Digital Citizen

The American public is said to have a taste for mild rebukes like “Goodnight Bush” but there’s no strong outcry for principled action which require holding people’s feet to the fire: real investigation, trial, and punishment beginning with impeachment. There is little organized challenge aimed at elected leaders on issues you’d think would merit at least voting reconsideration and pointed questions. Where’s the outrage?

Obama is quite a hawk, voting for war funding and now Obama supports telecom immunity for what used to be considered illegal domestic spying. An Obama presidency means more war is on the horizon: The Chicago Tribune quoted him on his hawkishness toward Iran. Despite this he’s still getting campaign funding from ordinary people.

There’s no clear indication that Bush, Cheney, and the rest will suffer any sort of investigation, trial, and punishment for warrantless spying, lying to the public about the justification for the War on Terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran is next), or any of the other things people hate them for. Obama never favored impeachment because it would be a dysfunctional distraction (”I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority,” [and,] “I believe if we began impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunction,” he added. “We would once again, rather than attending to the people’s business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, nonstop circus.”) and the US public isn’t holding him to account for that telling him that accountability and the rule of law are in no way a dysfunction. Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck in a corporate-managed election that is designed to leave out third parties and independents with varying dissident views.

The so-called anti-war movement in the US is dead. Its continued inaction builds on a pattern of shutting down to make way for the latest pro-war Democrat: not a peep during Sen. Kerry’s run, no serious criticism for Rep. Pelosi (”impeachment is off the table“), and now not a peep during Sen. Obama’s campaign.

The nation is sowing unaccountability. Nothing good will come from that.

The BBC brings us the latest essay from Richard Stallman, founder of the free software movement, with “It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars“. Stallman explains why it’s a mistake to focus on any particular proprietor (individual or organization) rather than focusing on the unethical system of proprietary software.

Recently the One Laptop per Child project announced they will switch to using Microsoft Windows on the XO laptop. I understand the plan will be gradual: New XOs will offer either the current Fedora GNU/Linux-based system or Microsoft Windows XP. Later only Microsoft Windows XP will be offered by default. This is a remarkably bad move for anyone who took the OLPC’s initial educational mission seriously—even if the Microsoft Windows-based XO has some free software running on it, the switch is a net reduction in user’s freedoms. Users running the current GNU/Linux system have are free to fully inspect, run, share, and modify their system (with the exception of one non-free program to control the wireless device). These freedoms are why the software is referred to as “free”, the use of the word free in this context is not a reference to price. By contrast, under Microsoft Windows far more of the operating system will remain off-limits to users. No proprietor would reject an opportunity to hook anyone, even the poorest people in the world, into dependency.

Users would prefer to not be spied on without their consent. But some proprietary software programs spy on their users (including KaZaA, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, and Microsoft Windows) reporting back to its owner. Users shouldn’t have to sacrifice their privacy to talk to one another. But Skype, a popular proprietary program which lets users make telephone calls over the Internet, routes all calls through a central switchboard run by the proprietor thus allowing the proprietor to record the calls. Because Skype is proprietary, users cannot improve the program to include free software encryption which would render such recordings useless, or use a different switchboard server to bypass Skype’s switchboard entirely. Users would also prefer not to get a downgrade when they believe they are upgrading to the latest version of a program. Yet Apple did just that with iTunes effectively reducing the usefulness of the program. One so-called upgrade resulted in users losing music they purchased through the iTunes music service. No iTunes user, even skilled programmers, had the option of improving the program and publishing their improved iTunes so other users could avoid losing their purchased tracks.

As Stallman told the Boston Review:

The remedy is to give the users more control, not less. We must insist on free/libre software, software that the users are free to change and redistribute. Free/libre software develops under the control of its users: if they don’t like its features, for whatever reason, they can change them. If you’re not a programmer, you still get the benefit of control by the users. A programmer can make the improvements you would like, and publish the changed version. Then you can use it too.

The free software movement presents the only principled challenge to proprietary software. Society must ensure that users are free to organize to help themselves and one another according to their own goals—social solidarity.

