Cyberlaw

Writing Disruptive Technology

Finally done. I handed in my edited thesis to my supervisor today. The work spans 268 pages split up into 1769 paragraphs, 9953 lines. Which became 101 956 words. It includes 7 tables and 2 figures, not including the cartoon in the acknowledgements.

Since I have already survived two seminars on the work with revisions after each now my supervisor will read the work again and I will be able to make minor changes after his comments.

From the brilliant Jorge Cham – PhdComics

Then its summer – not a lot happens then. With any luck I will avoid reading my thesis. Just let it be until the begining of August. Then the work is off to the printers and upon its return a copy of the work is nailed to the university notice board along with information about the public defence which will be in September (one of the days: 25th, 26th or 27th still undecided…). If I pass & survive my defence then I am well and truely finished with this project.

The title of my thesis is “Disruptive Technology” and it has the subtitle “Effects of Technology Regulation on Democracy” if you want to read the latest version download it here.

Posted on by mklang

Editing Hell

Editing my thesis is hell. Every time I pick it up to do some more work there is a physical feeling of lethargy which needs to be overcome. Thankfully a quote of Albert Camus keeps me on track. He wrote this in his personal notebook on September 30, 1937

It is in order to shine sooner that authors refuse to rewrite. Despicable. Begin again.

Albert Camus (1947) photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson

This was not written for others but I see it as a message to himself- a reminder that the work must be done. So ok – I am not Camus but I realise that when such a great writer needed to remind himself of the work that needed to be done…I feel comforted and begin again.

The thesis is now 101 815 words long. This is spread over 270 pages. An updated draft can be found online here.

Posted on by mklang

Wanted: Swedish Activist Wiki

Sweden has had a long reputation for being boring. Many Swedes prefer to think of this not as boring but as safe. Trygghet (security) is very big here. Traditionally most of this security was believed to come from the state which would protect its citizens from the cradle to the grave in the classic welfare state captured in the Swedish term Folkhem (Peoples Home). In part this security comes from a long period of neutrality and lack of war or civil conflict.

The upside with security is trust. Swedes tend to be trusting and can therefore get on with their lives. The downside is that trusting people make easy targets.

Sweden does not have a strong individualistic rights based approach and therefore are very easily caught with their trousers down when official agencies approach them. A good example of this was this weeks police raid on the Pirate Bay where amongst other things:

  1. The police took more servers than they needed â?? thereby disrupting the communication of organisations not connected with the raid.
  2. The Pirate Bayâ??s legal representative was asked (required?) to leave a DNA sample â?? a gross misuse of the purpose of DNA tests and a form of intimidation.
  3. The status of surplus information is unclear at present â?? therefore creating an opening for police fishing expeditions.

How does one move from a position of trust and security to a greater awareness of individual rights, legal requirements and the demands which can be made on the legal system? Education.

To achieve this I think there is a need to create a website (preferably a wiki) on the legal position of online activists containing information about rights and obligations in the case of police actions.

A site such as this would provide information on (amongst other things):

  1. What can the police take (and limitations)?
  2. How much or how little should the activist do to help?
  3. Must the activist hand over encryption keys?
  4. What should the activist think about (ask for receipts etcâ?¦)
  5. What happens in the police station? (rights, obligations and experiences)

So does anyone want to start a wiki?

Examples of sites:

Activist Rights – Australia – Demonstrating and Civil Disobedience – FreeBeagles Legal Advice

Posted on by mklang

Denial of Service

Denial of service attacks have earlier been used as protest forms (more here .pdf). Yesterday the Swedish government website was the target of such an attack. The attack claimed to be a protest against the actions of the Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström for being the minister who has introduced the most amount of repressive legislation in the shortest time (see earlier posts here and here)

The attack was sparked by actions by the Police on the request of the minister to shut down the bittorrent site The Pirate Bay. During the raid several organisations not connected with torrent sharing were closed down and the legal representative of the Pirate Bay was required to leave a DNA sample (see more here). The Pirate Bay was offline for less than five days and yesterday protests were held in both Stockholm and Göteborg.

