The history of cultural diversity

Today is a busy day! In another Swedish newspaper there is an article that claims, already in it’s title, that copyright gave us diversity (Upphovsrätten gav oss mångfald). The article is a short burst of twaddle that attempts to state that copyright is necessary for litterature and ends with the bombastic but incredibly false statement that:

To believe that an internet free from copyright protection will contribute to a rich cultural diversity over the long term lacks history and is naive. Copyright is the very basis for diversity – irrespective of technology – in every modern civilized society. (My translation original follows)

Att tro att ett internet fritt från upphovsrättsligt skydd långsiktigt skulle bidra till ett rikt kulturutbud är historielöst och naivt. Upphovsrätten är själva förutsättningen för mångfald – oavsett teknologi – i varje modernt och civiliserat samhälle.

The author is a fool. He lacks any knowledge of literature and the effects of copyright. This is pure marketing without any knowledge of the facts. It is counterfactual (an ugly word if there ever was one).  Let me explain this slowly and simply so that the slow witted author may understand.

The earliest modern copyright legislation came in 1710. This is a short burst from wikipedia:

England’s Statute of Anne (1710) is widely regarded as the first copyright law. The statute’s full title was “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors (i.e., creators) rather than publishers… (Wikipedia History of Copyright Law)

According to the article author there was no diversity before copyright and therefore there was no diversity before 1710… This means that: Homer (ca 850 BC), Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), Augustine (354 – 430), Boethius (480–524 or 525), Snorri Sturluson (1178 – 1241), Petrarch (1304 – 1374), Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), Dante (1265 – 1321), Chaucer (1343 – 1400), Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), Paracelsus (1493 – 1541), Rabelais (1494 – 1553), Cervantes (1547 – 1616), Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Racine (1639 – 1699), Moliere (1622 – 1673), John Locke (1632 – 1704) & Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703)… just to name a few…Did not provide the world with cultural diversity ?!?!?!?…  So what can the author mean when he writes that copyright is a prerequisite for cultural diversity? My only conclusion is that the author of the newspaper article is a fool…

Update:

In the comments section Henrik points out that Bo-Erik Gyberg (the author of the newspaper article) was appointed Chairman of the Swedish lobbying group Filmallians in in June 2007.

The shocking thing is that the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet does not present this information but allows him to write an article which is plainly a political position and part of his lobbyist work.

Shame on you Svenska Dagbladet! The concept of journalistic integrity seems to be lost on you completely… Are you being paid for this political advertising?

Open debate, free speech & copying

On Thursday last week a group of Swedish artists and writers spoke up in an op-ed on the topic of file sharing. Their motives and point of view are clear. Their timing is also to act out in support of the coming parliamentary vote that will create a harsher environment around illegal file sharing.

The op-ed begins with the idea that they [the artists/writers] had been too silent in their opposition to file sharing. The reason they state for this silence is the fear of “hate attacks from notorious file sharers” (my translation from: “hatattackerna från notoriska fildelare”).

This is an incredibly interesting position. These artists/writers are public figures and as such have a position from which they can easily publicise any and all opinions they may have. They are the media elite – when they talk reports listen. And yet they are asking for sympathy from the public since they are the victims of a group which does not have the same platform. The very fact that they have written and published an op-ed in one of Sweden’s largest and most important newspaper should suffice to prove this point.

This false humility, this wringing of hands, this wearing of sack-cloth and ashes is irritating but it could also be seen as a rhetorical move. Even so, the position of the poor-little-me-I-am-just-a-pop-star attitude is patently false and more provocative than they seem to understand.

The group of artists/writers who signed the op-ed seem to desire a world where they have the ear of the media, the platform to publish and to be discussed (in polite terms) but are not ready to meet criticism from the broader public – from those who they are selling to!

Whether it is culture or whether it is hamburgers the seller must be able to accept the criticism and choices of the buyers. I am a vegetarian and I will criticize any attempts meat sellers make to portray happy livestock. If an artist/writer makes an uniformed/stupid statement from the platform of fame and position of importance they have achieved, then I have the right to criticize them from below – without this being referred to as a hate-attack. If you speak out in public you must expect a reply. You may not like that reply but if you are unable to cope with the reply then you should not have entered the public arena.

This post was going to be about the content of the opt-ed but as you may have noticed I got stuck on the introduction and could not move beyond. So I take the easy way out and quote from the Industrial IT Group and a blog post they entitle: Stupidity in the age of information

…digital products are, by definition, open for being copied. This is the essence of the notion of digital. While some see this as a curse many of us see this as a blessing. Reinforcing laws surrounding filesharing comes at a prize and I see it as neither possible nor desireable to fight filesharing.