Cindy Sheehan writes clearly and without reservation—if you truly oppose war, you don’t vote for more war. The Democrats have a strong history of starting war, and there’s no reason to vote for them when they’re willing to help enable the Republicans continue occupation and kill. Sheehan is also continuing to stand by her promise not to support pro-war politicians.

First of all, we allow “anti-war” groups like MoveOn.org to set the dialogue and discourse. MoveOn.org is not so much “anti-war” as they are “pro-Democrat.” Tactics that MoveOn.org found outrageous under the Republican Congress, they find “frustrating” but understandable under Democratic leadership.

The “anti-war” issue is non-partisan in its scope by the very name “anti-war.” The Democrats are responsible for every war in the last 108 years, excluding the two Bush wars and the Reagan Grenada farce. Democrats are responsible for dropping, not one, but two atomic bombs on the innocent citizens of Japan. Democrats deserve no slack, and should be given none.

Secondly, during elections the “anti-war” movement loses its focus and works for candidates that promise peace or change, but previous actions, votes, or rhetoric do not match the campaign rhetoric. From Obliteration to Redeployment to Hundred Years, none of the duopoly candidates are promising anything different than BushCo.

After almost eight years of two-party collaboration that has undermined freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity, one would think that the US electorate would have developed some kind of sophistication regarding the throttlehold of sameness that the Republicrats or Demopublicans offer.

And then she names two clearly anti-war candidates:

We have a clear choice instead of the “lesser of two evils” politics. There are at least two candidates for President that present a clear alternative to violence and corporate oppression: Cynthia McKinney (Green Party and Power to the People Party) and Ralph Nader (Ind.).

Do you want someone who is a smidgeon less evil at the helm of our country, or do you want someone who is committed to true peace and true mastery over the corporations and true environmental integrity?

In 2004 we were told that we were seeing the most important election—the Democrat-supporting (pro-war, even if they didn’t want to admit it) Left wanted George W. Bush out of office and thought that it was wise and proper to join a candidate who merely offered better war management. No major anti-war protests were held in which one could present any organized opportunity to challenge Democratic Sen. John Kerry on the issues of continued war, no single-payer universal health care, and increasing separation between the richest and the poorest.

In 2008 there are more dead from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, more poverty, more displacement, more homelessness, and more uninsured and under-insured (with no real universal single-payer health care in sight). Yet where’s the outrage, the cries of how critical the 2008 election is? By these standards, we ought to understand what folly it is to call any US Presidential election the most important because as things get worse every election is more important than the last.

One would hope more people could come to connect policy and politics in the way Sheehan has without suffering Sheehan’s loss. One would hope that things don’t have to get worse before the folks who call themselves “progressive” dare to support politicians who agree with their take on the issues of the day.

The folks behind “Elephant’s Dream” have released “Big Buck Bunny“, a 10 minute animated short. According to the BBB website, everything on the 2-DVD set is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 so you can share and build upon anything you find on the discs.

The movie is very well done and the outtakes are quite funny. You can also get a copy of the latest Blender animation software and all the art used in the movie so you can build on it and make something else. This 2-disc set is well worth the money. As soon as they start collecting for the next movie, I’m on board to buy early and get an entry in the credits.

NTSC DVD ISO (MD5SUM: 966758b02da2c5c183ab7de2e0a5e96b)—If you watch this in the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, or Taiwan, you probably want the NTSC DVD image file.

Get it from the Internet Archive

PAL DVD ISO (MD5SUM: cb67e9bc8e97b9d625e7cd7ee0d85e08)—If you watch this in Europe, China, or Australia, you probably want the PAL DVD image file.

Get it from the Internet Archive

• 1920×1080 Ogg Vorbis + Theora
• 1920×1080 Ogg Vorbis + Theora
• 854×480 Ogg Vorbis + Theora
• More formats and screen sizes
• A mirror of movie files in various formats

See a map of which countries use which television broadcast standard:

You can read Ubuntu GNU/Linux’s handy reference on how to burn a DVD then watch your DVD on any DVD player. The way you burn the movie file with most graphical burning programs is substantially similar to how you burn data DVD discs.

You can also watch the movie without burning a DVD using mplayer, VideoLAN Client, and some other movie players. VideoLAN Client will read any of the files above, whether it’s a DVD image file or an Ogg Vorbis+Theora movie file. VideoLAN Client comes with the DVD image file and runs on most modern operating systems.

