My Delusional Dream

The Free Software Foundation has done some truly amazing things for computers. The creation of Emacs, GCC, most of the standard Linux utilities, and the genesis of the ideas that later created Open Source (although, Stallman despises it), are just a few of the important things they've done. They generally fight the good fight and make the computer world a better place to be.

However, over the past few years, something seems to have changed within the Free Software Foundation. With the rise of DRM the Free Software Foundation began to organize vocal protests against systems that enabled content providers to protect their creations -- after all, Free software doesn't need such protections. Activists in haz-mat suits could be seen at product launches for Windows Vista, at the Virgin Megastore, and lots of other places where they thought they could get attention. Always handing out little stickers explaining the problems with DRM. In fact, for a very long time, I've had a defective by design sticker on my laptop.

Of course, this was 2006 and times were very different back then. There weren't any stores to purchase non-DRM'd music, now it seems you can purchase it everywhere, so the whole DRM'd music issue is a bit more moot now. Instead, the Defective by Design campaign has chosen to focus on any system that enables DRM. Well, I shouldn't say any system that enables, just some systems -- in particular the iPhone 3G. In their latest effort, Defective by Design has been actively encouraging people to book times at Apple Genius bars to harass employees and customers. First, let's look at the five claims they make about the iPhone 3G:

1. iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can’t be on everyone’s phones.

This is partially true. It does cost money to become an official iPhone developer, but the amount is actually quite small, $99. There is also the little annoyance of the current NDA on the developer kit that also restricts what developers can do, although it is expected to be lifted soon. However, it fails on a couple of points. First, if you're an iPhone developer, you can run any application you develop on your iPhone and those of 4 other people. Once the beta system comes you'll be able to distribute to 100 other people. For small scale distribution this is pretty good. And second, and perhaps bigger, there is always the option of jailbreaking your phone to run whatever the heck you want. If you want to develop other applications, you're more than free to download the iPhone unofficial SDK. Last year when Bradley Kuhn, former FSF Executive Director, spoke at Ohio LinuxFest he bragged about removing DRM from music, so I'd assume they'd be find with this.

2. iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.

That's correct, the iPhone supports DRM'd files. It also supports non-DRM'd files too. Unlike Yahoo which cut off customers who purchased this music, Apple intends to continue to support them. Video files are still encumbered, but I don't know of any legal way to get high quality digital video that isn't encumbered. That's an issue you'll have to take up with the industry, Apple is just ensuring people can use it. Remember, with music DRM came first, then when it failed, we got open systems. There is no reason to expect it will be different with movies and TV shows.

Another aspect where the iPhone supports DRM is with iPhone apps. I'd imagine this is partially necessary to keep people from pirating the apps. When piracy rates for PC software may run above 95%, there no reason to assume that people aren't going to pirate software. Yes, there is DRM there, but it's pretty weak and lets me load the apps on any of the phones on my plan. Not to mention, it's been shown to be trivial to remove the DRM, although, that currently doesn't let one run the app on another phone.

3. iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.

Complete bullshit. Whoever wrote this has never touched an iPhone and clearly doesn't realize that every app must ask before it can use your location information. The only tracking that happens is whatever the carriers and law enforcement people typically use to track folks.

iNetworkTest patiently asks for permission

4. iPhone won’t play patent-and-DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.

Waah. Neither will most other things. If Vorbis and Theora are great from a technical perspective then you'd think you'd see a lot more of them floating around -- but they're not. Yes, I'm sure that Apple could implement at Theora and Vorbis codec in the iPhone, but I doubt it's worth their time. The people who really care about those issues aren't the kind of people who use iPhones to begin with. Apple is concerned about making the user experience good. Providing too many options leads to M-x play-vorbis-song. Not very friendly.

5. iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don’t spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software – like the FreeRunner.

