open

Saying Sorry

What are words? When used properly and honestly they may be very powerful. But they can just as easily be used dishonestly to no real meaning at all. The word sorry is used to express regret and when used honestly in this way it is a powerful step towards creating forgiveness and reconciliation among people and peoples. When used dishonestly its effect is lost.

But even a dishonest sorry may be an important step if those we apologize to believe (falsely) the sincerity of the speaker. On the other hand, even an honest sorry may be disbelieved.

Creativity/Machine reports that the Australian Prime Minister will say sorry to Indigenous Australians, and especially to the members of the Stolen Generations, on behalf of the Parliament and successive Governments. Shamefully, it comes more than a decade after the Bringing Them Home report. It’s very significant, it’s about time, and it’s (only) a start.

Governments and their representatives have a hard time using the little word – especially for past injustices. It probably should be easier to apologize for an injustice which one was not involved in. Especially if silence may be seen as condoning a past wrong. And yet for fear of losing face or weakness politicians dislike apologizing – even if their words, sincere or not, bring relief to many people.

Update: The Australian government has apologized openly, honestly and sincerely. Impressive and also nice to see my cynical side proven wrong.

Posted on by mklang

Comment on the Open Source Decade

It’s been ten years since the term open source was launched and one of the architects behind it, Bruce Perens, discussed this in an interview

“No. If Bruce Perens could change anything from that day in February 1998 when he announced the Open Source Definition and the Open Source Initiative he’d alter the very way open source licenses are ratified, to halt what he regards as the chief threat to the next ten years of open source: license proliferation.

Perens said the growth in licenses, especially the emergence of “badgeware”, or attribution licenses used by numerous open source companies, such as last year’s Common Public Attribution License (CPAL), is dangerous. Today, we have 68 licenses ranging from the well-known GNU General Public License (GPL) to the, well… the OCLC Research Public License 2.0 recognized by the OSI.”

For more on this check out the State of Open Source Message on Bruce Perens’ own website

Posted on by mklang

Law and the pirate bay

On the 29th of January the Frederiksberg county court (in Denmark), at the request of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), ordered (court decision available here) the ISP Tele2 to block access to The Pirate Bay. In 2006 a Copenhagen court ordered Tele2 to shut its customers’ access to AllOfMP3.com, a Russia-based online music site.

According to The Pirate Bay the only other countries to block The Pirate Bay are China and Turkey (Piratbyrån). The Danish Pirate group have already published articles on how to bypass the measures set up by Tele2 and have prepared a letter of complaint for the customers of Tele2 to copy&paste into emails (Also on jesperbay.org).

In Sweden the courts are beginning to move on the Case against The Pirate Bay (BBC News). Similarly in China, three major music industry companies petition courts to order Baidu to remove all links on its music delivery service to copyright-infringing tracks. (PC world, ArsTechnica).

We all know that these organizations are being attacked the question is what is it that they are doing that is so wrong?

First of all it is important to state that these sites, possibly with the exception of AllOfMP3, do not have copyrighted material on their servers without permission. In other words the organizations cannot be sued for direct copyright infringement.

They are being sued for helping others find that material. Some argue that that the role of The Pirate Bay is similar to that of linking (Copyriot). In other words the Pirate Bay is no different to Google or Yahoo. The debate on linking, and in particular on deep-linking & framing, was never really ended. It seems to have fizzled out in the last millennium, with non-cases such as Shetland Times vs Shetland News (in 1996 see for example BBC).

Eventually the whole concept of depth was lost on the Internet – in more ways than one it may seem.

But is The Pirate Bay only linking? The Pirate Bay is a large collection of torrent files. These files (and their protocol) are an ingenious way of utilizing the web to ensure redundancy of information and the a distribution of traffic to remove bottlenecks.

