How important is copyright respect for a healthy FLOSS ecosystem?

[jspaleta]

I have a very hard time understanding how multiple outspoken members of a FLOSS community can find it socially acceptable to lift up creative multimedia works made in their community, meant to show off what is great about their community, but are themselves flagrant infringements of the copyrights of others who are doing their work outside of the

Comments

[ext_37366]

Oh, it's another Ubuntu rant. Right. Should have guessed.

Is the argument correct or not?

[ext_110922]

I can't tell whether Jef's talking about some specific instance of copyright violation he saw, or whether he's just making a general observation. But since he went out of his way not to name names, it would behoove us to look at what he's saying. There are already enough forces out there in the world trying to dilute the meaning of free and open source software and content that we shouldn't be actively helping them erode our position

Re: Is the argument correct or not?

[jspaleta]

It's a reaction to a specific situation... but this post is meant as a more talking point about the behavior more generally. I very much doubt the people who are involved in the incident I am reacting to are going to read this. They already know how I feel about their actions. The point of this post isn't to shame them publicly. The point is to broach the topic about the behavior and why I'm reacting as strongly as I am

Re: Is the argument correct or not?

[ext_37366]

I think I'd have a lot of trouble putting my name to a statement that says I "respect copyright" -- the free software movement is an action *against* the unethical situations that are enabled by copyright law, isn't it? The fact that we use copyright as a tool to help create a world that looks remarkably similar to a world _without_ copyright doesn't mean that we're all gigantic fans of copyright and must never speak out against it.

That's my answer, anyway; maybe I'm much farther out on the FSF/Larry Lessig side of the copyright argument than most.

How important is wacky free linking?

[anonymous]

I should be able to link explanations of 'Jump the Shark' and probably pop culture that's competing for rent in my mind. The jump to embedding and syncing with video needs a little more hand work than j. random youTubinator tools are going to include; that's proper. Not only can concert recording use be promoted over album rips, the ad revenue streams can be set to sort things out somewhat. It's just a direction blogger.com and adwords haven't crossed streams on in visible space....

I wanted to make a note that your website link seems not to work (or perhaps work poorly because I am not on the Princeton Tokamak...no wait, is that still in occasional service?) (Chrome tells me to go to Princeton and search; I get all .pdfs. Fix Princeton!) I should also suggest updating or officially deprecating the gPodder.org build for Fedora, which is .17 rather than 2.5.3ish.

Re: How important is wacky free linking?

[jspaleta]

You must be talking about the F-11 gpodder