Whether passively or actively, all three of the US presidential candidates (the only candidates the mainstream media will let you hear) pay for more war. From the way people talk about Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), you might be surprised to know that this is merely more of the same—an unbroken line of war support for him.

From today’s Democracy Now! (headline, small audio, high-quality audio, video): (emphasis mine)

The Senate has approved a new war funding bill allocating $165 billion for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In a challenge to President Bush, the measure also includes billions in domestic spending, including $51 billion dollars for veterans’ education. Republican presidential candidate John McCain had opposed the domestic provisions, but did not interrupt his campaign schedule to return to Capitol Hill for the vote. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted in favor of the measure.

How long until a signing statement takes away any funding not directly aimed at continuing occupation and oppression?

How long until the public votes to say no more war?

How many more people have to die before you’ll decide that the Democrats aren’t the way to justice?

Marie-Monique Robin’s “The World According to Monsanto” is one of the most important recent documentaries because it exposes one of the most well-organized and dangerous corporations and because of Robin’s clearly conveyed research.

This documentary aired in France on 11 March 2008 but I doubt it will show up in the US. Monsanto advertises widely so they have the ear of a lot of media corporations which control the vast majority of what shows up on American television and movie theaters.

Viewers of another favorite documentary, “The Corporation”, will recognize a few of the faces and names in “The World According to Monsanto”.

“The World According to Monsanto” impresses upon you (and expertly defends) that this is a fight for control of the world’s population through controlling its food. As Vandana Shiva says, Monsanto’s effort is more powerful than bombs. Farmers around the world see a future where they can’t afford the patent licensing bill because they can’t avoid the GMO seed. The public (whether unknowingly or with no other viable option) eats the GMO food that raises one’s risk of a host of health problems including cancer.

Monsanto refused Robin an interview but their framing of the issue is heard clearly throughout the film. Robin uses Monsanto’s website to explain what things are, illustrates her points with citations from Monsanto’s internal documents (liberated by court order), and does the investigative reporting legwork to clearly explain to us how world domination through patent law and genomic manipulation is not at all far-fetched. The stakes are enormously high. I highly recommend seeing this documentary.

The Wall Street Journal conducted a test in which three groups of consumers were shown coffee and in a separate test they were shown t-shirts. In each test the group was told the products were “ethically produced”, a second group was told the products were made under unethical conditions, and a third group (the control group) was told nothing about the products.

The Wall Street Journal concluded that “consumers were willing to pay a slight premium for the ethically made goods. But they went much further in the other direction: They would buy unethically made products only at a steep discount.”. In the test involving coffee beans: the consumers given unethical information about the production of coffee beans were described as demanding to pay $2.42 below the control group, while the consumers given ethical information $1.40 over the control group’s price. WSJ also suggested a go-slow approach to maximize income for the effort noting that “companies don’t necessarily need to go all-out with social responsibility to win over consumers. If a company invests in even a small degree of ethical production, buyers will reward it just as much as a company that goes much further in its efforts.”.

So decades of trying to separate business from ethics are paying off for modern businesses; perhaps not as much as their owners would like, but still the climate is such that a token show of ethical behavior pays off as much as genuine pursuit of ethical behavior in earnest.

The frame for the debate with these tests and their results is clear: fitting ethics into the market is right and proper so long as there’s no room to critique the heartless market for its lack of ethics. No amount of death, dismemberment, starvation, birth defect, wage slavery, or suffering in any form can possibly compete with the pursuit of money and power. Doing right by other people is not valued for its own sake. This is the system people have created, maintained, and defended as a reasonable way to do business with one another. It’s okay to behave this way at work no matter who is adversely affected. Remember this extract of Mark Achbar’s commentary track from the excellent movie “The Corporation” (Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Speex) where he talks about how people can compartmentalize their wickedness?

For businesses, ethical responsibility is merely a market tactic—an ad campaign which will go away when ethical behavior becomes an unsaleable commodity (or perhaps not producing enough sales to justify the effort). The market must remain dominant, not asking the most important question one can ask: How should we treat other people? Hence even for the corporate “hero” of the “The Corporation”, Ray Anderson, there are strongly enforced limits on what he can say on the record without betraying his role as a corporate CEO and he works within them, perhaps struggling to do so.

