Cyberlaw

What is an ending?

I tend to avoid memes but one of them I came across recently has started me thinking. The idea is to blog the last sentence of your thesis. Actually doing this is not a problem â?? even though I am not sure how interesting it is to read.

Discarding the technology entails a limited, regulated use but will fail to recognise the full potential of disruptive technologies as an agent of change within the participatory democracy.

The problem is: what is an ending? How should a thesis end? What is the purpose of the end? The purpose of the conclusion is to bring the work to an end and to (hopefully) provide an answer to the question which was posed somewhere in the beginning. But what is the meaning of the last sentence and what should it include?

Obviously I realise that there always must be a last sentence. But now that I have begun to think about the role of the final sentence it has begun to bug me. Now I will have to try to figure out what the role of these last words areâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Temporary storage devices

Is it a cat? Or maybe its a rabbit. Childrens chalk drawings outdoors always interest me. In part its the excitement of drawing outdoors. In part its the sheer size of the drawing material. And then its the wonderful part that the drawing is only there fore a short moment. If you dont look now – it gone.

Yesterday at the seminar in Stockholm Lars Ilshammar spoke about information protectionism and the dangers of trusting storage devices. Microfilm has a life expectancy of less than 100 years (and is cost intesive). Most paper we use today will crumble to dust within 80 years due to the residual chemicals. Digital storage devices have a life expectancy of about 25 years (but probably much less). In addition to this digital storage devices require that we save and maintain both hardware and software and the means with which to maintain both.

As Lars put it – its a major problem and also a business opportunity for the company who manages to save everyones digital photo albums…

Posted on by mklang

Open Maps

Maps have always been considered valuable commodities. Therefore protecting them from illegal copying is of vital importance. However this protection also limits the ways in which maps can be adapted and used.

This is what OSM wants to rememdy. OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a voluntary not-for-profit organisation. The goal of OSM is to provide free maps that can be used by anyone.

So how does it work?

Anyone with a handheld Global Positioning System can start mapping straight away. You need to set your GPS to record tracks and then go for a walk or for a bike ride or a drive. Walk around some streets in your neighbourhood, making some notes about the street names and any one way streets or round-a-bouts that you find. When you get home, plug your GPS into your computer and upload the tracks that you recorded onto the OSM website. Within an hour or so, you tracks will appear on the website. You can then use the online tools to create a new map of the roads and street names that anyone in the world will be able to see.

This weekend they carried out their Mapchester project were over 40 participants, armed with GPS equipment mapped out Manchester.

What a cool idea!

Posted on by mklang

Digital solidarity

Tomorrow its back to Stockholm for the third time in two weeks. Itâ??s a good thing that I like trains! I shall be giving a talk about Free Information in Practice. It is part of a half day seminar on Digital Solidarity and Waking Public Opinion.

Also participating are Rasmus Fleischer from the Pirate Bureau presenting a talk on â??Shared Information, effective informationâ?? and Lars Ilshammar who will be talking about the global effort to free information.

So if you are in Stockholm and have the time drop in for what looks like an exciting seminar (and its free)

Starts 12.30 ends 16.45

Place: Solidaritetshuset, Tegelviksgatan 40, Stockholm

Information online

Posted on by mklang

On standards

Litterary aspirations be damned. There is no way you can write about the legal role of standards and still maintain it is a creative process:

A standard is a uniform set of specifications for some or all aspects of a product (i.e., a good or service) or other activity. The standard is a problem solution for repeated use that allows such products or activities to interoperate without special arrangement.

A de jure standard is a standard which has been developed in collaboration with, and approved by, an official standards organisation.

A de facto standard is a standard that has become a standard because it is widely used rather than because it was officially approved by some standards organisation.

Exciting stuff?

Or maybe not…

Posted on by mklang

The Covers

So which cover do you prefer? To vote just add a comment.

Background: When I came close to the end of writing my PhD thesis I began to think about the cover design for the book. Realising I needed help I blogged this on 12/4. In addition I mailed a few people. The information appeared (amongst other places) on Boing Boing, Lessig, Foreword, Patrik’s sprawl, Perfekta Tomrummet, Free the Mind and Cyberlaw.

Here are the results

Entry 1

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

Entry 5

Entry 6

Entry 7

Entry 8

Entry 9

Entry 10

Entry 11

Entry 12

Entry 13

Entry 14

Entry 15

Entry 16

Posted on by mklang

Virtual worlds and social interaction design

They have been busy in Umeå last week (read previous post) Mikael Jakobsson defended his PhD Virtual worlds and social interaction design (fulltext)

In his abstract he writes about his explorations of the virtual worlds:

I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance.

