Episode 116 – And the Flash goes SMOOSH!


All episodes of DyscultureD are NSFW which means Not Safe for Work OR Never Smelled Fried Weasel


  1. Dys is my comments:

    Composers/publisers vs. Makers/labels: One of the funniest things about this story is that CIPPIC.ca was co-council for the composers/publishers. As part of the settlement they were awarded legal costs, which essentially means that CRIA is now a major funding source for CIPPIC 🙂

    In the discussion I noticed that there was an assumption that “copyright holders” were all asking for the same or similar things, which is not the case. Even when they are asking for “more copyright”, it needs to be understood that the phrase means entirely different and often incompatible things to different people.

    Lets just talk about music for a moment, given that was what brought the topic up. Music is not a single industry working together, but three often warring components: composers and their publishers, performers, and makers of sound recordings (AKA: recording labels).

    For music performers and composers the phrase “more copyright” is synonymous with “more money” which they believe to be the same thing as “more levies”. This is where you get things like levy proposals to legalise P2P (which I agree with) or extensions of the existing private copying levy to devices (which I disagree with).

    For labels they mistakenly believe they can get more money with “more control”. For the current round they have been duped into believing technological measures will offer them more control. They are too technologically illiterate to realise that legal protection for technological measures grants specific monopolistic technology companies more control, and reduces/revokes control from copyright holders including labels. While strongly opposed to their own interests, this has been their largest lobbying push.

    Each group disagrees with what the other is asking for: labels dislike the levy system, and composers/performers dislike the idea of someone else gaining all the control (tech illiterate disagreeing with labels getting control, tech literate disagreeing with tech companies getting control).

    This has been the case for a long time — there is as much if not more disagreements about copyright between different copyright holders than there is between “copyright holders” and the general public.

    …Oh, and I wish Flash and Adobe would just go Flush! The two buggiest programs on my desktop computer are Adobe Flash and Skype, which also happen to be the only two non-FLOSS programs. Coincidence? Nop.

    The Apple vs. GPL story may be something to discuss at some point. The issue is that Apple makes DRM mandatory, and doesn’t allow software authors to make software available that can be modified by the technology owner. Specific clauses were added to GPLv3 to handle what was called “Tivoisation” at the time as the TiVo brand DVR was the first of this type of abuse where FLOSS was actively exploited by a hardware company that disallowed owners from making any of their own software choices. On platforms where the technology owners property rights are fully protected, there isn’t an issue.

  2. Wanted to throw in my two cents on a couple of things:

    1. The Twitter subpoena is silly; if your tweets are public, the Library of Congress is archiving them anyway.

    2. I’m still using Netflix and agree with Anth — the biggest reason to stick around is the documentary selection. I’ve also been watching a lot of TV episodes and bemoaning the fact that their film catalog sucks, as Anth says, balls. (That’s +2 for Anth for those keeping score at home.)

    3. Tanning beds — the next concern: “OH NOES! THE TEENS R GOING TO TAKE TANNING ROADTRIPS!” To Duncan (which is about an hour’s drive up the Trans-Canada highway).

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