In my last post about Freedomware I tried to define it without relying on the copyright law since I no longer believe in it.

There's no way around it: the longer you run a Windows installation, the slower and less responsive it gets. On my year-old dual-boot laptop, I wait longer and longer for Windows to boot, and longer and longer for programs to do what I ask.

"So for non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important. But trust me, this is huge [...] In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses.

Recently, Blue GNU reported that the Xming software is released under the terms of the GNU GPLv2, and that the developer might be violating its terms. Harrison now states his program is no longer under the GPL. So here's an update.

It used to be that you could safely assume a work was public domain unless there was a highly visible warning printed on it, containing both the copyright owner and the date of copyright (at least in the USA). This system also ensured that, when the work’s copyright expired, you could tell from any copy that this was so—by simply adding the duration of copyright to the date printed in the work’s copyright notice. The Berne Convention, however, changed all that by replacing the assumption of freedom with the assumption of monopoly, and it now takes extensive research to be sure a work is public domain.

The Public Domain Manifesto has its heart in the right place as it objects to some of the unjust extensions of copyright power, so Richard Stallman wish he could support it. However, it falls far short of what is needed.

Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., EMI Music Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. have agreed to pay songwriters and music publishers $47.5 million in damages for copyright infringement and overdue royalties to settle a class action lawsuit.

"...The GPL requires anyone who makes a program based on GPL'ed code has to release the source code for their program and license it under the GPL. The MPAA refused multiple requests to provide the sources for their spyware, so an Ubuntu developer sent a DMCA notice to the MPAA's ISP and demanded that the material be taken down as infringing."

The MPAA created the "University Toolkit", a modified version of Xubuntu Linux for universities. However, they made no effort to rebrand it and the site (http://universitytoolkit.org/) does not provide any link to download the sources. Is the MPAA violating copyright and Canonical's trademark (http://www.canonical.com/legal)?