I’ve installed the NoScript Firefox extension to protect against XSS and other javascript-based attacks, but am finding that lots of sites are depending on javascript for basic functionality 🙁
To all web devs – please remember Checkpoint 6.3 of the WCAG: Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.
These days it’s very easy to acquire digital copies of stories, pictures, music, video, fonts, code – any sort of media you care to mention. Sometimes this is legal, notably through open source/free software, creative commons licenses, and Bittorrent. Sometimes it’s illegal – through Bittorrent*, copying files from websites, lending CDs/DVDs, etc.
Obviously, this is in clear conflict with established media industries, often represented by acronyms groups like the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA, who want to maintain their historical place in the distribution channels. Many others around the web have commented on how these businesses need to realize that they don’t have a right to a profit in their particular part of the market, and I concur, but won’t rehash that here.
Instead, the whole reason for this post is to point to what I hope is the way forwards: License transparency at the client level – nicely demonstrated with the display of licensing information in recent work on the Banshee media player.
I don’t think this feature has filtered out to a release yet, but a suitably enabled Banshee will display the license information for songs, along with the track name, duration, etc.
This may not seem like the sort of thing that would be useful to 99% of the population, but it is relevant to 100% of the population, as many people may not realize that, in many cases, ripping the CD they borrowed from cousin Kev is illegal. For the cases where it’s the artist’s intent that copies should be made, I think it should be advertised and encouraged.
As a both a musician† and an open-source enthusiast, licensing rights can be an important tool to help me ensure the quality and longevity of my work in both those areas. I haven’t a solid plan for this, but suspect that outright, no-strings, free-for-all copying won’t help me develop my rock-star career. (Any advice on developing the rock-star career is welcome 🙂
I believe that most people don’t currently consider the licensing of the media they use, and just copy it if they feel like it. Rather than taking the futile DRM approach, I think it’d be better to share media quite liberally, and for software to inform people what’s going on, enabling appreciative users to support it – with financial (particularly for music), and direct (more relevant with software) contributions.
If we’re in a market-driven economy, let’s try and work towards perfectly informing the consumers…
Merry Christmas!
Dave B.
* Note the dual use (legal/illegal) potential of some technologies.
† Ok, I’m a drummer – it’s close enough 😉
So I’m working away on Windows XP, and suddenly everything starts shutting down. Hitting “Cancel” on a save/don’t save/cancel dialog doesn’t cancel, but closes the application. Without any warning, I’m logged out. What the?..
It turns out that the other Dave in the office has mistakenly logged into my PC via remote desktop, rather than the department “Terminal Sever” – and Windows just kicked me out with no warning or explanation, and then locked me out!
I’m not happy – asides from losing the work from that save/don’t save/cancel dialog, it was so rude. It warned Dave that he was going to log me out, but didn’t give me the same courtesy…
In brighter news, the new Ubuntu release (Hardy Heron) apparently has some support for incorporating Ubuntu desktops as members of a Windows domain (i.e. logging in using Active Directory), using a program called Likewise. If I can get that working, I’ll definitely try using Ubuntu as my primary desktop.