Author: mklang

Assange and Zombie Facts

It’s not the first time and probably not the last, but last night I fell for the intoxicating allure of discussing with people online. So now I am at the office after 4 hours sleep wondering what the whole point of my Don Quixote behavior was…

I must stop doing this!

The problem is that arguing Assange is like arguing with creationists. For every answer they ask impossible questions and if you cannot answer them (immediately) it’s obvious that they are right. Most annoying. Then there is the problem that they behave like trolls. They don’t read the earlier material but just jump in and repeat the same tired (and wrong) statements. I love the term “zombie facts” i.e. statements which stagger on even when shot down.

My position is legal and can best be summarized by The blog that Peter wrote and The Statemans Legal myths about the Assange extradition.

Let me summarize some of the more important stuff:

  • “The allegation of rape would not be rape under English law” False (No brainer – rape is non consensual sex i.e. no means no. Sleeping people have not consented).
  • “This is the Personal Vendetta of one Swedish Prosecutor” False (it’s a decision by the Swedish Court of Appeals)
  • “Assange is more likely to be extradited to USA from Sweden than the United Kingdom” False (I wrote a longer post on this in March)
  • “Sweden should guarantee that there be no extradition to USA” Not legally possible (I wrote a longer post on this in March)
  • Sweden will extradite him anyway False (see Mark Klamberg for more on this)
  • “The Swedes should interview Assange in London” No: Best answer in the New Statesman article (Also: Seriously? Do you negotiate with tax authorities where to pay taxes?)

In addition I am completely in agreement with The Blog That Peter Wrote when he writes:

This issue is not like choosing sides in a soccer match.  You can be pro-Wikileaks and keen to see the rule of law operate.  This does not make you anti-Assange, an Assange Hater or anything else.  I, like you, have no idea whether he is guilty of the alleged crimes back in August 2010.  I do feel that the alleged victims deserve to be taken seriously, having taken the step of reporting the alleged offences to the Police, and that they should have some form of closure.

It is frankly irrelevant who the man is who is wanted for questioning, and what other great things he may (or may not) have done.  If you believe in judicial process and the rule of law, it is hard to argue he should not return to Sweden for questioning (after, of course, dealing with the consequences of his behaviour here in jumping bail).

This post is to remind myself to turn of my devices and go the f**k to sleep.

Posted on by mklang

Tolerance is law

Enjoying the great feeling of seeing my latest article (together with Jan Nolin) in (digital) print! Please check out Tolerance is law: Remixing Homage, Parodying Plagiarism which has been published today in the open journal Scripted.

Would like to thank the reviewers for pointing out the flaws and helping us improve the article. But I still want more so every and all comment is appreciated.

The abstract is boring but the article is (hopefully) much more interesting. Abstract:

Three centuries have passed since copyright law was developed to stimulate creativity and promote learning. The fundamental principles still apply, despite radical developments in the technology of production and distribution of cultural material. In particular the last decades’ developments and adoption of ICTs have drastically lowered barriers, which previously prevented entry into the production and distribution side of the cultural marketplace, and led to a widening of the base at which cultural production occurs and is disseminated. Additionally, digitalisation has made it economically and technically feasible for users to appropriate and manipulate earlier works as method of production.
The renegotiation of barriers and the increasing number of creators who publish their works has led to an increase in copyright violations and a pressure on copyright legislation. Many of these potential violations are tolerated, in some cases have become common practice, and created social norms. Others have not been so fortunate and the law has been rigidly enforced. This arbitrary application decreases the predictability of law and creates a situation where creation relies on the tolerance of the other copyright holders. This article analyses different cases of reuse that test the boundaries of copyright. Some of these are tolerated, others not. When regulation fails to capture the rich variation of creative reuse, it becomes difficult to predict which works will be tolerated. The analysis suggests that as copyright becomes prohibitive, social norms, power and the values of the copyright holder dominate and not law.

M Klang & J Nolin, “Tolerance is law: Remixing Homage, Parodying Plagiarism”, (2012) 9:1 SCRIPTed 7 http://script-ed.org/?p=476

Posted on by mklang

Beating the crowds: A pre-emptive study of Teleportation Law

With a few days margin I finally got around to submitting my abstract for this years GikII which will be in London. The title is “Beating the crowds: A pre-emptive study of Teleportation Law”. This is among the coolest conferences as the people are smart and funny – and tend to explore the stranger sides of technology law.

The deadline is  August 13th 2012 – so there is still time for you to submit.

Here is my abstract:

Great strides are being made in the field of instantaneous transportation. Only recently (2006), physicists in Denmark and Germany passed gas over a distance of several hundred centimeters. Despite this great leap, scientists are still struggling with the concept of human teleportation.

To the cultural historian, however, the concept of teleportation (the shifting, usually instantaneously, of matter from one point to another without physically passing through the territory between the points) is well established. Teleportation appears in a plethora of sources: from the founding legend of the Kingdom of Champa to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and in almost every episode of Star Trek.

This lack of progress among physicists creates a window of opportunity for jurists to ensure that the necessary legal fundamentals are laid out in preparation for the scientific realization. This will ensure that, at least in this area, jurisprudence is not caught in the steel trap of Wendell Holmes’ pessimistic dictum of the law being inevitably behind the times.

In order to ensure that only the (current) laws of physics are broken it is necessary to look at teleportation from the several perspectives. The goal of this paper is to prepare an initial study over the necessary areas of law needed to successfully carry out human teleportation. It will, inter alia, look at criminal law, intellectual property, illegal downloading, privacy, protection of personhood, human rights, medical law and immigration issues.

