Last month, George Farris began a thread on the Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list questioning the license choice of Ubuntu training material. The training manuals are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, which is non-free because it doesn’t allow commercial use. George asks, “why on earth would you not allow educational […]
Free Culture
82 posts
I’ve been eager to transition my music library from the proprietary patent-ridden MP3 format to Ogg Vorbis, and since my iPod died a few months back, I’ve decided to make the move. I’ve read up on Ogg Vorbis and learned that it’s best to re-rip my CDs, since converting from […]
What good thing could come of an intellectually dishonest smear campaign against Lawrence Lessig? Mike Masnick absolutely ripping it to shreds. As a general comment, these defenders of “intellectual property” don’t seem to understand that granting artificial monopolies involves more government intervention, not less. Free culture is not communism. Also, […]
I encountered Catholics Come Home through a video posted on YouTube last week via AmP. Upon returning to YouTube to watch the video again, I noticed that it has been removed due to a copyright claim by Catholics Come Home Inc. The video was originally here. What is wrong with […]
The New York Times has an interesting article on the tension between sports leagues and media organizations, an issue that Techdirt has been covering for a while. The Times article begins by focusing on blogging and amateur journalism, but then tries to get to the core problem: At the heart […]
I’ve written about the SAC‘s proposal to legalize music file sharing several times in the past, giving it mixed reviews. It’s not a new idea, but it’s one of the first times an organization of artists has proposed it, and some record companies are entertaining the idea as well. I’ve […]
((If you’re tagged in this note on Facebook, it’s because I value your opinion and am interested to hear what you have to say. Or because I’m pretending to value your opinion and would be interested in proving you wrong. 😉 Either way, you may want to read the first […]
In a Saturday op-ed in the NY Times (via Techdirt), Billy Bragg argues that musicians deserve royalties for the use of their music on the web. Bebo, a social networking site which rivals Facebook and MySpace in popularity in the UK, was recently sold to AOL for $850 million. Bragg […]
The other day, I wrote a (ridiculously long) post announcing my commitment to free culture, and more specifically, to free music. I didn’t expect anyone to read the entire thing, but my friend, John, not only read it but also responded to it on Facebook. I’m not sure what his […]