The information contained in these files help to the person wishing to download. With no technical knowledge the user can download copyrighted material seamlessly from several sources at the same time while downloading the user also shares the parts of the material he/she already has downloaded. The actions of the user are a clear case of copyright violation if the original material is copyrighted and is shared without the consent of the copyright holder.

The Pirate Bay stores the torrent files and hands them out to all who want them. They have no way of knowing whether the torrent files contain information about legal or illegal material. Whether it is there with or without the consent of the copyright holder. So are they contributing to copyright infringement?

Contributory infringement analogous to the getaway driver in a bank robbery. Even though he/she did not go into the bank he/she is part of the robbery. There are two parts in contributory infringement: The infringer knew or had reason to know of the infringing activity and active participation in the infringement (for example inducing it, causing it or contributing to it).

It is difficult for The Pirate Bay to claim that they have not had reason to know that their site is playing an important role in the copyright infringement of others and supplying the torrents in a easy to use way could definitely be seen as contributing to the infringement.

Of course the same arguments can be made against many search engines but The Pirate Bay cannot use the argument that it is used mainly for legal purposes as Google would argue. The argument that The Pirate Bay may be discriminated against in the fact that it is being singled out for prosecution may be true but it is hardly a defense that will successfully permit any contributory infringing behavior.

We should expect to see the case against the Pirate Bay move from upwards and onwards until it reaches the highest court. Most probably by the time the case is resolved reality and business models for online content will have changed…

We look forward to many interesting arguments along the way.

Posted on by mklang

Interns to the Open Rights Group

The Open Rights Group is looking for summer interns. If you have the time and inclination this is a really worthwhile pursuit.

Are you a student thinking ahead to the long summer months? Are you itching to contribute to an exciting and socially beneficial cause? If you fit this bill and are interested in computer science, politics, law or culture online then come and intern for Open Rights Group.

The Open Rights Group works to  raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses and to protect digital rights online.

Posted on by mklang

Cape Town Open Education Declaration

The Cape Town Open Education Declaration is receiving strong backing through Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth.  The goal of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration is to make publicly funded education materials freely available on the internet.

The backers of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, announced on Tuesday, said the initiative is designed to echo the disruptive effect that open source had on the proprietary software world by opening up the development and distribution of educational materials. (ZDnet)

The declaration, and its public support, is an important step in promoting and developing Open Access.

Posted on by mklang

I wouldn't steal

The European Green Parties have begun a counter-attack on media propaganda. Most media companies claim that if you download a film you are just as likely to steal a handbag, break into a car or shoplift. These are ridiculous claims but somebody needed to say this out loud.

So enter the Greens! With their short film and their website they are making the fundamental and important point that making a copy is fundamentally different from stealing.

The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area – lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals. They argue that their laws are necessary to [support artists], but in reality all they’re protecting is their own profits.

The Greens in Europe and worldwide has been opposing these laws. We believe that consumers are willing to pay if offered good quality at a fair price. We also believe that sharing is expanding culture – not killing it.

To protest against the faulty propaganda from the industry, we made our own film. The difference is – you can choose whether you want to watch this one.

Check out the I wouldn’t steal website and watch the film on YouTube or download it as a torrent. Oh and the movie is licensed under Creative Commons (by-nc) so you can even make your own remix version – try doing that legally with the industry propaganda.

Posted on by mklang

The Information Society for None

Free the Mind has blogged about the report Cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy [PDF] being discussed in the European Parliaments Committee on Culture and Education.

Article 9 in the report attempts to address online piracy and should be seen as a step in the right direction. The authors have reached the understanding that …criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution.

