Tonight at eight Swedish TV2 will be showing the Danish documentary Good Copy Bad Copy. The film was made by Henrik Moltke of Creative Commons Danmark. If you don’t have access to Swedish TV2 you can download the it from the movie webpage.
politics
New sins and old
The Catholic Church has proposed seven new deadly sins:
Environmental destruction
Genetic Manipulation
Amassing unreasonable wealth
Causing poverty
Drug dealing
Using drugs
The list seems sensible enough since these actions cause pain and suffering to others. Naturally some of them are vague (what is unreasonable) but as a lawyer I know that it would be unfair to complain too much about that.
My beef, besides the whole church organization (all organizations exist to amass power), lies a bit with Catholic Church talking about unreasonable wealth – isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? Actually my main beef is with the last one. I am not pro-drugs but it lies in the lack of definition of drugs.
Which drugs? Naturally narcotics, but what about abuse of prescription drugs? What about the discussion on hard and soft drugs? What about coffee, tobacco & alcohol? Their abuse, and sometimes their production, cause pain to the individual and others. Actually it would be kind of strange if the Church were to try to claim that wine was a deadly sin.
The list is published in L’Osservatore Romano and was created to help people in the confessional. Naturally the old seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride) still apply so this actually means that there are fourteen deadly sins.
Update: Read more about this at Times Online
Update 2: Obviously I could not count as I only added six new sins when there were supposed to seven – there seems to be some confusion online as to the actual content of the list – I am not sure if it is actually a list or rather groups of social ills but there seems to be a general consensus on this…
Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature
Land of the not so free
The US likes to refer to itself as “the land of the free” but as a new report (download pdf) points out America is the country that has the greatest number of its own citizens behind bars.
Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation. (via Yahoo news)
This is far more than repressive countries like China and the former Soviet block, who are also among the top ten in this league. In addition to this America is also among the world foremost in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.
Honor the heretic
The Vatican is planning to erect a statue for Galileo 400 years after they put him on trial for heresy but this is not the first attempt by the church to look into the Galileo affair, as early as 1979 attempts were made to rethink the trial of Galileo. Still better late than never?
The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
This does feel a bit like an apology of too little, too late.
A statue to the heretic might be a good idea but I would prefer a statue that would remind the church of the power and responsibility is has for preventing the truth from spreading. And a statue to the need to remind everyone that the truth needs to be discussed and challenged if we are going to progress. While the Galileo affair was four centuries ago the church attitude towards birth control and abortion are ongoing in a world struggling to deal with overpopulation, poverty and aids. Do you think that they will erect a statue of this in about four hundred years?
(via Slashdot)
Design of Dissent
Milton Glasher and Mirko Ilic’s The Design of Dissent is a phenomenal repository of political poster art (and more). The book contains 200+ pages of explosive and provocative political art divided into sections that range from “Ex-Yugoslavia” to “Food” to “U.S. Presidential Election”.
The images are part historical testament, part marginalized voice, and part pop culture intervention. Together they make up a book that is an essential for anyone interested in political art, dissent, democracy, and the spirit of creative visual production to pry open the closed spaces of culture and community. (Art Threat)
The school of visual arts in NY has also created a site highlighting some 100 of the political posters curated by Glasher, you can view it here.
Fidel Castro resigns
Not surprising really he is 81 years old and has held power since 1959 (BBC online). Growing up in the middle of the cold war without really “getting” the whole thing, I could never understand why the world couldn’t just leave Cuba alone. We tolerated a lot worse men…
photo: Viva Fidel by GoGap (CC AT-NC-SA)
The Information Society for None
Free the Mind has blogged about the report Cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy [PDF] being discussed in the European Parliaments Committee on Culture and Education.
Article 9 in the report attempts to address online piracy and should be seen as a step in the right direction. The authors have reached the understanding that …criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution.