This is important stuff since it goes beyond the simplified perceptions of the online world. It is particularly interesting for those who intend to create regulatory systems which effect these environments.

Posted on by mklang

Being-with Information Technology

Anna Croon Fors from Umeå University has defended her PhD thesis Being-with Information Technology: Critical explorations beyond use and design (fulltext here).

From the abstract:

In the thesis a theoretical exploration concerning the significance of information technology in everyday life is conducted. The main question advanced is how the reflexive nature of information technology can be envisionedâ?¦The framework being-with information technology emerges as a result of my insistence on grasping the relationship between information technology and human experience as a whole. Informed primarily by Martin Heideggerâ??s thinking on technology the framework ascribes primacy to meaning-making and sense-making processes. The framework also aspire to reach beyond notions of use and design by emphasizing the role and importance of the potential of information technology to transform human experience in new and significant ways…

It is suggested that a focus on aesthetic experiences entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of information technology, meanings that all are intrinsic to information technology, but so far has received little or no attention. This suggestion is also a move away from a view of information technology as an object, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards a view of information technology as a relation to the world, to itself, and towards being human.

It sounds exciting and scanning the table of contents confirms this. I am looking forward to reading it properly.

Posted on by mklang

Bah, lazy hypocrites!

Its soon time for me to lecture on plagiarism again. I give this lecture every year to groups of students who are about to write their thesis. The idea is both to help them understand the boundaries between quote, citation, paraphrase & plagiarism and to get them to start thinking about the nature of property in relation to intellectual goods.

Giving this lecture today is aided by the current discussion on copyright and file sharing. In my IT & ethics course I regularly attempt to discuss the problem of file sharing and ask my students what they believe is the moral position of the person who illegally downloads music or films. Usually among my students 80-90% of those who download music do not consider there actions to be morally wrong and nor do they consider themselves to be stealing. The most often used legitimisation of their actions:
1. that they are not depriving anyone of use.
2. the entertainment industry is rich enough.
3. they would not buy that which they download and therefore there is no loss to the industry.

Considering these points it is interesting to attempt to raise awareness about plagiarism. In one way it is pretty easy: if you get caught you will be punished and it is humiliating. But this is not a good starting point since the stress is on not getting caught as opposed to building awareness.

Attempting to discuss student plagiarism is made more difficult recently when two professors have been accused (correctly) of plagiarising others work in their books. One is a professor at the University College of BorÃ¥s who has been sloppy when quoting others his/her own defence other are harsher and call it plagiarism (DN 29/4 â?? 2006)

The second is a professor at the University of Göteborg who has stolen other peopleâ??s works and included them in his work. The excuses for this theft was that the book was written under a very short deadline and the works from which he borrowed material are included in the bibliography.

We would never accept these excuses from our own students then why would these professors even think that the excuses would work for them?

Posted on by mklang

The sod-off day

Since I am approaching the date for my PhD defence the question of what I intend to do afterwards is being asked more often. I dont really understand the problem – the lists of stuff I want to complete once this project is finished is seemingly endless.

For example today I came across (I know I’m late!) the Creative Commons “Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution” wiki. Its a great idea except for the fact that it is based on US law so simply translating it and adapting it to Swedish conditions would be a worthwhile project.

Since I have a faculty position the US (?) problem of post-PhD tenure chasing is not an issue. While speaking to a colleague in Stockholm yesterday we both agreed that under the Swedish system the PhD defence is the big â??sod-offâ?? day, since once the PhD is accepted the shiny new PhD is no longer dependent upon currying favour among senior faculty.

After PhD you can say â??sod-offâ?? to many of the unpleasant tasks that you have been carrying out due to office politics and political correctness.

Which of course reminds me of a quote from Blackadder III where Backadder has promised to fight a duel for Prince George:

Prince George : Ah Blackadder. It has been a wild afternoon full of strange omens. I dreamt that a large eagle circled the room three times and then got into bed with me and took all the blankets. And then I saw that it wasn’t an eagle at all but a large black snake. And also Duncan’s horses did turn up and eat each other. As usual. Good portents for your duel do you think.
Blackadder : Not very good sir. I’m afraid the duel is off.
Prince George : OFF?
Blackadder : As in sod. I’m not doing it.

Posted on by mklang