The Software Freedom Law Centre has put out a guide to help with GPL compliance. The guide is mainly for software vendors but it’s an interesting read for most of us interested in the topic.
A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance (August 26, 2008) is written by Bradley M. Kuhn, Aaron Williamson & Karen M. Sandler and is also available in a PDF or Postscript version.
Finally! The Creative Commons team (Kalle and I) have spent two days drinking strong coffee, arguing and laughing in an effort to update the Swedish licenses from version 2.5 to 3.0. Now the license drafts are done and we have invited people, organisations and government bodies to read and comment on the work.
If any of you readers want to join in the bags of fun then feel free to surf in to www.creativecommons.se/drafts/
Right now I am looking forward to drinking a congratulatory beer or two. Since I am totally brain-drained and coffee-pickled.
In the case of Bauer v. Wikimedia et al, a New Jersey judge has dismissed defamation claims against the operator of Wikipedia (ruling).
From the EFF blog:
This case began when literary agent Barbara Bauer sued Wikimedia, claiming the organization was liable for statements identifying her as one of the “dumbest of the twenty worst” agents and that she had “no documented sales at all.” EFF and the law firm of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton represented Wikimedia, and moved to dismiss the case in May, arguing that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, operators of “interactive computer services” such as Wikipedia cannot be held liable for users’ comments.
User generated sites are going to get (and have gotten) involved in defamation-like cases and it is necessary that the parent company should have some form of immunity even if such immunity can be abused. It’s nice to see that it worked in this case.
Another question is whether or not calling someone the “dumbest” can be considered to be defamatory at all…
Virtual Law@LSE writes that BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up to the Government’s new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on File Sharing. [BBC, Guardian, Telegraph]
The MOU means that the companies have to work to create a “significant reduction” in illegal filesharing. This may sound easy enough but spying on customers and accusing them of violating copyright law is not really good business – especially for companies whose business it is to sell faster (and more expensive) broadband. The ISP’s have in the MoU agreed to send out “informative letters” to customers whose accounts have been identified as being used for potential file sharing. But as Virtual Law@LSE writes:
It would appear many thousands of people will get letters from their ISPs telling them that the BPI has identified them as potentially being in breach of copyright. The ISPs should be careful here in terms of customer relations. It is never a good idea to tell a customer of your that someone believes them to be a copyright infringer. It will (a) suggest you are snooping on them (which to an extent is true), (b) suggests you are entitled to lecture them on their activities online and (c) suggests you are serving the interests of the BPI not their own customers.
In order to be able to send the letters to suspected file sharers the ISP’s must either monitor all data traffic or only monitor those who use unusually high amounts of broadband. Either way the ISP’s are uncomfortably close to violating peoples privacy. Maybe not in a legal sense and maybe they are acting within the limitations of their customer contracts but still tantamount to surveillence and a violation of privacy.
It is also a form of privatized regulation through technology which sits uncomfortably with the potential freedom that the technology enables…
Technollama has his finger on the pulse of the recent World of Warcraft EULA case – read all about it!
The suit involved cheating autopilot exploit which allows a player to gather gold automatically by using intelligent agents and bots to control an avatar. MDY distributes software advertised specifically to serve as an exploit, which represents a serious problem for WoW developers Blizzard Entertainment because it affects legitimate players who put time and effort into levelling and gathering gold.
Seriously the results are important far beyond gaming – as if that was not an important topic
I must say that I do not like MDY, and my initial reaction was to wish Blizzard the best. However, this is a diabolical ruling. The actual effect of the court’s argument is that if you any user is in breach of the Terms of Use, they will also be liable for copyright infringement. To put this in other terms, if I let you into my house, I am giving you a permission to enter. I cannot just decide to revoke my permission unilaterally (which is what Blizzard’s EULA says), and while you’re inside call the police alleging that you broke in. No wonder EFF have flipped over the story (although I do not agree with their provoking title). William Partry is also beffudled by the strange decision.
Karl at Cyberlaw reports of a recent interesting copyright case decided at the Swedish Court of Appeal (Svea Hovrätt).
The case (2008-07-01, FT 685-08) concerned the question whether a screendump of one web page (containing pictures) being displayed on another web page constitued a violation of copyright of the pictures.
The court found that, first of all, the pictures displayed on the webpage which was pictured and displayed on another web page were not protected under 1§ of the Swedish Copyright Act (English version Pdf) but under Photolaw 49 a§ Swedish Copyright Act.
This difference is a remnant of the time when photographs were not covered by Copyright law at all. Today photographs are covered by Copyright law but the length of protection differs from other typical works protected under copyright law.
Since the images were small and hardly distinguishable to the naked eye they made up an unessential part of the the exception in 20a§ is applicable. According to this exception there is no need for permission to use works which appear in the background or are an non-essential part of the picture.
