politics

Democracy Gold

Unfortunately the economist has chosen to rank countries according to how good they are at democracy. And Sweden was â??bestâ??. The problem is now that instead of doing anything positive we can just relax. The idea of ranking countries in this way is completely stupid.

Democracy is not a horse-race where you can just whip out the photo finish and cry â?? Sweden wins by a nose. Reports such as this will be misinterpreted by all involved and this is not a good thing.

Donâ??t get me wrong Sweden is a good place. But now that we got the gold medal we will be all smug instead of fixing what is wrong.

Besides this any measurements are simply simplifications. They are rarely true indicators of a more complex reality. Itâ??s kind of like these tests you get in magazines. You know the type: Are you a psychopath â?? ten easy questions.

Posted on by mklang

Populism Tomorrow

Tomorrow I shall be trying something new. My university has a popular science event where researchers present an interesting aspect of their research to the public in 15 minutes at a local bookstore.

So tomorrow I shall be presenting the Swedish file sharing situation. This will include (1) what file sharing is (2) why it annoys people (3) the police raid on The Pirate Bay this summer, and (4) recent court cases.

All in 15 minutes with no props!

So if you are not busy during your lunch hour why not drop by Wettergrens bookstore on Västra hamngatan in Göteborg at 12.30.

The title of the talk is â??File-sharing: the battle between pirates and policeâ?? â?? what can I say? I have a broad populist streak.

Posted on by mklang

Enemies of the Internet

The Reporters Without Borders annual â??Enemies of the Internetâ?? report has been released online. The list includes 13 countries and explanations for their inclusion on the list.

The enemies of the Internet are: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan & Vietnam.

Taken off from last years list are: Libya, Maldives & Nepal.

Posted on by mklang

Copyright Australian Style

From Matthew Rimmer we get an update on the copyright situation in Australia where the Australian Parliament is viewing an amendment of copyright (Copyright Amendment Bill 2006).

Matthew writes that instead of creating a US style defence of fair use or even reforming the defence of fair dealing, the Australian Government has actually narrowed the defence of fair dealing in respect of research and study. There are new minor exceptions on time-shifting, format-shifting, non-commercial use by libraries and archives, and satire and parody.

However, such provisions have been so narrowly framed that they are largely unworkable and inoperable.
Search engines, such as Google, will be in particular strife in Australia under such a regime. In addition, the Australian Government is providing copyright owners with stronger technological protection measures and a wide range of remedies.

A Parliamentary Committee will hear half a day of debate next week on the topic. Some of the submissions of interest are from: The Australian Digital Alliance, The Australian Libraries Copyright Committee, and the submission of Google.

Posted on by mklang

Denying Censorship

Georg Greve of the Free Software Foundation Europe is present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens and he posts daily reports. On the second day of the forum the discussions turned to openness â?? a topic which many states that censor Internet traffic may find embarrassing.

So it was natural to expect hostile reactions towards countries which have a well documented history of Internet censorship. One way of dealing with bad news is simply to deny everything which Mr Yang Xiokun of the Chinese mission in Geneva did.
He stated that China has no access restrictions â?? at all.

Here is Georg Greve report of the exchange:

NIK GOWING:  Could I — may I ask you a question?  How would you define, for those who are not familiar with your government’s policy and the detail of it, what is the principle on restrictions of openness in China?

YANG XIAOKUN:  We do not have restriction at all.

Lets not forget that China is not alone in censoring the Internet. Organisations like the Reporters without Borders publish a list of â??15 Enemies of the Internetâ?? and many (most? all?) enlightened (?) European/Western countries intimidate, censor or limit access to information through alternative means – but at the same time it is almost impressive to be able to deny everything.

For more information about China and Internet censorship read the Open Net Initiative report on Internet Censorship in China between 2004-2005.

Posted on by mklang

Expression, not Repression

Amnesty is one of those organisations which you know you should support more than you already do. They have also moved into the digital domain and are supporting all kinds of online expression. In an attempt to prevent online censorship they launched their irrepressible campaign.

Part of irrepressible is a technical solution that breaks censored texts into small pieces and maintains them online. Read more about how to help here.

If you cannot do more then at least sign their petition:

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet â?? and on companies to stop helping them do it.

Amnesty International will also be present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens next week. Again they will be â??â?¦stressing the importance of protecting free expression and privacy onlineâ??

Read their press release here.

Posted on by mklang

Danish Courts Discover Internet Censorship

Denmark has taken up the fight against the freedom of Internet traffic. In a recent court decision (in Danish here) the court has decided that the Internet Service Provider must prevent users carrying out illegal activities.

The background is the controversial Russian site AllOfMp3.com (more info about background controversies on wikipedia). The Russian company claims to follow Russian law while the IFPI claim that they have not paid for any western labels. In addition to this the music is not protected by DRM and can be freely transferred to others.

The Danish court has found that since the music is downloaded is actually copied onto the ISPâ??s equipment then they are guilty of copyright violation. The court has not seen this as aiding someone elseâ??s copyright violation but find that the ISP is directly responsible for carrying out the actions.

