Copyright

Creative Commons Culture and Terra Nullius

I recently published an article in a Swedish journal called InfoTrend. The article included an English abstract which you can read below. The journal wanted me to sign a copyright form which I did. Their contract also included a clause granting me permission to reproduce the article on my website – so I feel I must! So here it is. I realise that I probably should refuse to sign all such documents and demand that they implement CC licenses and open access values but then not many articles would be published and I will not be able to spread the word. It’s a catch 22 kind of situation.

Creative common licensing model as an alternative The great land grab between the 15th and 18th centuries was often legitimised by the concept of terra nullius – since the land was not being commercially exploited, it was being wasted and was therefore free for anyone to take. This stance has in hindsight been criticised for its tragic impact on the cultures and ecology of the lands being taken. Thus today the concept of terra nullius has fallen in disrepute. Despite this the concept is being widely used in the debate on the ownership of copyrightable material. The actions of major cultural producers, such as Disney, show that exploiting from the public domain is a profitable business model. This article discusses the implications of these actions and presents the Creative Commons licensing model as an alternative for buildning a body of cultural material, which is secured under copyright, but can still be used in a manner akin to the public domain.

Posted on by mklang

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.

Posted on by mklang

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.

Posted on by mklang

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…

Posted on by mklang

Academic Publishing and Copyright

The Science Commons has released three “Author Addenda” which are amendments that authors can attach to the copyright transfer form agreements they receive from publishing companies. The purpose is to ensure that the authors retain enough rights to publish their works online.

Every Science Commons Addendum ensures the freedom to use scholarly articles in teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities. They differ in the following ways:

Want more information? Read the Background and FAQ.

Posted on by mklang

Freelancers & Copyright

My last post was an attempt to blog via mail but it was less than successful since all that was posted was the header. I obviously have a lot to learn in this area. The post was supposed to include this text:
Today I am attending the Nordic Seminar for Freelance Journalists. This year it is being held in Kungälv at a conference center with a great view of Bohus Fästning (Bohus Fortress). The whole event is between Friday and Sunday but I am here to talk about Creative Commons licensing for the intellectual property slot on Friday afternoon.

Bohus Fortress

The IP block begins with a discussion on recent caselaw which is followed by a presentation called the archaeology of copyright. After a short coffee break I will present Creative Commons licenses and the session closes with a presentation of the Nordic and European Union rules of Copyright. This sounds like an interesting way to spend the afternoon even if it seems like summer has finally arrived.

It will be interesting to hear first hand from the point of view of freelance journalists their views on copyright and hopefully we will even discuss the influence such technology as blogs.

I was concerned that the freelance journalists would not take well to CC but I could not have been more wrong. Their major concern is that their work can be (and often is) “stolen”, in addition to the need to be better at negotiating for payments for the online use of their work by their print media customers.

They often spoke of their concern for their reputation and themselves as trademarks – in particular their concern that online publication in forms that they could not predict may seriously damage their future work.

We had a very good discussion and the response was positive.

Posted on by mklang

not a conspiracy theory

Yesterday’s raid on the Pirate Bay has had an unintended side effect. Yesterday the Pirate Party (a new party whose main agenda is the abolishment of copyright law) saw an 35% increase in membership… They now have over 3000 members which is still a low number but not at all bad considering that they have only been around for a couple of months. Here is some information about the party in English.

Posted on by mklang

Raiding Pirate Bay

What is The Pirate Bay (TPB) supposed to have done?

TPB is the site of a BitTorrent tracker. In other words it helps users to locate BitTorrent files. BitTorrent is a variant (some would say development) of the Peer-to-Peer networks. It (the BitTorrent protocol) is a method for advertising and sharing files over a network.

Basically users looking for files (this can be films, music, texts, software etc) go to the search engine (TPB) and conduct a search. If they find what they are looking for they can download a â??.torrentâ?? file. This is not the actual end file they are looking for. It is a file which contains meta data about the file which they are looking for.

This data contains two sections. One that specifies the URL of the tracker and the other that contains the filename, fragment size, key length and a pass. The torrent file can contain information about many end files.

By activating the torrent file one begins the download of the end file or files. These are downloaded from several computers where the file is stored. As soon as part of the file is downloaded the downloader also becomes a source where others may download this part of the file. Once the download is complete the downloader may decide to keep this file available to others or remove it from the swarm.

Torrents are used to coordinate file sharing of copyrighted material both with and without the copyright holders consent. The technology cannot define whether the actions are legal or illegal. At present I have two complete files which I have been sharing for some time via BitTorrent. Since I am sharing complete files I am called a Seeder.

I have the most recent version of UBUNTU which is a Linux operating system licensed under the GPL license where sharing (and more) it is allowed. I have a film called Elephants Dream which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License and it is therefore permissible to share. In both these cases I am providing a service and helping the legal distribution of material.

OK â?? so that was the technical side. What does TPB do?

TPB is a search engine which helps people find the small tracker (.torrent) files. In other words the small files which contain information about where the end files are within the network. These tracker (.torrent) files are possibly not even capable of being copyrightable. If they are protected by copyright then they are the property of the author â?? in other words their creator. Not the creator of the end files that they track.

TPB case is going to be exciting to watch because the people in control of TPB are well aware of their legal position and of what they are doing. They will not have made the newbie mistake of having copyrighted material on their servers without permission.

Is it illegal to do what TPB does? If I tell you that you can buy a Gucci wallet knockoff at a well known marketplace am I guilty of the crime of â??facilitating copyright infringementâ??? Better still if I tell you how to make your own Gucci wallet am I still innocent? If I could sow and I create a copy of a fashionable suit for my own use is this copyright violation? If I instruct someone else is this â??facilitating copyright infringementâ???

If TPB are â??facilitating copyright infringementâ?? then what about Google? or Flickr? Google helps me find images and texts of masses of copyrighted material. Flickr not only helps me find it but also helps me store it?

What about the local library? They help me find and copy the material I needed to write this postâ?¦

The next step is obviously the question of the police action. The police have removed property from TPB. Removing property is a serious step and the question is whether the alleged crime motivates such action. In the case of computer equipment the question of surplus information must also be taken into consideration. In other words have the police taken too much?

TPB website today states that even servers containing material from organisations not connected with TPB were taken â?? in this case this amounts to a serious violation of an organisations ability to communicate. Can this amount of force justified â?? is the police action proportional to the alleged crime? Especially when other non-accused organisations are affected by police action.

Posted on by mklang

facilitating copyright infringement

It seems that The Pirate Bay offices were raided today. They have issued a short statement here. According to the online chatter (with some sources close to the Pirate Bay) 50 police were involved in the raid.

The Pirate Bay is the largest bittorrent tracker online and has therefore long been the center of much legal discussion and controversy.

The motivation for the raid was that The Pirate Bay was “facilitating copyright infringement”. The point of whether the actions of The Pirate Bay constitute a criminal act are under discussion. But a small point which interests me is the fact(?) that the police apparently took servers belonging and/or containing/hosting other organisations.

Even if The Pirate Bay have been facilitating copyright infringement it is interesting to see how far the actions of authoritites may go. In efforts to prevent a percieved crime and to secure evidence of this the authorities have now prevented the communications of other organisations not conducting criminal actions.

Posted on by mklang