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Apple Users Forced to Pirate VLC Player? Whatever Next?

Posted: 08 Jan 2011 12:08 PM PST

VLCpirate VLC media player is resident on the PCs of millions of Internet users. It’s an almost perfect tool capable of playing videos and audio in just about any format found anywhere on the web, especially file-sharing networks. Free and open source, when something can’t be played, VLC almost always provides the answer.

Last September it was revealed, much to the delight of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, that a version of VLC would now be available on Apple devices through the company’s App Store. Developed in the open source spirit and offered for free by mobile company Applidium, the app was given the blessing of VideoLAN. The reach of the mighty VLC had been extended and users far and wide rejoiced, but not for long.

One of the original developers of VLC, Rémi Denis-Courmont, angrily pointed out that incompatibilities exist between Apple's DRM policies and the terms of the GNU General Public License under which VLC is offered. While the GNU license allows Apple to offer an iOS version of VLC, the layer of DRM it puts over the top of the application was a no-no.

“Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch,” wrote Denis-Courmont on October 26th 2010, adding that the likely outcome would be that Apple would be forced to pull the free app from the App Store.

And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened.

In a post titled “There’s no app for that (anymore),” Denis-Courmont celebrates his victory.

“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store,” he wrote. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.”

While disclosing that i’m the fairly happy user of three iOS devices, i’m going to take the stance of the layman here and risk incurring the wrath of the hardcore supporters of the GNU public license. For the man in the street this decision sucks and this statement from Denis-Courmont is insensitive to say the least.

Look, I loathe Apple’s restrictive practices and DRM with a passion too but the vast majority of Apple users – the vast majority of regular computer users, period – couldn’t give a rat’s ass about this kind of dispute. And why should the layman care? DRM? Open source what? GNU? Isn’t that some kind of cattle?

The net result is that a perfectly good product, a free product wrapped in DRM that serves no practical use in this case, is no longer available to the masses. And understandably the man in the street won’t give a damn about the great philosophy of freedom behind the GNU license nor the evils of DRM. He will care only that VLC is not available any more and he can’t play his videos.

The great irony here is that it’s these kind of disputes, between the interests of one company and those of another, that causes all sorts of complex licensing issues in the music and movie industries. Those issues cause distribution problems and an inability to fulfil demand. The result is gaps in the market which cannot be served because of legal issues.

And what fills that void every time? Piracy.

It’s no surprise then that the free, open source VLC for iDevices is only easily available from the likes of Installous. What has the world come to?

Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005.

Pirate Party Members Arrested in Tunisian Censorship Revolt

Posted: 08 Jan 2011 05:16 AM PST

tunesian pirate Starting mid-December thousands of Tunisian citizens protested on the streets against the harsh economic conditions, political repression and increasing levels of censorship by their Government.

Calls from the public to allow freedom of speech for Tunisian citizens, however, have resulted in quite the opposite reaction from the authorities. Both online and offline protesters are quickly and sometimes violently silenced. A well documented article by Al-Jazeera earlier this week reports of hacked Facebook and Gmail accounts, presumably by the Tunisian Government.

Last weekend the secure https protocol became unavailable in the country and in the days that followed many bloggers and net activists were locked out of their personal accounts. Sofiene Chourabi, blogger and journalist for Al-Tariq al-Jadid magazine was one of the first to notice the ‘hack’ attempts last week.

“My personal account on the Facebook, including around 4200 friends, was exposed to failed hacking attempt last Friday, but I quickly recovered it after an unidentified person had taken control of it,” he told Al Jazeera. This first attempt failed, but a second last Monday was successful as Chourabi lost access to both his Gmail and Facebook accounts.

Another activist and critic of the Government who suffered the same fate is Azyz Amami, a member of the local Pirate Party. Amami had used a secondary email address to register at Gmail and Facebook which allowed him to regain access, but not before the authorities found the login information to his four blogs and deleted all content.

Amami said he thinks that the Government’s hacking and phishing attempts are more widespread, and that those reported thus far represent just the tip of the iceberg since many people fear repercussions from the Government. Only hours after stating his concerns in public on Thursday he was arrested, and he wasn’t the only one.

Slim Amamou and Slah Eddine Kchouk, both graduate students and members of the Pirate Party of Tunisia like Amami, were also arrested by the authorities. In addition several other activists and bloggers were arrested and taken in for questioning, without any specifics being released on the reasons of their arrests.

Slah Eddine Kchouk, Azyz Amami and Slim Amamou

tpp

The arrests are a sign that the call for more freedom of speech on the Internet is backfiring. The more vocal people get the harder the Government is reacting. But the public is not giving up without a fight. Last weekend ‘Anonymous’ activists successfully took down several Government websites, but thus far this has only resulted in more censorship and less openness.

The Tunisian Pirate Party is outraged by the arrests of its members and has posted an appeal for more attention to the growing repression. According to the Party the three members were “kidnapped” by the political police without a warrant, and all three also had their computers confiscated.

“Tunisia is a country where torture while in detention or in prison is very common as reported and documented by Red Cross, Amnesty, HRW and other NGO’s. Pirate Party Tunisia severely condemns the dictatorship of Ben Ali and will engage every possible action to free its members and to seek international legal course in case of torture and inhumane treatment on its members,” the Party announced.

A few hours ago the international umbrella organization for Pirate Parties – Pirate Parties International – also released a public statement condemning the unjust arrests of Pirate Party members and free speech activists.

“Pirate Parties around the World condemn these acts against freedom of expression, human rights and democracy, and call upon governments take firm action against Tunisia for these recent events. Party members are advised to refrain from visiting Tunisia until the human rights situation has improved,” the statement says.

Despite the harsh actions from the police and the ever increasing censorship, many Tunisians are continuing their protests online and offline. Increasingly Twitter is being used to propagate the message they feel the world should know, as it is less prone to censorship than Facebook.

Posting a video, blog post or Facebook status update has become a challenge and a threat at the same time for many young Tunisians. The current situation brings freedom of speech issues closer to ‘home’ than ever before for many Internet users.

Article from: TorrentFreak, Covering Torrent Sites and News since 2005.

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