Posts about copyright

jEdit macros, vs. Emacs functions

I've been playing with customising jEdit a little bit, and decided to have a go at writing some simple date insertion macros. These perform the same work as some old elisp functions I wrote years ago in Emacs, to insert date/time stamps in various formats. In my .emacs file, I bind these functions to short-cut keys, and then use them for updating Changelogs in code and in offline journal entries.

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DVD-CSS in SUSE

This post was origionally published at sinewalker.blogspot.com.au on 7 March 2006

There are excellent instructions for installing/patching SUSE to play commercial (CSS encrypted) DVDs. I had no trouble following them either. Wonder of wonders.


The whole issue of libdvdcss being “illegal” in DMCA-enlisted countries seems to be mute now, from my perspective... so long as your intent is only to watch movies that you have legally obtained (and not fincancial gain), then it should be fine — if it's good enough for the MPAA, then it's good enough for me. This would seem to me to work well with Australia's existing copyright law, which specifically grants fair-use copying and playing anyway, and goes against the dogma of the DMCA.

RIAA verses the world, and a return to Music Guilds?

This post was originally published at sinewalker.blogspot.com.au on 31 August 2005

In reference to this Slashdot article about RIAA lawsuits


Seems that RIAA are intent on sueing more 12-year old girls for sharing music... it sickens me.


I am not sure what to do to protest (beyond what seems to be happening already — consumers aren't buying today's crap, and RIAA/ARIA/MPAA etc are just blaming it on the Net anyway). I am considering what would happen if lots of fans started writing directly to their favourite artists and asking them these questions:


  • why do you have this deal with your distributor EMI? I can't play your
  • why don't you consider putting sample tracks on your web site? For that matter, why don't you deal directly with Apple, or start your own pay-per-download site for your songs? I'm sure heaps of fans like me will buy them, and you could get a much larger cut per track than Warner Bros is giving you

Of course, there are costs to running a web site also. But I wonder if what may happen eventually is a return to music guilds, where a guild runs the site, member groups contribute content and all proffit goes to the members. It would probably be a good business to start, atracting new groups like the “Idol” TV shows do now. Shame I have hopeless business sense though.