To this I would just like to add the schizofrenic position of encouraging and praising the importance is consumerism through digital gadgets and widgets while attempting to limit their use…

To the politicians about to vote on the coming legal proposals, a question: When you give your child an 120GB ipod – what are you expecting that they will do with it?

Harry Potter Lexicon – the sequel

Remember the court battle between Rowlings and the publishers of the Harry Potter Lexicon? Well much like the books and films this court case will not go away either. This was on the blog Recording Industry vs. the People:

“Copyright and Fair Use” at Stanford Law School reports that the defendant publisher, RDR Books, has filed an appeal from the Judge’s decision in Warner Bros. Pictures v. RDR Books, the case involving the Harry Patter Lexicon.

The Judge, after a bench trial, issued an injunction and statutory damages of $6750 holding that the Lexicon was not protected by fair use due to (a) sloppiness in attribution in sections, (b) the length of some of the quotes, and (c) imitation of J.K. Rowling’s writing style in portions.

I recently wrote an article criticizing the opinion, but doubting that an appeal would be taken in view of the small damages award.

Just goes to show that even court cases have sequels…

Academia thrillers

Most people seem to really want to believe in the peaceful co-existance among academics. Most of these people tend not to be in academia. Within this guild there are more political manouverings, illegal moves, moral scandals, alliances formed and broken, betrayals and the occaissional sunshine story to fill a mass of juicy thriller mysteries. And still people want to believe that nothing happens within the ivory tower.

One such affair which stems from my own university is the Gillberg affair which deserves a book of its own. While most of the reporting on this has been in Sweden I was pointed to a well written summary of the affair in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). The open lines of the article are worthy of any thriller:

Over one weekend in May 2004, three researchers in the University of Gothenburg’s department of child and adolescent psychiatry shredded tens of thousands of documents, destroying all data from a 15 year longitudinal study following 60 Swedish children with severe attention deficit disorders.

What became known as the Gillberg affair began in 1996, at a community summer party on the Swedish island of Resö. Among the guests were Leif Elinder, a paediatrician recently returned to Sweden after several years spent working abroad, and Christopher Gillberg, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Gothenburg University.

The article Hyperactivity in children: the Gillberg affair (BMJ  2007;335:370-373, 25 August) by Jonathan Gornall is well written and shows how research politics can get down right dirty and end up in the courts.

One of the main issues was the desire of Professor Gillberg to maintain the anonymity of his data. The reason for this depends upon which camp you follow. Gillberg (and his supporters) claim that the promise of anonymity the researcher gives (and often must give in order to get access) is valid. While the opponents felt that this was a convenient way of hiding possibly bad research.

The legal system, however, paid no heed to Professor Gillberg’s dilemma. Twice in 2003 the Supreme Administrative Court rejected his applications to appeal the decisions allowing Professor Kärfve and Dr Elinder access to the data on the ground that “he lacked any interest in the case that could be acknowledged in law as entitling him to apply for a rehearing of the issue.”

Most people involved in the affair have had their reputations damaged. The group that helped Gillberg, the professor and the Vice Chancellor of the university have all lost court cases and been fined. And yet the view of the Swedish research council speaks volumes:

Professor Gillberg’s work continues. Research funds have continued to flow his way, and in November the Swedish Research Council awarded him a record sum for three years of study into autism.

Professor Gillberg’s words close the article:

“In my view,” wrote Professor Gillberg, “it is unreasonable that I am first obliged to give strict promises of confidentiality by the State in order to conduct medical research, then . . . I am ordered by the State to break hundreds of promises of confidentiality . . . then I am indicted by the State and, ultimately, am sentenced as a criminal by the State because I had not broken those promises of confidentiality that I had the State’s instruction to give.

The whole affair has been a real shocker and the article is well worth reading. There is very little peace and tranquility in the ivory tower of academia a fact that some researchers find out at their peril. Most of the stories are of course not as high profile and the number of people who simply quit their academic carreers along the way would make an interesting research topic in of itself.

The End of Free Communications?

The final keynote of the day is Oscar Swartz The End of Free Communications? His talk is a depressing review of the way in which Swedish legislation is being rapidly updated to limit free communications via surveillance and harsher penalties. This wave of criminalisation is a reaction to technology which shows an overall fear of technology and the society which it is creating. Unfortunately the future cannot be stopped and the legislation will get worse.

He closes with some thoughts:

To motivate these laws we need to “create” wars as the war on terror and war on copyright violation.

Does the nation have to act in the way it did before – shouldn’t a new technological base lead to a new society?

The irrational fear of online terrors create an environment for these new laws

What can we do? Act, protest, understand to prevent global terrorism perpetrated on citizens by the people we elect.

The whole day has been very successful with stimulating talks and discussions. The whole effect has left my head buzzing with ideas and a realisation that there is a need to do something… but what? Right now the discussions continue.

