Here’s a nifty little extension for Firefox which lets you share the contents of your media files with your friends. P2P without the public - or the RIAA house detectives - able to see what you are sharing.
With broadband and this sort of private, virus/adware/malware free, enviornment my CD collection is your CD collection…Brilliant and another reason why the current copyright regime is doomed.
Written by jay on December 28th, 2005 with no comments.
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An eigth of a ton of silly putty? When you are a 20 something millionaire the sky is the limit. I kinda like the image of the guy grabbing the ink off a piece of newsprint…sort of sums up the business Google is in.
Update: given the spike in my traffic…it seems that there is more than silly putty going on in the Googleplex.
Written by jay on December 28th, 2005 with 1 comment.
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A French government crackdown on digital piracy has backfired because lawmakers rebelled by endorsing amendments to legalize the online sharing of music and movies instead of punishing it.
The vote last week by members of France’s lower house dealt a setback to Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, who introduced the draft legislation. Showbiz and cultural celebrities protested the latest move, an indication that the amendments’ supporters may eventually have to back down.
Under the original proposals, those caught pirating copy-protected material would have faced $360,000 in fines and up to three years in jail.
An 11th-hour government offer to give illegal downloaders two warnings prior to prosecution was not enough to stem the rebellion. Instead, the amendments voted would legalize file-sharing by anyone paying a monthly royalties duty estimated at $8.50.
post-gazette
It would be nice to see this sort of backbench epater the government in Canada.
In fact, at the core of the revolt is a very simple and rather elegant proposal which Canada would be wise to examine before rushing to embrace the strictures of the WIPO rules on downloading.
A simple royalty, perhaps based on usage, would go a long way towards making the illusion of enforceable copyright in an age of perfect replication edge closer to reality. The poor RIAA keeps suing its customers and Bittorrents and assorted bits of P2P software simply keeep expanding.
What has changed is the technology; what has not changed is the capacity of intellectual property holders to realize that their business model is not going to work in an era of seamless copying.
Written by jay on December 28th, 2005 with no comments.
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