The allofmp3 sitcom continues. Reuters has an article about the latest hurdle to Russia's membership to the WTO and surprise, surprise, that is allofmp3.

The interesting bit is that the company behind the website is apparently acting according to the local law. It does pay money to the organisation representing the authors rights in Russia - which is what the Russian law says. It apparently treats internet music sales similarly to how radio broadcasts and coffee shop music are charged in other places.

Up until now I was avoiding putting my thoughts on 'paper', but here we are. My instincts simply say Restricting knowledge distribution and use is wrong. Some might say this makes me a communist devil, anarchist or whatever other epithet is currently cool in their circles. Let's avoid that for the time being. These scribbles are probably not 100% correct. But the ideas are what matters anyway. And will you find a difference from a bird's eye view?

Obviously this is a strong social issue, as in it reflects a growing concern of the society as a whole. The society as the human beings represented by a state, like UK, USA, France, Bulgaria, or groups of states like EU, UN, ... Some long time ago patents were introduced by the British Crown in order to give a temporary monopoly to inventors, so that they can protect and exploit their knowhow, while making the knowledge (their knowhow) public. This was a significant social issue. This way knowledge was immediately becoming exploitable by the society. People could benefit from the abstract knowledge or the principles behind the patentable invention. These principles were not patentable at the time, only some of their defined applications - the invention, machines, products etc... The monopoly lasted for a relatively short period of time. Longer than it would take at the time to reverse engineer an invetion and set up production of a competitive product, but not by too much. This is important, since timescales, im my opinion, are important when trying to rationalise the costs of patents to a society.

Join the pirate party. Now. If there is none in your area, immigration to Sweden might help.

The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the Swedish parliament in the upcoming national elections in September.

Apparently, the pirate party stands a chance in the next elections.

This is a lame adapted translation of the Russian story I posted a couple of days ago. The author unfortunately is anonymous. If you could polish it, so it sounds better in English, please do. It's in the public domain, as far as I know.

A house somewhere in Britain, some time in the future
- Dad, can I get 99 quid off your card? Need to pay for a book
- What book?
- Shakespeare, Hamlet
- Why, we have it
- Really? Which file?
- What have files have to do with it! It's on the shelf. It's your nana's.
- Nah, that's a deadwood book
- So what? I read it when I was your age.

The lobby groups that proposed the amendment, the Association of Audionautes and the Artist-Public Alliance, want a €2 to €5 a month levy on ISPs to compensate rights holders.

Uploading would remain illegal.
El reg

This is interesting. Probably a decent compromise. I still think that the Record industry should be burnt to ashes and public houses built on top, since they don't offer good value neither to their customers nor to the artists overall.An act like this woul stop the useless bizarre posturing of all camps.

Reading this proposed french law gives me shivers. Well, if you thought that the proposed EU data-retention directive is bad, it's extensions devilish how would you classify this? The proud republic is just about to churn this dictatorial law, infringing just about most of my intellectual human rights I can think of. Ok, my interests lie in computers more than most, but still, that is an ugly piece of legislation. Any free/open source software becoming illegal? Well, recently NYC2123 were mentioning that, in relation to Windows Moto Edition, but that's cyberpunk, this is reality. Whose sick mind can cojure such an appaling piece of legislation? Does that anonymous bunch of bureaucrats have a concept of what knowledge is? Does that bunch of people have any idea how much they are going to damage the French software industry itself, some of the best wares in the OSS world come from France, by the way.

Well, things start to get a comic appeal. Sony infringes the copyright of a LGPL software to create their rootkit, which allegedly is used to protect its property, read music they distribute, but in reality stops you using your iPod, which in turn Apple has made to work only with their own service - iTunes.

Noodles. I won't even go further. It is just ugly. Just rephrase it and you'll get the outline of a Z-rated gangster movie. You've got the hustlers, you've got the hard men, you've got the "my patch".

Tho read the whole shebang just go to dewinter or slashdot. Sit back and enjoy.