It's long been my opinion that closed "standards" (including protocols and file formats) are an unmitigated loss for many reasons, though most especially because they lock the user into the first vendor's solution. It's gratifying that the European Commission has the intelligence to realise this, though given the trend in European (and other) governments towards open standards, perhaps not too surprising.