Odds & Ends

Occasionally when writing my PhD I could attempt to image what the period between handing in and defence felt like. Just as I still try to image what the day after the defence feels like.

Naturally nothing is what it seems. My days are not spent in still contemplation and preparation but rather an endless list of tasks ranging from the trivial to the truly important.

I move from discussing with a reporter whether the investigators guidelines for modernizing the use of content delivery were biased in favour of the music industry or not (they are).  To the more trivial buying stuff at Ikea (how very Swedish). From preparing a very important personâ??s 10:th birthday to buying socks. Itâ??s high and low at the same time.

Today I am off to Slovenia (Maribor) for a conference in Social Informatics where I am looking forward to taking my mind of the waiting by engaging in real discussion. I shall be presenting a paper on Internet censorship and the different approaches to circumvent such practices.

Anti-DRM Day in Göteborg

The 3rd of October has been announced as the â??Day Against DRMâ??. All over the world action groups are going out to protest against the uses and abuses of DRM. Naturally we will be active in Göteborg – more information below.

The point of the day is to be able to bring forward information to the general public and to show that the public concern about DRM is not limited to online virtual activity.

Anti-DRM actions in the past have taken the form of protesters, often wearing yellow (preferably haz-mat) suits protesting and handing out material.

Here is an example of an anti-DRM action which was held in Chicago on June 10, 2006

Naturally there will be an anti-DRM action in my hometown of Göteborg. So if you want the opportunity to see me in a yellow safety suit, why not join in and take a stand against DRM.

So you want to join in? or just watch the party? Well the dates and times are

3 October 08.30-10.15 Chalmersplatsen (outside Chalmers main entrance)
3 October 11.45-13.15 the corner of �. Hamngatan & �. Larmgatan (next to Kopparmärra)

If you let me know if you are interested in joining in then maybe I can organise a yellow suit for you!

For those of you who maybe follow this blog you will realise that the 3 October is the day after I defend my PhD. So this will be the day after the party…
More about DRM on Wikipedia

Down with DRM video contest

Freeculture are organising a video competition to coincide with the Down with DRM day.

Enter the Down with DRM video contest for a chance to win a Neuros OSD – a portable digital VCR!

Joining in Oct 3rd – Day Against DRM, Free Culture will select the 5 best anti-DRM video entries and award a Neuros OSD to each creator. DefectiveByDesign.org is also looking to air selected anti-DRM videos on their website during the week of October 3rd, and we want to give them a hand.

Here are the official rules to enter Free Culture’s Down with DRM video contest:

  • Deadline for submissions: Sunday, October 1 at 11:59pm EDT
  • Criteria for video:
    • Anti-DRM themed
    • Short
    • Video, animation, or remix
    • Make it catchy â?? we want these videos to be viral
  • Please submit your video to the online video sharing network(s) that you prefer. Here are some examples:
  • Please tag your video with “downwithdrm” and “dbdoct3” so that people can search for it.
  • Preference will be given to submissions under free content licenses such as Creative Commons BY-SA, BY, PD, or the Free Art license.
  • E-mail downwithdrm@freeculture.org with a link to your video by October 1 at 11:59pm EDT.
  • Free Culture will select the top 5 entries and award the winners with a Neuros OSD (one per video)

What is wrong with DRM?

What is wrong with DRM?

Most people tend to steer clear of three letter acronyms that they donâ??t immediately understand. DRM (Digital Rights Management) began as a vision of using technology to ensure that owners of intellectual property could maintain control over their property.  In other words it would be impossible to do that which was illegal. So far so good. Making it impossible to do that which is illegal is good. Frustrating illegal behaviour is right.

The problem is that DRM can also prevent behaviour that is not illegal.

A current example is the media player â??Zuneâ?? from Microsoft.

To maintain control over the music stored in the media player Zune is designed to limit music sharing. If music is shared between friends it can only be played three times or stored for three days.

The problem occurs when the music shared is either (1) not copyrighted, (2) in the public domain, or (3) shared with permission.

Supposing you create a song. Really. Or maybe a you create a snappy little limerick. You send it wirelessly to a friend. After three days. Or your friend plays it three times â?? it is gone. This is because Zune wraps all music which is sent in this way in DRM nomatter the rights you have as a creator or listener.

