Expression, not Repression

Amnesty is one of those organisations which you know you should support more than you already do. They have also moved into the digital domain and are supporting all kinds of online expression. In an attempt to prevent online censorship they launched their irrepressible campaign.

Part of irrepressible is a technical solution that breaks censored texts into small pieces and maintains them online. Read more about how to help here.

If you cannot do more then at least sign their petition:

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet â?? and on companies to stop helping them do it.

Amnesty International will also be present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens next week. Again they will be â??â?¦stressing the importance of protecting free expression and privacy onlineâ??

Read their press release here.

Glowing Review

I came across a glowing review on Amazon for Human Rights in the Digital Age (edited by Andrew Murray and myself). Getting a glowing review is a very nice feeling! So good that I naturally feel the need to reprint it here!

I read this book following Conor Gearty’s advice in his 2005 Hamlyn Lecture Series “Can Human Rights Survive?” that this book “should be required reading for all those interested in the future good health of our subject”. Although it drew on a wide variety of contributors, some better than others, overall I found the book filled a void in the current literature and for this reason alone it would be a must read. That aside though I found the contributions to be thought provoking and useful. Some of the better chapters come from Mathias Klang who discusses Cyber-activism and online civil disobedience, Douglas Vick who puts US and European views of free expression to the test and Andrew Murray who challenges the orthodox views that government should look after itself – at least when it comes to controlling the information flow about itself.

This is an excellent collection of essays and I simply echo Conor Gearty’s words – buy it if you are interested in the future good health of the discourse on human rights.

Social and cultural aspects of mobile phones

The social and cultural impact of mobile media has received too little study so here is an interesting call for papers to an international conference on social and cultural aspects of mobile phones, convergent media, and wireless technologies – The conference website Mobile Media 2007 will be up in August 2006.

Date: 2-4 July 2007

Place: The University of Sydney, Australia

…This relatively short history of mobile telephony is concurrently marked by the shift of the role of users from consumers to active producers – and mobile media is being heralded as a new site for consumption, democratic expression, individualism, citizenship, and creativity.

We also invite papers on all aspects of mobile media, including, but certainly not restricted to:

* what does it mean to talk about mobiles as media?
* how do we map and theorise the transformations underway with mobile platforms, applications, and networks?
* mobile art
* mobiles and photography
* emerging cultural and narrative forms for mobiles (such as mobile films and videos)
* intersections between mobiles and Internet technologies
* wireless technologies and cultures
* mobile television, radio, and other kinds of broadcasting
* video calling and communications
* sexuality, intimacy, and mobile media
* mobile media and national or regional cultures
* subcultures, minority cultures, majoritarian cultures, and mobile media
* how do gender, sexuality, disability, socio-economics, cultural and linguistic contexts inflect cultural practices in the far-from-even-and-even terrain of mobiles?
* mobile media and political economy
* mobile gaming
* what are the implications of mobile media for our concepts of culture, communication, and media
* mobiles, community, and public sphere
* mobile media, place and space
* ramifications of mobile media for creative, cultural and media industries
* challenges of mobile media for policy, regulation, and legislation.

Freedom of Expression & Computer Games

In the first case of its type in Sweden. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice has sued (Swedish decision here) the importer of the computer game Postal 2 for its excessive violence for an offence against The Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression (in English here), which is part of the Swedish Constitution (in English here).

Chapter 5 art 1, Second paragraph states â??Under the same conditions, unlawful portrayal of violence whereby a person intrusively or protractedly portrays in moving pictures gross acts of violence against persons or animals, with intent to disseminate the item, shall also be regarded as a freedom of expression offence unless the act is justifiable having regard to the circumstances.â??

The importer states that they follow the recommendations of PEGI (Pan European Game Information). The game was rated 18 and also carried a red warning label from the manufacturer. 200 copies of the game have been sold in Sweden.

The Office of the Chancellor of Justice was introduced by King Charles XII in 1713. One of the duties of the Chancellor is to ensure that the limits of the freedom of the press and other media are not transgressed and to act as the only public prosecutor in cases regarding offences against the freedom of the press and other media.

The trial will start next week and should be interesting in many aspects.

CC: The Story

From Lawrence Lessig:

Creative Commons was conceived in a conversation I had with Eric
Eldred. I was representing Eric in his case challenging the United
States Congress’ Copyright Term Extension Act. Eric was enthusiastic
about the case, but not optimistic about the results. Early on, he
asked me whether there was a way that we could translate the energy
that was building around his case into something positive. Not an
attack on copyright, but a way of using copyright to support, in
effect, the public domain.