That's somewhat correct. The FreeRunner, along with with its incomplete and buggy software is now available. I've played with them -- I tried to make a call with one. It crashed. I tried to lock at pictures. It crashed. I couldn't check my email with it. There weren't any well polished apps for it. The list goes on. The FreeRunner may be an option for some people, but it's expensive and has little software. If I'm trying to get stuff done, that's not a good thing.

Beyond the five points, of which, I've just shown have approximately 2 points of validity, the campaign contains a questionnaire that you're supposed to use to quiz the Apple genius. So, lets look at these questions:

1. Why do all developers have to submit their applications to Apple before they can be loaded onto an iPhone? Most smartphones, including those by OpenMoko, Nokia, RIM, Palm and even Microsoft, allow applications to come from a variety of sources, includ- ing free software developers. Free ”as in freedom” software development requires that users and developers be able to share and modify the source code for programs they use. iPhone users are not permitted by Apple to share or load modified versions of programs distributed through the App Store – even when a program’s developer wants users to be able to do this! Apple markets itself as empowering, alternative technology – How does Apple plan to support free software development?

1. Did the Genius understand the issue of free software?
2. Did they admit that other devices allow you to install applications from a variety of sources?

I'd like to first point out that this is a couple of issues all muddled together into one. Apple does allow Free software developers to develop for the iPhone, the WordPress people provide the source code to their app. Then, all that is standing in your way is the $99 developers fee. Once you've got that, run Free and Open Source to your hearts content. The issue is regarding supporting Free software. Apple has no obligation or business case that would require them to do so. Their system is based on Open Source which is not free -- if they chose to contribute back they may. However, allowing just anyone to create an untested unverified app that can brick your cell phone or really whack out the cell network, well, that's not such a great idea. The FSF needs to realize that the cell network is fundamentally different than a computer network. A malicious or poorly designed app can easily degrade the shared communication for everyone and rack up lots of bills for you. This poses a question that I'd like to ask the FSF people: How would Free software benefit the iPhone?

2. Why does iTunes still contain so much DRM-laden music? Services like Amazon, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, Play.com and 7digital are all selling music without DRM. A typical response to this might be that Apple has no option to sell media without DRM, but this is simply untrue. Jobs is the majority shareholder at Disney, and he could insist that its films be DRM-free. Apple should be leading the way to promote DRM-free music, but instead is lagging behind. What is Apple doing to fix this? If it really is the RIAA’s fault, can you tell me specifically what the RIAA said to Jobs when he asked for the ability to sell DRM-free music?

1. Did the Genius understand that Amazon, Rhapsody and Napster, along with many others are supporting DRM free music from the very same labels and artists that Apple is selling, laden with Digital Restrictions Management?
2. Did the Genius understand that DRM is not about rights, but about restrictions? Restricting the people who buy the music and videos from playing them on a variety of devices, like CDs and DVDs.
3. Did the Genius understand that Steve Jobs’ role at Disney could be used to leverage Disney going DRM-free?

This one I don't have a solid answer for. I'd imagine that part of the reason why there are protected tracks has to do with longer term contracts. Another reason may have to deal with a lack of incentive to change. In either case, the Genius is unlikely to have this sort of knowledge. They're NOT your personal Apple PR person, so just deal with it.

Point two, I have a bit better response to. I can understand why individuals would want to protect their content with DRM - especially when some people are so eager to steal your intellectual property. So in that response, it is about the rights of the producer. When I create something I should have the right to dictate to some degree who it is used. That's codified in US Copyright law -- you know, the exclusive right bit. Yeah, you might want to check that out. What isn't clearly codified is fair use. It's a much murkier proposition. Want to change this? Start by codifying fair use in US law.

With regards to Disney, this is a pretty good point. Steve could probably push Disney to drop DRM, but there would need to be a business case for it. He has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders still -- so, unless you can show me that such a decision would improve Disney's bottom line, then you have no argument.

