Tomorrow it’s time to travel to Uppsala for the three day workshop ‘Mashing-up Culture: The Rise of User-generated Content. The workshop is part of the Counter project, a European research project exploring the consumption of counterfeit and pirated leisure goods.
The program is filled with really interesting people and presentations so I know this is going to be good. An added bonus is that Uppsala is a very nice little town.
Can you feel the excitment in the air? It’s happening tomorrow. Yes it is Friday and the weekend weather is looking great but thats not what I am talking about. Tomorrow the courts will present their ruling for the Pirate Bay Case. It promises to be an interesting read.
Here is an interesting podcast of James Boyle on his book The Public Domain (via BoingBoing)
Professor James Boyle describes how our culture, science and economic welfare all depend on the delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain —the realm of material that everyone is free to use and share without permission or fee
Intellectual property laws have a significant impact on many important areas of human endeavour, including scientific innovation, digital creativity, cultural access and free speech. And so Boyle argues that, just as every informed citizen needs to know at least something about the environment or civil rights, every citizen in the information age should also have an understanding of intellectual property law.
Among the hi-tech tools used by the police in their work is the DNA database. Most countries have or desire one but few have implemented this desire as effectively and frighteningly as Great Britain with their National DNA database.
The Guardian reports that Britain’s National DNA database “is proportionately the biggest in the world and includes the profiles of more than 7% of the population, according to Home Office figures. Almost everyone arrested for a recordable offence is required to provide a DNA sample. Whether or not criminal proceedings follow, DNA records stay on file until the person reaches their 100th birthday.”
Considering the number of innocent (legally not necessarily morally) children stored in the database the 100 year old limit is possibly ageism. The Guardian again:
Genetic information taken from nearly 1.1 million children is now stored on the national DNA database, official figures show, and campaigners believe that as many as half of them have no criminal convictions… The figures show that 1.09 million DNA profiles of people aged under 18 were held on the database with 337,000 under 16.
Terri Dowty, of Action on Rights for Children, said: “Many children get arrested, have their DNA taken and there is no further action against them or they get a reprimand or final warning. We are collecting massive amounts of data on children, including how likely they are to be criminals, and it runs the risk that we will prejudge them.”
It is more than a little bit scary that despite the protests and criticism the police and politicians in Britain struggle to maintain a system which clearly violates human rights not only of children but even of adults. Since the protesters are now focusing on the negative effects on children it almost feels as if the struggle for innocent adults stored DNA is a losing battle.
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[1] European Court Rules DNA Retention Illegal (04/12/2008) Decision of the Court (Doc), Press release from the Court (PDF) & Privacy International amicus brief to the Court (PDF)
At four pm today, following a long debate in parliament the IPRED legislation (based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED)) went through. Those in favor claim that the law is necessary to protect the rights of copyright holders by allowing them to demand file-sharers identification data from Internet service providers.
The opponents of the law (in parliament these are the Left and Green Parties) argue that the law is an unfair balance which gives the copyright holders too much power and is not enough to protect users privacy. In addition there is a great concern that the legislation will be abused.
The formalities are cleared and I will be responsible for a new course at Göteborg University begining after summer. The course “The Vulnerable IT Society” (Det sårbara IT-samhället) will be in Swedish and there is some more information here.
Naturally the new course already has a blog http://techrisk.wordpress.com which will focus on the vulnerabilities of the information technology society. So basically I am looking for students, bloggers and general interest in the subject – but all in Swedish this time.
This is a bit of a late heads up but is interesting if you happen to be in Oslo this evening. Richard Stallman will give a talk on “Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks – Free software and beyond” at Storsalen, Chateau Neuf (Slemdalsveien 15), Oslo. He will be introduced by Gisle Hannemyr from the Department of Informatics, Gisle will also lead the discussion after the talk.
For those who are not able to leave our screens more information about video streaming is available here.
The Pirate Bay trial is into it’s fourth day and is being reported by bloggers, tweeters, reporters and commentators. It is almost impossible to miss this media event. This is also part of the problem since the trial itself has become larger than life and more interesting than the actual law. In reality the participants are less than exciting and the law plods along in its usual manner.
Things worth noting so far:
The prosecutor strangely decided to alter the charges (dropping copying and focusing on making available) – this is not uncommon but it was strange that it should occur on day two after a year of preparations. At the same time this doesn’t alter much even though it may importantly effect the damages that can be awarded.
The decription of the bittorent technology involved was badly explained. This is even more surprising as the prosecutors description of the facts should have been acceptable to all. Instead everyone is left with the impression that the prosecutor and his surrounding team is not tech savvy at all.
One of the defence lawyers used the “King Kong defence” when he stated that the prosecutor must show that the defendant has personally interacted with the copyright infringer. Even many users use aliases like King Kong and may well be in the jungles of Cambodia the prosecutor must show such personal interaction. This is a development of the Chewbacca defense.
Bruce Perens has written an interesting article about combining GPL with proprietary software the main point of discussion concerns the problem of combining software under different licenses in embedded devices. The article ends with a paragraph on what not to do:
Don’t assume that you can put proprietary kernel drivers in a run-time loadable kernel module. The legality of such a practice is dubious, and there have not been sufficient cases to say reliably what would happen if you were to get sued.
Also, don’t look for, and use loopholes in the Open Source licenses. Nothing makes your company look worse than taking unfair advantage of people who provided their work to you without charge, expecting in good faith that you’d honor their license. It also tends to make Open Source folks reluctant to cooperate with your company, the next time you need help with their software. And it looks bad to judges, too.
Don’t try to do what I’ve discussed without legal counsel to advise and review your actions.
This is a particularly tricky subject and every time a writer tackles it we slowly move towards a better understanding – but there is still a long way to go. In fact that shortest answer to the problem of combining GPL & proprietary software in one device may be “don’t do it if you are not sure” but not many are going to follow that advice since free and open source software is too much of a competitive advantage for developers to ignore.
(via Slashdot)
Reporters Without Borders has come out with a new version (Update: I am a year late with discovering this book see RSF release article) of its Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents. The handbook offers practical advice and techniques on some easy and some quite complex issues.
Everything from how to create a blog, how to make entries and get the blog to show up in search engine results. It gives clear explanations about blogging for all those whose online freedom of expression is subject to restrictions, and it shows how to sidestep the censorship measures imposed by certain governments, with a practical example that demonstrates the use of the censorship circumvention software Tor.
The handbook is very useful on many levels so blog about it to make sure it gets out there.