I readily agreed, not so much because I had a plan, but because,
naive lawyer that I was, I thought we’d win the case, and Eric would
forget the dream. But nonetheless, long before the Supreme Court
decided to hear Eldred’s plea, a bunch of us had put together the
plan to build the Creative Commons.

We stole the basic idea from the Free Software Foundation — give
away free copyright licenses. Because copyright is property, the law
requires that you get permission before you “use” a copyrighted work,
unless that use is a “fair use.” The particular kind of “use” that
requires permission is any use within the reach of the exclusive
rights that copyright grants. In the physical world, these “exclusive
rights” leave lots unregulated by copyright. For example, in the real
world, if you read a book, that’s not a “fair use” of the book. It is
an unregulated use of the book, as reading does not produce a copy
(except in the brain, but don’t tell the lawyers).

But in cyberspace, there’s no way to “use” a work without
simultaneously making a “copy.” In principle, and again, subject to
fair use, any use of a work in cyberspace could be said to require
permission first. And it is that feature (or bug, depending upon your
perspective) that was the hook we used to get Creative Commons going.

The idea (again, stolen from the FSF) was to produce copyright
licenses that artists, authors, educators, and researchers could use
to announce to the world the freedoms that they want their creative
work to carry. If the default rule of copyright is “all rights
reserved,” the express meaning of a Creative Commons license is that
only “some rights [are] reserved.” For example, copyright law gives
the copyright holder the exclusive right to make “copies” of his or
her work. A Creative Commons license could, in effect, announce that
this exclusive right was given to the public.

Which freedoms the licenses offer is determined both by us (deciding
which freedoms are important to secure through CC licenses) and by
the creator who selects from the options we make available on our
website. The basic components have historically been four: (1)
Attribution (meaning the creator requires attribution as a condition
of using his or her creative work), (2) NonCommercial (meaning the
creator allows only noncommercial uses of his or her work), (3) No
Derivatives (meaning the creator asks that the work be used as is,
and not as the basis for something else), and (4) Share Alike
(meaning any derivative you make using the licensed work must also be
released under a Share Alike license).

These four options — when each is an option — produce 11 possible
licenses. But when we saw that 98% of our adopters chose the
“attribution” requirement, we decided to drop attribution as an
option. That means we now offer 6 core licenses:

(1) Attribution (use the work however you like, but give me attribution)
(2) Attribution-ShareAlike (use the work however you like, but give
me attribution, and license any derivative under a Share Alike license)
(3) Attribution-NoDerivatives (use the work as is, and give me
attribution)
(4) Attribution-NonCommercial (use the work for noncommercial
purposes, and give me attribution)
(5) Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (use the work for
noncommercial purposes, as is, and with attribution)
(6) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (use the work for
noncommercial purposes, give me attribution, and license any
derivative under a ShareAlike license)

(We also offer a couple of other specialty licenses that I’ll
describe in a later post).

These options get added to a basic template license. That template
assures that the creator (1) retains his or her copyright, (2)
affirms that any fair use, first sale, or free expression rights are
not affected by the CC license, and (3) so long as the adopter
respects the conditions the creator has imposed, the license gives
anyone in the world four freedoms: (i) to copy the work, (ii) to
distribute the work, (iii) to display or publicly perform the work,
and (iv) to make a digital public performance of the work (i.e.,
webcasting). Finally, the license also requires the adopter to (1)
get permission for any uses outside of those granted, (2) keep any
copyright notices intact, (3) link to the license, (4) not alter the
license terms, and (5) not use technology (i.e., DRM) to restrict a
licensee’s rights under the license.

The licenses give creators a simple way to mark their creativity with
the freedoms they want it to carry by default. The license is an
invitation to others to ask for permission for uses beyond those
given by default. A “Noncommercial” license does not mean the creator
would never take money for his or her creativity. It means simply,
“Ask if you want to make a commercial use. No need to ask if you want
to make just a noncommercial use.”

We launched Creative Commons in December, 2002. Within a year, we
counted over 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. At a year and a
half, that number was over 1,800,000. At two, the number was just
about 5,000,000. At two and a half years (last June), the number was
just over 12,000,000. And today — three months later — Yahoo!
reports over 50,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. “Link-backs” are
not really a count of how many objects are licensed under Creative
Commons licenses – a single license could cover 100,000 songs in a
music database for example, or a single blog might have multiple
instances of the license. But the growth does measure something: The
uptake of Creative Commons licenses is growing fast, and indeed, far
faster than I ever dreamed.