3. The iPhone 3G has GPS support. How can users be sure that the GPS cannot be used to track their position, without their permission? When the only thing preventing the GPS from being used is software, and the software in question is known only to Apple, why should users of the iPhone trust Apple?

1. Did the Genius understand why GPS in a device is an issue?
2. Did the Genius understand why the fact that the iPhone is proprietary is an issue here?
3. Did the Genius express any kind of apology for this behavior?

Once again, seem my previous point regarding their five claims against the iPhone 3G. This is not an issue. The software asks before it uses your location. Every cell phone has some sort of GPS in it that is used for E911 services, therefore every cell phone could be rigged to spy on people. You're now crossing into conspiracy territory and losing credibility fast.

4. In ’Thoughts on Music’, Steve Jobs said ”it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in ’open’ licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC”. If Steve really wants to see free and open formats, why doesn’t the iPhone play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora video and FLAC? These formats require no licensing costs, and are not encumbered by patents. How does Apple plan to support these formats in future?

1. Did the Genius understand the issue of free formats, such as Ogg Vorbis?
   1. Did the Genius give any indication as to Apple’s lack of support for these formats?

Let's turn this around, if the Free Software Foundation really supports free and open formats, why don't they let my arbitrarily designed custom bitstream for my handycam shot movie. It's a documented format that is free and open on the web. Exactly. Most people don't care about these issues. Using Apple stuff is like shopping in the organic food aisle at the super market -- less selection, but the stuff is tasty. Windows, which supports all those formats through various plugins, is like shopping in a regular supermarket. If the FSF had their way, we'd be shopping in post-Katrina looted supermarkets with broken shopping carts -- multimedia doesn't work that well in Linux, maybe the desire to support way too many formats is part of the reason. Choice isn't always good, especially when those choices really suck. With regards to FLAC, people who really care about FLAC already have padded rooms with vacuum tube amps and wouldn't dream of listening to their music on something as pedestrian as a personal music player.

5. Last question. Why can the iPhone 3G only be activated by Apple and AT&T? In the United States, the Register of Copyrights has ruled that consumers have the right to unlock their phones and switch to a different carrier. How does Apple plan to remedy this discrepancy?

1. Did the Genius offer any advice or suggestions in unlocking your iPhone and moving it to another provider?
2. Did the Genius admit that Apple is getting kickbacks from your phone bill in exchange for locking you to a single provider?
3. Did the Genius offer any timeframe for Apple fixing this, despite the Register of Copyrights ruling?

The decision the FSF is referring to is the latest set of DMCA exemptions. You'll notice that they don't require carriers to assist you in unlocking your phone. The decision merely makes it legal to unlock your phone. So, FSF people, get cracking and write the software that will allow me to slip in a local SIM card when I go to Greece.

With regards to the other sub points, there is no reason why the Apple rep should provide the information on how to change a carrier. They've got a contract with AT&T saying that AT&T will be the exclusive carrier. AT&T is subsidizing the prices of the phones, contributing to advertising, maintaining the infrastructure that makes the phone useful. This isn't cheap, in fact AT&T has said that they're planning on taking a $720 million dollar hit from subsidizing the iPhone. That's a huge chunk of change that AT&T is spending to support a piece of Apple hardware. Also, in the US switching to another provider inherently makes your iPhone suck more as T-Mobile is the only other major GSM carrier in the US and their 3G network won't be ready until October 1st, and even then, it's only 27 markets.

With regards to kickbacks, it's well documented that Apple is getting even more kickbacks from AT&T. Just by purchasing a phone at an Apple store you're causing AT&T to pay $100 to Apple for signing up a new customer, on top of the $300 or so that they're subsidizing the purchase price. However, the older kickback system where Apple got a portion of the monthly bill, is no longer in effect.

