Cyberlaw

Important changes to license

In what is in the “sounds boring but is incredibly important and influential” category of news: The Free Software Foundation has released the GNU Free Document License version 1.3.

One of the main important changes is in Section 11 which now enables wikis to be relicensed under the from the earlier GNU Free Document License to the more flexible Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (v3.0) license. The condition is that such relicensing is completed by August 1, 2009.

That means, the Wikipedia community now has the choice to relicense Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license. Check out the FAQ for this change to the license.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this change to the Free Culture community. A fundamental flaw in the Free Culture Movement to date is that its most important element — Wikipedia — is licensed in a way that makes it incompatible with an enormous range of other content in the Free Culture Movement. One solution to this, of course, would be for everything to move to the FDL. But that license was crafted initially for manuals, and there were a number of technical reasons why it would not work well (and in some cases, at all) for certain important kinds of culture.

This change would now permit interoperability among Free Culture projects, just as the dominance of the GNU GPL enables interoperability among Free Software projects. It thus eliminates an unnecessary and unproductive hinderance to the spread and growth of Free Culture.

Posted on by mklang

Downgrading to old school

Now that Microsoft has launched Windows 7 maybe they will have managed to resolve the really big problems they had with Vista. One of the interesting things with Vista was that many users when they realised how bad it was downgraded back down to Windows XP.

The rest of this post is not digital…

With this in mind I decided to to try a bit of downgrading myself. I never liked to used electric shavers and being annoyed with my dependency on a single manufacturer and their exorbitant pricing system I began to look at alternatives and I slowly slipped into stranger and stranger forums until I found one on beards and shaving… old school.

So I bought a heavy old fashioned Merkur 34C and a pack of old fashioned razor blades. It was with a certain amount of nervousness I tried it for the first time. Amazingly enough, no cuts and my face is smooth shaven. Now I am looking forward to doing this on a regular basis.

Posted on by mklang

The End of Free Communications?

The final keynote of the day is Oscar Swartz The End of Free Communications? His talk is a depressing review of the way in which Swedish legislation is being rapidly updated to limit free communications via surveillance and harsher penalties. This wave of criminalisation is a reaction to technology which shows an overall fear of technology and the society which it is creating. Unfortunately the future cannot be stopped and the legislation will get worse.

He closes with some thoughts:

To motivate these laws we need to “create” wars as the war on terror and war on copyright violation.

Does the nation have to act in the way it did before – shouldn’t a new technological base lead to a new society?

The irrational fear of online terrors create an environment for these new laws

What can we do? Act, protest, understand to prevent global terrorism perpetrated on citizens by the people we elect.

The whole day has been very successful with stimulating talks and discussions. The whole effect has left my head buzzing with ideas and a realisation that there is a need to do something… but what? Right now the discussions continue.

Posted on by mklang

Protecting Digital Rights

Internet service providers are hardly known for their efforts to protect the rights of their clients. This is hardly surprising considering they low amount of money they make per client compared to the legal costs which would be entailed in attempting to defend a client. For example: A cheap web hosting service costs less per year than a lawyer costs per hour. It’s not too difficult to work it out.

At the same time the ISPs are our lifeline and basis of our ability to participate in a digital society so this lack of help is a serious flaw. So it was nice to see that the Council of Europe have published Human rights guidelines for Internet service providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the European Internet Services Providers Association (EuroISPA), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for internet service providers (ISPs). While underlining the important role played by ISPs in delivering key services for the Internet user, such as access, e-mail or content services, they stress the importance of users’ safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the providers to be aware of the human rights impact that their activities can have.

in addition to this document the Council of Europe have also published Human rights guidelines for online games providers

Developed by the Council of Europe in close co-operation with the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE), these guidelines provide human rights benchmarks for online games providers and developers. While underlining the primary value of games as tools for expression and communication, they stress the importance of gamers safety and their right to privacy and freedom of expression and, in this connection, the importance for the games industry to be aware of the human rights impact that games can have.

Documents such as these are the early steps at ensuring the protection of individuals online rights and as such should be applauded even if it is kind of worrying that we still see a need to attempt to define rights in online environments as something fundamentally different from human rights in the offline world.

Posted on by mklang

Quotable

The Australian Senator John Faulkner seems to be a highly quotable person. Here are two quotes from the New Zealand website Stuff.co.nz

A Facebook posting or a YouTube video, like an ill-considered tattoo, can linger forever.

and

Trying to legislate to control technological development or the ways people use technology is not perhaps ordering the tide to not come in, but it is certainly like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon.

