The Irish Penguin

The ever confusing term ‘Intellectual Property’ gets another run out today as the EU attempts to shoot itself in the foot, yet again on crucial IT issues. This time the European Union wants to embark on a plan to encumber its multimedia sector in a cocoon of red tape through the introduction of DRM. And goes to the absurd length of stating that it is doing so in the interests of consumers. What the …???

The Irish Penguin is a die-hard market fanatic. The reason is not just because it’s the most efficient way to run an economy but rather that it is the best for the consumer (Note: The Penguin doesn’t think that its the best way to run some things like health care but that’s another story altogether). The bottom line is the customer truly is always right. Remember this for later. Which is way todays announcement is not just bad news for budding business entrepreneurs within Europe’s software economy but also a smack in the chops for European consumers. One of the frantic undertones of the EU is often one of desperation - an attempt to try and emulate America - in order to somehow shed the image of a union which is hamstrung fragmented markets and business unfriendly polices. Unfortunately, it sometimes goes about it the wrong way. Instead of the Japanese tradition of copying a process and improving it, the EU cumbersomely ambles towards the wrong target and periodically releases sound bites which it thinks will make it sound economically competent. Today was a comical case in point. Here is an excerpt from its press release.

“The European Commission has decided today to give a new boost to Europe’s online content sector. EU citizens should be able to enjoy easier and faster access to a rich variety of music, TV programmes, films or games via the Internet, mobile phones or other devices.”

Let’s read that first line again. The European Commission has decided what? This opening sentence sounds like the EU is trying to convince itself that this is a good idea. In reality, the European Commission has NOT decided today to give a boost to Europe’s online content sector. This is because included in its announcement the EU has decided that DRM (a completely misnamed and dangerous Digital Rights Management technology) should be forced on the European customer at every turn - in order to stifle the promising multimedia sector. It is highly useful to see that DRM has roundly been rejected by media consumers right across the globe. All of the major record company’s used to have DRM woven into their CDs and products at the turn of the year. DRM prevented users playing music on more than one music playback device. For example, it locked customers who had purchased an album online into playing it back on an iPod only; the user could not choose to play that same album on their home computer. And it also locked users who had bought CDs from playing them on their iPod. As sales plumetted and customers rebelled, EMI was the first to reject this notion and give back consumers the right to play their music on any device. That the left the remaining labels with an inferior product and they all quickly followed suit. Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group all now sell ‘clean’ products in United States which are not contaminated with DRM. This shows the power of the Free Market to correct problems like DRM. So if it makes sense for these major players to roundly reject DRM then how on earth can it make sense for the EU to move towards it? The answer - it doesn’t!

Ironically, the second sentence is also meaningless rhetoric. The EU Commission’s announcement today does NOT make it easier or faster to access rich multimedia. The only thing that can do that is solid broadband policies and Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is crucial. It guarantees that the all services provided over the Internet are treated equal. This allows the separation of the bandwidth providers (such as European telecom companies and ISPs) from the content providers (movie distributors, news channels, websites, email services) in order to prevent the bundling of content with services. The big word there is ‘bundling’. If your telecom company is providing your movies via cable TV and an online company seeks to compete with them by providing movie downloads it is unwise to let the telecom company to control the bandwidth available to the online company - clearly it would be in the Telecom’s interest to restrict bandwidth for movies thus ruining the challengers business model and locks consumers into the telecom company’s cable movie offering. Thankfully, thus far Net Neutrality is not under serious threat in Europe. However, DRM certainly does nothing to make your Internet connection any faster. All is does is make digital media that you purchase over the Internet into an inferior product than it otherwise could have been.

One of the driving forces of the damaging policies is Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media. She says “We have to make a choice in Europe: Do we want to have a strong music, film and games industry?” However the report issued goes on to call for the “establish(ing of) a framework for DRM transparency concerning, amongst others, the interoperability of different DRMs, and ensuring that consumers are properly informed of any usage restrictions placed on downloaded content…” The question remains, why create ‘usage restrictions’? Why not let the user just play their music how they want. It’s like selling someone a car and then letting them drive down only one street. It defies logic. Not to mention the that fact that every digital item you purchase will be more expensive as the cost of DRM will be included in each product. A more expensive and less functional product is not what the consumer wants. And the consumer is always right! They have rebelled against DRM before and they will rebel again. And the EU Commission wants to drag down European software houses and content providers with this sinking ship. With a ratification on the Lisbon treaty coming up in Ireland with guaranteed influx of the “No” vote protesters from neighbouring countries, we can only hope that Europe starts to give its citizens reasons to vote for Europe than against it.

