Copyright

thou shall not plagiarize

Tomorrow I am giving another of my “thou shall not plagiarize” lectures to masters students. While I like giving this lecture since it gives an opportunity to get discussions going on the limitations between using other peoples work and stealing – I am sometimes concerned that the lecture may instead turn into “thou shall not get caught”

OK so I understand that the students don’t want to get caught , they are nervous and unsure about where the borders go. But there is still a nasty undercurrent of howto copy without getting caught in the questions many students ask.

Its very similar to the students who are very concerned about the number of pages an assignment must be without understanding the reason for this number or that the reader actually want content on the pages.

So the day begins with explaining plagiarism, references, writing etiquette and legal positions. Then after a short lunchbreak its off to grade two final essays…

TGIF.

Posted on by mklang

Raiding Pirate Bay

What is The Pirate Bay (TPB) supposed to have done?

TPB is the site of a BitTorrent tracker. In other words it helps users to locate BitTorrent files. BitTorrent is a variant (some would say development) of the Peer-to-Peer networks. It (the BitTorrent protocol) is a method for advertising and sharing files over a network.

Basically users looking for files (this can be films, music, texts, software etc) go to the search engine (TPB) and conduct a search. If they find what they are looking for they can download a â??.torrentâ?? file. This is not the actual end file they are looking for. It is a file which contains meta data about the file which they are looking for.

This data contains two sections. One that specifies the URL of the tracker and the other that contains the filename, fragment size, key length and a pass. The torrent file can contain information about many end files.

By activating the torrent file one begins the download of the end file or files. These are downloaded from several computers where the file is stored. As soon as part of the file is downloaded the downloader also becomes a source where others may download this part of the file. Once the download is complete the downloader may decide to keep this file available to others or remove it from the swarm.

Torrents are used to coordinate file sharing of copyrighted material both with and without the copyright holders consent. The technology cannot define whether the actions are legal or illegal. At present I have two complete files which I have been sharing for some time via BitTorrent. Since I am sharing complete files I am called a Seeder.

I have the most recent version of UBUNTU which is a Linux operating system licensed under the GPL license where sharing (and more) it is allowed. I have a film called Elephants Dream which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License and it is therefore permissible to share. In both these cases I am providing a service and helping the legal distribution of material.

OK â?? so that was the technical side. What does TPB do?

TPB is a search engine which helps people find the small tracker (.torrent) files. In other words the small files which contain information about where the end files are within the network. These tracker (.torrent) files are possibly not even capable of being copyrightable. If they are protected by copyright then they are the property of the author â?? in other words their creator. Not the creator of the end files that they track.

TPB case is going to be exciting to watch because the people in control of TPB are well aware of their legal position and of what they are doing. They will not have made the newbie mistake of having copyrighted material on their servers without permission.

Is it illegal to do what TPB does? If I tell you that you can buy a Gucci wallet knockoff at a well known marketplace am I guilty of the crime of â??facilitating copyright infringementâ??? Better still if I tell you how to make your own Gucci wallet am I still innocent? If I could sow and I create a copy of a fashionable suit for my own use is this copyright violation? If I instruct someone else is this â??facilitating copyright infringementâ???

If TPB are â??facilitating copyright infringementâ?? then what about Google? or Flickr? Google helps me find images and texts of masses of copyrighted material. Flickr not only helps me find it but also helps me store it?

What about the local library? They help me find and copy the material I needed to write this postâ?¦

The next step is obviously the question of the police action. The police have removed property from TPB. Removing property is a serious step and the question is whether the alleged crime motivates such action. In the case of computer equipment the question of surplus information must also be taken into consideration. In other words have the police taken too much?

TPB website today states that even servers containing material from organisations not connected with TPB were taken â?? in this case this amounts to a serious violation of an organisations ability to communicate. Can this amount of force justified â?? is the police action proportional to the alleged crime? Especially when other non-accused organisations are affected by police action.

Posted on by mklang

facilitating copyright infringement

It seems that The Pirate Bay offices were raided today. They have issued a short statement here. According to the online chatter (with some sources close to the Pirate Bay) 50 police were involved in the raid.

The Pirate Bay is the largest bittorrent tracker online and has therefore long been the center of much legal discussion and controversy.