Buzzing with FRA

The whole of Sweden is buzzing with the new surveillance law entering into effect in 2009. Or at least many of the Swedish blogs I follow. The outside world is a mystery to me since I am stuck inside writing. Paddy K has written an English version of what’s going on that is well worth reading. Not only that he also lightens my guilt of not actually being more active in publicising the anti-FRA to the non-Swedish speaking world, which is most of you out their since there are only 9 million swedes.

Paddy K also includes the brilliant line:

I guess politicians have short memories. Or scriptwriters with a developed sense of irony.

Thanks I needed a laugh!

The Swedish wikipedia has a good background on FRA. For more about this in English check out EDRIgram, jill/txt, English wikipedia and the Economist.

Voodoo Science

In what is one of the best examples of voodoo science and the gullibility of the law that I have seen in a long time (ever?) a court in India has accepted a scientist claims that his machine can measure guilt.

The International Herald Tribune reports a case concerns a woman who was accused of killing her former fiancé by poisoning him.The legal system decided to test the Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature test of Neuroscientist Champadi Raman Mukundan.

The test to measure her guilt consisted of placing 32 electrodes on the accused head. They interrogators then read aloud their version of events, speaking in the first person along with with neutral statements. From this the software distinguishes memories from normal cognition. Even if the accused said nothing her brain reacted when the crime was described. The judge agreed that the scans were proof of “experiential knowledge” of having committed the murder, rather than just having heard about it.

Obviously there are too many reactions to this! But let’s ignore the obvious lack of technical reliability, the need to prove the technology and the differences in legal and scientific methods and standards of proof.

Lets just say that the accused may have a guilty conscience in relation to the victim for several reasons other than the fact she may or may not have poisoned him. In addition to this she may lack any emotions of guilt even if she poisoned him.

The scary part is that the dignity of science is accepted without too many pertinent questions by the court and create real consequences.


Voodoo Fetish Market, Lomé by themanwithsalthair

Scientology Organised Fraud

The Church of Scientology will be tried in a French court for “organised fraud”. Scientology is not a recognised religion in France and there has been trouble before. The French see Scientology as a sect and therefore kept under observation. This is not uncommon in several other European states including Belgium, Germany and Greece. The sect has been in trouble in all these states for exploiting its members financially.

Scientology is a particularly nasty sect but it is interesting to see that some forms of delusion are permitted while others are not. Reminds me of the quote in Dawkins book “The God Delusion” which went something like this: One persons delusion is madness, a delusion shared by all is called religion.

While writing this I was happy to see that Operation Clambake was still online. Check out the wikipedia page about the site.

Update: I came across this on EFF apparently there has been a massive takedown of anti-Scientology videos on YouTube.

Over a period of twelve hours, between this Thursday night and Friday morning, American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology. Clips included footage of Australian and German news reports about Scientology, A Message to Anonymous/Scientology , and footage from a Clearwater City Commission meeting. Many accounts were suspended by YouTube in response to multiple allegations of copyright infringement.

From EFF Blog

You didn't check the EULA ?!?!?!

Google’s new browser Chrome is receiving a lot of attention lately. I was not really wowed but did actually jump when I read the Google Chrome EULA. This of course goes to show that I am not totally jaded – yet!

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms
of those Services.

Obviously the text formatting to bold was added by me.

It is totally amazing what companies are prepared to demand in their EULAs. Why don’t they even demand use of any/all physical material you may have lying about on your desk while you use their browser?

Update:

The license now reads

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

The text remains in the old version in Swedish but I guess that this will be changed soon. It was more a question of Google’s lawyers not reading the EULA but being a bit too quick on the old cut & paste 🙂

Interesting course offered at Lund

Intellectual property tends to be taught by and to lawyers which is a shame since they tend to focus on addressing the questions of how the law works. This handyman approach is necessary since most of the students are going to go out an apply the law – the idea is that they do not really need to understand the law beyond its application. We do not educate law students we simply fill them with facts.

So when law courses are taught outside the auspices of the law department it’s time to sit up and listen.

The course Intellectual Property and Digital Information: Law, Politics, and Culture is being offered by the section for ABM (Archive, Library, Information and Museum Science) of the Department of Cultural Sciences. Here is part of the course description:

The course is intended to deal with these issues from a number of different perspectives, specifically considering cultural, political, legal, but also economical aspects, including those relevant outside a Western context. It will provide an overview of the legal situation in a national, European, and international setting and also look at some hotly debated disputes and international agreements. We will gain an understanding of the various forms of intellectual property (copyright, patent, trademark, etc.) as well as concern ourselves with alternative concepts including the creative commons, open access, open source, and also file-sharing and piracy, and anchor them in a cultural and political context.

See what I mean? Lawyers would hardly be interested in the wider perspective in this manner. I wonder if I should apply to the course…