For a more technical analysis of the announcement, as well as an open letter which you can sign that argues against the EU’s position, check out this link.

Breaking with the blogging tradition of incredibly obvious (and search engine indexable) article titles, I think it’s fitting to have a subtle, more European perhaps, heading for this post. To cut to the chase, it deals with the great transatlantic dog fight between possibly the world’s biggest monopoly and the Eurocrats - that is Microsoft vs European Competition Commission.

This has caused great entertainment for those browsing the net as, for some, this has broken down into a full scale Europe vs America battle. The ruling is Microsoft’s first court loss of significance that stands to have genuine legal ramifications as most other similar cases have been settled out of court by deep pockets and hamstrung prosecutions. Although it’s always hard to pick the legal meat off the bones in a lot of software related court cases, other articles have mentioned that the ruling means limited scope for MS to appeal, possible requirement of protocols disclosure and of course the small matter of hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Small change to a big fish perhaps but no one likes to throw away money.

Those who support the decision are proudly strutting the streets with their vin rouge in one hand and their petit pain in the other singing “Vive la Revolution” as they go. Some have changed to spelling color with a ‘u’ and prefer to organise their day than organize it. Those against, see the fleeting head of communism attacking capitalism’s finest hour. Cries of “Red! Reds! Under the beds” can be heard from those who shun the European Courts ruling. Particularly entertaining is the comments at the end of the article Microsoft’s Stunning Court Defeat. I don’t normally mange to keep chugging through the comments but I did find this little flame quite amusing.

So what does the future legal direction of this case hold? Well that’s anyone’s guess, but the interesting thing that FFII correctly pointed out in one of their recent press releases is that patents are where the battle is at. Whatever respect Europe can garner by being the first one to call a spade a spade - or an illegal monopoly an illegal monopoly - will be soon squandered if software patents are allowed in the back door. How anyone could be stupid enough to repeatedly bring software patents to the brink of legality in Europe is amazing. But that is what’s happened time and time again. Software lifecycles are measured in months (not decades like in big pharma) and innovation has always occurred by building on the ideas of others. But yet there are those who are scared that taking a stance against software patents means being anti-intellectual property - when the reverse is the case. Let’s hope that the next time software patents are on the European menu, that there will be enough intelligent people in the room to call the spade again.

A couple of blog and news posts on the Internet this week seemed to make the headlines with death knells for Linux and Open Source for a multitude of reasons, both chronic (less anti-Microsoft sentiment about) and recent (GPL 3). But on reading, I couldn’t help but feel that both posts sounded wrong, utterly utterly wrong in fact. No disrespect intended to the authors of course.

The first post Open Source Is Dead, Long Live Open Patents? by David DeJean, which took a commonly cited angle on GPL3 hurting Open Source by fragmenting the community. But that is to not understand the community. Bare in mind one important fact about community-oriented Open Source developers, of which I am one - we write the software because we love to. For the vast majority of SMD’s (Small-to-Medium size project Developers, for want of a better term) we don’t really care whether our project is GPL2 or GPL3 - why? Because they are both effective Open Source licences and they will both serve our personal purposes fine as either licence would suit our pet projects. Of course, we’ll all still get our goat up as to whether Linux or the GNU Compiler Tools should be GPL 2 or 3 - but that’s a separate issue - it’s won’t stop us writing the software we love. It is naive for commentators to think that because a new licence comes out that it will hurt the amount of FOSS produced. As for businesses, if it made sense to switch to Linux before GPL 3, it will still make sense after GPL3 - irrespective of what or who adopts GPL 3. It technically affects Tivo (although they will be able to stick with Linux 2.4 kernel) - so what? Such cases only make up a small part of the econosphere. Plenty of business providers seem to be happy. Even embedded solution providers are saying that GPL 3 won’t turn customers off, with Jason Wacha of MontaVista saying “Our customers are used to working with licenses that are much more restrictive than the GPL. In my opinion, typical proprietary licenses are much more restrictive in pretty much all instances than the GPL.”