Microsoft announced that they will no longer support former MSN Music customers who want to play their DRM disabled music on new computers. For Microsoft, apparently it’s digital restrictions management (DRM) or nothing.

Jennifer Granick of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties organization based in San Francisco, wrote about how Microsoft’s announcement is right in line with their end-user license agreement or EULA.

When active, MSN Music’s webpage touted that customers could “choose their device and know its going to work”.

But when customers went to purchase songs, they were shown legalese that stated the download service and the content provided were sold without warrantee. In other words, Microsoft doesn’t promise you that the service or the music will work, or that you will always have access to music you bought. The flashy advertising promised your music, your way, but the fine print said, our way or the highway.

Granick explains how Microsoft, and other publishers, use licensing terms that leave customers vulnerable to discontinued service for whatever reason the publisher deems necessary.

Has this happened before? What’s going on with DRM? What are the dangers to users?

Major League Baseball recently did something similar with their DRMed copies of baseball games. Baseball fans bought into a service which would let them see recorded games online. The recordings were encumbered with digital restrictions management so they’d only play with a specific proprietary player program MLB distributed. Some time later, the DRM stopped working (it hardly matters why). This meant that customers were left with no way to see the recordings they had paid to be able to see. Many other fans had been left with no pro-rated refund and no independent means to replace this service (say, by being given a keycode that would unencumber the recordings they had already paid for and let them see those games).

MLB’s chosen DRM was thorough enough to stymie fans who had recorded the games to their own media. Red Sox fan Allan Wood blogged about his experience. In 2003 Wood downloaded recordings at $3.95/game and burned them to CD-R. When he went to watch one of the games, he was told he needed a license; the DRM provider was unreachable so the MLB system didn’t know if he was authorized to view this recording. The website he was directed to login to didn’t exist, so he was left with no way to watch what he had paid to see and MLB wasn’t going to issue a refund. Wood unwittingly treated a corporation like a charity, contributing $280.45 to MLB.

MLB’s spokesperson told Ars Technica that MLB has “provided detailed communications to the affected customers” and that “It was an inelegant transition period and we didn’t anticipate the problems it would cause.”. Ars Technica reports that “With the exception of postseason footage, customers will be able to redownload all of the now-unwatchable videos. Postseason content will be made available at an unspecified later date, according to the spokesperson.”.

Google did the same thing with its video store telling customers that after 15 August 2007 they would “no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos”. Google later offered refunds to the adversely affected customers.

Electronic Arts skillfully convinced the public to accept DRM in their proprietary video game called “Spore”. Spore uses DRM ostensibly to determine if the player is running an authorized copy of the game. But since the program is proprietary, we have no real idea what the game program does when it runs. Just before the game was released EA tested the reactions from their potential customers by announcing that their DRM would check for proper authorization every 10 days. Game players widely rejected this proposed approach, but one point seems to have escaped the public debate: EA had their foot in the door. Rarely did you see an objection to the existence of DRM. Instead the debate centered around whether 10 day checks were too frequent, too onerous on the player. EA was reported to have reprogrammed the game to only check the DRM when the software was updated. Again, players confirmed EA’s public relations victory here, patting themselves on the back for convincing EA that 10 days was too frequent instead of questioning the validity of DRM at all. As a distraction measure, EA was reported to have been dissuaded from 10 day DRM checks by players in the military who claimed that they couldn’t access the Internet every 10 days, so they’d be unable to comply with that DRM scheme and thus unable to play the game. The follow-up discussion shifted further away from questioning the validity of DRM as participants in forums such as Slashdot asked why soldiers are playing video games at all. The ethics of proprietary software and DRM were effectively outside the allowable limits of debate. A user’s software freedom—the freedom to inspect, share, modify, and run the program whenever they wish—concepts which, when consistently practiced, effectively challenge DRM, is simply not brought up.

