November 2006 Archives
A good article containing some of the points from the cc-licenses discussion about DRM:http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/debian_and_the_creative_commons
Debugging images from draw-something modified to use AARON's new colour algorithm. Like I say, they're debugging images. The colour is using a single choice probability and hasn't been tested properly yet. I also need to distribute the forms better but that's outside the control of the colour algorithm.
- "So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician."
- It's a manifesto...
- Commentary on the Realtime Art Manifesto
- "Apparently, having absconded with George Clinton's copyrights, Bridgeport is now shaking down artists like Jay-Z. Of course, lawsuits like this also make it harder for lesser-known sample-based artists to get distribution, radio play, and CD pressing ser
- "Welcome to the Napster era of Second Life."
- "The US government is quietly confiscating works of art produced by struggling artists who were enrolled in President Franklin Roosevelt's “New Deal” economic recovery programme"
- Architectural plans remixed as humanoid robots.
The GPL concerns Use of software but is triggered by Distribution. Use is not the same as Distribution. In particular Distribution is not a form of Use. It is common to confuse the two, but this is a mistake similar to confusing use value with exchange value in economics. Strictly speaking only users of software have the right to distribute it (well, receive its source).If you receive a piece of music and listen to it (or remix it, or cover it, or...) you are a User of that music, and are free to distribute it. If you do not listen to a piece of music you are not a User, and do not strictly speaking have the right to Distribute it.A recent survey showed that music users regarded sharing music that they have purchased with their friends as acceptable but that they regarded large-scale commercial copying without paying the original musician unacceptable. That is they supported Distribution by Users but not Distribution in the absence of Use. This is the difference between Use and Distribution as a social norm.NC may seem to reflect this norm, even in its tolerance of peer-to-peer filesharing (which is Commercial Use under US law). Peer-to-peer filesharing between individual users of music allows them to share music that you have bought with their "200,000 closest friends" as Lessig puts it.But the mechanics of a peer-to-peer service, or a repository site, amount to Distribution without Use. The GPL 3 draft has been modified to reflect this, allowing distribution of GPL licensed binaries through peer-to-peer systems. The personal use of a peer-to-peer network or a repository does not break the norm of Distribution by Users. But the monetization of such systems, the only hope Web 2.0 has of turning a profit, does.
The NC business model that Magnatune use has clearly inspired Creative Commons. Magnatune's success makes them a very positive model for a record label, but not in the way that might be expected from their use of NC. The problem is that the threats to their livelihoods that recording artists actually face are not the same as the ones that NC actually tackles.NC doesn't protect artists from losing value from non-sales distribution.NC explicitly allows both internet-era filesharing and walkman-era personal copying. NC therefore gives away any value that a direct audience for music can actually want to take. And it is as powerless as standard copyright to stop organized illegal commercial copying.NC doesn't protect artists from being ripped off by middlemen.Artists who use NC can still sign to a record label. Which NC then cannot prevent ripping them off, failing to promote them, or dropping them. Magnatune clearly state that they are not evil and make clear and public the financial terms of their relationship with their signed artists. This is far more important than NC for artists not being ripped off.NC is not the dissuader in NC-SA, SA is.Magnatune will sell proprietary licences for music by their artists to film producers who wish to use the music commercially. But it is unlikely that those producers would SA their films if the music they wish to use was SA-only. NC on top of SA is simply redundant in this case.NC is not Magnatune's secret sauce. NC doesn't stop artists losing sales, being ripped off, or losing proprietary use revenue. The secret sauce in Magnatune's business model is their strong and public ethical position, and this is far more difficult to reproduce technologically than their use of NC.
Harold gave an excellent presentation of how and why AARON's new colouring system works. I've just about hacked up an implementation of the system for draw-something from my notes in a couple of hours, so you can tell that Harold is a thorough speaker as well as an insightful and sometimes humorous one. ;-)AARON's new colour system uses three lists of numbers, one for hue created from an additive series with a random start, one for saturation generated randomly and sorted into low/medium/high ranges, and another for value created the same way. AARON then chooses the hue according to the kind of object, and the saturation and value from the low/medium/high ranges according to the probabilities assigned to them. There's some error correction and some mach-band-like generation of slightly lighter and darker colours for edge adornment but as Harold said it is a very much simpler system than AARON was using before.It is also a strikingly successful system aesthetically. The colours and the contrast of the images are pleasing and interesting, sometimes mellow, sometimes dramatic, always "creative". Perhaps this has to do with the new system matching our cognitive perceptual system's preferences in some way.I asked a question, badly, and got an answer with some interesting details about how AARON handles intersecting objects. A Furtherfield reviewer was there so hopefully a review will be up on Furtherfield soon. Many thanks to the excellent Computer Arts Society and Imperial College for arranging the talk.
Release The Music » Sign our petition We believe that any extension to the term of copyright protection for sound recordings would be highly damaging to artists and the public good. We hereby request that you publicly reject all demands from all parties for any extension, retrospective or prospective, to the term of copyright protection for sound recordings.Readers in the UK, please sign this petition from ORG and also take a look at the Release The Music web site:http://www.releasethemusic.org/
- "The RGBLED and mRGBLED controllers allow you to control the color of RGBLEDs. This might sound trivial, but it actually takes a lot of resources to let you be able to set an RGBLED to any color you'd like."