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Phew! After much fiddling and tweaking I finally managed to get my header image together for this site. All the while I had the song “The Irish Rover” bouncing round in my head - which probably didn’t help matters!

But I think the above header was worth it. Veronica, my glamorous girlfriend and graphic design mentor, didn’t like it much to start with. At least I managed to pacify her by throwing in a cute penguin pic, which I did up in the absolutely fabulous Inkscape. Inkscape has to be one of the best Free Software programs ever. It’s just so easy to use and yet things just always turn out good. It’s magic. And that’s just the kind of thing you’ll be hearing more about on this blog over the coming months along with other news and discussion from the filthy dirty world of Open Source.

Just a heads up for anyone trying to change their WordPress header image - make sure that you haven’t changed the header’s colours or anything previously in WordPress. If you have made changes then you should revert them - which can be done from the dashboard. Otherwise all the image uploading and CSS styling in the world won’t be enough to get that flamin’ header to change! Now there’s an hour of my life that I won’t get back! At least I had The Irish Rover playing away in the back of my head to keep me going…

Doo do doo…

Microsoft is allegedly preparing it’s army of lawyers (more than 800 strong according to one commentator) to issue an almighty patent onslaught on Open Source software. It lists 235 patents which it says are being violated by Open Source software projects. Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer says that it is in the “name of honour” that he must fight the Open Source community. The battle lines are being drawn in what could prove to be the ultimate shakeup of the U.S. software patent system. As Microsoft comes under increased pressure from Open Source software it is making lawyers, not software developers, the front-line soldiers in the fight to maintain the apparent monopoly. It looks like we’re entering interesting times.

On a lighter note, here’s a clip of Steve Balmer trying to rally the Redmond programmers in better days before lawyers led software development. I wonder does he exhibit the same passion today when he stands in front of his devs or does he prefer to go into the TV lounge and flick on an episode of Boston Legal…

The announcement that many people wanted to hear is imminent. Early rumours abound on various sites but possibly by the time you are reading this, Dell will have already made the official announcement that they are to ship Dell PC’s with the Linux operating system - Ubuntu. This is the major breakthrough that Linux as a desktop OS has been waiting for. Now all Linux communities -be it Open Source, Free Software, Linux for home or business that is your cup of tea - must help Dell sell this dream.

The most obvious way to help is for bloggers or people with websites to display a prominent ad for Dell Linux boxes. Let’s show Dell that by listening and embracing the Linux community that we can help them out. Each and everyone can be a partner to Dell and it is in everyone’s interest that Linux market share grows. A bigger pie means that more hardware vendors will support Linux and having the Open Source desktop OS in the limelight will mean more development work for Open Source programmers. For consumers, it brings choice like they’ve never had before - the modern day Linux OS thoroughly outshines it competitors. I do not make this comment lightly. But this week I got my first glimpse at the 3D accelerated desktop for Linux - it is incredible! It leaves Vista for dead. And comparing the two side-by-side there is only one winner.

So let’s help Dell sell Linux. I’m going to be emailing them after the official announcement to get my Dell Linux ad. Never has marketing been such a pleasure! And never has the Linux Desktop looked so good!

[digg=http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_Community_Must_Help_Dell_Sell_Linux ]

At last the fight against anti-consumer record labels crippling music purchased online is looking to be at an end. EMI have decided to make their songs sold on iTunes free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) - a technology which prevented users playing back their music on any device of their choice. This is probably one of the most important changes that could have happened in the delivery of online music and is set to transform the industry and reduce piracy. As EMI boss Eric Nicoli said,

“We have to trust our consumers. We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient.”

The new tracks will cost about 30 cent more per track. But the advantages of this greatly outweigh the cost increase and the tracks will also be of higher quality. In addition, customers who have already bought tracks will be given the option to pay the difference in price to make their entire existing collection DRM free.

The move is set to put pressure on other labels to stop restricting consumers’ freedom to choose how to enjoy the music they’ve purchased. A victory for choice, economics and anti-piracy in the music industry. This post is based on a news item on the BBC at the following link. So read more of the good news there. Here’s to EMI taking a leading role in the music industry and setting the ball roling on the most important music issue today!