Yes, I love technology but not as much as you, you see.

It can amaze even me, something of a professional techie in the grand scheme of things and a daily Slashdot reader, just how philosophically committed people can get to their computers and the software they run. Most of the world mistakenly thinks Microsoft software is required to run a computer, or at least to do business on one. This is dead wrong, of course; I still try to argue occasionally that Microsoft anti-virus software would remove the entire operating system if it functioned properly. Anyway, no one can match the passion of the Free Software Foundation and their followers, and that is in many ways a good thing. Their mission:

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), established in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' rights to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free software, particularly the GNU operating system, used widely in its GNU/Linux variant.

Basically, their goal is to allow people to control their own software, able to modify it and learn from it, rather than treat it like a black box of mystery. Their weapon of choice is known as the Gnu Public License, or GPL, which basically says you can modify a program, copy it, and even redistribute it to others, but that you have to pass on to them the same rights in turn. If you're familiar with the Linux operating system, this is the license that it is distributed under. I can give you a copy of the version we use at work, and it would be perfectly legal. Needless to say, neither Macintosh (the maker of the computer at which I type this) nor Microsoft buy into this model, though it should be noted that OS X is built upon an operating system developed in a comparable fashion. I like to think I've done my part in this: I've publicly released a scientific computer code under the GPL, and this blog is covered by a Creative Commons license that works in much the same way. Sharing is good, and should be encouraged.

In some cases, freedom of information is something of a mixed bag. There are campaigns underway to make scientific research freely available, both publications and the underlying data. Making articles available to as broad an audience as possible is certainly a good idea, especially given how much of the work is publicly funded (e.g., everything I work on). Some scientific journals are not so thrilled, and have actually been hiring expensive consultants with questionable track records (like supporting Exxon's campaigns against environmentalists), to argue that making scientific information freely available is somehow a form of government oppression (?!?). Thankfully, astronomers have made this issue moot for over a decade. Every paper I've ever published was released on the arXiv preprint server, which is completely free, whereas a journal subscription will run you thousands of dollars annually. Virtually every paper in physics is released this way, and it's fantastic. In a field where success is defined by how broad an impact you can make with your publications, you want as many readers as you can possibly get. This is not to say refereed journals don't have a place. Certainly, being able to get a paper approved by an independent peer review is still a certification of quality, and it reflects negatively on a paper if it doesn't eventually pass that standard, so the journals seem to be panicking over nothing. Access to data, on the other hand, can be a bit more problematic. More than anything else, it is really hard to train someone from the outside how to interpret the long strings of seemingly random numbers that most scientists produce. It doesn't even necessarily solve the problem of fudging results, since all it requires is for one to fudge the data files themselves, rather than just the plots. All in all, so long as scientific results are available to the broadest possible audience, I think it serves the public good; beyond that, we are starting to get into peripheral concerns.

The clearest cut case of freedom in the information technology world is the campaign being waged by the media corporations against their customers. The recording (RIAA) and film (MPAA) industry media conglomerate groups are among the most shortsighted businesses in the world, just after American car manufacturers. Simply put, they are suing their biggest fans because some of those fans have basic technological skills. Let's face it, it is painfully easy to copy a CD, and not much harder to do so for a movie (25 million Americans have managed to do it). The genie is out of the bottle, and it isn't going back in. Companies try to lock in content through all sorts of ridiculous Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, but it serves mostly to annoy. I bought what turned out to be my favorite album of the past year, Bruce Springsteen's "We Shall Overcome", but couldn't play it in my computer or DVD player (or iPod) because of the copy-protection. That CD was returned to the store double-quick. Nice move, idiots. Instead, I ended up buying the album from itunes, which itself has copy-protection issues that just got it banned in Norway. Of course, defeating Apple's copy protection, which limits replay devices to iPods only, is a piece of cake. You burn a CD with the songs, and read them back into the computer, making them free and clear in a completely legal fashion. DRM isn't being used to stop copying, it's being used to make it less convenient. Simply put, media companies hate you and think you are an idiot. They are correct often enough to keep trying their BS. In its newest incarnation, media companies have all sorts of protection schemes built into their new high definition next-generation DVDs, the competing formats known as HDDVD and BluRay (think Beta vs VHS videotapes). The systems they used were so impressive that the same guy cracked them both, within a week of each other. Nice job, guys. Just so we're all clear, this is definitely a project by the recoding industry, not the individual artists, who make more of their money from concert ticket sales. Unfortunately for the industry, the value of the albums themselves, measured by the cost to obtain them, is getting smaller because of modern technology. No CD is worth paying $20 for, especially when your local library has a copy (not that I am recommending you do anything legally questionable like make a copy, of course, since that would be wrong). To sell these overpriced albums, try adding some value. Throw in a DVD movie, or some really cool artwork to hang on a wall. Better yet, let's try joining the current century. DVDs are now widely available under subscription models, as are movies via On demand type services. The music industry can try the same kind of thing, or it can die. Then again, some artists can prove themselves to be visionaries, too, boosting their popularity by allowing their listeners to share music legally, as with last week's featured band, Jim's Big Ego, and their album They're Everywhere, released under a Creative Commons license. The future is here, and those that try to fight it (Microsoft, the RIAA) are going to get swept away if they're not careful. It can't happen a moment too soon if you ask me.