james holden » Culture

RMS vs EU Software Patents

James Holden — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:22:57 +0000

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, has written an editorial piece in the Guardian in which he illustrates the dangers of software patents by making a comparison to hypothetical literary patents – using the same example as Patrick Devedjian, who was until recently the French minister for industry. RMS illustrates that if literary patents had existed in the 1800′s, many great literary accomplishments would not have been achieved.

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New Music

James Holden — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 21:31:25 +0000

Well OK, I’m quite sure they’re not exactly new to an awful lot of people, but today I stumbled across ‘Lacuna Coil’ on special sauce. I’m pretty impressed to be honest. They seem to fall somewhere between NIN and Garbage and I like them a lot from my first 30 minutes of listening. Anyone care to add their thoughts?

Register your protest against the ID card

James Holden — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 20:34:10 +0000

No2ID have set up a pledge list on pledgebank for people to protest against the national ID card scheme. Once 10,000 people sign up, you pledge to donate £10 to a legal defense fund. Add your name now!

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Double Royalties Please

James Holden — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:42:04 +0000

Aparrently the music publishers think they’re entitled to double (or even triple) royalties for ‘copy protected’ audio CDs that have an extra copy of the music in some DRM’d format for playback on a computer. Heh, that’s funny! They shaft you out of the ability to play full CD quality music on your PC and want more money for it.

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Crazy Frog

James Holden — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 23:18:32 +0000

The crazy frog is fantastic. What? Yes, you heard it right. The crazy frog is fantastic.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ll have come across the crazy frog, possibly the most irritating ringtune ever. So why do I think the crazy frog is fantastic when everyone else is being driven to distraction? It’s a matter of marketing and the lowest common denominator. Think about it – the crazy frog advert airs on prime-time TV. That’s not cheap. They must be raking it it to pay for that kind of exposure. I would have never in a million years thought of a money making stunt like the frog – I just don’t have that kind of idea of what the general public will spend money on. Clearly I’m wrong.

Not wanting to miss out of making easy money of the masses, I’m currently open to suggestions on how to do it. Horoscopes? Sports results? Reality TV? Good old porn?

Moral Retards

James Holden — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 22:35:09 +0000

My goodness, has it really been that long since I last posted? Bah, I’m crap. Things have been a bit busy over the last few weeks – I swear I’m going to write a book on what could possibly go wrong when trying to move house. We’re alledgedly exchanging contracts next week, but that’s four days off so who knows what might go wrong between now and then.

On another note, a guy I’d never heard off from a Brooklyn college wrote a pretty good opinion piece on religious zealots that’s attracted quite a bit of attention from the US media. Thumbs up to the guy, it’s a well reasoned and sensible bit of writing.

The Lincolnshire Poacher

James Holden — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 13:37:08 +0000

I caught the tail-end of a facinating programme this morning about number stations, which broadcast encrypted messages on short-wave all around the world. The broadcasts begin with some sort of signature, like a series of notes on a xylophone, and consist of a recorded human voice slowly reading a list of single digit numbers in groups of five, sounding somewhat like the recorded voice you get when dialling 1471 from your home phone.

Some are scheduled, some are not, some are in morse code. Starting somewhere around the middle of the cold war, these stations started broadcasting on the edge of the frequency spectrum, and rather curiously, are still broadcasting today.

Simon Mason featured on the programme maintains a website on the subject. He also has a copy of the programme available in WMA format.

And the Lincolnshire Poacher? Well nobody really knows. The lincolnshire poacher appears to broadcast from somewhere in Cyprus, but nothing is known about who it really is or what is messages mean.

A Good ISP Should…

James Holden — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:07:17 +0000

The IFPI and MPA have produced a code of conduct which they hope ISPs will adopt. Some highlights are:

“remove references and links to sites or services that do not respect the copyrights of rights holders”
“require subscribers to consent in advance to the disclosure of their identity in response to a reasonable complaint of intellectual property infringement by an established right holder defence organisation or by right holder(s) whose intellectual property is being infringed”
terminate contracts of recidivist
implement instant messaging to communicate with infringers
implement filtering technologies to block sites that are ‘substantially dedicated to illegal file sharing or download services
voluntarily store data for copyright enforcement…
To enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server, or from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities

Obviously, any ISP adopting the code of conduct will be committing commercial suicide. Wishful thinking, I believe it’s called.
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Ethics are the new craft

James Holden — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 12:27:30 +0000

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow has written a fastastic editorial for Edinburgh University’s law department on how the tech companies have rolled over and played dead in the face of pressure for the entertainment industry, producting crippled products for fear of getting sued for ‘contributory infringment’.
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Dancing In Silence

James Holden — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:02:28 +0000

There’s a few people at the office with wireless headphones, with which they are able to wander to the coffee machine and back taking their music with them. This year, the organisers of the Glastonbury festival are taking the idea to a new level with a silent rave. Revellers will be given wireless headphones and will dance the night away, long past the noise curfew, in complete silence.
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