Carlos Solis’s Comments

• May 4th, 2016 @ 11:13am

  Even so...

  on Copyright Holders Try To Stop Ravel's 'Bolero' From Entering Public Domain Using Co-Author Trick
  ...there are still several countries with terms of over life+70 years, and without a rule of the shorter term. Which means that in the best case, Ravel's Bolero will enter the public domain in 2037!
  
  - Guatemala, Honduras, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, and Mexico (in certain cases) have life+75 years
  - Colombia, and Spain (in certain cases) have life+80 years
  - Jamaica has life+95 years
  - Ivory Coast (or Côte d'Ivoire as they prefer to be called nowadays) has life+99 years
  - And finally Mexico (in certain cases) has life+100 years, specifically for authors who died after July 23, 1928 and whose works were released after July 23, 2003.
  
  Add to the fact that the public domain status is renewed only on the January 1st after the Nth aniversary of the death of the author, and the public domain term applies until January 1st, 2037 (which would have been all the way up to 2038 if the work had been released no more than 13 years ago).
• Sep 15th, 2015 @ 2:02pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Time To Say Goodbye To All Pre-1972 Music?
  If the copyright agencies around the world could have a saying about it, it would be time to say goodbye to all pre-1914 everything basically. Personally, I can't in good conscience consider anything after that date as public domain, not considering the copyright laws around the world.
• Aug 4th, 2015 @ 8:24am

  The unfortunate side effect of not supporting DRM (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Matchstick, The More Open Chromecast, Destroyed By DRM, Announces Plans To Return All Funds
  The unfortunate effect of Matchstick not supporting DRM is that they'd have to miss out many parts of the web that are currently taken for granted in any respectable streaming device. Netflix is the obvious MIA, but there are also the rentals for YouTube and Vimeo, the movies from Apple and Google, and many audio streaming sites. Without DRM, the offerings such a device could offer would be very limited. Not their fault of course, it's the way that the media industry defends its model, and prevents third parties from participating in full without submitting to the whims of said conglomerate. All in all, I understand why Matchstick preferred to close their project, instead of releasing a "crippled" device due to factors out of their control.
• Jul 21st, 2014 @ 12:36pm

  (untitled comment) (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Airlines, Travel Sites Hand Over Your Full Booking Credit Card, IP Info To Feds, Who Keep It Stored With No Encryption
  At this rate, all members of the Free Software Foundation will start traveling abroad on foot.
• May 14th, 2014 @ 6:54pm

  Saddest part of this? (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on And Here We Go: Mozilla Felt Pressured Into Adopting DRM In HTML5
  Know what's the worst part of this? No other major browser is committed enough to freedom, and the few free-software browsers that do are mostly GNU+Linux-exclusive. For example, the FSF's fork of Firefox, GNU IceCat.
• Dec 8th, 2013 @ 7:59pm

  Re: Math (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Ridiculous: Why Is Any Country Supporting Locking In Life + 70 Copyright Term Protection?
  Now, let's consider the intricacies required to license said song as public domain in every country in the world. It's not pickiness, it's literally required to supply network services worldwide in several cases. There are several countries with terms even longer than Life+70: Mexico (Life+100), Ivory Coast / Côte D'Ivoire (Life+99), Colombia (Life+80), Samoa, Honduras, Guatemala, and Saint Vincent and Grenadines (Life+75). If you or your children, grandchildren or greatgrandchildren happened to move to any of those countries, your greatgrandchild would be in his 80's when said songs enter the public domain, and your greatgreatgrandchild (!) on his 55's.
• Oct 31st, 2013 @ 3:27pm

  Re: (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on How Much Does Gold-Plated Corporate Sovereignty Cost? $1 Billion Or About 2% Of A Developing Country's GDP
  If José María Villalta wins the presidential elections (next February), you can be sure that he'll kiss that agreement bye-bye. And, perhaps, sell us to the ALBA.
• Oct 30th, 2013 @ 7:36pm

  Talking about which, why not adopt a similar protocol for chat? (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Lavabit To Release Code As Open Source, As It Creates Dark Mail Alliance To Create Even More Secure Email
  XMPP providers ought to adopt the Off-The-Record standard for encrypted chat, by the way: https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/
• Oct 19th, 2013 @ 9:28am

  Re: Why not help FLOSS instead? (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Nintendo Shuts Down Recreation Of Original Super Mario Bros. For No Reason Other Than It Can
  Agreed. Projects like Secret Maryo Chronicles (a libre replacement of Mario Bros.), OpenSurge (a replacement of Sonic), TuxKart (Mario Kart), 0 A.D. (Age of Empires), StepMania (DDR/Pump It Up), and several others have been able to liberate the gamestyle of their original games while using unique and original characters and scenarios.
• Sep 19th, 2013 @ 7:28am

