Music industry shoots itself in foot, again

IFPI Advises Kids to Use LimeWire and Kazaa:

Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched a campaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers of filesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct the kids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.

Hizbullah versus Lebanon

I’m at a loss over who I’d like to see win in the recent fighting between Hizbullah and supporters of the Lebanese government.

On the one hand, although Hizbullah say they no longer want to make Lebanon into an Islamic state, there are no doubt still some very dodgy people in the Hizbullah leadership, with very dodgy religious agendas. And the more religion gets out of politics and retreats into the private sphere, the better it will be for the entire human species.

On the other hand, the fighting statrted because the Lebanese government wanted Hizbullah to scrap their secure telecom network, which provided telephone and Ineternet communications independently of the Lebanese government. I think everyone should have access to secure telecoms networks that are independent of governments.

The RIAA are worried

The RIAA are worried. Worried that someone, somewhere might still not hate them, after they’ve treated music fans and musicians alike with contempt for years. To rectify this, they’re trying to pass a law that would allow them to seize people’s houses (in the USA, at least) if they’re caught with unauthorised music:

I was just alerted that the House of Reps has passed HR 4279, with the lovely name, PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008). Like the doublespeak PATRIOT Act and Peacekeeper missiles, PRO-IP puts local law enforcement in a position to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. Which means that instead of the RIAA simply trying to collect fines, they can also incite local authorities to collect all the computers and related gear that was used to pirate.

If this bill is passed in its present form by the Senate and signed, that means there’s no more pro forma RIAA lawsuit payoffs, because if you wind up settling with the RIAA, you could still lose all your stuff in addition to any fee you paid them.

In fact, you could lose your house even if you haven’t pirated music:

This is particularly irksome in light of the MSN Music shutdown, about which the EFF has written a strong and powerful letter. It is increasingly likely a normal person could have purchased music legally from an online site, burned it to an ordinary audio CD, and in the right set of circumstances be branded a pirate because the original “granting” authority no longer exists to prove that the consumer was a legitimate purchasers.

If this law passes, I’m sure a few well-publicised cases will turn everybody against the RIAA and their increasingly desperate tactics, not just in the USA but in other developed countries. And then the backlash will begin: politicians will find they can’t get re-elected unless they stop sucking up to the RIAA, and they’ll start enacting sensible copyright laws, ones that recognize that the Internet, with it’s ability to instantly, effortlessly copy and transmit information, isn’t going away.

Tits and cocks at the RSPB

The RSPB’s website runs censoring software: You’re not allowed to say cocks, but tits are alright, apparently.

On a similar note, the BBC’s running the story that Great tits cope well with warming.

(via Liberal England)

FucksYouUpForSure

Remember a few years ago when Microsoft released a music DRM system called PlaysForSure? The idea was that a load of online music stores would sell music in this format, and lots of different MP3 players would support it, and so if a customer bought “PlaysForSure” music they could be sure it would play on their “PlaysForSure” music player.

(Of course, if you want music that really does play for sure, get it in MP3 format, since that is supported by essentially all music players and computers. PlaysForSure, because it’s a DRM system, is intrinsically about preventing stuff from working, rather than making it inter-operable. So Microsoft’s name for their system is essentially fraudulent.)

Anyway, some people fell for the Microsoft lies and bought PlaysForSure music, although the system was never a big success, and Microsoft didn’t support it for their own Zune music player.

But now, Microsoft are turning off the servers which authenticate PlaysForSure music:

Along with that, Microsoft shut down its failed online music store, and now for the kicker, it’s telling anyone who was suckered into buying that DRM’d content that it’s about to nuke the DRM approval servers that let you transfer the music to new machines. That means you need to authorize any songs you have on whatever machine you want — and that’s the only place they’ll be able to reside forever. And, of course, any upgrade to your operating system (say from XP to Vista) and you lose access to your music as well. By now, hopefully, everyone is aware of why DRM is problematic, but it’s nice of Microsoft to give one final demonstration by basically taking away more rights for the music it sold people with the promise that Microsoft would keep the music available.