While not seen as part of the formal/official protests DoS attacks have targed the Swedish Police website and the website of the Swedish Government. For a while a message to Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström was up on a site connected with the attack: “Thomas – we want our freedom back”. Aftonbladet has the screenshot here.

(via Media Culpa)

Posted on by mklang

Back Online

A couple of days ago 50 police raided the bittorrent site The Pirate Bay. Today they are back online. The site is slow but the implications are far reaching.

Whats new? Amongst other things the name: The Police Bay and their new logo – too cool!!!

So it took 50 police with a questionable legal basis to take down the Pirate Bay for five days. The ethical and legal questions will carry on for a long time. For review of the questions see here. The Swedish Minister of Justice will have to use more than his usual amount of teflon to avoid this mess sticking to him.

Posted on by mklang

Examination

With the end of spring term we arrive at the wonderful world of examinations and in particular the examination of masters thesisâ??

Lots of students who have finally managed to pull together enough text sit nervously as we attempt to understand what they have learned and why they couldnâ??t write clearly.

Basically there are three groups

Pass â?? this includes everything from the adequate to the overachievers. The latter group are desperate for the highest grade and will question every attempt to criticise what they believe to be the ultimate thesis ever handed in at your department.

Fail â?? a tragic group. Includes those who have worked hard but simply cannot get the grade. Mainly because they cannot write or understand what they read. This group also includes the slackers who feel that by simply handing in numbered pages (preferably with the school logo on each page and lots of diagrams) they deserve not only to pass but also to have national holidays created in memory of them.

Cheats â?? they stole it off the Internet but still feel that somehow due to their superior intellect they will get away with it. They will protest vigorously if caught and explain that everything from world politics to the neighbours cat is to blame. The fact that they are attempting to pass of stolen work as their own does not seem to them to be wrong.

Thankfully this ordeal will soon be overâ?¦

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

For the bibliography

After procrastinating and reading them online for the better part of a year I bought them. They have now arrived:

 

Jorge Cham’s brilliant comic strip about PhD studies have been collected in the two albums “Piled Higher and Deeper: A graduate student comic strip collection” and “Piled Higher and Deeper Chapter 2: Life is tough and then you graduate” They are an absolute necessary part of the required reading for PhD students (or those considering the path). With great sections like “What is…the thesis?“, “Grad Motivation Graphs“, “Newton’s Three Laws of Graduation” and “Writing” the strip captures what writing a dissertation can be like.

Posted on by mklang

Read this book

The blurb on the back of the book is important since it has to interest the reader and at the same time be a factual discription – without being too long, complex or explanatory… So after a period of thought and procrastination this is what I have:

This work is on the democratic effects of attempts to regulate disruptive technology. By looking at the phenomenon of online civil disobedience, viruses, spyware, online games, software standards and Internet censorship this work shows the effects of regulation upon the core democratic values of Participation, Communication, Integrity, Property, Access and Autonomy.

Social interaction and organisation are, in part, shaped by the technology used. The social differences between the technology of snail-mail and the technology of e-mail are defined by features that the technology allows, and the limitations that constrain, the user modes of interaction. Therefore technological innovation and development over time affects the ways in which social interaction and communication are carried out. Certain forms of gradual technological innovation and development may be easily assimilated while other forms are more disruptive. This disruption can be seen in the way which new technologies affect the organisation of social interaction and are called, in this work: disruptive technology.

This work studies regulation as an attempt to come to terms with the disruptive effects of technology upon social interaction. This is done by focusing on the attempts to regulate the disruptive effects of Internet technology and the consequences of these regulatory attempts on the IT-based participatory democracy. In conclusion, this work will show that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy.

Would you read this book? If so you can download it here.

Posted on by mklang