Playing TAU lectures from videos.tau.ac.il

[Stan Goodman]

At 20:46:08 on Monday Monday 26 July 2010, Ariel Biener 
<ariel at post.tau.ac.il> wrote:
> > I'll bite. What this thread asks is not how to redistribute these
> > films for free or for pay [FreeDist], but rather how to legitimately
> > view them on Linux while fully respecting the copyrights. Apparently,
> > the TAU workers did not do enough work to ensure portability and
> > interoperability for non-Microsoft-based operating systems, and the
> > people who asked here want to find a good workaround. This thread is
> > entirely due to their lack of ability (or because they did not care
> > enough), and it should be expected given that people use Linux and
> > want to view the lectures there, which is within their rights as TAU
> > students.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > That may not be a bad thing, because it gives publicity to the
> > university, and allows other people to enjoy your content. See:
> >
> > * http://remix.lessig.org/
> >
> > * http://ocw.mit.edu/ (OpenCourseWare).
>
> Yes, but TAUs policy on copyright is not on discussion, nor am I
> authorized to
> change it.
>
> > These internal means likely take time, as many people who have tried
> > to contact the operators of web-sites that do not function in
> > non-MSIE-browsers can attest to. In the meanwhile, people would need
> > some Linux-specific workarounds, which would not be needed if the TAU
> > staff cared enough about checking that. You reap what you sow.
>
> I do not like prejudice. The only way to fix TAU issues is via the help
> desk. Trust me,
> we're not your usual Joe ISP. We are a strong Unix/Linux shop, and most
> of our
> applications, especially web apps, are based on open source.

But it has been explained to you that Linux users have already addressed 
the help desk, which has not found (or which doesn't really care to find) 
a way to solve the problem, thus leaving Linux users unable to access the 
pages that they need for their course work. What does "trust me" mean in 
such a case? 

Hiding behind copyright law is a weak excuse. The university cannot 
arrange its student pages in such a way that proprietary software is 
needed for access, and then complain when students who are told to use 
the pages try to access without the proprietary software. I don't think 
that argument is "populistic", as you have argued; I don't think you do 
either, if you will think about it.
>
>
> -- Ariel
>  --
>  Ariel Biener
>  e-mail: ariel at post.tau.ac.il
>  PGP: http://www.tau.ac.il/~ariel/pgp.html
>
>
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-- 
Stan Goodman
Qiryat Tiv'on
Israel