GPLv3 report II

Eben Moglen began his presentation by putting recent news in new perspective. He spoke of the retirement of Bill Gates in a way that I found intriguing.
When a CEO states that he resigns there is a period of calming the market. Therefore when Gates says he will step down in two years this should not be seen as a long time. Two years it is the minimum timeframe that will not spook the market. The important issue is that the resignation comes 6 months from the shipping the most important product in 10 years.

Also we can put this into another perspective the FSF is on schedule with the most important product in 15 years. The update of to the GPLv3. The process going to version three is open and public. Philosophically it reflects the rule-making process put forward by Habermas where the idea is that those affected by the rules should be part of the decision making process.

When discussing the substantial changes Eben explain why the GPLv3 has been adapted to meet the needs of issues such as distribution via torrents, the developments within patents and the increase in DRM.

On the latter he explained that companies feel that they should be allowed to have rights (digital) and want to protect them. Many of these feel that RMS is attempting to change their vocabulary (from Rights to Restrictions). But this is not about attempting to use a software license to address non-software problems. The license (and its implementation) is about the software and the four freedoms. DRM is about the attempt to prevent users from practicing the 4 freedoms.

In closing before an extended Q&A session Eben returned to the issue of Microsoft. The falling revenues and the stepping down of Bill Gates will have the effect that one of strongest voices against Free Software will be silenced (almost). In the future arguing for Free Software will therefore not meet the strong resistance it is accustomed to.

GPLv3 report

The conference begins with Georg Greve explaining the organisation of FSF with its idea of sister organisations of FSF USA, FSF Europe, FSF Asia and FSF Latin America.

This was followed by Richard Stallman explaining what the GPLv3 would entail. He begins by stating very clearly that the most important thing to remember about any version of the GPL is that it is a free software license. Additionally the goal of the FSF is the liberation of cyberspace. This goal will be carried out by maintaining and defending four freedoms.

Software following the four freedoms is Free Software. If any freedom is substantially missing then it is proprietary software. The problem with this is that proprietary software is about the subjugation of users.

It is easy to write a license which says you are free to do what you want. But this is not the best way to liberate all the users. This is because people will modify and then distribute it as proprietary software. Copyleft is the method of preventing this practice. Copyleft is copyright flipped over. Copyright subjugates users. Copyleft prevents the middlemen from enclosing the code and making it proprietary.

Stallman then went through the highlights of important changes which are being discussed in the GPLv3.

This talk was followed by Ciaran Oâ??Riordan who gave a short talk of the public process before it was time for lunch.

CC tool for Microsoft Office

Microsoft and Creative Commons (CC) have released a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of CC licenses in the Microsoft Office package. The tool will enable users of the Office package to select a CC license from within the specific application. The copyright licensing tool will be available free of charge at Microsoft Office, and CC. The tool also provides a way for users to dedicate a work to the public domain.

Quotes from the press release:

â??Weâ??re delighted to work with Creative Commons to bring fresh and collaborative thinking on copyright licensing to authors and artists of all kinds,â?? said Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft. â??We are honored that creative thinkers everywhere choose to use Microsoft tools to give shape to their ideas. Weâ??re committed to removing barriers to the sharing of ideas across borders and cultures, and are offering this copyright tool in that spirit.â??

â??The goal of Creative Commons is to provide authors and artists with simple tools to mark their creative work with the freedom they intend it to carry,â?? said Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of Creative Commons. â??Weâ??re incredibly excited to work with Microsoft to make that ability easily available to the hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft Office.â??

â??Itâ??s thrilling to see big companies like Microsoft working with nonprofits to make it easier for artists and creators to distribute their works,â?? said Gilberto Gil, cultural minister of Brazil, host nation for the Creative Commons iSummit in Rio de Janeiro June 23 through 25, where the copyright licensing tool will be featured. Gil, who will keynote at the iSummit, has released one of the first documents using the Creative Commons add-in for Microsoft Office.

The full list of licenses available from Creative Commons is available online.

The guilt of a travelling techie

I replaced my iPod yesterday after the total collapse of my last one. Today I read about the iSweatshops. The iPods are assembled in China by mainly female workers. The workforceâ?¦

â?¦resides in “iPod cities” with as many as 200,000 employees. Outsiders are forbidden, and 15-hour workdays are the norm. As you might expect, the wages are low, even for China. (Foreign Policy).

Tomorrow I will fly to Barcelona to participate in the GPLv3 conference besides being an event that I am looking forward to, the privilege of visiting foreign cities is one I value. Recently the discussion on environmental damage caused by flights has taken speed â?? especially with the rapid rise of cheap tickets which increases our â??unnecessaryâ?? flights.

Monbiot writes: â??Flying kills. We all know it, and we all do it.

Monbiot is referring to the environmental effects of flying. He claims (convincingly) that while most of our reliance on fuels causing carbon emissions can be reduced without a too serious limitation to our freedom â?? this does not apply to flying. Reducing carbon emissions caused by flying means reducing the number of flights we take.

