rms

I had the good fortune of attending a lecture by Free Software Foundation President and Founder, Richard M. Stallman (rms). Stallman often makes distinctions between free in the monetary sense and free in the civil rights sense. His talk focused on freedom in a civil rights sense. While his focus was on software, the most important parts of his talk for me were his statements on art. Some highlights from his talk:

• Free software is about sharing and corporations don’t want people to share because they are afraid of losing money.
• People can still make money if they share
  e.g. MP3s sell better when people are allowed to sample the music
  e.g. Monty Python saw a 300-fold increase in sales when they put their work on YouTube for free!
• The Four Freedoms (he owes FDR a royalty) foster sharing, co-operation, and community
  0. Freedom to run the program however you wish.
  1. Freedom to help yourself by viewing the source code and modifying it.
  2. Freedom to copy software and distribute the copies to others.
  3. The Freedom to publish and distribute modified source code.
• Artists are not entitled to payment for their work!
• Copyright law should be changed because copying technology has changed:
  hand-copies > printing-press > computer networks
• There should be three categories of copyright:
  1. Practical works should be completely free (0, 1, 2, & 3) (Software, Recipes, Fonts, Clothing Patterns)
  2. What People think should be shareable but not modifiable because it would alter the original intent (0 & 2) (Memoirs, Autobiographies, Scientific Works)
  3. Arts & Entertainment should be completely free after 10 years of copyright protection.

Stallman’s main argument is that copyright is bad for individuals, bad for creative people, and bad for society as a whole. I agree with some of the things he says because artists do not always benefit from copyright. For example, in a work-for-hire situation, a writer, a musician, or an illustrator is only guaranteed payment once. The publisher retains all rights and can continue to receive payment indefinitely (if copyright keeps being extended beyond a natural lifetime). Smart publishers will keep talented artists by continuing to pay them and offering them better deals. However, this is more the exception than the rule. For example, I recall my mother mentioning her musician uncle never received payment or credit for music he composed for a certain 1950s television show, although they clearly valued his work because they continued to use it!

One could argue that an artist does not require a corporation in order to publish her work, especially with today’s technology; the artist could self-publish. This argument has two serious flaws. The first flaw is that in a society where money is exchanged for goods such as food, shelter and clothing many artists will opt for a sure method of payment over a theoretical one. The reasoning goes as follows, “I could try publishing this myself but there is no guarantee I will receive any money. This publisher will give me money I need to pay my rent if I do work for them on spec (specification). Therefore, I will give away all my rights to my work just so I can have a place to live.” Some purists might accuse the artist of “selling out“, but I have often found it is easy for someone with a full belly to criticize someone with an empty one. On the flip side, my great-uncle sold-out and was ripped off!

The second flaw is that while lower in cost than it was in the past, self-publication is not free in the monetary sense of the word. I will remind the reader, Stallman differentiates between free in the monetary sense and free in the civil rights sense. Without large amounts of capital to produce a high quality product, it is often difficult for self-published artists to get a start, although not impossible.

Stallman greatly favors freedom from copyright in that it restricts people’s ability to share especially as it relates to software. He also points out the negative impacts of copyright for art. For example Shakespeare, generally acknowledged as one of the great writers of English literature, borrowed many of his ideas from earlier literature such as Beowolf. While hailed as a literary genius in an earlier age, in the modern age, Shakespeare would be accused of making unauthorized copies of earlier works without the permission of the copyright holders. Worse still, he would beguilty of creating “fan-fiction”, an inferior form of fiction based on the work of the officially sanctioned artists. Who is to say that “fan-fiction” is not in some ways aesthetically better than “official fiction”? It is here that Stallman’s greatest points are realized. Corporations borrow regularly from individuals without paying a penny. They see the value of sharing when it benefits them. When individuals attempt to do the same thing, they are criminalized.

In the case of software, the entire Internet is a product of free software development; open standards that anyone can use, scrutinize and improve upon. Corporations all benefit from this sharing as a new vehicle to promote business but they actively discourage anyone attempting to copy their proprietary systems. In the case of Arts & Entertainment, popular shows such as Star Trek benefit from so-called “fan-fiction” when their official writers have run out of ideas. Essentially they copy the works of fans without paying them or getting their permission, which is technically a violation of copyright. In the realm of Painting, what great artist has not copied the work of other great artists (living or dead) at some point in their career?

One area where I strongly disagree with Stallman is the notion that artists are not entitled to payment for their work. He used the analogy of listening to a song on the radio. Should everyone be forced to pay for the privilege of listening to a song they enjoy? Probably not. His idea is that artists should receive donations. Press a button and your favorite artists gets instant payment, similar to PayPal although Stallman opposes PayPal on privacy grounds. This could be done with music on iTunes, however the recording industry acts as a greedy intermediary.  The problem with this notion is that again, artists require money for their supplies and equipment. In the case of actors, it is very difficult to create great performances when one is hungry and without shelter. Artists often cannot create art without spending some money. Donations are theoretical payment but a price tag is guaranteed payment (provided people are honest and don’t steal). Perhaps recognizing this flaw in his reasoning, Stallman suggests that the state should provide financial support to artists. Some conservatives might argue that the already exists in the form of welfare.

I like his idea of donations based on a push button model. Imagine walking through a gallery and seeing a painting you think is absolutely breathtaking. You could automatically donate one dollar or more to the living artist or to the gallery based on your enjoyment of that work. Artists would receive direct payment instantly allowing them to continue their work. It still doesn’t get around the fact that artists require initial funds in order to create their work in the first place.