With this paper the author hopes to demonstrate the ways in which technological breakthroughs require a reappraisal of existing legal attitudes and a revaluation of their underlying norms.

Posted on by mklang

Your Phone Company is Watching

Data retention and mobile telephones are seen as boring subjects. But change that to “Your phone company is watching” and get Malte Spitz to harass his phone company to use his right to information. The data he gets maps out 6 months of his life – check out what he does with the data. All of a sudden data retention is not boring – it is scary serious.

Spitz demonstrates simply why this is important. He argues that we have to fight for our right for self-determination every day. He is right and history may depend on it.

 

What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn’t too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code — a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

Malte Spitz asked his cell phone carrier what it knew about him–and mapped what he found out.

Posted on by mklang

Breaking up with eBooks

Just love the text Librarian in Black writes about ending her relationship with eBooks I’m breaking up with eBooks (and you can too)

I want to break up with eBooks. Don’t get me wrong, eBooks is dead sexy and great arm candy at parties, as well as a magnet for attention and memorable experiences. But man…eBooks makes for a crap boyfriend. This relationship is as dysfunctional as it gets.

The flash of the ebook may be losing some of its glamor and I do miss many of the things that paper books had (ease of use and tactile sensation) but I am not sure if I am ready for a clean break just yet… I may just have to keep seeing them on the side?

Librarian in Black has written a wonderful text – read it!

Posted on by mklang

Science is the poetry of reality

The British Humanist Association have created a great little video Introduction to Humanism. Its basically a six minute explanation of what humanism is. But what makes it particularly great is the people who do the talking in the movie. They are a star cast: Rumy Hasan, A.C. Grayling, Polly Toynbee, Tim Minchin, Phillip Pullman, Zoe Margolis, Andrew Copson & Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins enthusiasm for science is wonderful and inspiring in the video he says: “Science is the poetry of reality”

Posted on by mklang

Lets eat Grandma

Reading too many papers written by students with poor language skills is melting my brain, and it’s not that I am particularly good at correct use of punctuation…

I just love the intro to Kyle Wiens blogpost: I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

 

Nor do I want to be a language police. Every time I get too serious about this I remind myself of this…

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography – Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

Posted on by mklang

When culture isn't shared

Yesterday Clarinette sent out a series of three tweets about the way in which we no longer are able to share culture as we used to. Mostly this is because much of our culture is locked into specific devices or user accounts.

Have you ever thought how much are devices have become ‘indivudualized’ ? Can’t share laptops, phones, iPads, eBooks or music anymore. (5:56 PM – 25 Jul 12).

 

Culture is becoming ‘individual’, not shared. Can’t pass in books, music, devices. Itunes music dies after death. Even picz stored online. (5:58 PM – 25 Jul 12).

 

Wondering what we will leave behind after death. I surely print much less picz, write very little on paper, most music is online…. (6:03 PM – 25 Jul 12).

Her comments are interesting as they illustrate the paradox that we probably have access to more cultural material than ever before but this culture is not shared between family, local community or even nationality. We do share culture – consuming is a form of sharing – but not in the same way as we did before. In many cases to share culture almost requires each sharer to have his or her own device (and of course that the cultural expression is not locked-in with DRM).

A friend of mine complained some time ago that it was not enough to buy one e-book reader for the family but each member needed to have their own device. When everyone had their own device the family’s reading habits changed – they no longer read the same book and talked about it. In one sense the sharing of culture within the family broke down.

In the long term this should also have an effect on the collected culture we leave behind (see for example Will Your Children Inherit Your E-Books? and Memory in the digital age). Not to mention the amount of stuff we “lose” somewhere on old hard disks.

The increased ability to chose, the diminished ability to share and the decreased ability to leave a collection of culture to the next generation. Will this change who we are?

Family photo’s a thing of the past? My Grandfather & I

To end on a nicely paranoid note: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Chapter 3.

Posted on by mklang

Corporations often lose in Social Media

Many companies want to be part of the “new” “trendy” world of social media but they are not prepared to accept the realities of the world in which they enter. Often the campaigns just get lost, they are a failure in silence but occasionally they turn into magnificent failures that make your job drop in amazement – what were they thinking?

In January 2012 it was McDonalds who attempted to create buzz by asking people to tweet their cosy moments under the hashtag #McDStories. They were obviously expecting plenty of nice little tales of happy customers enjoying advertising like moments but – of course – this was not the only thing that happened. Forbes published a story on the campaign #McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag which included examples such as

One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up.

Hardly a brilliant piece of marketing.

In a more difficult situation the oil company shell has been the “victim” of an interesting Internet anti-campaign by Greenpeace. Greenpeace set up a copy of the Shell site and asked people to automatically generate advertising posters for their (Shell’s) arctic oil. Huffington post writes:

Since June, Visitors to the site arcticready.com were treated to a spoof mimicking Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s website, a collaborative effort by Greenpeace and The Yes Men, a pair of activists known to imitate companies they dislike.

The results were obvious

According to design consulting firm, PSFK, the public was ready to believe that Arctic Ready was a legitimate marketing campaign. “It is entirely plausible Shell might have been reckless enough to crowd-source adverts using its ‘Let’s Go’ line, and that the crowd-sourced efforts had included gems such as ‘This fox will murder you unless we kill it first. Let’s Go’”

Greenpeace soon released a statement claiming responsibility for the campaign…

When it comes to Social Media dialogues corporate budgets are inadequate when dealing with the sheer numbers of responses capable of being generated by individuals using social media. Any responses left for the corporations (such as suing for copyright violation or defamation) are more likely than not going to generate even bigger PR failures. What is a poor multi-billion dollar corporation to do?

Posted on by mklang