Expression & Censorship

Copyright and Swedish Universities

Some notes from a recent discussion

First lets start off with the fundamental difference between Copyright in Swedish and Anglo/American law. Anglo/American law views copyright as the right to copy or reproduce. Swedish law sees copyright (upphovsrätt roughly translates as the right of origin). This foundamental difference creates problems when attempting to implement or discuss copyright in the different legal regimes.

Those people within universities which may be involved in copyright discussions can be one of three groups of people.

Students
Students can be funded by the university but are not seen as employees for the purpose of copyright. Students however are viewed as â??quasi-employeesâ?? when the discussion of work environment is discussed in the university â?? however this has no bearing on copyright issues.

Therefore the student is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the student must be compensated in some way.

Phd Students (â??selfâ?? funded/funded by the university)
Often viewed as employees. They have the trappings of the employee. Office space, telephone & equipment. However for the discussion of employment relationship the Phd project does not count as work.

The â??selfâ?? employed Phd student is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the student must be compensated in some way. This can be the case of research projects where the Phd student participates.

Phd students funded by the university may be seen as employees. These students are therefore employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

Researchers (â??selfâ?? funded/funded by the university)
The â??selfâ?? employed researcher is not seen as an employee. All/everything produced during his/her period of study belongs to him/her. The university has no copyright in essays, software, artwork or more. This can naturally be changed by contract â?? but then the researcher must be compensated in some way.

Researchers funded by the university may be seen as employees. These researchers are therefore employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

Employees
This group includes all employees who are being paid to produce something for the university. The product belongs to the university (not the moral rights since the moral rights always belong to the author). Traditionally universities in Sweden do not exercise their right to the product. Any attempt to exercise this right must be explicit and based upon contract.

A discussion can naturally be carried out as to what it is that is the employees are being employed to produce.

Additional questions of interest

Access to public information
Any and all material handed in to the university for grading (essays, exams & phd thesisâ??) are considered to be public information. Such public information is available to all who would like to read it (a cost for copying and sending may be levied).

Competing work
Employees at universities have a duty to be loyal and therefore should not carry out work which competes with the goals of the university. This may include abusing positions of trust by producing teaching material which they sell as compulsory material to students. The latter is not prohibited but may be frowned upon.

Posted on by mklang

Less integrity in Sweden – again!

The Minister of Justice in Sweden wants to allow the police to bug telephones even when no concrete suspicion of crime exists. A proposal to amend the law to allow this will be presented in autumn.

The minister says that this is part of a policy to combat terrorism â?? but he also states that politics is not being formulated by terrorist attacks.

As usual the concern for personal integrity is not high on the political agenda.

Maybe someone should tell him that the whole point of combatting terrorism is to preserve an open society. If we loose this the terrorists are not only dictating policy & politics but actually winning. If European countries such as the UK & Spain remember this in spite of terror attacks then why cannot Sweden (which has not been attacked) be more interested in integrity?

Posted on by mklang

Red Herring Blog: If you've got a day job…

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang argues that there are 4 reasons why academics should blog!

Excerpt:

The virtual subway. For journalists and writers, blogs are a place to practice and refine their craft. As Rainer Maria Rilke put it, writers don’t write because they want to; they write because they can’t imagine doing anything else. For writers, blogs are to publishing as speed chess is to a formal tournament: the same basic game, but faster, edgier, and rougher in an interesting way. To invoke another metaphor, for many writers blogs are less like op-ed columns than virtual subways, a place to play for a couple hours and maybe pick up a little extra money.

Credibility = transparency. Some professionals who blog have realized that the very fact that they’re blogging will impress readers. If you’re willing to be so open about what you do, the logic goes, you must be good. And it’s not bad reasoning. We all know that jargon and obscurity are crutches for marginal performers, and that professional poses can obscure as much as they assure. Transparency, on the other hand, is easy to understand, and easy to trust.

New court, old game. Then there are professionals– academics and scientists, most notably– for whom blogging is a natural extension of what they already do: network, cite each other, and argue. There are a number of high-energy physicists, string theorists, and cosmologists who are bloggers; they all seem to post extensively on each other’s blogs, taking online arguments they’ve been having for years, or that start at a conference or colloquium and just jump to cyberspace. Charles Darwin called his Origin of Species “one long argument;” the same phrase could apply to most science. Blogs turn out to be hot-houses for disputation. If e-mail encouraged flame wars, blogs encourage intellectual feuds– which figure prominently in academic life.

The brand of me. Finally, some use blogs to build their personal brand: to widen the reach of their ideas, to increase name familiarity, whatever you want to call it.

Red Herring Blog: If you’ve got a day job…
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Posted on by mklang

Ny bok från Piratbyrån

Den 25 juli lanseras piratantologin Copy Me med en releasefest på Elverket på �stermalm i Stockholm.

Texterna är huvudsakligen hämtade från Piratbyråns artikelsektion och bjuder på en mångfald av perspektiv kring piratkopiering. Från Michel Foucault till datorspelens historia, från Friedrich Hayek till Public Enemy; det är mycket som inte fått plats i tryckpressmedias rapportering, där upphovsrättsindustrin ofta tillåtits sätta dagordningen.

