For all the oldschool people who actually still use chat clients (like ICQ, MSN or AIM): check out Miranda. I have been using it for a couple of years now.

Advantages:

• Very small.
• Needs very little RAM.
• Addon system similar to Firefox: the program offers what is needed, you can get the rest (all the fancy stuff noone really wants, like games) via addons/plugins.
• You can run many chat clients on Miranda at the same time. Look at the screenshot – use see my online contacts for Facebook, ICQ, Gmail and Skype. It works for many more protocols, that means you have all your contacts from all different kinds of programs in ONE chat program. MSN, AIM, JABBER etc. pp. are supported.
• For browser-based protocols like Facebook and Gmail you do not need to have your browser opened.
• It is not green (like ICQ), it is not flashy (like ICQ), and it refrains from regularly doing stuff you very much do not want it to do (yes, you guessed already … like ICQ).
• Unfortunately, Miranda still refuses to do my dishes. But apart from that, it’s a pretty neat tool.

EDIT: No, I did not get money for posting this. Too bad really …

A couple of days ago I talked about a study showing that people who illegaly download music on the internet actually also buy more music legally – which means that if the music industry increases the prosecution of downloading music, they actually harm themselves.

People who illegally download music from the internet without paying for it are the music industry’s main clientele, because they are at the same time the very people who buy the most music legally.

Now, a new study has been published on timesonline, with the title “Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing”? The answer is a clear “nopes”.

Let me quote the most interesting parts of the article:

“The most immediate revelation, of course, is that at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music.”
[...]
“Our data [...] make two things clear: one, that the growth in live revenue shows no igns of slowing and two, that live is by far and away the most lucrative section of industry revenue for artists themselves, because they retain such a big percentage of the money from ticket sales.”
[...]
“Revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales.”

The article also contains two very interesting graphs, I’ll show one here, titled with “This is the graph the record industry doesn’t want you to see”.

To sum the graph up:

• The labels makes less money with records, the artists still make the same money as before.
• Compared to 2004, musicians in 2008 earned around 50% more money from live acts.

Overall, they make more money since the whole “pirating” business started, not less.

(via: netzpolitik.org)

by Hans Moravec

Computers are universal machines, their potential extends uniformly over a boundless expanse of tasks. Human potentials, on the other hand, are strong in areas long important for survival, but weak in things far removed. Imagine a “landscape of human competence,” having lowlands with labels like “arithmetic” and “rote memorization”, foothills like “theorem proving” and “chess playing,” and high mountain peaks labeled “locomotion,” “hand-eye coordination” and “social interaction.” We all live in the solid mountaintops, but it takes great effort to reach the rest of the terrain, and only a few of us work each patch.

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose (Moravec 1998) that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life! For now, though, we must rely on our representatives in the lowlands to tell us what water is really like.
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There are people who bring serious harm to our children, to society, to everybody really. They are responsible for global warming, and they will go to the very special hell – the one that is reserved for people who talk in theatres.

I’m not talking about rapists or mass murderers or people killing dozens of innocents by blowing themselves up. I’m talking about people who illegally download music from the internet. For free!

They …

• … harm the music industry by illegally getting access to CDs and spreading the data on the internet
• … harm the artists – especially young artists – because these sell less CDs, become poor and commit suicide
• … are a very bad lot indeed.

That is why countries like France, Great Britian and Germany (sic!) have implemented or are going to implement a so-called “Three Strikes Rule” – if you get caught doing illegal activities on the internet three times, the state shuts down your internet, and you may not access it anymore. This idea is a completely awesome, and we have seen it employed properly in the middle ages a lot – for instance by chopping of a thief’s hand after he stole three times.

Unfortunately, a scientific study has popped up – god I hate science. Anyway, they kind of questioned a sample of 1.000 British 16- to 50-year-olds, and found that the minority of 100 people who admit downloading music illegally spend £77 a year on music, whereas the other 900 only spend £44.

To sum it up:
People who illegally download music from the internet without paying for it are the music industry’s main clientele, because they are at the same time the very people who buy the most music legally.