- "The Public Catalogue Foundation has come up with the first informed estimate for the number of paintings held in public collections in the United Kingdom: over 150,000. Of these, the foundation says, over 80% are not on view to the public. "
- "we're in a conflict between two ethical imperatives, and we must balance them appropriately in order to live ethically. Artists need to make a living, and excellence should be rewarded."
- "onliness v.1.0.1 is released as open source music. the album itself along with the v1.0.1 audio source files and programming are available for free download and modification."
- "onliness v1.0.1 is released as Open Source Music (OSM). demon doc defines OSM as any musical composition(s) where the copyright owner..."
- Ideologically driven Free Art project under the FDL.
Should CC release software licenses? | Creative CommonsIt has been suggested that there would be some value in CC entering the field of software licensing. I am skeptical (there are plenty of software licenses) but the explosion of mixed code/content platforms (e.g., Flash) has led me to at least get feedback about the idea. So if you have thoughts about this, I'd be grateful if you could send them to software-licensing@creativecommons.orgPlease email CC to oppose this. It's an interesting area but YAL is not the solution.Possibly CC could draft a GPL-3 exception to allow aggregation with BY-SA content?
Boing Boing: Copyright explained through a wild west metaphorBounty Hunters is a clever exercise in explaining the copyfight. I suspect it will resonate strongly with some readers who haven't encountered or understood the subject.I bought a print copy a while back and I highly recommend it.
In "Free Culture" Lawrence Lessig described a perfect storm of law, technology, media mergers and divergent social norms that had broken the tradition of free culture. Now Lessig has the solution to this problem: a NonCommercial economy of sharing and reputation building.This seems like an elegant solution. Individuals can create and share and build on work freely without being unfairly exploited commercially. When they have built their reputation to the point where they can monetize their work, they have still retained their commercial rights. And the ability to withhold a propritary licence gives creators much needed protection for their reputation. If value, then right. If right, then value.Sharing without creators having to accept harm to their earning ability or their good name in exchange for freedom. Who could disagree with such a perfect system? You would have to be a free content (sic) zealot, or even a Debian free software fanatic who doesn't want artists to make any money because making money is wrong. Possibly even a communalist (see Wikipedia for a definition of the last term).On the surface these are powerful memes to argue against. But if we scratch off the shiny gloss of this argument we find that they are ethically and economically broken.Creators who reserve a right of creative fiat may see that same right exercised against them, and they will appreciate it much less in those circumstances. This is a permission culture, not a free culture.Creators who release their work at no cost under an NC licence will have to compete with their own work available gratis if they ever try to monetize the same work. This makes NC at least as effective at destroying earning ability as other CC licences allegedly are while giving less freedom and returning less value as well.And creators who use work made by others will have to pay for that use if they wish to charge for their own work. Which may make producing documentaries, to take one of Lessig's own canonical examples, impossible to meet the costs of unless the artist has already entered into proprietary culture. This is an economic permission culture, but still a permission culture.But at least nobody will get ripped off. No starving artists will be exploited to make middlemen multimillionaires without giving so much as a digital tip to the people who make their fortune possible. This is Web 2.0, everybody shares. And the people who enable the sharing are peers with the creators......Right up to the moment where one of the survivors of the first web bubble or an even older media corporation buys those enablers out. Then all that NC work makes somebody millions, and it isn't the people who made the NC work.Pleading for NC in the name of artists is, as ever, pleading for middlemen. Creative Commons's NC licence very carefully redefines US law to define peer to peer sharing as noncommercial. You don't even have to get bought out, you can charge people for using pipes or pods rather than selling them a CD. Given a choice between having to pay artists who might resonate with the public enough to recover their advance or being able to guarantee making much more money just by paying off a couple of hackers, media corporation executives are more than capable of spotting which option offers maximum return to their shareholders.So as well as its other problems NC protects against a business model that was dying when NC was being drafted but delivers its users up wholesale to the profiteers of the Web 2.0 bubble without any need for compensation. Opposing this NonCommercial Permission culture is not simple-minded idealism, it is basic economics.
- Scans of historical anatomy books.
What would Nixon do?- Richard Nixon.
- " OpenFest 20064-th annual cAonference, 4–5-th November, 2006 г.Central Military Club, Sofia"
- "this is apparently some kind of a covenant not to sue, not a true cross licensing deal. I think that's how they plan to step over and around the GPL. The Novell FAQ says the deal was worked out with the GPL in mind. Right. Like how not to abide by it."
- "You'll perhaps remember NEWSgrist's coverage of Blanch v. Koons (Nov. 2005): Jeff Koons had won a summary judgment in a case he took on when commercial photographer Andrea Blanch sued him for copyright infringement; Blanch appealed, and has lost. This is
- "This year, Ronin Press released a new edition of the Principia Discordia, changing the title to Discordia: Hail the Goddess of Chaos and Confusion, altering some of the text, and slapping a copyright on the work. This has angered many of Discordia's pope
