I just read an interesting blog post about Montenegro [1]. Apparently a key to the process of becoming a country was acting like it was inevitable.

It seems that this method can be applied to many areas, one of which is the contest between Linux and some proprietary OSs.

For many years monopolists have convinced people that it was inevitable that they would monopolise all areas of software development. Why use any other software (even if it is more reliable, faster, has more features, and is cheaper) if a monopolist is about to dominate the market? The monopolist changes sometimes, the monopolist from ~1990 to now is different from the monopolist of the 1970’s, but the tactics of a computer monopolist remain the same.

The way to beat this is largely to just ignore them. There is an ongoing debate in some circles about when Linux will be “ready for the desktop“. I’ve been running Linux as my primary desktop environment since about July 1998, it’s almost 10 years of having Linux as my primary desktop environment. It seems inevitable that the Linux will take over the desktop – it’s far better for desktop use than it was 10 years ago when I switched.

Some people claim that Linux lacks driver support. Every piece of hardware that I’ve wanted to use over the last 10 years has had adequate support. Often second-hand hardware works best with Linux, hardware vendors have no reason to continue to support their old products on newer operating systems (they make more money if you buy new hardware to run the new OS). Not only is hardware support for Linux adequate, but long-term support is far superior (and I often get to use cheap second-hand hardware). Now that an increasing number of hardware vendors are supporting Linux for their new hardware (Intel, AMD, and most laptop vendors are doing some good work in this regard). It seems that everyone who has tried both says that writing drivers for Linux is easier than writing drivers for proprietary OSs, so it seems inevitable that Linux will end up with better driver support by all metrics.

Linux is designed for users. DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is not something that interests Linux developers. Run Linux and your computer will obey you and give full quality audio and video. It seems inevitable that Linux will dominate the AV section of the market (it already dominates the computer work involved with creating movies).

Free software (of which Linux is merely the most famous and popular example) is based on the principles of open design and open standards. When you use a free software program to save a file then you can be reasonably sure that you will be able to read it back again in a few decades. Most free software uses file formats that are well documented and standardised. Sometimes there are bugs in programs and new versions will use files in a different way, this is sometimes a case when you rely on a bug in an old version. Using the older version of the software is sometimes required to properly access old data. Fortunately when you have the source to the older programs they can be compiled on new systems (so different types of CPU won’t matter). Also the lack of DRM means that an OS image can be virtualised. One thing that is on my todo list is to create a set of virtual machine images of some of the most commonly used distributions of Linux so I can easily compare distributions of 10 years ago with modern distributions – it’s not technically challenging and there is no particular technical or legal obstacle to doing this. This would also mean that if someone gave me a file in some strange format from 10 years ago I would have a better chance of reading it. It seems inevitable that as the value of data increases the desire to avoid OSs that prevent people from accessing their own data will also increase, and that will eventually squeeze out most closed software from the market. This doesn’t mean the end of proprietary software, merely the end of software that holds user’s data hostage.

The majority of the world’s population does not use computers. The computers that they end up using will be cheap because they can’t afford to waste so much money on new hardware. To make cheap machines means that there will be limited resources in terms of RAM, mass storage, and CPU power which require more efficient software. Also to properly take advantage of machines with small screens and other limitations changes to the design of the software will be required. It seems inevitable that the most open software will be adapted to such environments more readily than proprietary software.

Now this doesn’t mean that we can take a break from development. In the free software community there are usually many different programs to perform a particular task with competition between the developers of the various projects. The fact that a monopolist is inevitably going to lose it’s position is of little relevance to the competition between the various free alternatives.

• [1] http://www.airs.com/blog/archives/115

I am going to make some suggestions to a company that might possibly sponsor development of free electronic text books for schools (suitable for running on an OLPC machine).

I would appreciate any suggestions for things I should include. I will make my suggestions as a blog post summarising all input I receive and send the URL to the company in question.

I just read an interesting post by Kylie Willison [1] which mentions the restaurant Lentil as Anything [2].

The restaurant chain is noteworthy for charging what people believe that the food is worth (poor people can eat for free). I think that there are cultural similarities with the Linux community, so we should have a Linux meeting at one of those restaurants some time. Comment or email me if you are interested, I’ll probably arrange the details on the LUV-talk mailing list [3].

• [1] http://kyliewillison.blogspot.com/2007/10/emergency-relief-conference.html
• [2] http://www.lentilasanything.com/
• [3] http://www.luv.asn.au

My previous post about the SFWA falsely issuing DMCA take-down notices [1] has got some reactions, many of which indicate a lack of clear reading of my post.

I am not advocating boycotting sci-fi. I am merely changing the priorities for my reading list. There must be at least 10 sci-fi books on my shelf of books to read, so refraining from buying more for a while isn’t going to impact my reading much either.

