infosoldier.com

Stuff. Where does it come from? Where does it go?

But the most important question is... Why?

For the sake of the freedom you should have when your are using your computer. Please, take thirty minutes of your life to follow the links in this post.

In the last post I talked about DRM. Digital Restrictions Management I called it. In the post I mentioned Lawrence Lessig, who for some time has been talking about the real danger that DRM poses to our rights. The first link below will take you to a flash presentation of Lessig's Free Culture speech. If you value your right to create culture , then you owe it to yourself to hear what he says.

I you had previously heard Lessig's speech I've got a new one for you. The second link below will take you to a speech transcript given to Microsoft by one Cory Doctorow about the folly that is DRM. He argues more politely and correctly than I could; why DRM is bad for everyone. Go read it, now!

The information soldier is pro-culture...

Links

• Lessig's Speech
  
• Doctorow's Speech

Filed in: DRM LawrenceLessig CoryDoctorow Speeches FreeCulture Microsoft

I wanted to write a post about Square Enix's upcoming movie Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. But ran afoul off some obstacles in Microsoft Windows DRM.

I wanted to see the trailer for Advent Children, which is a movie based on Square Enix's video game RPG classic, and fan favorite, Final Fantasy VII. I didn't know how the post was gonna come out but, one thing was certain. I wanted to include a screenshot of the trailer within the post; which I believe is fair use (not to mention free promotion for a straight to video film). I also wanted to talk about the mule, and how I use it to download these sort of things, big files, because dial-up tends to be shaky in my area.

Anyway, I was using my wife's new laptop, a capable Dell Inspiron 700m. I opened up the file and up comes Media Player to show me the trailer. I take a screenshot using Alt+PrintScreen as usual and then I paste it onto a new document in Paint. So far, so good. Caveat Emptor, however, the Dell has Windows XP on it as the operating system and when I saved the file... The image of the movie just... vanished. I thought I had done something wrong... So, I did the process again and this time double checked the filename before saving. Same result.

I opened up the My Pictures directory, which is where I saved the files. Of course the files where there, as expected. And when I selected them Windows showed them to me. Or rather it showed what was left of the image, namely, the borders of the Media Player application. Again, I thought something wasn't right . I have the DivX Player too and I did the whole process using that, again. The film's still shot vanished every time.

Stupid. Stupid me. Stupid Microsoft. Stupid Windows.

This is the consequence of Microsoft implementation of DRM in Windows XP. You see, the movie industry, the music industry and Microsoft created this scheme, this DRM. Which they say means Digital Rights Management, but would be more aptly named Digital Restrictions Management.

DRM means to protect content from unlawful use. But, it stems from the conclusion however, that you are a thief. That what everyone does is steal music and movies from the Internet. And, fair use? Fine, thank you... But it's not for YOU.

Lawrence Lessig's doomsaying hit pretty close to home... Oh yeah, you want to know how I got the image in this post at last? Well... Knoppix.

I booted the laptop with Knoppix, in less than three minutes I was watching the trailer again. This time using the Xine application included in Knoppix. Xine by the way has an icon straight in its control panel which takes a screen shot of the scene of the video being shown and saves it to your home folder. Just one step.

Well actually I did take another step which was to use the GiMP (also included with Knoppix) to convert the image into a nice, compressed and resized JPEG file.

The information soldier is an information-sharer...

Links

• Final Fantasy Advent Children: Official Movie Site
• Digital Restrictions/Rights Management: WikipediA Article
• Square Enix: Company Site
• Fair Use: WikipediA Article
• eMule: Official Site
• Role Playing Game: WikipediA Article
• Dell: Puerto Rico Company Site
• Caveat Emptor: and other phrases in latin on WIkipediA
• DivX: Better quality video player for Windows
• Lawrence Lessig: Free Culture Speech and Presentation
• Knoppix: Try Linux (and overcome Windows) with this LiveCD
• Xine: Video Player for Linux
• GiMP: professional Image Manipulation Application for Linux and Windows

I just saw some incredible videos involving my favorite video game: Street Fighter.

Hang on, because I want to tell you various things about this experience.

I've been playing Street Fighter steadily ever since Street Fighter II Turbo hit the Super Nintendo Entertainment System way back when. For a while there I played it with a passion, every... single... day. I figure that Street Fighter is my chess, I will strive to play better and with more strategy every single time I get the chance to play it, 'til death do us part. I can picture myself, arthritis willing, playing Street Fighter until I am too old to hold a gamepad. Naturally, I know the game rather well, what I mean to say is that I know the language of it's strategy. And, I can recognize another player's ability by the way he or she makes the game do amazing stuff within the limited scope it provides; it's a videogame, remember?

So I saw some videos of a team of players, Team Whales, playing Street Fighter latest version; Third Strike. I downloaded the video using BitTorrent. It was amazing to for me to watch. Because for me, a person that knows the language and "limits" of what the game should do, the players proficiency seems nothing short of miraculous. Also I instantly fell in love with the music used in the video. In fact I'm listening to it while I write this. The song is by M-Flo (warning: site is in japanese, but is mostly understandable), and the title of the song is Miss You (Just thought you'd want to know.)

But as I watched the video I started thinking; asking myself actually. Does Capcom, the company that produces this video game, allow this sort of thing? I mean can I legally offer for download a video of myself playing Street Fighter? Is that covered under fair use rights? I can only guess that is indeed covered under fair use.

But, let's say, for a moment, that the answer is no. That you cannot tape, cut and remix a video of yourself performing what some people (like me) may call a work of art. Simply because the company that provides the medium for you to perform does not grant you that right. Suppose that Capcom started to sue every person that produces or watches a video of someone else playing Street Fighter; would people like Team Whales continue playing... With the passion they so evidently show now?

Lawrence Lessig has an interesting name for the kind of people like Team Whales and others that, together, make this sort of work possible: The Remix Culture.

What is so special about the remix culture is that technology in recent times has increased tremendously the ability for individuals to copy, cut, paste, mix, remix, burn and publish any kind and amount of data / information that is available to them.

On the other hand, traditional companies that have made their living making remixes, like Disney, are pushing for more and more limits in the way of laws that restrain the individual from becoming a part of the remix culture.

Such fools...

The Information Soldier very reason for being is the protection of your right to be part of the remix culture...