Random Reviews

I was just reading my RSS Internet feeds and I come across this story http://blogs.computerworld.com/think_you_own_your_kindle_books. This seems to be a continuing theme. That makes the problem with DRM abundantly clear. The problem being, Companies are going head over heels out of their way to ensure that the end user is just not allowed to own anything anymore. Many of us are familiar with the term SaaS, software as a Service, however how many of us are familiar with the term CaaS, Content as a Service? Well, we know that is what DRM is about. But the trend is continuing and growing.
With the rise of Web 2.0 which has been sold to us as the next version of the Internet that allows the end user to feedback into content – not to mention that the subsequent content no longer belongs to us. How it is the transfer of ownership seems to take place so liberally in one direction only? What part of the Web that supposedly now belongs to us more than ever actually now belongs to us?
So we have had a free software movement more commonly called FOSS, Free and Open Source Software at the heart of this is http://www.fsf.org/ the Free Software Foundation. A web site that I certainly advice going to give a visit to. Via this organisation they have produced a number of licences (GPL Gnu Public License) under GNU (Gnu is Not Unix) self referencing moniker. These represented a shift in taking the restrictive rights away from the companies and producers. But not necessarily giving them on to anyone else. So this leaves us in the unique position that while something maybe privately owned, it has enforced by law community access. Still, this is not the situation where we used to be where if you buy it, you own it. Just if you buy it (or download it) you can use copy and redistribute it freely. It’s not yours, if you modify it, then the modifications are yours – some progress. But remember that although the modifications are yours, you are not free to do what you want with the code; you must comply with the GPL license code that the original was written under. There are other licenses, but the GPL ones are the most significant ones.
Lawyers, business people and engineers/scientist/artists make an interesting combination. Everyone needs to get paid, the only ones in this mix that are not content producers in this list are the Lawyers. Even business people make a creative input in defining the creative process.
Sprung up around this field is the well respected Open Source Law site Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net, which monitors all the latest activity regarding the free software movement the law, particularly patent implications, this is another site that I recommend taking a look at.
At the end of the day, it seems as though we are moving towards a society where private ownership is not encouraged unless you are fortunate enough to own shares in a company which owns some sort of Intellectual Property.

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