Author: mklang

Islandic Terrorists

This is something I missed. Apparently the British Prime Minister has declared that the Icelandic people are terrorists.

The UK has used anti-terrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by a troubled Icelandic bank. This is an awful example of how legislation is abused to enable it to do something it was never intended. It has also worsened the effects of the economic breakdown on ordinary Icelandic people.

In order to “help” him to see his mistake (which is costing them dearly in this time of economic turmoil) there is a website with a petition and lots of pictures of non-terrifying Islanders.

On Wednesday October 8th, the British Government invoked anti-terrorist legislation, which was in effect aimed at the people of Iceland. This devastating attack on our society was received with disbelief here in Iceland, where it turned a grave economic situation into a national disaster. The people of Iceland have always considered themselves great friends of the United Kingdom. Our nations have a long history of mutually beneficial trade and have been close allies in NATO and Europe.

Read more, sign the petition and check out the pictures. But above all point out to Mr Brown that he must be off his nut.

Posted on by mklang

Mashing-up Culture: The Rise of User-generated Content

Sampling and remixing, mash-ups and appropriation, wikis and podcasts are part of the digital creative milieu of the twenty-first century. Sites such as YouTube, Flickr and deviantART have offered new outlets for creativity and become hubs for innovative forms of collaboration thus playing their part in challenging modernist notions of what it means to be a creator as well as a consumer. User-generated content has draw upon the reuse of existing texts as well as new creations, bringing forward possibilities for new audiences and meanings while also raising questions about how digital texts are controlled through copyright and how intellectual property is managed.

Drawing on this background, papers are invited for the two-day workshop – Mashing-up Culture: The Rise of User-generated Content – which will take place at Uppsala University, Sweden on May 13th-14th, 2009. The event will be the first organised by the European research project COUNTER which explores the socio-economic and cultural impacts of the consumption of counterfeit goods and will bring together COUNTER researchers with scholars and stakeholders to explore the current state and dilemmas surrounding copyright and the production, consumption and distribution of culture.

Papers are invited which explore the possibilities and pitfalls surrounding the creative use of copyrighted materials with possible themes including but not limited to:

  • Sampling, mash-ups, and appropriation
  • Creativity and collaborative practices
  • Creative industries and intellectual property
  • Copyright, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Policy
  • Regulating intellectual property (formal and informal protection)

The aim of the workshop is to provide a creative and stimulating forum for an interdisciplinary and international discussion. We especially invite researchers at the earlier stages of their career to submit proposals coming from across the humanities and social sciences. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings and further publishing outlets will be explored following the workshop.

Abstracts must be no longer than 1000 words and should consider key questions addressed in the paper, data used, theoretical perspective, as well as key findings and/or contribution to the field. The title, author(s) names, email contact(s), institutional affiliation(s) and references cited must be clearly given in the submission but is not included in the 1000 word limit. Further a 200 word biography of each author should also be appended to the abstract.

Abstracts must be submitted as word processing files (not PDFs) to Eva Hemmungs Wirtén – ehw@abm.uu.se – no later than Wednesday 7th January 2009.

Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of originality, quality of research, theoretical innovation and relevance to the central themes of the COUNTER project. Accepted authors will be notified by email by 30th January 2009. Successful applicants will be invited to attend the workshop at no fee and receive significant reimbursement of travel costs and workshop accommodation.

Delegates are expected to participate in the whole of the two-day event.

Key dates:

  • 7th January: Deadline for submission of abstracts and author biographies
  • 30th January: Successful authors notified by email
  • 10th April: Full papers submitted for inclusion in proceedings
  • 24th April: Papers circulated to workshop delegates and discussants
  • 13th-14th May: Mashing-up Culture workshop

A document picturing some of the venues to be used for the workshop and the social events is available online. For further information on the workshop please cotact the workshop chair, Eva Hemmungs Wirtén – ehw@abm.uu.se.

Posted on by mklang

Protecting Digital Rights

Internet service providers are hardly known for their efforts to protect the rights of their clients. This is hardly surprising considering they low amount of money they make per client compared to the legal costs which would be entailed in attempting to defend a client. For example: A cheap web hosting service costs less per year than a lawyer costs per hour. It’s not too difficult to work it out.

At the same time the ISPs are our lifeline and basis of our ability to participate in a digital society so this lack of help is a serious flaw. So it was nice to see that the Council of Europe have published Human rights guidelines for Internet service providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for internet service providers (ISPs). While underlining the important role played by ISPs in delivering key services for the Internet user, such as access, e-mail or content services, they stress the importance of users’ safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the providers to be aware of the human rights impact that their activities can have.

in addition to this document the Council of Europe have also published Human rights guidelines for online games providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for online games providers and developers. While underlining the primary value of games as tools for expression and communication, they stress the importance of gamers safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the games industry to be aware of the human rights impact that games can have.

Documents such as these are the early steps at ensuring the protection of individuals online rights and as such should be applauded even if it is kind of worrying that we still see a need to attempt to define rights in online environments as something fundamentally different from human rights in the offline world.

Posted on by mklang

Spineless Academy

In 1786 King Gustav III founded the Swedish Academy to preserve the purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language” (Svenska Språkets renhet, styrka och höghet). The Swedish Academy is most famous for decideding who will be the laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel. A task it has been carrying out since 1901.

The motto of the Academy is “Talent and Taste” (Snille och Smak) and apparently neither talent nor taste have anything to do with any form of courage.