The motivation for the raid was that The Pirate Bay was “facilitating copyright infringement”. The point of whether the actions of The Pirate Bay constitute a criminal act are under discussion. But a small point which interests me is the fact(?) that the police apparently took servers belonging and/or containing/hosting other organisations.

Even if The Pirate Bay have been facilitating copyright infringement it is interesting to see how far the actions of authoritites may go. In efforts to prevent a percieved crime and to secure evidence of this the authorities have now prevented the communications of other organisations not conducting criminal actions.

Posted on by mklang

Free Films Online

While the main discussion on online films revolves (rightly or wrongly) on pirates downloading material. This discussion sometimes forgets that we have now reached a period when a number of films are being released into the public domain. Here is a selection of films available at the Internet Archive. Browsing their collection is lots of fun and may seriously threaten thesis work.

Things to Come (1936), William Cameron Menzies (dir.), The metropolis of Everytown is a city threatened by world war. Pacifist intellectuals try to turn the tide but efforts go unheeded by the self-interested classes, and war arrives with tanks and aeroplanes and gas bombs. The war continues for thirty years, its original purpose forgotten. Everytown is destroyed by air raids and civilization degenerates… (imdb) (Public Domain).

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (dir. George Meiles), an old 1902 film from france about a small group of scientists that travel to space on a rocket to get to the moon. (Licensed via CC Att-NC-SA).

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) (dir. Roy William Neill) Based on the Sir Authur Conan Doyle story “The Dancing Men”, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are placed in WWII europe to help protect a scientist and his invention from the Nazis. (Licensed via CC Att).

The Kid (1921) (dir. Charlie Chaplin) The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length movie. It, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. (Public Domain).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) While travelling in Switzerland, the child of a well-off couple is kidnapped. She is held to ensure that her father does not reveal what he knows about a planned assassination. Since they can’t talk to the authorities, the parents plan to begin the search for their daughter on their own. This is the original, British-made movie from 1934 and is now in the Public Domain.

Mechanical Monsters (1941) A ten minute Superman cartoon where he battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army (imdb) (Public Domain).

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton) the story of a naive, college-educated dandy who must prove himself to his working-class father, a hot-headed riverboat captain, while courting the daughter of his father’s rival, who threatens to put Steamboat Bill, Sr. and his paddle-wheeler out of business. (Public Domain).

The New Adventures of Tarzan. (1935) (dir. Edward Kull) Not many realize this feature, along with ‘Tarzan and the Green Goddess’, were produced by E.R. Burroughs, himself. He wanted a screen portrayal of Tarzan as he had written him, a noble intelligent Ape Man/Lord Greystoke, not as Hollywood had made him (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”). And NO Cheetah.

Three Stooges – Color Craziness (1965) “The New Three Stooges” featured the animated adventures of Moe, Larry, & Curly Joe. The cartoons were introduced by live-action inserts with the real Stooges. These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color, and they also feature long-time Stooge collaberator Emil Sitka. (Public Domain).

Posted on by mklang

Web 2.0

Apparently O’Reilly claims that they own the term Web 2.0 so without their permission academic conferences cannot use this term. Cory Doctorow writes:

O’Reilly Media have taken a ton of criticism for attempting to enforce a service mark against a nonprofit group in Ireland that wanted to have “Web 2.0” conference. O’Reilly exec Dale Dougherty coined the term Web 2.0, and O’Reilly used it for a line of very successful conferences chaired by Boing Boing’s business manager, John Battelle (I’ve been a speaker at Web 2.0 as well, and found the con to be an amazing, eye-opening experience).

The dispute seems to have been resolved amicably. O’Reilly has apologized for sending in lawyers against the con before speaking to them, and has granted the con permission to use “Web 2.0” in its name.

I am probably not alone when I say that I like much of the stuff which comes from O’Reilly but attempts to create value in this way show that even organisations which on the surface “get” the effects of the web and have been involved in defining (Not owning or creating) web 2.0 still do some amazingly stupid things…

O’Reilly writes about this story here and includes the following from their VP of communications:

Donagh Kiernan of IT@Cork (to whom the letter was addressed) graciously talked with me late in the work day on a Friday (Irish time), and we’ve resolved the service mark issue. O’Reilly and CMP are fine with IT@Cork using “Web 2.0” in the name of their June 8 conference. And I apologized again to Donagh for the tone of our letter, and for that fact that we didn’t contact IT@Cork before sending it. That’s not the way we want to do business, and as a few of you (OK, more than a few) have noted, it was a mistake.