So, I think that I've been able to go through and show that most of the campaign by the FSF is wrong, or just based on incorrect facts, and on the basis of these incorrect facts they're going into Apple stores and bothering employees who 1) really don't care and 2) have better things to do. Yeah, way to go FSF, I'm sure you'll find some freetards who will be excited by this, but everyone else sees that you're just being dicks. Go back to your crappy little script that downloads text only web pages and the rest of will enjoy the future. Oh wait, nevermind, Stallman deleted the wireless firmware from his laptop...

Last Friday, I had the chance to hear CMU SCS Ph.D. alum, and president of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee speak on the building Google China and what it means to do business in China versus the United States. It reminded me of the fact that what we accept for "The Internet" -- Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Flickr, etc -- isn't universal. In fact, what we refer to as the "The Internet" barely exists in other markets. Most American web companies that have invested in China have failed spectacularly -- never gaining market share, or buying the dominant Chinese firm and running them into the ground. Dr. Lee made it clear that Google was planning for the long run and had no intention of being driven into the ground -- largely because they have the resources and are willing to burn lots of cash in the process of understand the market and developing tools to serve the market.

Throughout his presentation, he briefly mentioned a few of the political challenges around building companies in China. For example, when he was listing how Chinese view western web products, for Wikipedia he listed "no access to wikipedia" and for MySpace he listed "periodic access to MySpace". These garnered a chuckle out of the people in the audience, but they highlight very real issues with the Chinese governments attempts at censoring the net. Google, for their part, has acquiesced to the Chinese government demands, and censored their search results.

An easy, and obvious example of this is doing a Google search for Tiananmen Square. On the English language web, the top hits on this topic are related to the 1989 massacre there. On the Chinese web it's all the articles you'd see about a square area in any large city. Of course, most Chinese aren't going to be searching in English, rather they'd search for 天安门广场. Comparing the images on the US Google images search and the Chinese Google images search shows quite the difference. For the US the first four images are typical info images, but then the subject quickly changes to the protest with the photo of the tank man who defiantly stood in front of a column of Chinese tanks only to later be whisked away to who knows where.

According to Dr. Lee, the real reason for this is that Google tries to provide culturally relevant searches. This makes some sense -- in the UK someone searching for Biscuits is looking for what we call Cookies here in the US. They should not be subject to dozens of recipes for biscuits and gravy. At the same time, most people above the age of 25 know the power of the protests in Tiananmen Square -- I was nine at the time and vividly remember the news and pictures out of China. It's an aspect of Chinese history that has been washed away by the Chinese government -- only they can't erase the memory from the rest of the world. It also sets a very dangerous precedent for companies operating in repressive regimes. What if the protests from Burma, which were captured on Flickr and numerous other sites, happened in China? Would Google be obligated to censor such information at government decree? The answer is probably yes, and I'm sure they would.

When pressured about the issue through a question which was much more weakly worded than what I would have used (I tried to get called on, but was in a bad position), Dr. Lee stated that Google's position was that they believed the Chinese people were better with their products than without. Translation: "We'd really like to make money there, even if it does help out a repressive regime". Will all this make me stop using Google products? No. Does it change my views on Google? Yes. I'm very disappointed that a company that is so loved in the US has taken such a weak stance abroad. They claim they have patience, if that's true, they should have the patience to not contribute to a corrupt totalitarian regimes effort to censor information for the purpose of maintaining a political elite with complete control.

Computer science and information technology is, by its very nature, a complicated field. I'm not talking about the math, or abstractions, or models, or classes or any of the other typical things you learn about before graduation from any decent school of computer science. It's complicated becuase it is one of the few fields which has people in the field trying to actively subvert and destroy the work of many people in the field. Not only are they actively working aginst other people in the field, but in many cases they don't care about the implicit battle lines that have been drawn -- or worse they don't realize and/or don't care about this dichotomy in the field.