But for those who examine the system, the forest, rather than the trees of a particular example here or there clearly see the most important themes:

• With DRM, you are not in control. The DRM provider controls your media after the sale and, therefore, they can change the terms of the sale at any time (including not letting you see what you thought they sold you). The future will be determined by what you value; do you value being told under what circumstances you may enjoy some copyrighted work? Or do you value freedom to determine this for yourself? This choice should inform how you think about these examples and how you react.
• The freedom of older media is being replaced with newer lock-in, locked-up media. Paper books, for example, don’t dictate where or when you can read them. Other circumstances may determine that, but the book and its publisher have already had their say. eBooks are different; the publisher can determine ad-hoc when you’re allowed to read any particular work. All the information the eBook reader can gather (including physical location, network location, time of day, and user ID) can used to curtail when you can read the eBook. It’s not hard to implement such controls so they continue to control you offline as well.
• Contrary to what so many in the progressive Left believe, one cannot explain away all of this behavior in terms of avarice. MLB didn’t stand to make more money by failing to negotiate a means to see the recordings without interruption. MLB opened a lot of people’s eyes to the power of DRM, earned a bad reputation along the way, and now serves as a warning not only to never do business with MLB but to avoid all DRM you can’t crack.
• All too often the price one pays for DRM-riddled works is so low people don’t think to sue. This leaves publishers with little to compel them to behave better. It’s unlikely these stories and critical examination of the lessons learned will reach the mainstream media, so publishers don’t have to fear many people knowing about any publisher’s “inelegant transitions”. More powerful publishers can afford to simply drop customers leaving them with unplayable files they might not be able to legally crack.

People who make their own unencumbered recordings and share them (even illicitly) have no problem playing back any of their recordings at any time, on any device, anywhere they want, using any player program they wish (including free software like VideoLAN Client), even offline.

• Ars Technica’s article on the dangers of DRM explains the context and some history on this issue.
• My response to Wil Wheaton about Apple’s DRM where Wheaton said he thought Apple was being “more than generous” in how they treated him after upgrading to the then latest version of the proprietary iTunes music player program left Wheaton with no access to any of the music he paid Apple to hear.
• Richard Stallman’s essay on DRM clearly illustrates a proper frame for debating this issue because Stallman takes the side of the user who is adversely affected by DRM instead of the publisher who benefits from the control DRM gives them.

In 1984, Richard Stallman founded a social movement known as the free software movement. The free software movement fights for the ability to control our computers as a cooperative community (as opposed to being under the rule of software proprietors where users have only as much control over their computers as the proprietor allows).

On May 1, 2008, Stallman gave a talk in Manchester, England on “Free Software in Ethics and Practice” and the newly formed Manchester Free Software group recorded this talk and released it under a license that allows sharing.

This talk is quite engaging; Stallman gets into why schools must run exclusively free software, touches on international politics, and addresses the secondary issue of why free software matters for business (secondary in importance, that is, as society shouldn’t organize around business interests).

• High quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Medium quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Low quality Ogg Theora+Vorbis
• Audio in Speex format (more information about Speex)
• License

At Fordham Law School’s annual so-called “Intellectual Property” Law Conference on March 28, 2008, Ray Beckerman of Recording Industry vs. The People debated Kenneth Doroshow, a Senior Vice President of the Recording Industry Association of America, a corporate label lobbying group.

An interesting point of contention was whether it ought to be considered copyright infringement to make copies of copyrighted works available when one doesn’t have license to distribute that work. The RIAA says “making available” is copyright infringement, as this reduces the work the RIAA has to do to successfully sue ordinary people who allegedly infringe RIAA’s client’s copyrights. Beckerman contends “making available” isn’t infringement; copyright holders should have to prove that an illicit copy of their copyrighted work was made, not merely offered. The moderator of the debate, Professor Hugh C. Hansen, the keynote speaker, Michael Schlesinger, and a lot of the lawyer-filled audience apparently believed that “making available” constituted copyright infringement.

They were wrong.

Beckerman explains:

[T]his panel discussion took place on the business day before Elektra v. Barker and London-Sire v. Doe 1 came down, both rejecting a making available right. And of course a month later Atlantic v. Howell was handed down, rejecting the ‘making available’ theory from pillar to post.

Read the transcript of the event. Unfortunately this transcript doesn’t include Schlesinger’s remarks but Beckerman summarizes those remarks just before the transcript.