Although Stallman’s talk focused on software, his ideas have many implications for other disciplines and demonstrates once again that Art is everywhere.

When I first started in 3-D design, some terms were familiar to me because I had studied university-level mathematics but many new terms were thrown at me that I did not understand. Over time I came to understand what these meant and I would like to share this knowledge with those new to 3-D. These definitions are entirely my own. I reserve the right to change them at any time.

	Bezier Curve: A curve that is defined by a series of control points. Manipulating the control points reshapes the curve. Bezier curves belong to a class of curves called splines.
	Bump Map: A UV map where black represents shadowed areas, white represents lighted areas, and shades of gray represent different levels of lighting. Bump maps create the illusion of detail much the same way actors use makeup to appear like they have deep scars or wrinkles. Bump maps do not alter the underlying geometry. Compare this to displacement maps.
	COLLADA (*.dae): A Universal industry standard format used for saving 3-D files and transfering them from one application to another. COLLADA is managed by the not-for-profit technology consortium, the Khronos Group.
Crease Angle: This is the value used to smooth out a polygonal surface. Higher angles result in greater smoothing. Lower angles result in a “blockier” looking image.
Diffuse Color: The light reflected from an object when exposed to pure white light. This represents the true color of an object.
	Displacement Map: A specialized UV Map where black represents flattened areas, white represents raised areas, and shades of gray represent different levels of height. Displacement Maps alter the location of vertices and edges in the underlying object. In general, it is much easier to modify geometry with a displacement map than to add additional faces.
Edge: A line defined by two vertices on a polygonal surface.
Face: A single quadrilateral made up of 4 edges and 4 vertices or a single triangle made up of 3 edges and 3 vertices.
Global Illumination: All the light in a scene, including direct illumination from light sources such as lamps and the sun, as well as indirect illumination due to light reflected from objects in the scene. For example, when near a red shiny object, some of the surrounding objects pick-up reflected red light. Calculating global illumination is a computationally expensive process.
Least Squares Conformal Mapping (LSCM): LSCM reduces the amount of distortion in a UV map by keeping each grid as square as possible.
	Morph: As a verb, the process of changing a 3-D object into another object without changing the number or order of edges and vertices. This is most commonly used to transform the face or body of one figure into another. As a noun, the result of this process, hence “Elite Morph for Victoria 4″. The advantage of morphing is that one high quality figure can be used to represent multiple characters.
	Non-Manifold Surface: These types of surfaces can break many 3-D applications, especially Poser’s Cloth Room. Real-world solids have the property that, at every section on the surface, a small enough ball around that section is divided into exactly two pieces, one inside and one outside the surface. Non-manifold surfaces are physically impossible objects because they violate this rule. For example, a ball no matter how small could be divided into more than two pieces when passing through a section of a non-mainfold surface. This can be described mathematically but there is no way to visualize it.
Silo from Nevercenter gives 3-D artists a quick method for finding non-manifold surfaces. Go into Silo’s Selection menu under Select Special Geometry and select edges with more than two faces (opt Edges with faces > 2). This will highlight the nonmanifold surfaces in your 3-d mesh.
Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURB): A curve or bumpy surface in 3-D space that is defined by a series of control points and a knot vector. Manipulating the control points reshapes the NURB. NURBS differ from Bezier Curves in that the control points are given different weights or levels of emphasis.
Normal: An imaginary arrow that points out from a 3-D surface. The direction of a normal determines how an object is displayed.
Polygonal surface: A 3-D surface made up of many faces.
Render: As a verb, render is the process of creating a 2-D bitmap image from a 3-D model using realistic lighting and reflection. As a noun, render is the end result of this process.
Specular Reflection: Highlights. Shiny object have a higher specular reflection than matte objects.
Spline: A curve that is made up of pieces of smaller curves. Each piece is defined by a different equation.
Transparency Map: A UV Map where black represents invisibility, white represents opaqueness, and shades of gray represent different levels of transparency. Transparency maps are useful for creating realistic looking hair and skin.
Texture Map: A UV Map that applies color to an object.
	UV Mapping: The process by which a 2-Dimensional texture is applied to a 3-Dimensional surface. UV mapping allows digital artists to “fake” detail in a 3-D object, thus reducing development time. UV unwrapping involves the inverse process, flattening a 3D object into a 2D texture.
Vertex: A point. The plural of vertex is vertices.
Wavefront Object (*.obj): The most common type of polygonal surface. It was the de-facto standard used for transferring 3-D objects from one 3-D application to another. The COLLADA format is replacing it.

… or The Ballad of Joe Blow & Joe CEO

Joe CEO made lots of bad bets.
Joe CEO ended up with bad debt.
Joe CEO says government is bad.
But Joe CEO doesn’t follow his own fad.

Hungry & Poor? Get out of line!
Joe CEO is running out of time.
You see, Joe CEO is TOO BIG TO FAIL !
As for Joe Blow… that’s another tale.

Joe CEO is now in the sunny Caribbean.
Sipping piña colada and watching the scene.
But Joe Blows of the world have a role to fill;
We are the ones stuck with the bill!

Copyright © 2008 by Kofi Garbrah

Honore Daumier says it best… Tax-dollars go in, favours to friends of the king come out!