Now that’s a man with a sense for metaphors! The Australian Law Reform Commission recently handed the Government Australian Privacy Law and Practice (ALRC Report 108) a three-volume, 2694-page report which contains 275 recommendations to improve privacy laws. It is being considered by the Government.

Posted on by mklang

The Bands Visit

Klufty recommended a movie to me called The Bands Visit (original title Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) from 2007. What was the film about? “Once-not long ago-a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many remember this…It wasn’t that important.” This is from IMDB

On an ordinary day, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra arrives in Israel from Egypt for a cultural event, only find there is no delegation to meet them, nor any arrangements to get to their destination of Petah Tiqva. When they find their own ride, they arrive instead at the remote town of Beit Hatikva. Stuck there until the next morning’s bus, the band, lead by the repressed Tawfiq Zacharaya, gets help from the worldly lunch owner, Dina, who offers to put them up for the night. As the band settles in as best it can, each of the members attempts to get along with the natives in their own way. What follows is a special night of quiet happenings and confessions as the band makes its own impact on the town and the town on them.

I guess that I was expecting a feelgood movie but through it all there was so much human loneliness and sadness. The movie was not a sugary happy one but many of the minor characters made me laugh and then the laughter stuck in my throat. The film is not about the predictable message of the healing power of music. Often the music is not a part of peoples lives so they simply cannot appreciate it and what it’s about.

Keep your eyes open for the lesser roles: The DJ at the video skating rink, The poor guy waiting for his girlfriend to call & The guy too afraid to make a pass at his eager blind date. These raised the humor of the film. The photography is like the film: brilliant both sad and empty and very very funny.

Posted on by mklang

Grapes with licensing agreement

Via Boing Boing comes this marvel of legal wackiness. The plastic bag containing grapes has the text:

The recipient of the produce contained in this package agrees not to propagate or reproduce any portion of the produce, including (but not limited to) seeds, stems, tissue and fruit.

I suppose that the sellers are trying to make an analogy with shrinkwrap licenses. The result, if the text on the bag is upheld in court, would mean that any attempt to grow new grapes from the content of the bag is in violation of the “license” (for the want of a better word). Violating a contract does not mean automatically that the seller or producer can recieve damages so what is left? If you manage to grow something from this bag you will have to give back the original grapes? Its all too confusing.

photo: Grapes with an EULA by dasmart (CC by-nc-nd)

Posted on by mklang

My licensing book is out

My short book on open licenses in Swedish Copyright – Copyleft: En guide om upphovsrätt och licenser på nätet is finished and it is online at the IIS, the organisation who commissioned the work. The book covers seven licenses and the Creative Commons system.

The licenses discussed/explained are the Free Art License 1.3, GNU Free Documentation License, the Sparc Author Addendum, the Ethymonics Free Music License, the Common Documentation License, the, the BSD Free Documentation License and the Open Game License.

I am happy that the work is done and I hope that it will serve to help the curious learn more about licensing.

Posted on by mklang

You didn't check the EULA ?!?!?!

Google’s new browser Chrome is receiving a lot of attention lately. I was not really wowed but did actually jump when I read the Google Chrome EULA. This of course goes to show that I am not totally jaded – yet!

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms
of those Services.

Obviously the text formatting to bold was added by me.

It is totally amazing what companies are prepared to demand in their EULAs. Why don’t they even demand use of any/all physical material you may have lying about on your desk while you use their browser?

Update:

The license now reads

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

The text remains in the old version in Swedish but I guess that this will be changed soon. It was more a question of Google’s lawyers not reading the EULA but being a bit too quick on the old cut & paste 🙂

Posted on by mklang

Interesting course offered at Lund

Intellectual property tends to be taught by and to lawyers which is a shame since they tend to focus on addressing the questions of how the law works. This handyman approach is necessary since most of the students are going to go out an apply the law – the idea is that they do not really need to understand the law beyond its application. We do not educate law students we simply fill them with facts.

So when law courses are taught outside the auspices of the law department it’s time to sit up and listen.

The course Intellectual Property and Digital Information: Law, Politics, and Culture is being offered by the section for ABM (Archive, Library, Information and Museum Science) of the Department of Cultural Sciences. Here is part of the course description:

The course is intended to deal with these issues from a number of different perspectives, specifically considering cultural, political, legal, but also economical aspects, including those relevant outside a Western context. It will provide an overview of the legal situation in a national, European, and international setting and also look at some hotly debated disputes and international agreements. We will gain an understanding of the various forms of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, etc.) as well as concern ourselves with alternative concepts including the creative commons, open access, open source, and also file-sharing and piracy, and anchor them in a cultural and political context.

See what I mean? Lawyers would hardly be interested in the wider perspective in this manner. I wonder if I should apply to the course…

Posted on by mklang