Closed door negotiations left net radio with a glimmer of hope but it hasn’t solved the problem of crazy high fees for streaming music. The following article from Webware has the details:
But contrary to some published reports traversing the blogosphere on Thursday and Friday, SoundExchange, the nonprofit group charged with collecting the payments, has not made any sort of blanket pledge to delay enforcing the contentious new Webcaster payments established earlier this year by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board, according to spokesman Richard Ades.
“There is a misunderstanding, and SoundExchange is making it very clear that everybody is expected to comply with the law,” Ades told CNET News.com Friday.
The CRB ruling at issue requires Internet radio operators to pay additional fees to SoundExchange, which passes them on to artists and record labels, retroactive to 2006 and through 2010. Webcasters opposed to the new rules say the changes could drive up their mandatory payments by as much as 300 percent for larger entities and 1,200 percent for smaller ones, arguing such increases could put them out of business.
TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 7, 2007 – Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced more details on Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition at Computex 2007 in Taipei.
Following discussions at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Seville Spain and a great response from the developer community generally, the target specifications and technical milestones for the project have been agreed.
Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition will provide a rich Internet experience for users of Intel’s 2008 Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform. To achieve this, Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded will run video, sound and offer fast and rich browsing experiences to the MID target user. Optimized for MIDs based on Intel’s low power processors and chipsets, Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded edition is expected to deliver fast boot and resume times, and reside in a small memory and disk footprint.
“We are delighted with the progress of the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition” commented Jane Silber, Director of Operations at Canonical. “we have had a great response to our first announcement with many developers showing interest in the project. With a clear roadmap, an active developer community and a date for release - we look forward to bringing Ubuntu to Mobile Internet Devices.”
The first full release of the software will be available in October 2007 corresponding with the normal release cycle of the Ubuntu operating system. Working collaboratively with Intel, Canonical is working to deliver software on actual devices from system manufacturers in 2008.
At first blush, the new offering, with a proposed release this fall, appears to have the makings of a serious competitor. Designed as an add-on “EDU-CD” to accompany the upcoming 10.3 release of openSUSE, the so-called “SLEducator” is designed to “[ease] the installation and configuration of an educational network and student desktop.”
The dearth of women in math and science has been discussed frequently. Computer science and programming is part of that same picture. It is obvious to everyone that the ratio is seriously lop-sided. But determining exactly why and what, if anything, we can do about it is not as obvious.
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Ruby on Rails Podcast — Roundtable: Women in Development
The podcast is a round-table discussion on the state of women in open source programming. It features Jen May Wu, Dr. Ana Nelson, Liz Summerfield, Sandy Metz, Carmelyne Thompson, Cynthia Kaiser, and Desi McAdam, and it is moderated by Geoffrey Grosenbach. To share just one insightful tidbit from their discussion: they mention how many technology companies only give out men’s t-shirts and how much they appreciate companies that bother to stock both men and women’s t-shirts. A great point.
You have probably already noticed that there are no ads at Linuxchic.net. I get quite a few hits to this site and I probably could bank some extra cash by tossing up some ads. As a matter of fact, I have dabbled in that arena a time or two but always end up taking them back down. I am definitely not sleeping on a mattress filled with money and would love to have some extra moolah to cover hosting costs at the least. The problem is I hate ads. I loathe them. It’s a personal choice for the site at this time. Not to say that one day I won’t give in and decide that the need out weighs the want but right now I don’t want the clutter. I don’t hate sites that use them, I just don’t want them here.
There is also another debate on that front;I don’t want my posts confused with paid advertisements. Bloggers are making money and that is really awesome however, some of them probably shouldn’t be managing their own business. I choose blogs to read for their integrity. I want to be sure that what I am reading is not a biased post because of the paycheck they are getting for clicks or views or links or whatever. If I can’t be sure that what they write is unbiased when they say it is, then I will most likely stop reading it. I read some fanboy blogs even though I KNOW they are pimping out the devil because they are pretty upfront about it. They are biased but I know that going into it. What gets my goat are bloggers who are claiming to be non discriminate then selling their words to the devil. Embedding words into a post that you have sold is even more fly by night than the pay to post type deals. I don’t care if it is a stupid slogan or the a single word, if you got paid to stick that into your post, you have sold your soul to the dark lord if you don’t tell your readers that you got paid to stick that crap in there. A simple disclaimer somewhere in crazy small print would satisfy me. Just tell me. If I am too stupid to see the small print then that is my problem.
The pay for post is not as sneaky as slipping a few words in here and there, but in my opinion it’s more deceiving. We have all seen these types of “fake” articles in print magazines. Usually in print the “article” in question looks like an ad. It is typically printed with a different weight paper or glossier paper or something telltale not to mention the “Paid Advertisement” print somewhere on it. The problem with these types of advertisements on blogs is there is nothing physical about it. There are no paper types to distinguish it and I have yet to see “Paid Advertisement” in bold print anywhere in the article. If the writer is getting paid to review a product by a manufacturer then there had better be a disclaimer even if that review is honest and discusses pros and cons otherwise that writer is risking having their integrity called into question for not only that review, but any other opinion stated in the future. How can I trust them?
It’s really just a matter of principal so I don’t want to hear any whining about how anyone has to make a living. We ALL have to make a living unless we are blessed enough to be independently wealthy from birth, it is just a matter of how you choose to make your living. Advertisers aren’t holding a gun to your head. If you love what you write about THAT much, you could bag groceries for a living and still write. This “good vs. evil” conversation has been going on since the World Wide Web was born. Dot-Com? Commercialize the information I love? That’s crazy talk?! Oh wait, yeah, it is still going on just tell me it is a commercial because I really don’t want to be duped. Don’t cop out either claiming your banners and ads are enough to clue readers in that your “words” are paid for too. There is a HUGE difference to putting a column of ads on your site and selling words in your posts. If you call yourself a “professional blogger” you had best behave like one and take some responsibility for your business because that is what you site becomes the moment you put ads on it no matter what the profit or loss margin is for it.
If everyone else jumped off the cliff, would you be a lemming too?
With the launch of iTunes Plus, Apple’s become the first to sell DRM-free music from a major label. Not included in the press release is the fact that all such downloads are watermarked, containing the user’s full name and email address.
It’s quite clever, when you think about it. The only way it could ever be a privacy concern for the user is if they do something they shouldn’t, such as share the file with others. If you think that DRM-free music is an excuse to start throwing it up by the gigabyte on Bittorrent, there could be public humiliation and, perhaps, a legal suprise or two in your future.
Moreover, iTunes itself could easily spot tracks in its own library that have been illegally shared by other users. Perhaps by getting on the DRM-free bandwagon, Apple’s managed to make itself the copyright entrapment-meister general.