The reason why it's based on revenue, not profit, is the same reason that successful actors negotiate for a percentage of the gross, not the nett -- Hollywood accounting. If the outgoings are going to depend on profits, the beancounters will ensure that there are no profits. It's the same reason Starborgs pays little to no tax on their coffee shop income stream. Gross income is harder to fiddle (though I'm sure the beancounters and financial engineering community would have a good go at it).

It seems like a reasonable market-based solution to the real problem of software that doesn't bring in enough to cover its long-term maintenance. If 1% of revenue is too high a price for the software you are using, write your own, or licence something cheaper.

As as for the "but what if I want to use 99 other bits of software - won't that wipe out my income?" NO, it won't. As the summary says, the 1% payment "would cover all Post-Open software used by the organization".

Yeah, you get to sell another compressor every time you use it. Much better for revenue than a fully reusable spare wheel (or even a cheaper, but alas still reusable just-about-limp-home narrow spare wheel).

And as for "retails at the same price" - that's less important for margins than cost to manufacture.

They are not making these changes to improve the customer experience, so much as the quarterly bottom line.

There may be more cost effective ways of providing free access to college than running what is, in global terms, a rather large military.

US bills have famous Americans on, and you can use them to buy dipsticks, which is surely just as demeaning as whatever it was you said. Maybe you should give away all your money in protest.

Since the daughter of Hitler's finance minister is suing the publishers in Germany, it's German law that matters.

IANAL, but... While the EU copyright directive allows states to legislate for Fair Use, it seems that German statute law does not include such a provision. However, German courts have in the past relied on provisions in the German Constitution which state that Art and Research are free, to allow some reuse of portions of a work (see paper). However it's not necessarily clear how the court might rule in this case. And besides, there is the issue of the publisher having previously agreed to pay, and then deciding not to. There could be questions of the validity and enforceability of such an agreement. And there is the question of whether the lady concerned is in fact the copyright owner.

So there is plenty for lawyers to fight over.

But I find it quite distasteful that research could be blocked, or charged for in this way. That's why much of the world DOES have [fairly] clear "Fair Use" or "Fair Dealing" exceptions in copyright law.

Like with DRM, it will be a felony to bypass the feature locking mechanism in the USA (and most of the rest of the world, thanks to lobbyists and policy laundering. All consumers will get "screwed".

Hope you DIY enthusiasts aren't living in a state with mandatory life sentences for your third "felony"!

It's just a repackaging of the old net-discrimination ideas that provoked the Net Neutrality debate.

Make data allowances artificially low, and charge content providers to "ensure" they are not throttled. It's not in the interests of consumers, and it's not in the interests of content providers.

I can see why AT&T might like it though...

Of course most people will say that. It's about Terrorism, after all, and they are not Terrorists, so the government is only spying on Other People, right?

And it's not so bad that other bad people give up a little of their privacy to keep US safer.

We're some way off global, carbon-free energy production, as you point out. But that's not the problem this is solving.

Of course energy from garbage contributes greenhouse gases. But this is not displacing greenhouse-gas-free nuclear or wave power generation - it is reducing the dependency on high-running-cost, greenhouse-gas-producing oil / gas / coal power. So it increases sustainability to that extent. That is a good thing. And less landfill is also a good thing.

It's not about "shiny", so much as improving things where and when we can. But we need to increase reuse and recycling (in that order), and reduce waste caused by built-in obsolescence, excess packaging, and excessive consumption too.

It sounds troubling, but it's hardly even a Government proposal for legislation, never mind a Bill being laid before parliament. And the decision to withhold the draft may still be appealed.

This seems to be an early draft (a bit like the ACTA negotiations, perhaps) since the grounds for withholding are:

• the material is still in draft form
• the material has not gone through the necessary whole-of-government review and approval processes; and
• to release such material at this stage would, in [the bureaucrat's] view, prejudice the current negotiations and decision making processes which are in train

So the Department concerned is probably committed to something like the draft, and they are trying to work out what is feasible, but the rest of the government has not yet had a chance to comment.

The appropriate response at this stage is probably (1) appeal, (2) contact representatives in government and opposition who may oppose any provisions that threaten civil liberties, and (3) use the media (and slashdot) to raise awareness that something is coming in the future.

But it is not normal to release early drafts (that have not yet been thought through properly) to the public - at that stage you could not possibly have a workable policy, and people may get very worked up about errors that the government themselves will address. Surely the time for public scrutiny is when concrete proposals are made?

Though crowdsourcing of bills might be interesting... it worked for the constitution in Iceland, didn't it?

So does this mean that in the war on weather, we can use the drones to shoot down hurricanes and suspected hurricanes before they reach the US?

Great news, I think (clearly I didn't have time to read the summary).

TFA is a bit light. I'm wondering how you review a score? Was it "muse score software didn't display this note properly", or "the music would sound better if you went up instead of down here, or repeated a theme differently"?

Open source music, now there's an idea. Could be like composing by committee...

Is that how they named the "World Series"?
To be fair, I guess all the teams are actually in "the world" :)