Category Archives: Free

Information wants to be free.

Neutrality

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The Internet and Canadian Healthcare both have something in common. Discussions are happening over whether the tiering of the system will improve the services they provide. Many Canadians are staunchly against the privatization of healthcare and are quite proud of the service that we get. Likewise, many people on the Internet are opposed to the tiering of the Internet, proposed by some American telecoms, and are quite proud of the open nature of the Internet. As you can see, there are some very interesting parallels. Continue reading →

Shakespeare and the Public Domain

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An interesting point in English was raised the other day. We’ve moseyed our way on to Act III of Hamlet. We skipped a part of II.ii because apparently, it was Shakespeare talking about his views on theatre at the time. That led to something about his children, who were killed by the plague. So my English teacher says that there’s no one left who’s related to Shakespeare to collect all the royalties from every copy of his plays that were sold, although that could easily be rectified if they could get a DNA sample or something and match it with someone.

The fact is that it wouldn’t matter whether any of his relatives were alive or not anyway, since they wouldn’t be able to get any of that money we think they are entitled to. Why? Because of a nifty little thing called the Public Domain. Continue reading →

DeCSS

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I realize that there are many who don’t understand how I can hold my unique views about filesharing, music, and software. I’ve already posted about copyright law and how downloading is quite fair use and about free culture. Now, let’s look at the law again.

This time, it’s the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. You may be wondering what the DMCA has to do with anything. I mean, it’s an American law that says you can’t circumvent any digital protections or locks, like those found in Windows Media. Well, it has a lot to do with Linux, really.

In fact, many Linux distributions are illegal. Continue reading →

Voluntary Collective Licensing

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A new ISP from the UK called PlayLouder has a deal with Sony-BMG to allow any of their customers to share any Sony-BMG music with other PlayLouder customers. According to BoingBoing, this is what’s called voluntary collective licensing by the EFF, who is fighting for the filesharing in the United States. The prices for DSL service from PlayLouder is around the same price as other providers. Continue reading →