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary program probably best known these days for two things: showing people videos (YouTube) and making animated interactive graphics on the web (many ads are require Flash). Flash documentation was also, until recently, only available if one agreed to rather onerous non-disclosure terms which restricted how many people could write their own Flash player.

The most widely used Flash implementation is proprietary and not available for all kinds of computers and operating systems. A free software Flash player program was needed so that people could use their computer in freedom without having to forgo visiting a number of popular websites.

One free software Flash player, Swfdec (pronounced “swiff deck”), has been in active development for some time, and generally becoming more capable. Another free software Flash player, Gnash (the GNU Flash player), offers considerable capability to play Flash websites. Gnash has also been in active development.

Today Adobe announced that they have released documents which describe the structure of Flash files one finds online. These documents are restrictively licensed—sharing the document files is not allowed, not even verbatim non-commercial sharing—but the information is available without agreeing to the non-disclosure terms. There’s no clear indication that Adobe holds patents on the ideas one needs to implement their own Flash software and no clear license granted for such patents.

I think that when free software gets to a point where it can perform sufficiently well, competitors take notice and react. The free software competition doesn’t have to be a drop-in substitute to be an effective means of applying pressure which engenders more software freedom.

Is Microsoft’s Silverlight responsible for pushing Adobe to make their documentation available to more people? If so I doubt it played a very big role because Silverlight exerts little pressure; hardly anyone uses Silverlight (so users are unlikely to come across a Silverlight-based website) and Silverlight doesn’t come with Microsoft’s currently most popular variant of Microsoft Windows so it’s not widely installed by its target audience.

Adobe isn’t divulging very much. Adobe isn’t changing the license for its Flash implementation; that’s still proprietary software. Adobe isn’t even distributing their Flash player for all kinds of consumer-grade computers in use today, there’s no 64-bit Flash player program. But Adobe has taken one step toward making it possible for more hackers to contribute to free Flash software players.

Adobe could be providing a trap as well. If there are any Adobe patents covering ideas described in the documentation, Adobe gives no indication that you are licensed to deal in those patents. So this raises (at the very least) questions about whether Adobe is trying to trap people into implementing something that they couldn’t distribute as free software. Adobe could grant a license to implement anything covered by those patents, but the larger problem would remain for patents Adobe doesn’t control. The real fix for this is simple: end software patents.

People in countries that don’t have software patents don’t have to fear losing a patent infringement lawsuit, but software patents have put quite a chill on users who deal with software (which is virtually everyone and every organization). Software innovation happens without government intervention. So we don’t need to worry that people will stop improving computer software if software patents were no longer enforceable. Everyone who uses a computer is at risk with software patents. Around 1990, Paul Heckel threatened Apple over a patent of his that covered something in Apple’s Hypercard program. After Heckel told Apple he’d sue Apple’s users, Apple realized that for the price of licensing Heckel’s patent (paying him off), Apple could avoid becoming known as the computer company that will put its customers at risk of losing a patent infringement lawsuit. Apple paid Heckel an undisclosed sum and Heckel went away. But the example Heckel set remains a potent demonstration of the power of software patents.

Adobe didn’t release much of interest to Swfdec. Benjamin Otte, the chief swfdec developer, said that Adobe’s release today isn’t valuable:

For Swfdec the Flash playe it means pretty much nothing. Swfdec already implements everything that is written down in that specifications. This is just the Adobe version of http://www.m2osw.com/swf_alexref.html

For Swfdec the project it’s nice that people will stop asking “Did you read the forbidden specs? Are you sure what you’re doing is legal?” Even though these where pretty much non-issues before. It also means we now have a document to show newcomers that want to hack on Swfdec. It seems nicer as an introduction text than the link above.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen such a reaction on the part of a major proprietor. Sun Microsystems distributed their proprietary Java software for years and recently liberated it. At about the time they had announced their plan to liberate their Java software, free software Java implementations were coming of age. It was increasingly likely that one could run a free software Java program without relying on Sun’s proprietary Java software.

