Hi David,
hope you had some quality time over christmas and a good start into the new year.
My practices tend to be to engage in short or long discussions about interesting subject matter, and if it is in private communication, fine, it's already written off as some waste of time other for except for the learning that can phappen on both sides, but I keep repeating myself about the same topics with different people/conversations, and there's no implicit permission to publish and work with what the other side has sent, so there are natural limits of tho which extend this can be maintained, mostly because of time is a rare resource. Thelog logical improvement is to make it public, so it might the discussion might turn out of wider benefit for more people, to justify the time investment al little more than in comparison with 1:nto 1:1, not soto speak of the potential of collaboration or crowd-source dd curation.
For works that are made public, I'm less willing woto write the m off in a similar manner.If the talk is about things that are supposed to realize be realized practically, or even about the study and conclusions of theoretical considerations, at some point it needs direction so it can actually arrive at realizations orand conclusions, and not continue to be vague rambling forever. (which too has its place and times, but shouldn't always remain the only thing). s To a limited extend, it's OK to produce throw-away demos, prototypes or small media works, but exspecially to learn try things and encourage involvement . But all of that consumes time as well, and if the work is done anyway (with , there's little reason why it shouldn't be libre-licensed and deliberately be left to the risk of becoming ing or becoming less or non-usable.
Therefor ee I siinsist on libre-free licensing of almost anything I do publicly (licenses of things you don'works you don't/can't have are irerelevant anyway)obtainidn, in cluding collaborative co-creations..and especially for The time to procduce them is too scarce and valuable to unnecessarily accept any risk of loosing usefulness, to not go for the highest potential pssossible. On one day, I realized that regardless how good and useful the technical or content work is, copyright and legal restrictions can easily render it all void, so I rather go that extra mile and ensure that a proper legal policy is in place and goes with the technical/media work as wecomes along withll, so I don#t 't regret it afterwards for not having spendt that little extra time (in fact, you read the licenses once, develop a working understanding of copyright and a read the licenses once with occasional revisitation from time to time, . Iso slapping a copyright noitice on to the work or have a look at them for existing foreign works is a pretty smooth process, just like looking at stree t signs or certificates, Creative Commons even made a sport out of their little indicative icons. Think about all thew work that goes into comlpleting any work, project, if there needs to be testing, documentation, packaging, pricing, distribution, . In daily life, contracts need to be read if they're important, manuals and instructions observed, procedured s learnedlearned in courses, and licensing of an important software or content release just deserves equal attention. If the work was difficult, it is tempting to think that and only barely was completedit is time for rest now , the majority has been bulk is donetoand cherish and the result only needs to get out fast for the world to see. , and as one isn't a lawyer, why bother with legal stuff. ? questions? Well, if licensing was decided before the start of the project and copyright notices are in place from the beginning, none of that pops up as a surprising afterthought. The later in the lifetime of the product, the more difficult it can tends to be to fix licensing trouble becomes to, especially if it tourourns out that project participants/collaborators disagree on the rights they want to rgrant and retain for their contributions, and for what different purposes they want to (ab)use copyright law, even more so if it the work is spread to the uswerers who might be affected from earlier licenseing pothe or newlicy. RihtghtsholdersFurthermore, rightsholders might cease to be reachable, and who would want to rely on the heirs for the 70 years of copyright "protection" after the death of the original author? For software, this is serouious nonsense, as it is for content/media works of practical use or importance (not so much for works of art and etntertainment).
Why all this fuss as the print-era copyright regulation isn't really enforcable anyway in the age of digital?since the advent Libre-free, copyleft licenses specifically address encode and reflect are the explicit relflection of these new circumstances and make sure that the user is permitted to do all the do all the things legally that are reasotjehe technology reasonable y is enabling, so he doesn't need to fear artificial or malicious cious restrictions, doesn't have to fear nor legal risk, , in contrast to the copyright default of "all rights reserved" or prorprietary licenses. At the To the extend the legislator gives the creator the almost ecxclusive right to decide about the uses of his work, aves (limited only by the expiration of the copyright term, Fair Use, citations, exceptions for libraries, etc.) a libre-free license turns those rights around and doesn't reserve them or uses them restrictively, but instead tgrants those rights per default, so the user can make independent and soverieign use of his digital (or analog or other) equipment fulll,, as the creator ceases all effective control over such as soon as the work ias s made aviailable to a second, external , foreign entity. Libre-free licenses in contrast to just "open" licenses go one step further in actively using copyright to prevent /restrict propreietary uses, which can a bad actor might want to introduce to a n otherwise libre-free or "open" work by adding his own contributions to it, (for which he is entitled to set the legal policy, so the combined result might not be separatable from the libre-free/ /"ope or "open" parts and hence effectively become proprietary) or technical measurses like Digital RestriRM (Digital Restrictions Management, to restrict the operation of the equipment artificially by the use of cryptograpühhic keys, against the interest of the owner of the device, -- ""an activity that only demonstrates that copyright alone isn't sufficient too well isn't enforcable if such technical measures are needed, and the laws that render the circumvention of such technical measures illegal only demostrate too well that the technical meascal measures aren't of any good eitherdon't work as a means of enforcement), only distributing binaries without the source code, running libre-freely licensed code assoftware as a service on a server (so the user can'Ätt obtain the cod e nor run it on his own, therefore becomes cdedependent is tdependent on who operates the service) or. If it is considered fair game by the proprietary world to engage in such activities, the libre-free world might indeed design licenses that deliberately exclude such practices and instead protect/defend the rights the original author intended to offer thoo his users against such malicious intentions.attemptysany