And this makes a lot of sense – because people who get to know more music, people who listen to more music are much more likely to find bands they wish to support. And I bet that 90% of the visitors of concerts of bands which are not yet superfamous are people who accidentally, or by recommendation downloaded music of this band before going to the concert.

Peter Bradwell, who is employed at the think-tank Demos, which commissioned the new poll said:

“The latest approach from the Government will not help prop up an ailing music industry. Politicians and music companies need to recognise that the nature of music consumption has changed, and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access”

Mark Mulligan, Forrester Research:

“The people who file-share are the ones who are interested in music. They use file-sharing as a discovery mechanism.”

(Source: independent.co.uk)

Lebenswert heute: Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat den Chaos Computer Club gebeten, eine Stellungnahme zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung abzugeben, da dort gerade eine Verfassungsbeschwerde läuft. Das Gutachten ist hier zu finden.

Festhalten.

Die Europäische Union hat gestern China offiziell gerügt, weil die Internet Seiten filtern.

“Das Blockieren oder Filtern bestimmter Internet-Inhalte ist für die Europäische Union völlig inakzeptabel.” Diese Worte hat EU-Medienkommissarin Viviane Reding der chinesischen Regierung ins Stammbuch geschrieben. Die von Peking geplante Einführung eines Internet-Filters ziele darauf ab, das Netz zu zensieren und die Meinungsfreiheit einzuschränken, sagte Reding in Brüssel.

Diese bösen Chinesen! Aber halt mal, wieso machen die das eigentlich?

China hat erklärt, der Filter richte sich gegen Seiten mit pornographischem Inhalt und diene dem Jugendschutz.

Irgendwoher kommt mir diese peinliche Ausrede bekannt vor … Moment, war das nicht das Wahlprogramm der UNION? In diesem Punkt auch noch klar von der SPD unterstützt?

Update, 29.06.2009:

• Und Wikipedia taugt doch was … das ist mit Abstand die übersichtlichste, kompakteste, qualitativ hochwertigste Zusammenfassung der Kritik am Gesetz zur Internetzensur, die ich bisher gesehen habe. Klasse Artikel!
• Auch Hochschulen müssen die Richtlinien des Zensurgesetzes implementieren, was zu massiven Problemen führt, und den Steuerzahler sehr viel Geld kosten wird (was für den Arsch ist, wenn das Gesetz vom Verfassungsgericht gekippt wird). Hier ein sehr kritischer, offizieller Bericht von ITlern der Universität Stuttgart.

– via Netzpolitik.org, und ein bisschen fefe :p

Passend zu meinem letzten Eintrag ist das Unions Wahlprogramm geleakt (siehe WIKI-Leaks für das Original) – hier berichtet die ZEIT sehr kritisch darüberm und verlinkt unter anderem auf den Aufruf von netzpolitik.org: nicht CDU/CSU wählen!

Zum Thema passend: ein Interview mit Familienministerin von der Leyen und Franziska Heine (Initiatorin der Petition gegen das Zensurgesetz des Bundesregierung), auch in der ZEIT.

Ich möchte euch hier auch unbedingt den Artikel von Kristian Köhntopp ans Herz legen, der wie bisher kaum ein anderer schildert, wo das Problem bei der ganzen Debatte liegt. Und wenn ihr den Artikel gelesen habt, und in den letzten Wochen mitbekommen habt, dass die Gegner der Gegner der Zensur oft als “Internet Ausdrucker” bezeichnet wurden, schaut euch den Link am Ende des Beitrags an …

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Panasonic hat eine Reihe von Firmwareupdates für Digitalkameras vorgestellt. Doch die Kameras können danach nicht mehr mit Akkus von Dritthersteller betrieben werden. Panasonic begründet das mit Sicherheitsmaßnahmen. Kritiker vermuten eine bewusste Störung des lukrativen Zubehörmarktes.

Schwierig. Ab jetzt Finger weglassen von Panasonic Produkten? Es muss bedacht werden, dass die Akkus der großen Hersteller extrem überteuert sind, und damit massiv Geld verdient wird.

– via fefe via golem

Quoted from Lessig’s book Free Culture:

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn’t make it available for free. Most probably wouldn’t have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he’s not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend “recalling” old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero–the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

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