The issue I'm speaking of is intellectual property. I realize that some, such as Richard Stallman will argue that intellectual property is an abberation in the legal system and is never codified in law, which is partially true as much of the law surroudning IP is case law, but regardless, it's something that is here and thanks to organizations like WIPO, it's not going anywhere soon. Every single person who works in creative industries, such as advertising, design, software, journalism, and research, relies on the concept of intellecutal property for their paycheck every day. As an academic researcher, if someone were to take the output of my research without my permission I would be upset and seek some sort of remedy, such as a formal apology, sanctions, etc. In academia this happens too often, it's called being "duped" -- where someone else writes the same paper you've already written without adding anything new or properly citing your previous work.

It's with the concept of intellectual property in mind that I find working at IBM Research a little interesting. Working for research is like working at a summer long academic conference. The students and researchers are always collaborating, presenting ideas, and planning future projects. The student interns come from the best universities around the world. Just like a conference, there is a handful of people you may already know, and a score of people whom you're waiting to know. Even though there are a multitude of projects going on at work, they all have one major thing in common, the primary product research produces is intellectual property. This is evidenced by the multitude of ways that research projects end up in commercial marketed products, the journal papers we publish, and the thousands of patents that IBM receives every year. There are very few things that come out of research that the bulk of the work cannot be stolen with an iPod set to disk mode.

The workers here are definitely on the creative side. We enjoy going out and seeing NYC basically every chance we get. Music and movies tend to be some of the biggest ways that people enjoy their time in the city. Between the clubs, shows, and free concerts in the parks, there's always something to do related to music in the city. That's why it's so ironic that so many people around work carry iPods loaded with music that they haven't paid for and don't have permission to listen to. I'm not talking about people who have laboriously ripped their entire CD collection to mp3 files, I'm speaking of the issue of people downloading music from torrents or those who use tools to get copies of the streamed music from Yahoo or Napster and then remove the DRM from the music.

With all this in mind, I started to note the behavior interns that I work, many folks are walking around with iPods all day long, even in the hallways. So, seeking to do some investigating, I posed the following question to a number of interns:

Assuming that in all cases you lack permission of the copyright holder, what is the difference between downloading music and movies from the internet and taking a piece of code from a corporation and using it in other endeavors?

You'll notice that I worded the question to avoid issues of creative commons licensed music and movies. It would be great if lived in a world where there was a stable body of content that most people were getting their music from these sources, but it's just a fallacy folks tell themselves to feel better.

So lets delve into some of the responses that I've heard from people. Take note, these are all very intelligent people who are working on getting a Ph.D. in computer science or other related fields.

• Is it even illegal? I thought that it was only illegal if I made a profit. - All too common of a mistake. While in most cases casual piracy of music and movies will not yield criminal charges in the United States, it certainly can yield civil charges. Just ask anyone who has been victim of the RIAA's racketeering about that one.
• It's only hurting the companies, not the artists. - I almost can understand this one. In most cases the companies have the artists sing heinous contracts that do little benefit to the artist. I quickly follow up with "Have you done anything to actually support the artist, such as buying merchandise directly from the artist or going to their shows?". If the answer is no, then this conversation is usually over. If it is yes, I get a little stymied here.
• Music and movies are meant to be seen by the masses. Research data typically is not. - Once again, I'm not entirely certain I agree with this. All products have a limited market. People often perceive the market of music as being bigger because it's part of popular culture and a reference point in conversations at bars. It's hard to say that the market for the output from research is smaller because most people don't want to talk about it. When was the last time you tried to pick up a chick in a bar by telling her about your optimization algorithm that helps schedule airline crews? Ohh, that's hot.
• Corporate research output typically has additional laws protecting it. - This is interesting, because you see individuals putting a set of levels on the laws. Copyright infringement is considered minor for these individuals, trade secret infringment is pretty major.
• I hate big media. - This message, or something like it, has come up a few times. I ask them to remind of that next time they go to see a movie in a thetre or crank up the White Stripes on their iPod. If you really hate something, you choose not participate in it, not to just take the output of it. The reason I don't see movies in the theatre is not because I don't like movies - I love movies. I just don't like being called a criminal after paying $12 to watch a movie. So instead of paying to be called a criminal, we reserve movies from the library and watch them at home. If you're using this argument you need to make a distinction between the output and their business practices.

