In two words "that sucks", that's what I think of it. I blame the ISP's for caving to the pressure of the music industry. Maybe if people who use these ISP's started to move to other ISP's to show their displeasure with them they would start to take notice.
While we're at it, stop buying music cd's and movie dvd's. Stop going to concerts and the cinema. Let the sales drop off and see if that gets the movie studios and the music industry's attention. (end of rant)
I know these solutions may seem simplistic, but they have worked in some situations. I only hope that governments come to their senses and put a stop to some of this nonsense. I wonder if they realize how a site like LinuxTracker helps smaller distros, that don't have much server space, get their product out.
Good luck to you Mark and to LinuxTracker.
Wayne

I am opposed to any thing that is a blanket ban with out any exception 

The Open Source movement has to pressure every where in the world for an exemption of the ban 
That is every one, you and me and every one. This must be done by all Open Source advocates now 

If the LinuxTracker (c/w others?) does not ask Irish ISP Eircom for an exemption ? then it will never happen.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2009, 10:21:09 PM by johncoom »

If you want music, try http://www.etree.org/. They're hosted by the University of North Carolina, so any complaints about possible lack of legitimacy should be directed to them. Not me or mcangeli.

Peer-to-peer networking has a long commercial history; here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Advanced_Peer-to-Peer_Networking is how it worked before OS/2 was born (probably before most Linuxtracker users were born, too), and now that OS/2 has died you can still use SNA APPN if you want 'guaranteed service' rather than the 'best effort' that Linuxtracker and TCP deliver.

We shall see. But I think that the 'music industry' is like Napoleon at Waterloo; it's an unwinnable fight.  Rather than recruit the next version of Abba, they choose instead to ask the Swedish state to litigate them into the ground. It's the 'wrong side of history'; Wellington wins Waterloo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo, and Napoleon gets exiled to Elba.

'Music Industry' needs to move to live concerts; sell tickets to hear the band in person. Increase the 'service content' of what they sell. Tough, if you're used to selling pieces of plastic or shellac with grooves on; but inevitable. iTunes is OK for a while but that is saturating its market quite rapidly too.

It's not enormously clear what 'offence' the Swedish students stand accused of; nor, if they are found guilty, what punishment would be appropriate. A week in a Swedish jail, with food, water, and guards paid for by the taxes of the Music Industry, and lessons in computer and Internet use so that they can be productive members of society on release ?

Interesting times, and all highly anti-scientific and anti-engineering. Who'd want to learn (and teach)  how the physical world works, when clowns like that want to haul you before a judge and make you stop ?

Keep on tracking !

There's some more 'Commercial Insanity' being reported on here http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20090226062840462 , where our favourite 'bete noire' is seeking to have TomTom GPS in-car navigation systems banned from the USA on some-or-other pretext.

It isn't as if Microsoft is in that business. Surely they are throwing a commercial hissy fit.

If I was TomTom, I would withdraw from the US market; make sure my business held no US-demoninated assets (such as dollar bills); and see if any 3rd-party remarketers would like to distribute into the USA. I think "not having US assets" puts you beyond the reach of the US civil jurisdiction.

And maybe have a word with the European Commission. If TomToms are prevented from selling in the USA, maybe Windows and Office should be prevented from selling in Europe.

And then we're in a full-blown trade war. Is that in anyone's interest ?

Well, I'll grant you that posturing isn't very useful in an engineering sense. However, any time you get an organisation with a lot of marketing dollars to spend, they can if they wish cause a lot of chaos.

Last time something was 'finally' resolved, it was between ATT and the University of California (Berkeley). I believe the judge in the case told ATT to get on with the phone business, and UCB to get on with educating Californians, and indicated that neither really threatened the legitimate interests of the other.
UCB is still educating Californians, ATT was split into a dozen or so 'Baby Bells', and if you'd like the source code for ATT Unix then all you have to do is ask Sun for a copy of OpenSolaris.

So Federal Court may have said what you think it said. But the fat lady hasn't sung yet, as far as I know; and if you don't like the answer you get in the USA (where you only allow kings and queens as tourists) then you can always forum-shop to Europe (where we still have Kings and Queens, and in England the Queen signs off on all the laws), choose between France (Napoleonic Code) and England (Wellington defeated Napoleon, but generally similar to USA except for having a Queen, haven't fought the USA since 1776 ). Or China;  I think you have to hire a Chinese lawyer if you wish to be heard in a Chinese court, and I have no idea what principles Chinese law is based on. Inscrutability, probably.

And if you have enough dollars to apply to the task, you can keep trying all of them in the hope of persuading one of them of the fundamental rightness of your competitive position.

Cash brings choices. You can squabble all you like until you run out of cash.

On that cheery note, http://www.tap2015.org/ Tapping America's Potential is hoping to double the number of science, technology, engineering, and math graduates in the USA by 2015, at pain of the risk of falling behind. Same problem in Europe. And there is corporate backing.

Who'd be an engineer ?

It is, however, our fate to serve. Keep on tracking !
« Last Edit: February 27, 2009, 06:25:08 PM by chris »

I'm not actually convinced about this. BitTorrent is good for 'Public Service' distribution, and for 'Asymmetric Warfare' where a little guy wants to get a story out which 'big media' doesn't have or doesn't want. But its effectiveness relies on the willingness of downloading participants to upload as well (which may not work if upload bandwidth is scarce or expensive); and using the 'last mile' for upload as well as download isn't actually a very good use of network resources.

Inside the corporations (where we have ATT-operated LAN closets, lights-out mainframes, and 24x7 global ops support) it works a lot better to have managed disk space, and run explicit point-to-point ops. Fetching DVD-sized chunks over http from web servers actually works quite well; and there is no need for the anonymity that BitTorrent gives. If you can't convince your manager that the data should be available corporation-wide, then it probably shouldn't be.

And if you want to do 'multicast' ... like the BBC iPlayer ... it's easier on the infrastructure if you do the data hand-out Akamai-style, by using servers in the Web, rather than relying on 'domestic' machines running Azureus.

We shall see. Some corporations have learned a lot from universities (who always seem to give their software away) and from hobbyists (who find ways of collaborating in seemingly-unlikely circumstances). And at least some of the corporations thank those that they learn from.

What follows on from the Disney Home Video and the Disney DVD ? Will it use broadband somehow, on the 'green' basis of reducing auto journeys to the rental store, if nothing else ?

And how will the money thing work ? (Inside a corporation, just like between hobbyists, the price is always zero.)

So we're now to the point where we cannot watch music videos on GooTube in the UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm , according to the BBC who are usually reliable about these things.

Really. If the 'music industry' want to encode their marketing novelties in EBCDIC onto punch-card and drop them through our letterboxes (put them in our mailboxes, for you the other side of the Pond), so be it. But it does seem a bit of a backward step, and it will require an awful lot of high-grade cardboard.

For myself, I don't really have the time or resources to take sides in commercial disputes. I'm just the engineer around here. If they pay me to make an Internet, I make an Internet. If they pay me to chop it to bits, I chop it to bits. I may have opinions as to what the public interest requires, but at times like this I keep my opinions to myself. I've already accidentally caused the Marketing Manager to call the Development Manager and suggest that I need my head examining; and the Development Manager is considering how to fund things, and how to explain away the non-disclosure agreements that need to be in place before I can be allowed to discuss anything with a Shrink who isn't employed by the business and might be providing head examination services to the competition the next day.

Technology you Cannot Use (sm) ! Luddites !
« Last Edit: March 09, 2009, 07:23:37 PM by chris »