However the committee members did not agree with this and several of them have submitted proposals for changes [PDF]. The most serious is the proposal from Christopher Hilton-Hearris. His proposal will force Internet providers into action and to close the accounts of those caught violating others copyright:
This cooperation of Internet service providers should include the use of filtering technologies to prevent their networks being used to infringe intellectual property, the removal from the networks or the blocking of content that infringes intellectual property, and the enforcement of their contractual terms and conditions, which permit them to suspend or terminate their contracts with those subscribers who repeatedly or on a wide scale infringe intellectual property
He even proposes that the EU-Commission launch pro intellectual property campaigns to the general public and as a subject in schools. He is not alone in his suggestion to cut off Internet supply to those involved in copyright violations. The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has recommended the Committee for Culture and Education to:
Calls on the internet service providers to cooperate in the fight against internet piracy and enforce their contractual terms and conditions or terminate contracts with subscribers who infringe intellectual property rights. Internet service providers should apply filtering measures to prevent copyright and stop existing infringements
Photo hear hear by massdistraction
This is an extremely simplistic and naive approach to the problem of copyright violation in digital environments.
Now that politicians are actively attempting to shut down connections the dream of creating an inclusive society based upon a technological infrastructure (for example Information Society for All) seems to be on its way out.
Why is banning people from the Internet a bad idea?
The Internet has been promoted and become our most basic communications infrastructure (obviously my focus here is Europe since this is where the proposal is being discussed).
1. The punishment does not fit the crime: We have changed the way Banks, Post Offices, ticket sales, hotel booking, insurance (etc, etc) work and banning someone from the Internet will be tantamount to branding a symbol of guilt onto the person. Not to mention the increased costs involved in time and money. Indeed why should copyright violation prevent me from online banking?
2. Group punishment: If an Internet connection is involved in copyright violation this does not mean that all those dependent upon that connection should be punished. The actual violator may be underage or the network may be open to others.
3. Privatizing the law: The ability to punish copyright violators should not be delegated to private bodies. Internet providers are not equipped to mete out legal punishments.
The proposals seen above are simplistic, naive and dangerous they show a fundamental lack of understanding not only of technology or its role in society but also a lack of understanding of the role of communication in a democratic society. The actions of the politicians proposing such measures show that they are not acting in the interests of the individuals they are there to serve.
Privacy International Ranking 2007
Privacy International has released its Privacy Ranking for 2007 (28/12-2007).
The picture is a detail of the report’s privacy map. Where black is the worst, pink/purple is bad, red is not good and so on. Privacy International writes about its own report:
The most recent report published in 2007, is probably the most comprehensive single volume report published in the human rights field. The report runs over 1,100 pages and includes 6,000 footnotes. More than 200 experts from around the world have provided materials and commentary. The participants range from eminent privacy scholars to high-level officials charged with safeguarding constitutional freedoms in their countries. Academics, human rights advocates, journalists and researchers provided reports, insight, documents and advice…The new 2007 global rankings extend the survey to 47 countries (from the original 37) and, for the first time, provide an opportunity to assess trends.
The report shows that the situation is worsening. Read the report here.
Benazir Bhutto killed
Maybe this was unexpected but it is terrible. The more world politics go to hell, the more tired I seem to get.
Pakistan was plunged into deeper political turmoil today after the assassination of the former prime minister and main opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, in a suicide attack.
The Guardian Online
OK so I am a naive person but I really would like peace for a change.
Filtering Swedish Parliament
The Swedish Parliament has installed a filter in order to stop access to child pornography (Swedish press release). The filter was not installed in order to stop activities which were occurring but rather to prevent their occurrence. Most probably the decision to install such a filter was done to prevent what could have become a public relations nightmare.
The filter will delete any child pornography images it detects and no logs are created. The decision to create no logs may be strange but with the Swedish freedom of information policy this is probably done again to prevent public relations messes from occurring? Oh correct my cynical soul (if I had such a thing) if I am wrong.
Therefore in order to prevent a problem that has not occurred the highest decision making body in Sweden has placed its free access to information into the hands of who? Most probably a private company. If I was a more paranoid person then I would say this was a bad decision. This means that Swedish members of parliament will be unable to find information freely and independently.
Naturally I am not supporting child pornography – don’t be obtuse. I am, however, against putting free access to information into the hands of a private body. This is self censorship. Done in order to avoid public relations disasters.
Of course the parliamentarians could complain but considering the political atmosphere surrounding this issue anyone complaining would probably be placing themselves in a questionable light. This has the makings of a classic paranoid witch-hunt.