In late 2006, Philip Langdale wrote about a similar move with SD card readers (those devices that read the media you might use with a digital camera, digital audio player, or personal digital assistant). When Pierre Ossman reverse-engineered the relevant standard that allowed him to use his SD card reader and then shared his software, we all benefitted. Subsequently the SD Association released a version of the specification that helped filled in some gaps Ossman’s software didn’t include. Langdale explains:

Although I can’t prove it, I feel that the subsequent publishing of the ’simplified’ spec (without the DRM bits that we don’t care about) by the SD Association was provoked by his efforts (Why bother hiding it now?) Thanks to those specs, Pierre was able to polish the driver up even more and support a wider range of implementations (of course, there are some that are so out there that even having the SDHCI spec isn’t enough to get them working).

A GNU/Linux computer operating system that contains only free software—software you are free to run, inspect, share, and modify—is out and ready for you to try on your ordinary PC (Intel or AMD-based computer).

The hackers who make gNewSense (pronounced “guh-NEW-sense”) GNU/Linux started with Ubuntu GNU/Linux and removed all the software that doesn’t come with these freedoms, including software most people doesn’t know is in their operating system like firmware (software used to control various computer devices) and drivers.

• A disk image you can burn to a CD-R, boot up, and try without installing anything on your computer (638MB). If you like it, you can run the installer which is on the screen.
• The source code for all the software on the disk image (1.6GB).
• …or go to the gNewSense GNU/Linux mirror archive and get the software from there.

Ubuntu GNU/Linux has a handy set of helpful instructions.

Now that the Democrats have had time to settle in, having won control of both houses of the US Congress, we can assess their recent record and bask in all the successes they’ve made.

• They didn’t just go along with the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. A majority of them voted on principle to not define the US by war and oppression, but by close examination of facts and evidence even when it meant questioning the US President. And let’s be practical, who wants to be a party to war crimes? They haven’t altered this clear anti-war stance for years.
• Somehow the invasion of Iraq happened anyhow but the Democrats ended the occupation once they were put into office during the 2007 mid-term election. That’s why you won’t find any American troops, American mercenaries, or American corporations in Iraq today. The Democrats used the power of the congressional calendar (which the Democrats control) and setting conditions on how to spend money on the occupation in order to say “This far and no further!”.
• The Democrats kept impeachment alive and we’re all better off for it. We’d look like first-class dumbasses if we supported some party that said they wouldn’t consider holding people responsible for corruption on the order of “high crimes and misdemeanors”! The Democrats are keeping our heads where they belong: challenging the wars abroad so we don’t have to challenge each other at home.
• The Democrats’ strong support for HR676, a single-payer universal health plan also known as “Medicare for All”. That’s why the 47+ million Americans without health insurance is a thing of the past. No more fearing that you’ll be left to the tender but expensive mercies of the emergency room; no need to worry where chronic care will come from (like insulin for insulin-dependent diabetics) because Americans are all covered now. The Democrats didn’t ignore the majority of Americans who have long held that universal health care is desirable even if it means paying more in taxes to get it (this, despite Americans paying already more per capita for health care than countries that already have universal coverage). While Vice President Cheney glibly dismisses public opinion the Democrats highlight their difference by obeying the clarion call of ordinary Americans and pushing aside their would-be corporate paymasters (not that the Democrats would let corporate money influence their decisions!). Just listen to the strong endorsement Democratic Party presidential candidate and New York Senator Hillary Clinton gave to universal single-payer health care at a recent debate in Los Angeles: (audio, high-quality audio, video, transcript)

  Sen. Hillary Clinton: We cannot get to universal healthcare, which I believe is both a core Democratic value and an imperative for our country, if we don’t do one of three things. Either you can have a single-payer system, or—which I know a lot of people favor, but for many reasons is difficult to achieve—or you can mandate employers—well, that’s also very controversial—or you can do what I am proposing, which is to have shared responsibility.

  to which that nay-saying Nellie, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, responds:

  Amy Goodman: It’s interesting to note something Hillary Clinton says in that clip. When she mentions a single-payer system, the audience applauds and cheers, even though it’s an option rarely seriously discussed by politicians or the corporate media. And Hillary Clinton acknowledges the applause by saying, “I know a lot of people favor [it], but for many reasons [it’s] difficult to achieve.” She doesn’t explain why she thinks it’s difficult to achieve. And polls repeatedly show a majority of Americans favor it. An A.P. poll in December found nearly two-thirds of voters want universal healthcare, in which everyone’s covered in a Medicare-type program, while more than half of voters explicitly said they support single payer.

