I wrote an article which has been published on the Swedish Green Party website Cogito.nu. The article discusses the dangers to democracy posed by digital restrictions management (DRM). In the article I discuss the way in which regulation works by using an example of picking up dog poo. Strange mixture of DRM & dog poo but I think it works. The article is available here (in Swedish).
Learn Out Loud presents ten arguments against DRM. This is a good way to quickly get up to speed with the issue of digital restrictions management (DRM). The most important is that DRM changes the who controls our media and infrastructure. In the long run this control may also begin to control the way in which we think.
Nice news today. A short article I wrote (on DRM) was published in the University staff paper. Strange how difficult it was to write when you know that ALL your colleagues might be reading it. It turned out alright. It’s in Swedish over here (with a photo).
Otherwise most of the whole day seems to have been spent re-creating the computer after the crash. Lots of small and large pieces of software to be installed, passwords to be remembered and settings to be restored. Very tiring and annoying but good stuff. Today it works! Better than before. This means that the weekend will be spent doing the work that I should have done this week.
Today has been another travel day. Up to Stockholm for a day discussing copyright in relation to university libraries. As usual I found the librarians active and concerned about copyright issues. This is only natural since they are forced to be pragmatic about the way in which they react to copyright.
Most of the problems discussed today dealt with archiving. The most common forms of documents, which need to be archived (and are troubled by copyright), are student essays, licentiate theses and PhD theses.
Copyright creates problems in a couple of ways. First off can universities force student works to be archived and if so can they be put online? The same questions apply to the output of teachers and researchers (not always the same thing).
The whole question is complicated by the shifting practices among libraries, university departments and faculties. Actually the universities rarely have power in these issues since the decision making power is on the faculty level. For more on the dilemmas of university copyright see here.
As I mentioned the librarians were pretty cool. From totally ignoring the question of copyright and taking the â??just do itâ?? approach â?? to the more careful approach which is more concerned with the consequences. The lawyers on the other hand tend to be pessimistic and uncooperative. They want to risk nothing, do nothing, for fear of losing. Sometimes I wonder what they think they would lose in a battle? Since the slow disintegration of copyright is losing the war.
An interesting thing was that the librarians were very concerned about the potential malicious side effects of DRM use by publishers.
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)
The Anti-DRM campaign Defective By Design has begun tagging products on Amazon.
The system works on Amazon.com with their system of “tagging” products on its US site. You can look at a product and add a tag that describes it. We have started tagging items that contain DRM (Blu-Ray players, Blu-Ray DVDs, the Zune, the iPod, Amazon Unbox movies etc.) with the “defectivebydesignâ?? tag.
As products get tagged over and over again with a particular tag, that tag surfaces to the top of the list, and displays in larger text in some views. There is also a page for pictures and discussions of the tag. Tag these products and search for similar DRM products to tag now!
All of the international Amazon websites allow customers to review products. Review a DRM product NOW as a way to warn others of the problems they may face because of DRM. Once you have reviewed a product you can post the link as a comment on our site, to encourage other DefectiveByDesign crew members to rate your review. If you see a product review that points out the DRM problems you can also rate that review highly so that others will see it.
Your participation will ensure that thousands of products get tagged and reviewed, and hundreds of thousands of consumers, maybe millions, will be warned about DRM. Nice!
(via Defective by Design)
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)Â 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?
Earlier in September I blogged about a “Down with DRM video Contest” arranged by FreeCulture.org. Anyway the results are in and Freeculture.org is pleased to announce the contest winners.
My favorites are
Interchangeability by R. Clayton Miller
CC License: BY-SA
and
Trusted Computing by Benjamn Stephan and Lutz Vogel (Lafkon)
CC License: Sampling Plus
Which do you like?
We carried out a final anti-DRM protest in Göteborg today. We stood outside the AIPPI Congress and handed out flyers. There were less people who took the flyers but on the other hand we had interesting conversations with those who stopped to talk. It was a nice way to spend the morning – even if it was a bit chilly…
As you may have known yesterday was the international day to protest against DRM. For more information see http://drm.info. Despite the fact that I defended my PhD and partied until two. I pulled myself out of bed at 6am to get dressed in yellow overalls and demonstrate outside Chalmers University at 7.30. At about 9.30 stopped handing out leaflets and took a well deserved break.
This did not mean that we were done for the day. Oh no. At 11.30 we gathered at the center of town to continue our demonstrations until 1pm. The results? We handed out well over a thousand leaflets, we were interviewed by two newspapers and my headache never left me for a moment.
It was a brilliant way to celebrate my new life as Dr. Klang. This is the first time I wrote Dr. Klang! Feels kind of strange, but nice…