Therefore Microsoft Zune limits the legitimate rights of the user in an effort to comply with or control intellectual property. This is bad.

But wait â?? it is worse!

In the book 1984, Orwell introduces a method of control through the language called Newspeak. The idea was that by limiting the meaning of words we the party in power would eventually limit the way in which the citizens think. In the book the example given was that the term free would loose all connections with freedom and only be used with the idea to be rid of something. The example in the book is that a dog will be free of lice. But the concept of freedom as liberty will be lost.

This is the most damaging part of DRM systems. By controlling what is physically possible they create amongst the users an illusion of what can be done. A technical limitation to our use becomes a law of nature. Copying becomes bad not because it is illegal but because it is impossible.

Therefore by controlling the physical reality the manufacturers of DRM are slowly changing the way in which we see what is possible and impossible. In extension this will also limit our ability to envision what could be possible.

NeoOffice

While sitting in a boring meeting, getting annoyed at sales reps from Microsoft enthusiastically praising trusted computing. When I questioned them why anyone would give all that power to one corporate entity they replied that they couldn’t see why not –

“so long as you trusted Microsoft everything is fine…”

Honest – I was speechless! Can you imagine me speechless?

Anyway during the meeting I downloaded the latest version of NeoOffice for mac (Download NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta 3). It looks pretty good and seems to start faster too.

NeoOffice is a fully-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) for Mac OS X. It is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite.

Free Software & Microsoft Sales Reps

Due to a colleague calling in sick I jumped in and gave a short presentation on Free Software & Open Standards to IT technicians at my university. Following my presentation two salesmen from Microsoft presented the corporate visions of the future and a short demo of the coming Vista and Office software.

The first salesman after hearing my presentation insisted on talking about how “Free Software” microsoft was. Since they were involved in several projects intended to define open standards this made, according to him, Microsoft – Free Software.

Should someone tell Balmer?

I bit my tongue when he spoke about all this and about trusted computing. It was all too much. He was so positive that the inconsistencies were only embarrasing.
He also was lyrical about schools without books and the fact that many university students are not able to use basic excel – something he felt the university should teach them. So I shut up while he praised the dumming down of universities.

I will get him during the break… Or maybe not… it’s just too embarassing to listen to.

Call for Copyright Activists

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary define the word Extortion as obtaining (as money) from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or unlawful use of authority or power.

In order for musicians to get paid copyright collectives began to appear in the 19th century. These collecting societies were formed to ensure that those who create copyrighted material are able to collect the money they are due. In its simplest form the member musician hands over control of his/her economic rights to the collecting society. The collecting society then has the mandate to collect the dues. Once collected these funds are dispersed among the members.

In most (at least European) countries the collecting societies have established themselves as a central part of the socio-economic system. They are powerful interest groups which ensure that they (and in extention their members) are catered to by the political-legal system. By entering into agreements with trade organisations the collecting societies now have established the right to collect money from all businesses that play music, show tv etc to their customers.

Rasmus at Copyriot has written an interesting piece on the way in which collecting societies manage to collect money. In Sweden the most active collecting societies are SAMI and STIM which are able to collect money for any music played in places of business where customers gather.

So large everything from: hotels with music in the lifts, small pizzerias whose music annoys you while you wait for your delivery, hairdressers, businesses that play cheesy music while you are on hold and cafés with music nobody listens to. They are all required to pay to the collecting societies.

Rasmus even relates an event where a policeman at a demonstration in Germany wrote down all the songs played and sent the list to the German collecting societies who promptly sent the organiser a bill. Swedish law would work in the same way. The policemanâ??s superior stated that the policeman had gone too far but the bill still has to be paid. (link to story in German).
The Spanish Case

In 2005 the main Spanish collecting society (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores – SGAE) â?? sued Ricardo Andrés Utrera Fernández, the owner of Metropol, a disco bar located in in Badajoz for not paying SGAEâ??s license fee of 4.816,74 â?¬ for the period from November 2002 to August 2005 for the public performance of music.