  Barack Obama’s unwavering support for single-payer universal health care shines through when he rejects the current buy-it-yourself HMO-based system of American health care:

  Sen. Barack Obama: What they’re struggling with is they can’t afford the healthcare. And so, I emphasize reducing costs. My belief is—is that if we make it affordable, if we provide subsidies to those who can’t afford it, they will buy it.

  And only Obama has the fearlessness to cite the job loss inside HMOs we’d suffer by switching to universal single-payer health care. With leadership like what the Democrats are offering, it’s hard to know which candidate will support my favorite HMO best!

I’m sure this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Yes, it makes so much sense to support the Democratic Party now that they’re showing us what they’ll do with their power. Once you see how much they’re on your side you really have no other alternative. That scoundrel Ralph Nader who makes all the Democrats so upset, is just a Republican-lite, a mere imitator. One look at his campaign website, his articles, his almost-blank political history and you’ll agree that Nader clearly wants more corporate control of our economy which means more war, more environmental pollution, and more recession—policies which present no clear differences from those of the two major parties.

The Canadian Broadcast Corporation recently released “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister“, a competition show where five candidates competed to become the crowd favorite. The show is licensed to share. There’s been some buzz about it online (1, 2) and for good reason: their take on DRM is right-headed

While plenty of TV networks have experimented with offering shows online for free, it is CBC’s use of DRM-free BitTorrent downloads that is the most interesting. Guinevere Orvis, one of the interactive producers on the show, told me that the motivation for this choice was their desire for the “show to be as accessible as possible, to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in.” As for DRM, she said: “I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don’t realize it.” She added that “if it’s bad for the consumers, it’s bad for the company.”

and this alone puts them considerably ahead of American broadcasters who are still not clear on how they can retain control over every copy of every show, restrict copies electronically, and track viewers so as to more effectively sell them stuff. For American media distributors, DRM is still taken seriously. It’s this kind of thinking that creates a huge competitive edge for those who treat their viewers better. The CBC is way ahead of the US’ PBS in terms of licensing, DRM-freeness, and modern decentralized distribution of their shows.

But the most interesting part of this show has to do with the level of debate, a debate you won’t hear on American TV.

Download the program: High-resolution Ogg Vorbis+Theora, lower quality Ogg Vorbis+Theora, higher quality Ogg Vorbis+Theora, XVID.

Pam Hrick brought up topics on the show that you’d never hear on American political talk shows or the US Presidential televised so-called “debates”—universal health care, universal post-secondary education, multilateral involvement to address nuclear threats and not taking the US’ word on what threat Iran poses. One look at this program and you see why Ralph Nader is not allowed on debates alongside the American Republican and Democratic Party candidates—Nader would bring up topics and views that are uncomfortable for the corporate-sponsored candidates. Today in the US, presidential candidates have their questions screened by a corporate-friendly moderator both Republican and Democratic parties had a hand in approving. If anyone dares to ask an unscreened question, their mic is turned off. The American people know these forums are horrible: they watch those debates in fewer numbers over time, according to one of the speakers on the documentary “An Unreasonable Man”.

Remember how the Democratic Party, freshly voted into control of US Congress, said that impeachment was “off the table”? After explaining how light impeachment really is, Ralph Nader lays it on the line for the Democrats:

Repeatedly during the past seven years, Mr. Bush has lectured the American people about “responsibility” and that actions with consequences must incur responsibility.

It is never too late to enforce the Constitution. It is never too late to uphold the rule of law. It is never too late to awaken the Congress to its sworn duties under the Constitution. But it will soon be too late to avoid the searing verdict of history when on January 21, 2009, George W. Bush becomes a fugitive from a justice that was never invoked by those in Congress so solely authorized to hold the President accountable.

Is this the massive Bush precedent you and your colleagues wish to convey to presidential successors who may be similarly tempted to establish themselves above and beyond the rule of law?

Is this the way you and your colleagues wish to be remembered by the American people?

So what’s your breaking point?