The moral of this story? Never, ever buy DRM’ed media or any DRM system — the companies selling it will fuck you up the arse as soon as they think it’s in their interests to do so. Instead, get media in an uncrippled format — either buy it, or if it’s not legally available in a non-DRM format, acquire it via a P2P network such as BitTorrent.

Why engineers are over-represented in terror cells

Why are engineers over-represented in terrorist cells? Here’s why.

The Internet? Just a fad!

Courtesy of Paleo-Future, here’s an article in Newsweek from 1995 that predicts the Internet has no future of importance. Some selections:

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Why should religion get a free ride?

Chris Dillow notes that Gordon Brown is privileging religion:

What is a conscience? This is the question Brown opened when he said that “exercising your conscience will mean for Labour Party members a free vote” on parts of the embryology bill.

But, as Janine asks, why should conscience only permit a free vote here? To take just one example, many Labour MPs consciences might - or should - stop them wanting to put people in jail for 42 days without charge. But there’s little hope of a free vote on the Counter Terrorism bill.

What Brown means by “conscience”, then, is “religious belief.” Which raises the question: why should religious beliefs have a special status in politics that allows MPs free votes when they don’t get them on other grounds?

Why should religion be privileged above other belief systems? Dillow says it shouldn’t be. I go further than that: religious beliefs should be accorded less respect, less status, than for example secular liberal beliefs.

There are about 6 billion people in the world, and about 100 million of them die every year. Most of these people die of diseases, many (or all) of which could be curable over time with medical research. So medical research saves lives, and being against medical research — which opponents of the embryology bill are — kills people. Hitler only killed 50 million or so; these people want 100 million potentially preventable deaths to happen every year.

Most of the religious people who oppose the embryology bill are I suppose in their private lives good and decent people; certainly the vast majority don’t personally go round killing people. Which leads me to the conclusion that although good people do good things, and bad people do bad things, it takes religion to make good people do bad things.

Free our bills!

MySociety (the people behind They Work For You, The Public Whip, etc) want parliament to publish bills in a better way electronically so that citizens can more easily see what’s going on in Westminster. They’re calling this campaign Free Our Bills:

Writing, discussing and voting on bills is what we employ our MPs to do. If enough MPs vote on bills they become the law, meaning you or I can get locked up if they pass a bad one.

Bills are, like, so much more important than what MPs spend on furniture.

The problem is that the way in which Bills are put out is completely incompatible with the Internet era, so nobody out there ever knows what the heck people are actually voting for or against. We need to free our Bills in order for most people to be able to understand what matters about them.

They need this information so that they can make information about bills better available to the public:

Unless Parliament produces better bills:

• We can’t give you email alerts to tell you when a bill mentions something you might be interested in.
• We can’t tell you what amendments your own MP is asking for, or voting on.
• We can’t help people who know about bills annotate them to explain what they’re really going on about for everyone else.
• We can’t build services that would help MPs and their staff notice when they were being asked to vote on dumb or dubious things.
• We can’t really give a rounded view of how useful your MP is if we can’t see their involvement with the bill making process.
• We can’t do about 12 zillion other things that we’re not even bright enough to think of yet.

The actual technical changes they need to do this are fairly simple, and appear to be well thought out.

If you think this is worthwhile (if you live in the UK, you should do) then you can join their campaign via the form on their web page.

I guess I won’t be flying with that airline, then

I won’t be flying with any airline that takes up this idea:

Force everyone to wear a bracelet that, when remotely activated, gives the person a debilitating shock.

No, really. A company is trying to commercialize this idea.

I wonder what happens when the computer controlling this fails, and gives everybody a shock? Or when someone is shocked who has a medical condition which is made worse, or they die? Somehow I don’t think this has been fully thought through.