IFIP-TC9 HCC8
8th International Conference on Human Choice and Computers
on
Social Dimensions of ICT Policy
University of Pretoria
25-26 September 2008
Thursday 25 September
9:00 – 9:30 Opening session
Welcome speeches by conference organizers at the University of Pretoria
9:30 – 10:30 Plenary session: keynote speech
Communication, Information and ICT Policy: Towards enabling research frameworks, Robin Mansell
10:30 – 11:00 coffee break
11:00 – 12:30 Plenary session: Issues of governance of the information society
• 15 Years of Ways of Internet Governance: towards a new agenda for action, Jacques Berleur
• Free and Open Source Software in low-income countries: emergent properties? (panel): Gianluca Miscione (chair), Dorothy K. Gordon, Kevin Johnston
12:30 – 14:00 lunch break
14:00 – 15:30 Track 1: Harnessing the empowering capacity of ICT
• Government policies for ICT diffusion and the governance of grassroots movements, Magda Hercheui
• Egyptian women artisans: ICTs are not the entry to modern markets, Leila Hassanin
• Digital divides and the role of policy and regulation: a qualitative study of Greece, Panayiota Tsatsou
Track 2: National information systems infrastructures
• Institutional strategies towards improving health information systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, Solomon B. Bishaw
• Technology, globalization and governance: research perspectives and prospects, Diego Navarra and Tony Cornford
• Globalization and national security issues for the state: implications for national ICT policies, Jackie Phahlamohlaka
15:30 – 16:00 coffee break
16:00 – 17:30 Track 1: ICT and development in Africa
• Examining trust in mobile banking transactions: the case of M-PESA in Kenya, Olga Morawczynski and Gianluca Miscione
• Next generation ICT policy in South Africa: towards a human development-based ICT policy, Walter Brown and Irwin Brown
• Challenges of ICT policy for rural communities: a case study from South Africa, Mpostol Jeremia Mashinini
Track 2: ICT in education
• A human environmentalist approach to diffusion in ICT policies, Elaine Byrne and Lizette Weilbach
• ICT and socio-economic development: a university’s engagement in a rural community in Yola, Nigeria, Jainaba M.L. Kah and Muhammadou M.O. Kah
• Lessons from a dropped ICT curriculum design project: a retrospective view, Roohollah Honarvar
Friday 26 September
9:00 – 10:00 Plenary session: keynote speech Dorothy Gordon
10:00 – 10:30 coffee break
10:30 – 11:30 Plenary session: panel on the policy implications of a UK mega-programme in the health sector
Evaluating ‘Connecting for Health’: policy implications of a UK mega-programme, Kathy McGrath (chair) Jane Hendy, Ela Klekun, Leslie Willcocks, Terry Young
11:30 – 12:30 Plenary session: panel on ICT and women’s empowerment
Gender research in Africa into ICTs for empowerment (GRACE), Ineke Buskens and Anne Webb (co-chairs), Gertrudes Macueve, Ibou Sane
12:30 – 14:00 lunch break
14:00 – 16:00 Track 1: European Union and national ICT policies
• Empowerment through ICT: a critical discourse analysis of the Egyptian ICT policy, Bernd Carsten Stahl
• American and African geospatial myths: the argumentative structure of spatial data infrastructure initiatives, Yola Georgiadou and Vincent Homburg
• ICT policy as a governable domain: the case of Greece and the European Commission, Ioanna Chini
• National variations of the information society: evidence from the Greek case, Dimitris Boucas
Track 2: Challenging two fundamental institutions of modernity: IPR and measurement
• Social networks within filtered ICT networks: internet usage within Iran, Farid Shirazi
• No-IPR model as solution to reuse and understanding of information systems, Kai K. Kimppa
• Measuring ICT for development, Anouk Mukherjee
• Open Access and Action Research, Mathias Klang
16:00 – 16:30 coffee break
16:30 – 17:30 Closing plenary session: Discussion of emerging issues on ICT policy research, Chrisanthi Avgerou (chair)
The French have gone and done it! Times Online reports:
Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy.
“There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts.
This is, as I have argued earlier (last time in January), a really bad idea. Why is banning people from the Internet a bad idea?
The Internet has been promoted and become our most basic communications infrastructure (my focus here is Europe since this is where the the French are).
1. The punishment does not fit the crime: We have changed the way Banks, Post Offices, ticket sales, hotel booking, insurance (etc, etc) work and banning someone from the Internet will be tantamount to branding a symbol of guilt onto the person. Not to mention the increased costs involved in time and money. Indeed why should copyright violation prevent me from online banking?
2. Group punishment: If an Internet connection is involved in copyright violation this does not mean that all those dependent upon that connection should be punished. The actual violator may be underage or the network may be open to others.
3. Privatizing the law: The ability to punish copyright violators should not be delegated to private bodies. Internet providers are not equipped to mete out legal punishments.
Earlier, when arguing against proposals such as these I wrote:
The proposals seen above are simplistic, naive and dangerous they show a fundamental lack of understanding not only of technology or its role in society but also a lack of understanding of the role of communication in a democratic society. The actions of the politicians proposing such measures show that they are not acting in the interests of the individuals they are there to serve.
Even if the French have chosen to go the other way – I still believe that they are wrong…
There has been some really weird stuff happening to photographers. The mood is growing against public photo takers are being hassled by police. The idea is that taking photo’s in public is becoming more and mote connected to terrorism.
Schneier on security writes:
Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.
Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.
Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don’t seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?
Because it’s a movie-plot threat.
He develops this as an interesting theory. Read the rest here…
So I was looking at Slideshare which is basically a site where lots of people upload and download powerpoints. Besides avoiding other work the reason for me being there was to see whether this would be a good tool to use. Or maybe it’s enough already with the whole 2.0 thingy.
Anyway while looking at all the slick (some are very slick) presentations I saw something I recognized. The first slide in a presentation on How to Describe and Improve your Business Model (not my area at all!!) was one of my photo’s from my Flickr account.
The ppt maker (Alex Osterwalder) has even followed the CC instructions when he used my original image of a silver spire in Dublin (original photo here) and attributed me in the notes section of the slide. Very nicely done. I was surprised to run across myself like that, after the initial surprise I must say I really like it. Wow, Creative Commons works 🙂