Ethics and Law in New Media, week ten

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015? Write a short (blogged) predictive analysis. 

It is difficult to predict what it will look like, but based on the text I read, there might be two various scenes - I picture the first with Microsoft still pushing its rights and making it easier with technology to track abusers of the contract. The second might be a battle between MS and GNU, which leads MS thinking what they could do better and how they could profit from that, like it has been till now. 

I do not actually believe that much is going to change in five years licence-wise. People in Estonia are used to Microsoft, IT directors install MS software by default (with the exception of some organizations like Tiger Leap Foundation who suggest that it would be good to use free, open source software), because users tend to be more acquainted with such software. In the Tiger Leap Foundation's computers there is a variation between Linux and MS Windows, what do you think most teachers use? Of course the last one (this is solely based to my own opinion and observations from my workplace). 


Perhaps Ottavio's idea, that Microsoft is going to change something radically - be it software or policies, holds true, but if Microsoft would have Online Word or Excel or whatever from that package, it would still be secondary to Google, and I think that they would think of the way to get benefit from it as well. To go on with the predictions from here, there have been discussions whether Google could maliciously use its userbase data to so-called "rule the world"? I doubt such actions, because it would drive the world mad, and I also doubt if Google would be ready for that. I guess not. Definitely there will be more free innovative online content, because education technology-wise the Internet is a rich facility.



Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc. 


I think that copyright restrictions should be made for educational and research purposes, as this could help to improve software. A good example (sadly not from Education) is Microsoft itself - with ALTAIR they launched a program, where users could improve the library and I believe this was for their own benefit as well, to get ideas from the users for free.
Restrictions could be limited as well when we want to avoid multiple programs for one thing - for example conversion to PDF is a good app with different programs, that way no multiple readers should not be used. This is an idea I got from the course text.
Also when I have purchased an item, it should not be prohibited for me to make more than one copy of the disk for personal use. Of course nowadays CD and such manual data carriers are outdated, Internet stores all information. Legal online storage permission of a purchased disk would also be nice.
Libraries and University facilities should be able to make copies and let their students use the materials. Here a good example is Tallinn University (I think Microsoft programmes are not the best example when we consider this course) where it is possible to use their programs during learning time. Of course lots of legal stuff is added to it, but still, for personal use it is OK.
I would consider all copying restriction exceptions useful, because I love free software, but most of all I prefer online solutions and I use them eagerly. Google has won my heart for now, I must admit - it's open for everyone and free to use.