Blackmoor Vituperative

A gang of Somali pirates has kidnapped a British couple, who were sailing to Tanzania.

The Chandlers set off from the Seychelles for Tanzania on October 21 on their 38-foot-yacht, the Lynn Rival, according to their blog. A distress beacon was activated October 23, according to naval officials.

(from Briton says pirates holding him, wife, CNN)

Yet again, I wonder how — or if — the news media will compare/contrast these real pirates with the so-called “pirates” who buy the latest Miley Cyrus album and share it with their friends.

A reminder:

Sharing is not piracy
Copying is not piracy

Red Hat has filed an amicus curiae brief in a major Supreme Court case. In the brief, Red Hat makes a strong case against software patents, arguing that the legal reasoning that led to software patents was flawed and that the pending Bilski case provides the Supreme Court with an important opportunity to rectify this long-standing problem with the patent system.

[…]

“Far from encouraging innovation, this proliferation of patents has seriously encumbered innovation in the software industry. Software is an abstract technology, and translating software functions into patent language generally results in patents with vague and uncertain boundaries,” wrote Red Hat VP Rob Tiller in the brief. “Under the Federal Circuit’s previous erroneous approach, the risk of going forward with a new software product now always entails an unavoidable risk of a lawsuit that may cost many millions of dollars in legal fees, as well as actual damages, treble damages, and an injunction that terminates a business. Only those with an unusually high tolerance for risk will participate in such a market.”

(from Red Hat tells Supremes: software patents stifle innovation, Ars Technica)

The issuing of patents was an experiment. That experiment has unequivocally failed. Getting rid of software patents is a good start.

The Free Software Foundation has a new educational campaign, and in a shift from previous efforts, it is more openly negative about the costs and morality (or lack thereof) of closed-source software. This is the Windows 7 Sins campaign, and it looks like the mainstream media might actually be picking up on it (if only to heckle).

Personally, I think this is an interesting effort, and I hope that it achieves positive results. I define “positive results” as an increase in the number of people who convert to Linux (what the FSF stubbornly persists in calling “GNU/Linux”), and a decrease in the number of people who continue to blindly hand Microsoft their money.

According to the site TorrentFreak:

The ISP that supplied much of The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth before cutting them off yesterday, is reporting that it has been sabotaged. Calling in experts and the police, Black Internet says the attack on them is intentional and has caused substantial damage.

This makes me sad. It certainly does not reflect well on those who would see our current cartel-controlled copyright system reformed. Why attack Black Internet? They’re a victim of these thugs just as much as The Pirate Bay.

According to a new report on ZDNet, the SCO group won an appeal in its copyright case. In case you are wondering if this will halt or reverse the inexorable death spiral of SCO, or if it has any repercussions for the Unix/Linux world… it won’t, and doesn’t. All this means is that SCO owes money to Novell, and that SCO should have had a trial before they lost in Utah, rather than a summary judgment.

Bottom line: SCO will waste more of its investors money beating this dead horse. For Novell, it means a few more pennies, and for the rest of the Linux world, it’s a footnote in the history books.

The Digital Rights Mafia (RIAA and their ilk) won a major court victory yesterday: the jury awarded the plaintiffs $1,920,000.00, or $80,000.00 per song. $80,000 per song.

One more time: $80,000 PER SONG.

A jury did this. What the hell is wrong with people? What the hell is wrong with our justice system? When will our elected representatives stop twisting our legal system into pretzels for the benefit of the Digital Rights Mafia and the media robber barons?

One thing is certain: juries need to be better educated.

Ars Technica has a review of the book Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. I will have to pick this up.

By the way, don’t feel bad for record companies. They have been screwing artists for years. It was only a matter of time before something brought an end to the perverse market conditions that allowed the big record companies to survive.

The recording industry has spent (and continues to spend) millions of dollars on its litigation campaign against accused file-swappers, but if two lawyers have their way, the RIAA will have to pay all the money back. Not content simply to defend Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her high-profile retrial next week in Minnesota, lawyer Kiwi Camara is joining forces with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.

The goal is nothing less than to force the industry to pay back the alleged “$100+ million” it has collected over the last few years. Perhaps the RIAA had good reason not to send those settlement letters to Harvard for so long.

(from Lawyers plan class-action to reclaim “$100M+” RIAA “stole”, ArsTechnica)

Give ’em hell, guys. It’s about time someone seriously took on the Digital Rights Mafia.

Check this out this article from RoughlyDrafted Magazine: Soviet Microsoft: How Resistance to Free Markets and Open Ideas Will the Unravel the Software Superpower.

Here is a surprisingly cogent argument for the reform of copyright law. Check it out.