Ralph’s Comments

• Dec 17th, 2011 @ 5:04am

  Re: Apple patents

  on Apple Abuses Patent System Again To Obstruct W3C Open Standard
  Did you even try to read the article? This is *not* about patents they had for years, this is about patents they *just* filed.
• Mar 15th, 2011 @ 11:55am

  (untitled comment)

  on Bon Jovi Thinks Steve Jobs Killed Music; More Old Rockers Shooing Those Darn Kids Off Their Lawn
  Sorry Jon Bon, sorry that you are a bit older than me. Because the real magical time was when we put on our headphones and turned it up to 11.
  
  The unmagical time was, when we recognized we were listening to one of your albums, "Cowboy".
• Dec 30th, 2010 @ 12:01pm

  Re:

  on GEMA Music Collection Society No Longer Will Let Kindergartens Get Away With Teaching Music For Free
  Umm.
  
  "musical notes" == sheet music, if that was not clear :)
• Dec 30th, 2010 @ 11:57am

  (untitled comment)

  on GEMA Music Collection Society No Longer Will Let Kindergartens Get Away With Teaching Music For Free
  This is not correct on two counts:
  
  a) it is not GEMA who requires those fees to be paid, it is the Verwertungsgesellschaft Musikedition which is the collection society for sheet music publishers (and a bit more). They "just" use GEMA for money collection, with GEMA being the bigger collection society and probably having the better infrastructure for that.
  
  b) German Urheberrecht explixitly *forbids* copying of musical notes, *if* the music itself still is under "copyright" (the quotes are there, because our Urheberrecht is different from your copyright). So there was no recent change in policy, they never allowed that. They just now began to "collect".
  
  But don't fret, most german news publishers didn't get that correctly either, even some politicians are rather unclear about that. :)
  
  http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/der-kindergarten-als-rechtsfreier-raum/ for those who can read german. It's mostly a rant about journalists not getting what really is behind the story.
  
  That what they're doing is questionable is on another sheet. But when our Urheberrecht was "renovated" a few years ago, that was explicitly left in. And that this just shows how bad a copyright/Urheberrecht is, which just makes the publishers the strong party while completely forgetting the users - well, I don't want to preach to the choir.
• Aug 2nd, 2010 @ 12:32pm

  Very funny

  on ASCAP Continues Propaganda Campaign With Laughably Bad Video [Updated]
  I like how his T-Shirt goes from "Open Source Dude" to "Fair Payment Man", as if those two things are related somehow. Even how Open Source (d'oh, some people can transcribe music, so even if it gets paid for, the "source" is open) relates to music anyway is a mystery to me.