ISP liability for the actions of their customers has a long background and basically takes three positions. The ISP is totally innocent in the same way as the post-office is innocent of a blackmail letter it delivers. The ISP is guilty since without their equipment the crime could never have taken place. And thirdly the more complex: it depends. This last case must answer questions such as:

Did the ISP have knowledge of the actions?
Did the ISP take actions to prevent it?
Would it be possible (technically, economically, politically) to take action?

The result of this is that the ISP has been protected by its own strategic ignorance.

But now the Danish court argues that the ISP is not contributing or aiding crime (which in itself is a questionable stance as the questions above indicate) but is guilty of the crime itself.

The court writes

â??Retten finder … at ogsÃ¥ den flyktige og tilfældige fiksering af musikværket i form av elektroniske signaler, som foretages i de forskellige routers under datapakkernes transmission via internettet, er omfattet af ophovsretslovens § 2.â??

Basically: that the consequences of millisecond that it takes for the music to zoom through the companies routers is, in fact, the creation of a copy of digital music. This is done without the permission of the copyright holder.

Wow! The Danes have really begun something here. First of all you can hardly read, listen or see coherent information while it flies through the router. Since information online is mixed up in many packets and mixed together with other packets and all the little packets can take different routes to their final destination.

IF the Danes were right then I should be able to sue the Danish ISP for copying all my emails which happen to go through Denmark without permission.

Another problem is that the Danish court has ordered this whole problem to be resolved by blocking all traffic from the Russian site. This implementation is both unpoductive and dangerous. It is unproductive since those who want can still download – site blocking is a minor impediment. It is dangerous since it shows a lack of understanding of how the Internet works. Faith in blocking only leads to the false impression that something is being done.

(via Oscar Swartz, Copyriot)

Posted on by mklang

DRM & Vista

Yesterday at the Internet Days in Stockholm a nice man from Microsoft who was apparantly no more than three steps away from the head developor at Redmond (nice, if you like games like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon)  stopped by the FSFE table to discuss DRM. We were on opposite sides of this issue and we had a very interesting discussion which concluded (predictably) that we were still in disagreement.

Basically his argument was that DRM can be useful and that opponents to DRM were too emotional (and a bit paranoid). My arguments were that DRM limits users rights, regulates in a way that limits legal rights and requires trust in a corporate body (whose goals are, and must be, profit – not user’s rights).

After a move into arguments that nobody is forced to use DRM:ed software we then moved into the realm of philosophy with arguments whether the user can “choose” without facts, or whether the user is aware that choices need to be made, and finally, whether or not the user cares about his/her rights.

We both had an agreeable time.

We also exchanged products. I gave him a copy of my PhD and he gave me a copy of Windows Vista Customer Preview program (Release Candidate 1). This version has ten licenses, which means that it can be installed on ten computers (or ten times on the same computer).

So â?? does anyone want to try Vista?

Posted on by mklang

Software Eco-Systems

Say ecosystem* and most of us will think of something delicate and finely balanced. We have been taught to understand that the environment is made up of systems which hang together and that disturbances in one part will created unintended and in our experience sad consequences.

Say Microsoft, Adobe or General Motors and we tend to think of corporate bohemoths hardly the delicate flowers in need of protection, but more often a cause of some destruction within their particular ecosystem.

A letter (pdf here) to the European Commission has recently come to light (it was leaked). The letter shows the extent which the anti-Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) lobby is prepared to go in order to maintain control of their dominant business model for the production of software.

The letter was sent in response to a recent EU report on the role of open-source software in the European economy. The letter warns of against encouraging the FOSS movement. The letter states that the actions taken by the European Commission could “disrupt the entire software eco-system” and the report itself was biased and looked “more like a marketing document than a serious survey”.

The letter comes from The Initiative for Software Choice (ISC). A name which inspires one to think of openness and freedom. Yet the group is a lobby group funded by proprietary software manufacturers – this, in itself, may be seen as a contradiction in terms.
According to Techworld the ISC was created to oppose government efforts to give preference to open-source or open standards-based systems. According to critics such as Bruce Perens, the ISC largely pursues a pro-Microsoft agenda, though the group itself emphasises that it has more than 300 members.

The letter is full of artful uses of language and leaves the unsuspecting reader with an impression that the writer is concerned about the welfare of the European Union and its development. At the same time the message is hammered home – with the subtly of a rhino with a headache – do not change anything. The system works as it is.

Naturally the concerns of the manufacturers of proprietary software should and must be taken into consideration but this letter is a masterful peice of dubbletalk and rhetoric (in the worst way).

Read the letter and LEARN from it.

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* An ecosystem refers to the collection of components and processes that comprise, and govern the behavior of, some defined subset of the biosphere. The term is generally understood to refer to all biotic and abiotic components, and their interactions with each other, in some defined area, with no conceptual restrictions on how large or small that area can be. To many, ecosystems, like any other system, are governed by the rules of systems science and cybernetics, as applied specifically to collections of organisms and relevant abiotic components. To others, ecosystems are primarily governed by stochastic events, the reactions they provoke on non-living materials and the corresponding responses by organisms. (Wikipedia)

Posted on by mklang