In regard to whether boycots are good or bad, it should be considered that the enjoyment of a work of art is highly subjective. If you don’t like the artist then you probably won’t enjoy the art. Boycots on products for which there are objective criteria of quality are often unsuccessful because the buyers have to make a conscious decision to buy a product of a lower quality or a higher price. I can’t make any objective claim about the relative merits of the work of Cory Doctorow and Jerry Pournelle. But it is impossible for me to enjoy reading Jerry’s work as much as I enjoy reading Cory’s work due to my opinion of the two authors.

I have just read a post by Eva Whitley [2] (the widow of Jack L. Chalker – one of my favourite authors when I was younger). She starts by describing Jack’s attitude towards electronic publishing, which sounds quite enlightened. She then notes that Del Rey has the rights to some of his books which are officially still in-print but in practice impossible to get, Baen is still paying royalties but had paid him a large advance so he won’t receive money until the royalties exceed the advance, and some books are out of print but no publisher wants to buy the rights to do a re-print. So it seems that she is not receiving money from her late husbands work partly due to book companies being uncooperative (not printing the books and not permitting others to print them without payment) and partly due to being paid in advance.

Eva states that she is happy that the SFWA issued take-down requests for copies of the work of her late husband. That is good and in fact it’s a legal requirement. No-one can legally get copyright laws enforced unless they own the copyright or they are acting on behalf of the copyright owner. She is entitled to authorise the SFWA (or any other group) to act on her behalf in regard to her copyright violations. Neither the SFWA nor anyone else can take action against copyright violations without such permission.

Jerry Pournelle has written about the situation [3]. He complains that the site owners wanted the items listed individually. The Wikipedia page about the DMCA [4] makes it quite clear that you must provide such detailed information to get something taken offline, and that the DMCA take-down request MUST include a statement claiming ownership of the material UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY.

If you make a false DMCA claim then you are committing perjury, according to Wikipedia the penalty for perjury in the US is up to five years in prison [5]. Sure any idiot can write up DMCA take-down requests for random stuff on the net and get them acted on (here’s an example of a 15yo idiot who did just that [6]). But if you want to stay out of jail you have to avoid making such false claims.

Jerry expresses a total lack of sympathy for Cory Doctorow and other people who have been victims of slander of title [7]. I wonder how he would react if someone started making public statements under penalty of perjury claiming that he didn’t own the title to some of his work. I suspect that he would desire something similar to what he desires to be done to people associated with 9-11 [8].

Finally one thing that I suggest doing to make some additional money from writing sci-fi is to release T-shirts. A basic T from cafepress.com was $7 last time I checked. $11 for a shirt based on a sci-fi book is not overly expensive and gives $4 profit for the author (more than twice what most authors make from a book sale). Shirt sales are unlikely to make as much money as book sales due to lower volumes, but the effort involved in creating a shirt design is not so great. A publishing company may deny an author (or their estate) future revenue by refraining from printing further copies, but unless they also own the trademarks related to the book and deny the author (or their estate) the right to use them then it should still be possible to make money from merchandise. Making money from merchandise is not as glamourous as making money from book royalties, but it can be effective as demonstrated by xkcd.com.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/09/17/web-scabs/
• [2] http://evawhitley.net/2007/09/08/on-scribd-jerry-pournelle-and-jacks-books/
• [3] http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view481.html
• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca
• [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury
• [6] http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,21563838-27317,00.html
• [7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander_of_title
• [8] http://www.jerrypournelle.com/war/whattodo.html

I have just read an interesting post by Ted Ts’O about copyright protection on the net [1]. Ted is well known as a free software programmer, but it’s slightly less well known that he is an avid Science-Fiction fan. In the Free Software community most people seem to be interested in Sci-Fi, but Ted is more interested than most.

Ted’s post concerns the irresponsible actions of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America [2] (SFWA). To summarise it they issued DMCA [3] take-down notices for any web page that matched a search on the names “Asimov” or “Silverberg“. I don’t approve of the DMCA laws as a collection, but take-down notices are not necessarily bad (I have issued such notices for unauthorised copies of my own work in the past). The problem in this case is that the words in question are extremely common, not only might they be used as the names for other people (authors or characters) but Asimov in particular is a well known term when describing the potential development of intelligent computers that operate robots (see the Three Laws of Robotics [4]), the term “not Asimov Compliant” has been used by Alastair Reynolds in Century Rain to refer to a class of military robots that have no compunction about killing humans.

Among the fall-out of the SFWA actions was the removal of a free novel by Cory Doctorow [4]. Incidentally my favourite free to download Cory Doctorow book is Eastern Standard Tribe [5]. craphound.com has Cory’s blog as well as links to other free Sci-Fi that he’s written.

Reading the links from Ted’s post took me to a blog entry by the current SFWA vice-president [6] which describes authors such as Cory Doctorow as “webscabs“. This offends me greatly. My work and that of my friends in writing free software could be described in the same way (and in fact is described in a similar way by some software monopolists). Every blogger could have their work described in a similar way by paid journalists.