  FaiF is becoming a need (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Lavabit's Levison Now Avoids Email Altogether, Has Turned Into A 'Political Activist' Thanks To The NSA
  My wish to found a company that releases free-as-in-freedom hardware, devoid of any technology under restrictive patents or binary-only firmware, that builds and releases a cheap plug server based on it, specialized on hosting decentralized, encrypted, free-as-in-freedom networking services, is starting to turn, not just on a desirable reality, but also in a need.
• Aug 28th, 2013 @ 10:17am

  (untitled comment) (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Let Freedom Ka-Ching! On The 50th Anniversary Of 'I Have A Dream,' AT&T Can Use The Speech To Sell Phones, But You Can't Post It
  And to think that the speech (along with all other Martin Luther King's works) will be in the public domain in Mexico only after 56 years from now.
• Jul 18th, 2013 @ 7:36am

  Public domain is no longer trustworthy (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Just As US Finally Realizes Copyright Terms May Be Too Long, Japan Looks To Make Them Longer
  This is one of the reasons why I avoid to work upon most public domain works: retroactive re-copyrighting. One day, for example, you publish the translation of a work from an author that died, say, 53 years ago, taking care of releasing it solely in the countries where life+50 applies, and not those with life+70 or beyond. The next day, the parliament of a country where you already released the translation declares that copyright is retroactively extended to life+70, and bam! Now you're a criminal, liable for infringement, most possibly about to be sued for the earnings of your book and then some more, even if the work is already declared as "orphan". I usually recommend people who do use public domain works in a common basis to use only works that are legally usable in all countries of the world (currently that means life+100, thanks to Mexico and Ivory Coast amogn others), in order to avoid both licensing fragmentation and unexpected retroactive licensing. The alternative is, of course, copyleft and liberal licensing, but even those are liable to retroactive relicensing as well (albeit in a more limited form).
• May 10th, 2013 @ 5:27pm

  Come on! (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on DailyDirt: Not Enough Flies In My Soup, Waiter...

  Starbucks had to switch to a vegetable-based dye because people were either grossed out or vegan.

  
  That's like saying "Adobe Flash was working perfectly on YouTube, but Google switched to WebM because people were either running low-spec hardware or Stallmanite freetards".
• May 3rd, 2013 @ 7:48pm

  Trademarks as marks of origin (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Mozilla Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Commercial Spyware Company For Using Firefox Trademark And Code To Trick Users
  Finally, a good example of the usage of trademarks as a mark of origin and trust. Even though I disagree with the other restrictions that Mozilla places on its trademark usage (e.g. not allowing free-software derivatives of Firefox to use its trademark, to the point that the IceWeasel and Icecat projects had to be created as a direct result), in this case they're totally correct into claiming it as a case of deluding unaware users, tricking them into trusting a product masquerading as a privacy-protecting program.
• May 3rd, 2013 @ 10:12am

  The obvious solution... (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on When Memes Go Corporate: Creators Of Nyan Cat And Keyboard Cat Sue Warner Bros.
  The obvious solution would have been to use the MooGNU instead (see http://archive.org/details/M00GNUhttp://archive.org/details/M00GNU for more details). But, of course, which manager would like to release a GPL'd Scribblenauts only because of that?
• Apr 5th, 2013 @ 3:30pm

  Re: Re: (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Microsoft Creative Director Defends Always-Online, Insults Customers, Murders Logic...All In One Day!
  Or PS Network Premium, which isn't free but gives you free games every so often, among other perks. Now that's how you do business.
• Mar 29th, 2013 @ 8:00pm

  Next step: decentralized federation (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on This Is Not The Cloud Computing We Should Have
  The best effort done towards making the cloud work for its users has been the federated social network, where anyone can host a local version of the network and communicate with other servers with only knowing the address to point at. Status.Net, Diaspora, Friendica, Pump.IO, just to name a few recent examples.
• Mar 18th, 2013 @ 9:45pm

  Re: Sweet! (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on DailyDirt: Melding Humans And Machines
  I'd go for the one that runs on GNU/Linux-libre. Except that, of course, it would take five years to gain support for eye vision.
• Feb 27th, 2013 @ 2:47pm

  Disregard of foreign copyright as a war tactic? (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on North Korean Propaganda: Now With More Elder Scrolls!
  I am almost sure that they intentionally use footage from US games just to taunt the "imperialist" MPAA and affiliates.
• Feb 15th, 2013 @ 7:45pm

  This lawsuit is actually wrong (as Carlos Solís a.k.a. ArkBlitz (in the rest of the I)

  on Arthur Conan Doyle Estate Sued To Show That Sherlock Holmes Is Public Domain
  If we take into account that there is at least one country (Mexico) where the copyright of the Sherlock Holmes' series as a whole is still standing until at least 2031 (100 years after the death of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), then the defense of Doyle's estate can allege that Klinger and King are infringing in at least one country, which will grant them 8 more years than the estate claims!

More comments from Carlos Solis >>