Thus far, only one reason has held up: not supporting the record companies. Such logic only works if you buy an artists work through other channels. I'm even slightly questioning the long term viability of that as a method for ensuring that artists succeed. As the record companies can provide a valuable service in promotion of music and concerts. It's true that you can become an internet superstar, but at some point, even most internet superstars sign on with major labels.

The key point is this. I, and probably most people reading this entry, work in creative industries. We try very hard to create something unique and useful. However, in almost all cases, these products have almost no copying cost, just like music. When we're copying music without permission of the rights holder, its almost like someone taking my research and incorporating it into a product without allowing me to reap any benefits. Except there is one major difference, the music industry has other outlets to make money through concerts, last time I checked, people weren't turning in droves to watch me develop social network algorithms or extensions for Eclipse.

When it comes to freedom, there are several levels of software out there. At the most difficult level is subscriptionware. This covers packages like SAS, a very powerful statistical analysis package. These tools typically cost thousands of dollars and require a new license to be obtained every year. Once the clock on your system ticks past the final date on the license, the software ceases to work. While it's not ideal, it's in the license agreement, they never promised that you could look at, manipulate, or even use it, outside of that agreement. Today, the copy of SAS on our server died because the license expired. Fortunately, I go to Carnegie Mellon, where they shell out thousands of dollars for Windows and Linux licenses for SAS. A simple email got me the updated license.

Another level of software is those that require activation or a serial number but then keep on working because there is no need to check the license anymore. Many games are like this. Windows used to be like until they instantiated the Windows Genuine Advantage program. These packages usually don't include source, but they should still keep on working. As an example, I was able to install the Battle.Net edition of Warcraft 2 last week using my original key. No problems at all

At the next level is "free" software. This is closed source software that is freely available, but not redistributable or otherwise may cause difficulties. Some of the software from SysInternals falls into this category. On the Linux front, there really isn't much software that falls into this category, VMWare player and VMWare server do, however. In VMWare Player's case, it just works. There isn't a need for a serial number or anything like that. Server is much more insidious, because I have been beta testing the software, my version was time limited. I run my server under VMWare server, with very little trouble -- until today. Today I noticed that my server died. I logged into the VMWare server console for the first time in what seemed like months, to be greeted with a message that my license had expired and ceased to work. Getting a new license just required vising a web page, but I ended with a non-sensical error message about the versions required, and finally realized I needed to upgraded VMWare server. In my case, this produced a 3-5 hour outage on my server this afternoon. I'm still a little confused about whether or not I'll be forced to upgrade again in the future. This was certainly an annoyance to me, and something I really didn't want to deal with today.

Another example of "free" software that you run into a lot is Java. You know, that language that could have toppled Microsoft if only Sun had a brain about making it easier to redistribute it. Instead of using Java on the GNOME desktop, we see that the Mono implementation of C#, a language directly from Microsoft, will be included in the next version of GNOME. However, one good thing is that there is plenty of Open Source software for Java out there -- Eclipse and Jakarta come to mind very quickly. However, many of these packages rely on "free" but not freely redistributable software -- such as the JavaMail package (in fairness, the recent versions of JavaMail have been made Open Source) -- which then essentially makes the whole package not-free. Today, I had the problem of trying to get Tomcat working, but could not find some decent RPMs of it because not everything was freely redistributable. Yup, here was a decent Open Source package being polluted by non-Open Source software.

At the best level is "free" and Free software -- Open Source. Software that you are free to redistribute, modify, share, examine, and most importantly use. In each of the prior cases, the lack of Freedom made it difficult to actually use the software. With true open source, you should always be able to use it. Linking open source to non-open source is dangerous because it places an artificial limitation on using the software. But there also is another dangerous problem with open source. The subscription model, the same thing that I talked about earlier regarding SAS. This is the technique that RedHat has chosen with RHEL. When your subscription runs out, your system breaks. While the subscription is great for people who know nothing about system administration, it sucks for people who can administer a box and just need a nice repository to download files from and take care of dependency hell for them.