I’d also like to reiterate that, as Web 2.0 Conference co-chair John Battelle noted, “Remember, Web 2.0 is also about having a business that works. And not protecting your trademarks is simply bad business practice.” We’re not claiming exclusive use of “Web 2.0” in all contexts. Our service mark applies only to “Web 2.0” when used in the *title* of “live events” such as conferences and tradeshows.

Posted on by mklang

German Copyright

The German Bundesrat on the 19th May voted to change German copyright law (The Bundesrat position) which was implemented in 2003 and has received heavy criticism. (Press release)

The Bundesrat recommends a copyright legislation which is more positive towards teaching, research and education in an effort to promote scientific information and public access to such information. The public right to information has been laid out in the government plan â??Informationsgesellschaft Deutschland 2006â??

Unfortunately my German is too weak to understand this more fully. Anyone seen any translations/comments?

Posted on by mklang

Commons Bibliography

OK – so this really should be a wiki. But consider this to be a quick and dirty version. I am collecting a bibliography on litterature on the commons. Both theoretical contributions on the commons in general and applications (such as) Creative Commons.

The current list is here and a non-english version is here. To add to it please leave a comment to this post.

Posted on by mklang

People & technology

The concept of technological determinism can be explained with the quote from Homer (unconfirmed) â??The blade itself incites to violenceâ??. When I try to explain technological determinism to my students I usually ask them to think about their iPods. What are the people who build and sell a device which fits 10 000 songs saying about intellectual property?

Another cool application of technology is flickr.com. I like the work of the graffiti artist Banksy so here are a few images taken from the Banksy pool.
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wyn gilley

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Marble Arch. Nolifebeforecoffee.
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Near Drayton Park Train Station, N7 London. atomic shed.

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Hocker Street, Shoreditch. distantbombs.
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Corner of Noel Street and Poland Street, London, 2001. Simon Crubellier.

The point (not of Banksy but of technology application) is that in a cool interconnected way I can follow Banksyâ??s work. Since he is a graffiti artist it is not going to be displayed for too long. Flickr provides both the storage medium but also a searchable area where interests can gather. Not only can I find images from all over the world I can also follow them by theme (e.g. Banksy) and see the work of different photographers. The development of the social organisation of photography via sites like this is very cool.

The point is not simply mindless technology optimism but rather that given a technological base people will find social uses for it. It is not about developing a business model but rather that by applying technology in an unorthodox way people will develop and organise their interactions with the help of technology. But we still need to develop the technology and make it more available, cheaper and free to manipulate.

Part of the problem is (naturally) that there is not enough political will to fulfill this vision. As soon as we approach anything like this someone starts talking about the need to ensure that business can profit from technology. Profiting from technology is ok – but not if it stops the development of a better socio-technical organisation. The development of a new socio-technical organisation began the dissemination of the web but has faltered with the demands of business to make profit and the inevitable crash of a market based upon words & greed…

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 Conference

On the 22nd & 23rd June its the 3rd International GPLv3 Conference which will be held in Barcelona.

The focus will be on the GPLv3 – this is from the press release

The goal of the GPL is to ensure that recipients of GPL covered software are free to examine it, to modify it, to pass on copies, and to distribute modifications. Version two of the GPL was released fifteen years ago, in 1991. The new version is being drafted to account for changes in the legal and technical environment in which software licences operate.

The main changes in version three are to minimise the harm of software patents, to prevent Digital Restrictions Management from being used against software users, and to make the licence compatible with certain classes of other Free Software licences.

Speakers will include, amongst others, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen.

Posted on by mklang

Pearl Jam & CC

The video for Pearl Jamâ??s new single â??Life Wastedâ?? is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs license, so that the people around the world can legally copy, distribute, and share the clip.

This is the first music video by Pearl Jam in eight years that Pearl Jam and also the first time that the band has licensed work under one of Creative Commonsâ?? copyright licenses.

Pearl Jam and J Records are offering the video as a free download at Google Video and Pearl Jamâ??s website from May 19th, through May 24th. After May 24th, the clip will be made available for sale.

Posted on by mklang