Andrew @andrew907@librem.one

Although I disagree with Lawrence Lessig that there should be any such thing as copyright, I am thankful to him for developing the cc0 license that empowers people to opt out of the inequitable system as much as possible. And if Professor Lessig were given the power to reform copyright--say, if he drastically reduced the length and reinstated the formality requirement--maybe I could meet him halfway.

The good news is that Nautilus seems to have added a batch rename feature like Thunar. What a pleasant surprise!

What really irritates me though is that many people digitizing public domain music still claim a copyright in the pdf or musicxml. Why! Let's reinvent the wheel then.

Open source is important for music as well: musicxml, ly, musescore, or at least midi. The composition can be public domain all day long, but pdfs are a chore to turn into music and audio files are hopeless. More regrettable yet when the only thing keeping the audio files from being public domain is copyrighted samples. I'm looking at a certain illustrious website of music generously released to the public domain by living composers who don't understand why people would want the source midi.

2/2. Besides audio quality and the physicality of experience, the biggest takeaway from lovers of vinyl and CDs is that it is critical to OWN your OWN music collection. If you stream on Spotify or YouTube, you don't own your own music collection. You don't even own it if it's all on CD because you can't copy it and give it away to your friends. You DESERVE to own your music collection. You deserve a public domain/cc0 collection; that is the only music owned by the People rather than Big Money.

1/2. I am an audiophile too. I get your position if you love physical media like vinyl or CDs. For me, what matters most is that the audio is lossless. Flac is a free, lossless audio codec that still compresses your audio by half.

An easy-to-say but hard-to-do way to avoid copyright infringement: if you only consume uncopyrighted music, then there is only uncopyrighted music swirling in your head to inspire you when you make your derivative works. And let us be clear about this: *all* creativity is derivative.

If you want to make free as in libre pipe organ music without sampling your own pipe organ, the only alternative I'm aware of is Versilian Studios' cc0 pipe organ. They have what sounds like a flute stop and a full, unanalyzable mix, which is awesome but not as much as we could have gotten if John McCoy were working in a copyrightfree world.

John McCoy worked so hard and produced something remarkable: a convincing pipe organ library under 4 MiB. It was truly ingenious, the sounds he could coax from material where others may not have seen the potential. The bad news is copyright. His license forbade commercial use. I don't care about commercial use but forbidding it is adding one more complication that shackles a work of art. Even if John McCoy could be persuaded to release under cc0, he apparently used copyrighted sources. Ahem.

Or, if not useless toys, proprietary tools with actual functionality made by developers clueless or unempathetic enough to assume that everyone uses either Mac + iOS or Windows + Android.

However, if you are content with equal temperament and a 1900s-style Steinway, Bach's Art of Fugue does appear to be one of the few works available under cc0: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Audio_files_of_Libre_Art_of_the_Fugue

Another work that should be public domain but that I can't find in a cc0-licensed version: Alice Mary Smith's Symphony in C minor. I believe robynsveil at musescore was working on digitizing this, but it does not seem to be complete yet let alone cc0-licensed.

Most of us, if not all of us, grew up listening mostly or entirely to copyrighted music. Music is among the most powerful emotional experiences and we can get emotionally attached. Five months into my boycott of copyrighted music, the wound is still healing. First they get you emotionally hooked, then they censor you with the threat of a lawsuit if you do the most natural human behaviors like sharing or remixing. Here's a bit of cc0 music to help with the healing: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prelude_1,_Just_intonation.ogg

I am extra grateful for the teens in Anchorage when I see that even Stockholm is roasting in the 30s.

It is time for Christmas in July. We hear alarming reports that temperatures in England are hovering in the high 30s over the next few days and cracking 40°, but in Anchorage we are looking forward to a delightful week mostly in the low teens with a fluffy ceiling of clouds. 🎄 ☁️ And maybe a hint of drought relief?! It is not so far-fetched to pretend that we're in the Blue Mountains and join them from afar in Yuletide festivities!

Because even in the case of CC-licensed works or open source software licenses, let alone full-proprietary works, any restriction contaminates the body of freedoms remaining to downstream users and remixers. For example, CC-BY-ND allows attributed copying, which is much better than nothing, but for purposes of an ongoing cultural conversation the work is as locked as any proprietary Disney crap.

The only tolerable response to copyright laws, which are draconian and unreasonable around the globe, is to avoid copyrighted works as much as possible (unless they have a CC0 license indicating that the copyright owner is signaling intent not to invoke their government-backed purported right to censorship). Yes, an absolute zero tolerance policy is a ways out of reach, but more progress is better than less. Choose a less restrictively licensed work over a more restrictively licensed work.

Alaska Public Media reports that 10521 km² burned to date in Alaska this year. Meanwhile, Yukon is up to 161 fires.

In Anchorage, the weather has been delightful: still highs in the low 20s, but clouds make all the difference, and we even got a bit of desperately needed drizzle. An appropriate backdrop to start Christmas in July celebrations! For our neighbors in the NWT, Yukon, and Interior Alaska, fires are still devouring the countryside. 230 fires active in Alaska as of yesterday morning, 136 fires in Yukon as of Wednesday.

Plus side: apparently Zoom provides an Ubuntu client (I'll have to see whether it works). That is not to be underemphasized. Down side: Why do folks have to choose between forgoing opportunities and installing proprietary software when there's perfectly good open-source videochat software available? And why do developers like Zoom assume that all Linux setups are x86 when Ubuntu and much of its software ecosystem work just fine on ARM? We've got to beat the drums, spread the word that we exist.