On February 17th, 2006, the Lower Court number six of Badajoz, a city in Extremadura, Spain, rejected the collecting societyâ??s claims because the owner of the bar proved that the music he was using was not managed by the society. The music performed in the bar was licensed under CC licenses that allows that public display since the authors have already granted those rights. Specifically, the judge said:

â??The author possesses some moral and economic rights on his creation. And the owner of these rights, he can manage them as he considers appropriate, being able to yield the free use, or hand it over partially. “Creative Commons” licenses are different classes of authorizations that the holder of his work gives for a more or less free or no cost use of it. They exist as â?¦ different classes of licenses of this type â?¦ they allow third parties to be able to use music freely and without cost with greater or minor extension; and in some of these licenses, specific uses require the payment of royalties. The defendant proves that he makes use of music that is handled by their authors through these Creative Commons licenses.â?? (quote from CC)

The full text of the decision (in Spanish) is available here. The Spanish case sets a new precedent in that it confirms that the collecting societies can only collect if the music played is made by members of collecting societies.

Copyright Activists Needed
What needs to be done? Hairdressers and café owners are probably not the most tech or Internet savvy. So to help them the basic idea is to set up a website filled with CC licensed music and easy howto instructions on how to use the music either online or by downloading and creating CDâ??s.

Aside from music arranged by genre, technical information on how to use it, the site should include legal information explaining why the users will no longer have to pay money to the collecting societies.

This copyright civil disobedience could potentially become the most important method for affecting change in the copyright system since it attacks the purse of the collecting society. In addition to this the scheme is legal. This last point does not make it less civil disobedience since the organisation of the site is a form of protest against the extortionary powers which the collecting societies have collected.

Edible Computers

The London Science Museum has an exhibition called Dead Ringers, which is on the uses and abuses of discarded mobile phones. It includes some interesting information online. The exhibition goes beyond the simplistic statistics of our rapidly growing mountains of discarded IT stuff.

Beyond more traditional ideas of using specially made biodegradable materials and the idea of re-cycling our gadgets on interesting idea is the use of pasta to make circuit boards.

Pasta Circuit Board

Naturally pasta is biodegradable but it also comes with an additional advantage. Since pasta quickly becomes soft when boiled it is easy to remove components which are attached to the pasta circuit board. This makes the job of re-cycling components more cost efficient and more attractive.

Is there a catch?

Naturally this is not all good. No, the concern is not that food production will be diverted to gadget-making but we do focus more on gadgets than on more basic necessities. The problem is that presenting solutions such as biodegradable materials relaxes concerns. We can collectively shrug and claim that the problem has been solved. This is not so. There remains a missing component for this to be true. We need harsher regulation to enforce rules demanding manufacturers use more biodegradable material in their gadgets. Market solutions would be a nice option but have proven in the past to be ineffective.
More on high tech trash here & here.

Smoke and Fire

Is it true that there is no smoke without fire?

Browzar claims to be privacy enhancing software. Despite the fact that it is little more than an “Internet Explorer shell”, a program that sits on top of Microsoft’s popular browser to change its look and some of its functions. It is a free download and is offered as a “beta”, or test version.
Now Browzar is being accused of being adware (BBC article) – in other words the privacy tool is being accused of collecting and using user data to ensure that advertising can be sent to it’s users.
Browzar denies that it is adware or spyware or anything och that sort. The interesting  thing is not whether the claims are correct or not but what will the effects of such claims be on a company… Obviously accusing a privacy enhancing company of violating users privacy is not a small thing.

Responsible Design

From Question Technology come this story of grocery-carts with built-in TVs for your kids to watch while you shop.

OK so this does not have the same dignity as the mobile execution centers (death vans) but what were the designers thinking? What are the store owners thinking? and finally what are the parents thinking?

Does the designer who creates something like this even stop to reflect about the long-term effects of his/her ideas? Or is everything just a cool wacky idea? In Swedish we have a phrase which fits perfectly just now: Jag blir trött translated this means: I become tired. The phrase reflects the tired feeling one gets when acts of stupidity abound and your personal energy to fight is on the decline.

I WANT RESPONSIBLE DESIGN!!!!

Sorry for shouting but this pisses me off. Boy I am grouchy this morning…