The fact that the SFWA VP is not representing SFWA when writing such comments does little to allay concern about this. It seems to me that people with such ideas are intent on attacking my community, and that it would be wrong of me to give any of them $0.50 by buying one of their books. I resolve to not buy any more Sci-Fi books until I have read all the freely available books that I want to read. After that I will prioritise my book purchases with a significant factor being how well the author gets the concepts of copyright etc. If nothing else an author who can’t understand how copyright (something that is essential to their own livelyhood) interacts with current computer systems will have significant difficulties in predicting how technology and society will develop over the next hundred or thousand years.

My problem in reading Sci-Fi books is not in discovering books that are enjoyable and which contain interesting concepts, but in finding time to read them. Thanks to SFWA for giving me an extra criteria to cull the list of books to read.

• [1] http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2007/09/15/whack-the-gopher/
• [2] http://www.sfwa.org/
• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmca
• [4] http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/science-fiction-writ-1.html
• [5] http://craphound.com/est/
• [6] http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/10039.html

The Cyber Law Center has blogged about the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia Limited being permitted to charge night-club owners $1.05 per person per night for playing commercial music up from $0.07. The number of people is calculated on the maximum licensed capacity of the venue – not good if the venue isn’t full. Of course given the huge prices of drinks in clubs this probably makes no difference to the profit margins.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in any of the articles I’ve read is whether this applies to clubs that don’t play music from artists represented by the PPCA. If a club can freely play music produced under a Creative Commons license that permits commercial use then the fee increases would be good for the production of music. Also encouraging clubs to pay musicians to perform live is a good thing, most of the best musicians started out with live performances in bars.

The recording industry is the enemy of music. They under-pay artists and lock out competition giving us a succession of talent-less wage-slaves on the radio. It’s difficult to imagine any change other than Digital Restriction Management (DRM) that could make things worse.

A few days ago I wrote my first DMCA take-down notice, I followed the instructions on the Wikipedia page. The reason for this was that someone was mirroring my blog and putting google adverts on the copy. Before I started putting Google adverts on my web sites I wouldn’t have been bothered about this. But now that I’m making a small amount of money from Google advertising I don’t want someone else just mirroring my content and taking the money away from me.

The person who managed the site in question took a surprisingly large amount of time to comply with the request (a discussion of several messages plus a couple of reminders over the course of a few days).

The most recent news about DMCA abuse is the case of trying to prevent the distribution of a code used for decrypting DVD-HD. It is widely believed that copyright was used to prevent the distribution. Strangely many people who otherwise have a good understanding of technology have been saying “you can’t copyright a number”. What precisely is a program binary if not a long series of numbers (or a single large number depending on how you look at it)? For that matter a JPEG file or the ASCII representation of a book is also either a very large number or a series of small numbers. Also apparently it’s not protected under copyright but under the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA.

If it was a matter of copyright it would not be an issue of whether a number can be copyrighted, but what defines such a number. One criteria for copyright is that it has to be on something non-trivial (EG I couldn’t copyright the use of “a few days ago” as an introduction) so length is a criteria. Another is that it has to be a creative expression (so an encryption key can’t be copyright). However in many jurisdictions there are separate laws regarding distributing passwords without permission, such laws are designed for preventing people from granting unauthorised access to computers but I believe that they can be used more generally (I have been advised that such laws exist in the state of Pennsylvania in the US – I’m not sure what the law is in other regions but expect that something so useful would be copied).

Another breaking story is that the RIAA has created an organisation with a US government mandate to collect royalties on ALL music that is played over Internet radio. This includes music for which the copyright owner is not an RIAA member and does not consent to have the royalties applied. You can create your own music, grant free access to everyone out of philanthropy, and then have the RIAA tax the music!

It’s unfortunate that only the down-side of this dramatic change in copyright law has been discussed. Compulsory licenses have a lot of potential in other areas of copyright material. Recently people have been complaining that government sponsored scientific research is often only published in journals that cost large amounts of money. Why not have a compulsory license for journals at a fair price that everyone can afford? Software is often unreasonably expensive (Windows Vista with the latest version of MS Office can cost up to twice as much as a new PC), let’s have compulsory licenses for software at a reasonable fee! Software vendors often cease selling old versions of software to force customers to upgrade, a compulsory license scheme would permit us to buy MS-DOS 3.30 at a reasonable price regardless of whether MS wants to sell it.

Finally there is at least one evil cult that claims it’s “religious” texts are copyright as a way of preventing the public from seeing what a drug-addled second-rate sci-fi author produces. Let’s have a compulsory license for them so everyone can read them!

The only thing that’s wrong with the RIAA scheme is that there is no option for copyright owners to directly license their material to the users (including granting a free license if they so desire). The up-side of this is that it proves beyond all doubt that the RIAA is not representing copyright owners.

Update: I initially accepted the claims about the DMCA take-down notices being based on copyright rather than anti-circumvention. Since learning of my mistake I modified this post to reflect the fact that it was not a copyright issue.