Interview with Neil Young on Music Piracy, MP3 Hell and Finding Freaks on the Web (ReadWriteWeb) [LWN.net]

Interview with Neil Young on Music Piracy, MP3 Hell and Finding Freaks on the Web (ReadWriteWeb)

Posted May 9, 2008 20:34 UTC (Fri) by sdalley (subscriber, #18550) [Link]

There is LWN, there is linux, there is FOSS in general with its various causes, there are
free-and-open people like Neil Young with vision and inspiration, and there's all the rest of
the world, in ever-expanding circles. I personally find it pleasant and no bad thing to have
one's mind and outlook broadened, discover new horizons and people, that sort of thing.

And anyway, it's not as if anyone's foisting the whole article on you in a few column-inches.

It's Friday, as well ...

Well said!

Posted May 9, 2008 22:10 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

Well said! And besides, the whole Nine Inch Nails (and Radiohead) Creative Commons License release strategy independent of any RIAA-influenced record label just seems to resonate (if on a parallel basis) with the whole Open-Source philosophy.

Disclosure: I'm somewhat a fan of Neil Young, NIN, and Radiohead (among many other artists/groups). Even if you don't like their music, you ought to admire how they're acknowledging that people will P2P their works regardless, and they're freely sharing their art with fans. These artists realize that there are ample other methods to earn royalties for their creative works.

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 1:01 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Right. And when Zimbra makes software available "almost freely" what do we do?

This is, in fact, even worse: "Free for non-commercial use".

It's nice to have those freebies. But how do they help to enrich our culture? Do they help the
next artist who wants to write a song?

We have here two successful artists that can afford to give away freebies in order to gain
popularity. That, as-is, doesn't really show anything.

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 5:08 UTC (Sat) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Even RMS doesn't claim that creative works of art (music, books) should be copylefted.  With
software, it's a tool and (per RMS) the user should be given access to its internals,
otherwise the user is crippled.  With art, there's no reason the creator's wishes on
distribution/modification should not be respected.  In fact, the GNU Free Documentation
Licence falls afoul of Debian's guidelines for just that reason ("invariant sections").

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 10:55 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Those invariant section indeed make that license non-free.

Again, beyond the availability of freebies that those rich artists were kind enough to
release, what did we actually gain here?

Will you be able to mix that and use it in a party you throw? Will you be able to use that in
your new movie? (probably not, because you put it for download in a page that has adds, and
thus it is for-profit even if it freely-downloadable)

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 18:49 UTC (Sat) by renox (guest, #23785) [Link]

>With software, it's a tool and (per RMS) the user should be given access to its internals,
otherwise the user is crippled. 

And? What's wrong with that?

Sometimes proprietary software providers sell binary-only software or you can also buy the
sourcecode and the right to maintain the software.

Obviously the second option is more expensive, but I don't see any moral difference between
both options..

I've never understood/agreed with this part of RMS speech (closed source software being
imoral), if you don't agree with the terms of purchase of something, easy don't buy it!

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 19:44 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

If you didn't agree with the purchase of Windows in 1998, you could have 
chosen not to buy it... by choosing not to buy a computer at all.

i.e., your argument is flawed because it assumes that other choices 
necessarily exist.

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 21:02 UTC (Sat) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

Could you please give an example of such a case?

Source code available != free software (FSF's "free software", or OSI's "Open Source", just to
avoid silly semantic arguments)

Well, not

Posted May 10, 2008 22:49 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

The `we sell you the binary and support, or the software and you get to 
maintain it' is one of two approaches often used when the supplier is a 
small software house selling proprietary software to enormous behemoths. 
(The other approach is `we sell you the binary and escrow the code: if we 
go under, you get the code and poach our developers'.)

This sort of situation inverts the power relationships typical in the 
consumer software industry, where the software company is the behemoth and 
the users are trying to get some freedoms. In this case, the *users* are 
the behemoths and are trying to make sure that the supplier wouldn't put 
them over a barrel.