In connection with the Rushdie affair when the Iranian mullahs pronounced the fatwa against him. The Swedish academy decided not to make a statement in favor of Rushdie and denouncing the death threat he now faced. The academy naturally could comfortably rely on old principles that they should not make political statements. Two of the members of the academy left in protest (Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten).

So now when the Italian author Roberto Saviano is revieving death threats for writing a book about the Camorra and several notables (amongst others: Michail Gorbatjov, Desmond Tutu, Orhan Pamuk, Dario Fo, Günter Grass & Salman Rushdie) have shown their support, the academy when asked formally to show support replies (my translation)

It is extremely sad that a writer in an European country is in mortal danger because of something he published but it seems to me [Horace Engdahl the academy secretary] to be a police errand and not a question of protecting principles of freedom of expression.

The people of talent and taste are hiding behind their non-political stance to avoid taking formal moral stances. Everything a body like the Swedish Academy does is political. Every time they make a choice in litterature concerning the most author most deserving of the Nobel prize – it is a political choice.

Therefore the decision not to stand up for freedom of expression or, at the very least, to condem death threats is moral cowardice.

Posted on by mklang

Three more trains before FSCONS

Sitting on a train on my way home from Malmö. Tomorrow is going to be back and forth to Stockholm before the cool weekend conference FSCONS. For those of you who have not been paying attention this a bit of their blurb:

FSCONS 2008 is the first among many Free Society conferences that bridges the gap between free software and cultural freedom. Co-arranged by Free Software Foundation Europe, Creative Commons and Wikimedia Sverige, FSCONS 2008 is already a landmark event in bringing the different movements working for digital freedom together.

But seriously check out the schedule – the speakers promise to make this a special event. If you are in the area you should seriously consider showing up.

Posted on by mklang

Dibley, terrorism, dvds & other annoyances

Recently I bought the a box collection of BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley after enjoying the content I did not turn off the DVD in time and I caught the advert against piracy which included the amazing news that “piracy supports organized crime” and “piracy supports terrorism”

This type of false propaganda annoys me on several levels. So ok I can accept that there may be a link between organized crime and piracy but terrorism???

So what between planning to fly an airplane into a building and bombing innocent civilians, terrorists sitting in caves mass pirate dvds and upload films on the Internet? What a load of bull!

Actually another thing that annoys me about dvd’s is the compulsory and very annoying copyright and piracy infomercials in the begining. It almost makes you want to be a pirate – at least they cut away that crap. If I buy a dvd I actually think it should be my right to be able to jump past the annoying useless stuff in the begining.

Posted on by mklang

Swedish young women blog

Confirmation about the people behind the blogs comes via Media Culpa who is attending Internetdagarna in Stockholm. A report from the World Internet Institute shows that among 16-18 year-olds it is almost three times as common for girls to blog than it is for boys and in the 26-30 year age group it is even more than three times as common for women to blog.

This confirms the views of Media Culpa who has studied the state of Swedish blogging over time (check out the report BlogSweden 3) that shows young women dominating the Swedish blogosphere.

swedeninternet2008

Posted on by mklang

Open Access & Scientific Publication in Malmö

Tomorrow I am off to Malmö to give a copyright & Creative Commons presentation at a seminar on Open Access and Scientific Publication. This should be an interesting event (not because I am there) because the speakers are an interesting group concerned with increasing accessiblity to scientific publication. Judging from the amount of registered participants it should be a good meeting. I am looking forward to the trip.

Posted on by mklang

Is the web really wild

The paper University Affairs has an interesting article on the ills of Web 2.0. The article gives examples of identity theft, harrassment, unethical behaviour, lies and racism (just to mention a few things). The article illustration is a huge evil spider standing ominously behind three users surfing innocently while caught in a web.

My first annoyance is that this has nothing to do with Web 2.0 and the term is simply used to modernize the old gripe about the evils of web technology. But let me just get over that.

The real problem is that all the examples in the article are part of what is to be expected as part and parcel of the “new” technology. The article begins with an example of a Facebook group falsely accusing a university of using puppies in medical research. Nobody listens to the university and the group grows. The rest of the examples are even worse, potentially damaging and some show that people will be hurt in the offline world as well.

Popular beliefs, fooling the masses and common delusions are common throughout history. So what is the article really about? Well it’s a typical article showing technology as being dangerous and uncontrolable – it is simple fearmongering based on anecdotal (but most probably true) evidence.

This is journalism selling itself on sex and horror stories not with the intention of achieving anything and barely with enough material to be considered news. It is journalism profiteering on sex and horror which of course means it is not journalism but rather a profiteering on the same sex and horror it is pretending to be concerned about.

Posted on by mklang

A must see thingy

The venerable blog Blackadder Hall (as an important bearer of pre-Bean culture it deserves the venerable title) has put the documentary The Whole Rotten Saga online. The 1,5 hour documentary has been split into seven parts. They write:

This documentary looks back at the hilarious historical saga of Blackadder, the enduring comic creation of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis now celebrating its 25th anniversary. The programme charts the behind-the-scenes story of the show, from early development to its rise as one of Britain’s best loved sitcoms. Featuring rare rehearsal footage of the team at work and in-depth interviews with key cast and crew such as Richard Curtis, Ben Elton and Stephen Fry.

This is not a time to think of copyright. Just sit back and enjoy!

Posted on by mklang