Unfortunately, RedHat doesn't seem to recognize this, and have locked up their entire repository behind a wall -- sure you can get the source, but you can't get the binaries. Not without paying their fee. At first I thought this wouldn't be that bad. But that was before our RHN subscriptions just randomly started to expire. Suddenly our nice open source server is no longer usable either. If you ever seen the circular dependencies that you get when trying to build many RPMs, you'd know why.

Believe it or not, I ran into all of these situations today. SAS died, my VMWare server suspended my machine because the license expired, my Windows VMWare box (running on my laptop install of VMWare Workstation) refused to upgrade, even though it's a legal copy of Windows XP, Tomcat couldn't compile because of stupid Java dependency hell related to closed source software from Java, and finally there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it because the "subscription" on our server had expired. Talk about an aggravating day. Most of these packages have a truly free solution -- for stats I can learn R, which is quite good, but still difficult to use. I could use Xen for my virtualization. I could just not test my photo gallery software in Windows, and tell people to use something else. I could recommend to the student who wanted Tomcat to use PHP, Python, or ASP.Net instead of Java server pages. Finally, I could switch our server over to Ubuntu and kick RedHat to the curb.

But here's the problem, they're all just tools. I already know the tools, I know them well, and they're working. Sure they really piss me off when all of them break because of the same reason (not being truly Free) on the same day (today). But there is a massive opportunity cost in switching, and a greater cost if they can't do something I need. I realized that I'm facing the same dilemma that a lot of organizations and individuals face. We could run Apache for our web server, but we already know IIS. We could use Xen for virtualization, but we loose the live migration in VMWare ESX, or worse, without new hardware I couldn't run OpenBSD. We could use R, but it's not clear how to create the same graphs we can create in SAS. It's not 100% that the Free software is broken, it's just different. And people hate things that are different.

What it comes down to is the intrinsic value one places on freedom related to software. Do I feel bad when I use software that isn't free? A little, but not a lot. For me I can live in the happy medium. However, the line is always switching. More frustrations may push the line closer to the switching point, likewise, new features in Open Source competitors help out too. However, new features in the commercial software may make it more difficult to switch (this is one form of vendor lock-in). However, one thing is for sure, I need to be cognizant of these situations and make my choices in light of the fact. Because, as I found out over and over again today, free isn't "Free".

During the cold war many "citizens" of totalitarian states were required to carry identification papers and show them on demand to authorities. This action was oestensibly done to check for criminals, but in reality the rulers of these nations had something more insidious in mind. They accurately released that making the citizenry live in fear of the police was a wonderful way to keep everyone under control.

Fast forward to 2005 and America is heading in the same direction. In September Deboarah Davis was riding the bus to work in Denver. A police officer came on the bus, asked for everyone's ID on the bus, and had Mrs. Davis, a 50 yr old middle class mother of three, thrown in jail on federal charges. This is not my America, and this insanity has to stop now. Make a call to your reps and senators today and tell them that you're concerned about how America's freedom is becoming a permission society where the government dictates what route we can take to work, what planes we can fly, and what trains we can ride. What next? What roads we're allowed to drive on?

I gave another presentation this morning on the Broadcast Flag to the EPP tech policy group. It wasn't my best, perhaps a bit too soft. I should have spent more time talking about some of the economic analysis of the issues. Anyway, the slides are available for download.

I did find out one VERY cool thing during this talk. Another of the students in my department has a much cooler MythTV setup than I do. In his home country, connected to a $30/month FTTH link at a friends house he has a MythTV box set up to record television. Then utilizing the job queue in MythTV he uploads the programs to his local MythTV system in Pittsburgh and watches it all on XBox frontend. Wow. Talk about cool. He says it takes about 2 hours to get a 1 hour MPEG stream, but still, quite cool and a very interesting use of technology.