– Med Copy Me vill vi bredda piratdebatten frÃ¥n antipiraternas klumpiga problemformuleringar till en seriös diskussion kring den aktuella tekniken och kulturen, säger PiratbyrÃ¥ns Rasmus Fleischer. Boken kommer inom kort.

Posted on by mklang

Europe seeks harmonized music royalties

The European Union is planning to create a new Europe-wide licensing scheme for music royalty collection and airplay compensation. Reuters reported this week that it could be ready to go to public consultation as early as this month.

At the moment royalties are collected by a different agency for each country, and in some countries there are multiple agencies. This makes creating a Europe wide online music store something of a nightmare.

Europe seeks harmonized music royalties | The Register

Posted on by mklang

Swedish Radio, Public Service & Internet Technology

Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio – www.sr.se) is the public service radio broadcaster in Sweden. The company is owned by a foundation and is entirely funded by licence fees. Advertising is not permitted. Swedish Radio is proud of its public service tradition. One of the goals of Swedish Radio is that the programs shall be of interest for a wide audience across the country and made available to listeners in the whole country.

(Programmen skall rikta sig till och vara tillgängliga för publiken i hela landet samt i skälig omfattning tillgodose skiftande behov och intressen hos landets befolkning.)

The purpose of Public Service Radio, as defined by SR themselves is that everyone, independent of sex, age, geographical residence or cultural background should be able to find something of value among SRâ??s programming.

To further fulfil these goals SR has adopted digital technology and the Internet as a mode of infrastructure. It is possible to listen to the radio online and to find and download recent programs, as well as programs from the archives.

Unfortunately SR fallen (inadvertently?) into the trap of using proprietary software. To be able to listen to SRâ??s audio files the user must have Realplayer version 7 (or later) installed on her computer. The user has a choice between using either the free version or buying the program.

However using Realplayer presents the user with something of a dilemma. The first problem arises from the fact that the free version of the software is not entirely easy to find. For those who are unaware that the free version exists the alternative is to purchase the software.

The second problem is that Realplayer has serious integrity issues. They have been sued for privacy violations more than once. For those users who wish to protect their integrity Realplayer is not a viable alternative.

The third problem arises if the user wishes not to support or use proprietary software. Free Software, the alternative approach presented by the Free Software Foundation is an important part of an open technological infrastructure and many who support the need for Free Software alternatives are not able to listen to SRâ??s audio files since they are not available in non-proprietary alternatives.

Audio compression formats based upon non-patented, open source solutions (Such as ogg vorbis – www.vorbis.com) should be the format of choice for large publicly funded radio stations such as Sveriges Radio.

Using such formats Swedish Radio will promote open formats for listening and become part of an open society instead of providing support for a private corporation lock-in.

This post therefore argues:

1. Swedish Radio should not be promoting the product of a single manufacturer.
2. Swedish Radio should not be promoting products which are used to gather data about the user.
3. Swedish Radio should be supporting free and open formats.

Posted on by mklang

CC presentation at EuroPython2005 – June 27-29

Abstract
The Creative Commons (CC) project was developed to help creative people share copyrighted material. This was done by creating a licensing scheme that could be applied, understood and communicated by non-lawyers. The project was launched in 2001 and took inspiration from the GNU General Public License. The first stage was the release of a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Following this CC has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, under certain conditions.

The success of CC has led to its spread over many different legal jurisdictions and its application in many new areas. The purpose of this talk will be to briefly explain the CC licensing system and the use of meta-data in the licensing. In addition to this the internationalisation of CC will be presented from the viewpoint of the work of CC in Sweden.

http://www.europython.org/

Posted on by mklang

CC Sweden Progress

Yesterday CC Sweden met with CC Norway in Oslo. Since both countries share a fundamental legal tradition we realised that it would be to everyones advantage if we worked closer together.

In addition to this we decided to change the present license which is mainly a translation to a more Scandinavian style license.

Dates:
The new version is to be ready within two weeks.
Translation into English & explanatory notes sent to CC International by the end of June
Porting process & Launch end of August?

We still need more interested people to help with CC Sweden – you do not have to be lawyers or hackers. We need people to help with content production, create CC music lists & work with media contacts.

Posted on by mklang

Online Forum on Intellectual Property in the Information Society

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will host an online forum on Intellectual Property in the Information Society – from June 1 to 15, 2005 – at http://www.wipo.int/ipisforum/. The forum will provide a unique opportunity for all to contribute to the emerging debate on the value of intellectual property in the information society.

“This initiative is part of WIPO?s continuing efforts to raise awareness about intellectual property issues, encourage debate and ensure that the intellectual property system is accessible, balanced and responsive to the needs of all stakeholders,” said Mrs. Rita Hayes, WIPO Deputy Director General. “WIPO is looking forward to a lively and extensive debate in the online forum.”

Online Forum on Intellectual Property in the Information Society

Posted on by mklang