Both these arguments (iSweatshops & flying) have something important in common. They both bring into question things I appreciate. The question that must be posed from this information is â?? what shall I do about it?

When bringing this information to people he meets Monbiot writes of the listeners response: â??They just want to enjoy themselves. Who am I to spoil their fun? The moral dissonance is deafening.â??

The first impulse may be the ostrich approach â?? by sticking oneâ??s neck into the sand the bad news can be ignored. This approach should not be ignored â?? it works surprisingly well and is applied successfully by many. I tried this for a while â?? unfortunately it eventually wears thin. Another approach is self-denial. A no-excuses approach to technology and flights. This entails limiting everything to the bare necessities â?? without allowing for rationalisations. This involves denying oneself of many of the things that I appreciate â?? not an easy approach.

Can there be a middle-of-the-road approach? Is awareness better than ignorance? This argument would mean that our knowledge of the harm our choices entail legitimises our actions even if this has no real effect on physical events (better working conditions or environment). As much as I would like this, I cannot believe this is a solid approach to improvement.

The answer? Donâ??t look at me. I believe it is better to be aware than ignorant of the harm I do â?? even if this cannot mitigate the harm.

Death Vans

In a move that is eerily echoes the mobile Nazi gas chambers China has begun to use specially designed busses as mobile centres of execution where they administer death by lethal injection. It is no secret that China has capital punishment, but the amount of capital punishments undertaken remains undeclared by the Chinese government.

Death Van

Product Specifications (via USA Today):
Cost: $37,500 to $75,000, depending on vehicle’s size
Length: 20 to 26 feet
Top speed: 65 to 80 mph

The van is divided into three sections:

Execution chamber: in the back, with blacked-out windows; seats beside the stretcher for a court doctor and guards; sterilizer for injection equipment; wash basin
Observation area: in the middle, with a glass window separating it from execution area; can accommodate six people; official-in-charge oversees the execution through monitors connected to the prisoner and gives instruction via walkie-talkie.
Driver area


Banality of Evil

In an earlier post I wrote about the banality of evil â?? here is another excellent example. How does it feel to design such a vehicle? Does the designer add this to his/her CV? What about the company that sells them? What does the sales rep think when he/she wakes up in the morning? Is it a good thing that they are selling well?

This is an excellent example of the responsibility of the designer which I hope to make use of in my teaching. The main point is to problematize around designer responsibility and the issue of whether it is right (ethically & morally) that the designer does his/her best to solve the needs and meet the requirements of the customer.

Death in China
Amnesty International writes that capital punishment can be used â??â?¦for as many as 68 crimes, including non-violent crimes such as tax fraud, embezzlement and drug offences. 1,770 executions were reportedly carried out in China during 2005.â??

USA Today report that the majority of these executions are by firing squad but death by lethal injection is growing. China has introduced mobile execution vehicles where lethal injections are administered as a

â??â?¦civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely.â??

It has been speculated that one reason for the transfer to lethal injection is that the method keeps the organs in better condition for removal and sale. For a longer report on the Chinese death penalty read this Amnesty report (March 2004)

(via Space and Culture)

Does Bodström dream of high-tech hammers?

The Swedish Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström can without a doubt be placed among the European Ministerâ??s most hostile to civil liberties (older posts about this here & here & here). Besides blogging about it (along with many others) Henrik Sandklef and I wrote a debate article concerning this mans naïve faith in technological solutions to crime. It was published in the newspaper (in Swedish) and the Minister replied â?? well sort ofâ?¦he never actually met our arguments on civil rights violations, but claimed that the police needed tools to do their job (in Swedish).

Yesterday the Chairman of the Swedish Police Union, Björn Ericson, wrote in a debate article (in Swedish) that despite the Ministerâ??s claims that the police force has increased by 1500 policemen the actual numbers show that the number of policemen have decreased by almost 700 since 1997. Ericson wonders whether the 1500 policemen are all working deep undercover since nobody besides the Minister seems to know where they are.

Besides the politics (it is, after all, an election year), Ericson brings up a vital point in his article. Who will watch the tapes, analyse the data and read the log files? Much of the current wisdom concerning police enforcement deals with the importance of visibility. Policemen on the streets. It is not only important that the police patrol but also that they be seen to be patrolling.

Technology costs. The cost of building and maintaining a high-tech police force will create higher costs for the police. This will mean that they will have to make budget choices. Either be visible or spend money on technology. Our Minister has shown his inclination lies in the dream of a technological future â?? but what is missing in this dream?

Implementing the high-tech surveillance society will entail making choices. Simple choices with far reaching effects. The Bodström vision entails moving the police from all types of prevention and focus them on the cure. In the long run prevention is more cost efficient than cure. All the high-tech in the world cannot, will not, prevent crime. The only aspect of use is that high-tech may provide proof in the ensuing court case. And this can only be achieved through the trampling of civil liberties and therefore must only be used as little as possible.