On Thursday morning I finally managed to get through to Congressman Mike Doyle's office on the issue of the broadcast flag. For once I was even able to speak to his technical aide on the issue. The basic gist that I got was that representative Doyle favors the need to protect copyrighted work from unauthorized distribution on the internet. Not all that surprising given his stance on internet decency and censorship.

On the bright side he is in favor of time shifting and allowing us to copy media for personal use. However, he doesn't seem to understand the ramifications behind this. Any sort of DRM will inevitibly be broken and just be a pain for innovation and home users. I still have to get around to forwarding him the Darknet paper to better explain the problems with this logic. Anyway, I'm hopeful. But still, not ideal.

So how much does it cost to buy off your fair use rights? According to my analysis, somewhere around $305,740. That is the amount that the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association have spent in the last two years to buy the twenty reps who support the Broadcast Flag. This was prompted by my previous look at who is buying off Mike Doyle. I swear, stuff like this has me almost angry enough to run for congress.

All this great stuff was mined out of Open Secrets. How I wish they exposed some sort of XML-RPC or SOAP based interface to query information. This stuff was not hidden in the most obvious of places. I left out many other probable supporters/bribers of the broadcast flag such as Comcast, Cablevision, and of course Clear Channel.

It should come as no surprise that I have yet to hear anything from Mike Doyle's office about this situation. Please, take time to call them and let them that bad boys do not get re-elected. His washington number is 202-225-2135. It's important that we show him that the people of Pittsburgh are more important than Beltway interests, which is where he gets most of his money. This guy does not represent Pittsburgh. Let's boot him out. I also called the democratic party here in Pittsburgh to ask about this issue, no response there yet either.

Last night I blogged about Mike Doyle's support of the broadcast flag. I was fortunate enough to have an officemate overhear my call to Doyle's Washington office (202-225-2135) and ask me what the broadcast flag was. I got my little chance to get on my soapbox and explain. My officemate quickly realized this would be bad for innovation, and saw the problems with it. He then asked me who was really paying for all of this. Off to Open Secrets to find out.

Hmm, that's interesting, the #2 supporter of Mike Doyle, the national association of broadcasters. Here's the top 10 supporters of Mike Doyle:

A little more digging shows that almost 2/3rd of Doyle's money comes from the Washington DC area, and only about 12% actually comes from Pittsburgh, the area he is supposed to be representing. Clearly this is not good, and I have not concluded that the pride of Swissvale must go.

Update:More digging reveals that Doyle's top contributor for the 2004 election was Comcast. Yeah, this guy represents the people.

Here's a follow-up on the origin of my EFF hat. Apparently the EFF didn't even consider where the hats were made when they started, which is pretty normal for most folks. They simply searched for the best deal. It sounds like they have a decent amount of hats stored up still that they will continue to distribute rather than dispose of; that makes sense. In fairness to the EFF, my impression is that these were part of bulk order a while back. Possibly before China got really draconian with beefing up the firewall and shutting down netcafes, and maybe even before the blog explosion of the last two years which they've fought desperately to control.

It just shows, it's difficult to know where products are made and it's difficult not to support regimes that you don't agree with or that violate human rights. Other big exporters, such as Indonesia and Malaysia also have their own human rights issues. We could also resort to saying buy American, but then we're also deluding ourselves to a degree. I suppose at least with capitalist countries you're not really supporting the oppression like you may be with communist nations. Intuitively I would think that shopping at Ikea would be fine, but I just looked a few Ikea picture frames; made in China.

Thanks to whichever one of my blog readers gave the helpful pointer to the EFF. I noticed that they looked at the weblog entry from last night and in the email they made a comment about persevering after no response. Thanks to the EFF for taking time to respond. You guys and girls rock. Thanks for fighting the good fights.