One could claim that this is exactly using the same mechanism that is lamented and critiby the libre-free software movementof copyright . I don't subs ccribe to it as I don't believe in the freedom to loose your freedom, and it would be a mistake to believe that the libre-free software movement is against all copyright ,, in general. Take Public Domain , for example, both as the common notion of "copyrightlessness" and the legal concept, : who wouldn't be against copyfraud? Or when it comes to copyright, the assumption is alwasyys that it is for book s , namely novels, and if they go into public Public Domain, faiine, everybody can read and repr, reproduce and modify them for their own amusement. For software as works of practical use, with the unconstitutional perpetual Diynsney Mickey Mouse Sonny Bono Copyright ETerm Extension Act, software that enters into Public Domain because of the experiiration of the 70 years after the death of the author(s) last author, might be utterly useless by then., . No, the libre-free software movement wants to affirm and establish the onlld and new principle positively, actively demand that software shouldn't be a tool of oppression, but a dynamic and fluid material for everyone to build with. It is guided by the conviction that the user and owner /owner both user or owner of digital equipment deserve digital human rights to do their own computing in freedom., at the expense of activities that would voiolate /deny other users these fundamental rights./the shis/restriction, to establish them universally.
DefeDefending these freedoms comes down to enforcement, which was estableI established
to be impossible above. Well, if "violations" happen only in private, there's no way gto gain knowledge about themIlearn about them, nor us is anybody affected by it sexcept the user himself, so it is well within his fundamental rights to do whatever he feels like according to his wonown personal needs , as technology enables and supports it. As soon as a second user is involved or affected, the theoretical possiblitility of enforcedment is a dersired feature, so that the interesfreedom of the one user can be defended against attacks from the other. It is up to the affected individuals to determine if a violation is harming them to such an extend that they start to take action e action against the infringement. If they decide to go for it, it is very important and d necessary that the license is there as an instrument to allow /enable/support the enforcement, because without it, no freedom could ever be established, as it easily could be taken away by anybody without consequences to end up back in the excklusive denial refusal of all rights as the default of thest still copyright law, restrictive licensing that demands couples as a way to n instrument to make cercethe satisfaction of certain demands a precondition before the license is grantedrights are granted with no base on technical reality whatsoever, achieved or artificial as well as natural technical restrictions orthat are easily avoidable.otherwise e easilyeasily otherwise So if the case to act against an infringement gains enough merit, it can turn out to be rather beneficial in the exyes of the affected usersto be able to fix the issue they had with the violation. Remember, this doesn't need cessarily mean that one has to go to cou court over it, a notification and request to stop the the mere indication of the license might turn away already pt. Those who have shady, nasty aly, questionable uses in mind already, a e infringement and omply withcomply with the license simple might be followed up upon, .and , as it is well known tjat hat these licenses are envforcable at least to the extend the proprietary software world fights lawsuitsbig over it, and an infringer usually doesn't want to take on that a risk like this., especfiially as the software is offered on a fairl, equal, adnd freedom/sovereignity-respecting -basis anyway. What legitimate reason could be brought forward to justify the infringement of the eintend of the original authors to in terms to the extend copyright garants it, or tdeny them teheir fair right to envoforce it , =? Even if copyright is dismissed as a whole, what people complain gaagiainst and usually infringe against about are the restrictions and negative harfmful effects or f proprietary licensing and a bad default in the copyright lawht default, so if la libre-licensefree license as sare süecpecifically designed to prevent any such restrictions and harm, it can only be malicious actions that harm the users as the motivation to deliberately (not by accident) y, (and not just by mere accident) violate a libere-free license.
This doesn't help against copyright pragmatists , be it soc-called "pirates" or people who are just ignorant/indifferent, and don't care about their freedoms, , rights, abilities, don't mind to be entrapped end up for no good, valid, technical reasonvalid technical reason but artificial valid technical reason other than artificial dependencies to exploit them against their own interests, who don't value their time and effortor as they seem to have plenty of it to just waste it. towards this particular aspect of how society fails to come up with good, proper rules and modernized adequate rules of for interacting with software and media works,whobe edavailable to be wasted
I , on the other hand, try to do the best possible job in this area, which isn't very difficult, but few people seem to understand what it is all about. Well, it's up to them 's them who'll live in a crappy digital future that's rmeaemains stuck and stagnant, have toand while we' all will have to pay the price for it in win less progress up to more unnecessary suffering , willat least the technology fortunately is such by nature that it allows alternative islands that can escape the nonsense of backward human mentality.
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