2 June, 2008
posted by Pablo Defendini at 8:54 am permalink
. . . . that the Pirate Bay was raided, in a headline-grabbing move carried out by Swedish police, but orchestrated by the MAFIAA. Since then, the ‘Bay has only grown stronger, and the file sharing movement has grown with it. Like a Hydra, baby. Like a Hydra.
Ars Technica has a nice write-up here.
Zak Snyder has announced a contest for people to submit fake ads and other, Veidt Enterprises-related promotional material, here. The winning entries will be used as in-story content in the upcoming Watchmen movie. I’m split three ways about this:
The fanboy in me is incredibly excited to see this film. Snyder outdid himself on 300. Watchmen, from what I’ve seen so far, looks to be of the same caliber and fidelity to the original comic.
The web-denizen in me is very interested to see a motion picture from a major studio integrate crowdsourcing into its production.
However, the creative professional in me balks at the idea that this is, in effect, a muti-national conglomerate (and member of the MPAA, no less) soliciting spec work from the masses, to be used in a profit-generating film. I have absolutely no doubt that some of the entries will be of professional caliber, and the thought of some hapless fanboy giving away his hard work for mere geek-cred just rubs me the wrong way. While, upon reading the fine print, one does find that there are cash prizes to be won,the legalese seems a bit sketchy to me. I’m inclined to speculate, but I am not a lawyer, and I have trouble parsing legalese, so I’ll keep my mouth shut. Anyone else have any thoughts?
8 April, 2008
posted by Pablo Defendini at 6:47 am permalink
Typophile has a short rant about Apple’s claims that designers can now use any font when creating websites, using CSS3 specs, and that Safari will correctly render the typefaces:
Apple says: “With CSS3 web fonts in Safari 3.1, web designers can go beyond web-safe fonts and use any font they want to create stunning new websites using standards-based technology. Safari automatically recognizes websites that use custom fonts and downloads them as they’re needed.”
One of the biggest concerns around the Web fonts scheme is that Web designers would post commercial fonts through either ignorance or disregard of font licensing rights. Apple were aware of this (both Safari folks and Font folks) so I find it hard to understand why they’re telling web designers that they can post any font to the Web.
Technically, Typophile is correct. And technically, so is Apple. The technology for embedding fonts is there, via the CSS3 standard and Safari’s ability to correctly parse this code. Legally, however, font foundries normally include a ‘no embedding’ clause in their EULAs, so using this (in my opinion, great and a-long-time-coming) technology is, in effect, a breach of contract. As some in the article’s comments section have mentioned, the fault here lies not with Apple, who are simply touting their product’s capability to do something, but with the foundries, whose legal language is outdated and doesn’t reflect changes regarding how their product is used.
Granted, Apple probably should have included some sort of legalese warning about font licensing, like their infamous “Don’t Steal Music” warning back in the early days of iTunes, but criticizing them for this is akin to criticizing Xerox for making products that enable and facilitate the infringement of copyrights.
Will this make designers not use the Web Fonts feature? I doubt it. Personally, I find it incredibly compelling to be able to design for the web with any typeface. This bears re-stating, because I feel very strongly about it: incredibly compelling. The prospect of using fonts other than Verdana, Times, and Arial (bloody Arial, FFS!!) in online designs without having to resort to either tricky, image-based workarounds or the use of Flash is a very, very tempting proposition.
This will make one of several scenarios come to pass: either 1) foundries will have to find a way to compromise, and change their EULAs to reflect modern usage of their products; 2) the technology will be crippled with some form of DRM, at the behest of the foundries (remember, Adobe is a foundry, and they have clout); 3) the foundries will form some sort of MAFIAA-esque litigating body to go after infringers, with craptacular results. Just one more example of how our copyright system just isn’t working, I suppose. Let’s hope that the foundries learn from the experience of the music and film industry (can’t stop the signal!), and come correct.
[EDIT: This is a post from the archives on my previous Blogger blog, which I thought was worth bringing over. As such, it may be somewhat dated.]
Here’s a fascinating excerpt from Matt Mason’s new book, The Pirate’s Dilemma, via torrentfreak.com. To wit:
We live in a world where it is legal for a company to patent pigs, or any other living thing except for a full birth human being, but copying a CD you bought onto your hard drive is considered an infringement of someone else’s rights. A place where an average law abiding citizen could owe more than $12 million dollars in fines if they were sued every time they accidentally violated copyright law in a single day. A society where it’s ok for each of us to be hit with 5,000 advertising messages every 24 hours, usually without our permission, but creating a piece of art and placing it in public yourself without permission can land you in prison. This isn’t just about the pros and cons of file sharing – this is about an entire species losing its sense of perspective, failing to understand the potential of one of its most precious (and yet most abundant) resources.Many of us are confused about whether our ideas should count as information, or property. When we have a new idea, there are two opposing forces at work. At the same time as we are thinking “how can I get this out there?” we’re also asking ourselves “how can I benefit from/monetize this idea?” We want to spread ideas as information, but capitalize on them as intellectual property. This problem with information is something I call The Pirate’s Dilemma.
Interesting stuff, and there’s not much on there that I don’t agree with. I’ve had this book mentioned to me three times today alone—I’m going to have to shortlist it on my reading pile. . . .