The choices the police are being forced to make will therefore change their purpose. They will not be about the prevention of crime but rather the police will become the servants of the courts, the errand boys of the prosecutor. Despite their handcuffs, handguns and truncheons their primary work will be the collection of data for analysis. This is not unworthy work but it does not prevent the bulk of most crimes.

Technology such as that of bugging (phones and computers), DNA databases and surveillance cameras are all tools. Tools work well to resolve certain problems. With the right tools people became efficient â?? a large part of human development can be studied in the development of certain tools (fire, bronze axes, steam engines, silicon chipsâ?¦) but with the wrong tools the work becomes difficult, if not impossible. Of course you can bang in a nail with a screwdriver â?? but at a cost.

Most violent crimes (Terrorism, Saturday-night brawling, violence and abuse at home) will not be prevented by buying technology. The 9/11 terrorists used their own names â?? it would not have mattered to them if they had been asked to donate DNA. Putting more, and better trained, police on the streets â?? does have an effect on crime.

More patrolling policemen would not have prevented 9/11 â?? there is no way to prevent the determined. More patrolling police will not prevent abuse in homes. This takes an even more costly prevention â?? education and social welfare. But it is a better preventative cure for most other crimes. In addition to this it does not violate the civil rights of law-abiding people in the hope of catching the criminal.

There is a saying: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Thomas Bodström is busying buying the dream of the big high-tech hammer and no matter how many different problems people attempt to explain to him with this approach all he can see is nails â?? and he cannot wait to pound us down.

Sad iPod

My iPod has just made a face at me. Now it only does this

While I remember many years ago when my cat peed on/in my powerbook 100, I spent lots of time carefully drying it out. At the first successful startup the icon (usually a smiling mac) now looked like this.

I was naturally so thankful that my computer worked. Even if it never did smell the same again especially when the harddisk became warm…

Now that I am stuck here with a non-functioning iPod the “cute” unhappy ipod icon seems more like rubbing salt into the situation… So mac doesn’t use the “blue screen of death” but how is this better? The equipment does not work – but look at the cute icon? Bah!

Online helps involves resetting in different ways – I have tried them all. The final method which remains untried is to put my ipod in the freezer for a few hours and then reset.

oh, the joy of tech!

Exciting news and GPL3

Exciting news! I will be part of a panel at the 3rd International GPLv3 Conference in Barcelona next week. Look at the schedule (highlights below) can you imagine a more interesting two days?

Highlights day 1 – 22 June
10:30 – Georg Greve: opening introduction
11:00 – Richard Stallman: Overview of GPL v3 Changes
12:30 – Ciarán O’Riordan: The public consultation process
14:30 – Eben Moglen: The wording of the changes

Highlights day 2 – 23 june
10:30 Panel: Current projects of FSFE

  • Carlo Piana (Tamos Piana & Partners), the MS anti-trust case
  • Pablo Machón, building the Spanish team
  • Ciaran O’Riordan, Legislation from Brussels
  • Stefano Maffulli, FSFE’s Fellowship

11:30 Panel: Awareness and adoption of GPLv3

  • Fernanda Weiden, Associação SoftwareLivre.org
  • Anne Ã?stergaard, GNOME Foundation
  • Alexandre Oliva, Free Software Foundation Latin America

12:30 Pablo Machón: GPLv3 and the European software patent struggle
14:30 Panel: The Discussion Committees

  • Niibe Yutaka, Free Software Initiative Japan (committee A)
  • Philippe Aigrain, Sopinspace (committee C)
  • Masayuki Hatta, Debian (committee D)

15:30 Panel: Enforcing the GPL, thwarting DRM

  • Harald Welte, gpl-violations.org
  • David “Novalis” Turner, Free Software Foundation
  • Mathias Klang, Informatics researcher, University of Goteborg

16:30 Stefano Maffulli: Closing presentation

Brainstorming: The Politics of File Sharing

Its election year in Sweden and most parties are therefore working hard to show that they have the right stuff. Among the new problems the traditional parties have to face this year also offers up some new surprises like the rise of new political parties. In Sweden since the last election we have seen the rise of both a Feminist Party and a Pirate Party in addition to the attempt of The June List (a Swedish cross-party alliance in the EU Parliament) to become more active in national politics.

One of the issues which has been pushed into the forefront of the political debate is what the position should be on file-sharing.

I have been asked by an established political party to visit them and talk about Copyright, File Sharing, Creative Commons and associated issues. This spans a whole range of items from the technical to the philosophical.

So now I am calling for input â?? instead of just saying the politicians donâ??t get it, participate and help me by brainstorming around the topic: What every politician should understand about filesharing!

Add your comments in Swedish or English…

Football Technology

People will go to great lengths to adapt technology to suit their needs. This was the technical solution which on Saturday turned an ordinary bar into a sportsbar for the first game Sweden played in the World cup – Sweden lost…UPDATE – As ink pointed out in the comments the result was a draw. Sorry for exposing my total sports incompetence 🙂