However the committee members did not agree with this and several of them have submitted proposals for changes [PDF]. The most serious is the proposal from Christopher Hilton-Hearris. His proposal will force Internet providers into action and to close the accounts of those caught violating others copyright:

This cooperation of Internet service providers should include the use of filtering technologies to prevent their networks being used to infringe intellectual property, the removal from the networks or the blocking of content that infringes intellectual property, and the enforcement of their contractual terms and conditions, which permit them to suspend or terminate their contracts with those subscribers who repeatedly or on a wide scale infringe intellectual property

He even proposes that the EU-Commission launch pro intellectual property campaigns to the general public and as a subject in schools. He is not alone in his suggestion to cut off Internet supply to those involved in copyright violations. The Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has recommended the Committee for Culture and Education to:

Calls on the internet service providers to cooperate in the fight against internet piracy and enforce their contractual terms and conditions or terminate contracts with subscribers who infringe intellectual property rights. Internet service providers should apply filtering measures to prevent copyright and stop existing infringements

Photo hear hear by massdistraction

This is an extremely simplistic and naive approach to the problem of copyright violation in digital environments.

Now that politicians are actively attempting to shut down connections the dream of creating an inclusive society based upon a technological infrastructure (for example Information Society for All) seems to be on its way out.

Why is banning people from the Internet a bad idea?

The Internet has been promoted and become our most basic communications infrastructure (obviously my focus here is Europe since this is where the proposal is being discussed).

1. The punishment does not fit the crime: We have changed the way Banks, Post Offices, ticket sales, hotel booking, insurance (etc, etc) work and banning someone from the Internet will be tantamount to branding a symbol of guilt onto the person. Not to mention the increased costs involved in time and money. Indeed why should copyright violation prevent me from online banking?

2. Group punishment: If an Internet connection is involved in copyright violation this does not mean that all those dependent upon that connection should be punished. The actual violator may be underage or the network may be open to others.

3. Privatizing the law: The ability to punish copyright violators should not be delegated to private bodies. Internet providers are not equipped to mete out legal punishments.

The proposals seen above are simplistic, naive and dangerous they show a fundamental lack of understanding not only of technology or its role in society but also a lack of understanding of the role of communication in a democratic society. The actions of the politicians proposing such measures show that they are not acting in the interests of the individuals they are there to serve.

Posted on by mklang

Open Your Wifi

Bruce Schneier is a security expert and author, in a recent Wired article he argues for maintaining aopen wifi networks. It’s very nice to see that someone who is focused on Internet security can also argue for keeping open networks.

In particular when out traveling finding an open network is a great. Since I often rely on this I leave my own network open to others. In the early days most networks were open, but after some years of scare propaganda and the companies delivering wifi are making them closed by default. When I moved into my new apartment I found seven wireless networks from my kitchen – but none were open. Mine is still the only one available.

For me, keeping my network open is a way of helping others. But, it’s annoying to have to defend this position, so now it’s nice to be able to refer to Schneier and his arguments. Why not read his blog?

Posted on by mklang

Creative Commons Philippines Launch

Congratulations to the Philippines Creative Commons to their upcoming launch on the 14th January. From the Creative Commons press release:

Following the unveiling of the Philippine localized Creative Commons licenses in December, citizens of the archipelago will gather today in Manila to celebrate in full the public launch of its completed licenses and the country’s strides towards fostering the global commons movement.

Attorney Jaime N. Soriano, Creative Commons Philippines Project Lead and Executive Director of the e-Law Center, announces that the launch activities are scheduled to take place on January 14, 2008 from 1:00pm to 9:00pm at the Arellano University School of Law.

The event will consist of three parts: 1) an orientation to projects by stakeholders in the Philippine Commons, with the aim of developing a local collaboration promoting alternative licensing, free and open source software, open education, and free culture;  2) the public presentation of the CC Philippine Licensing Suite Version 3.0, which has been available online since its soft launch December 15, 2007; and 3) the CC Philippines Concert featuring  more than six local rock bands.

Posted on by mklang

Trashing the OLPC

The Economist trashes the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) in a recent column. The tone is negative from the start with the title One Clunky Laptop Per Child the reader quickly gets the idea. The main argument is however strange. The criticism is not about the idea but is focused squarely on the technology that has been produced. The Economist goes so far as to call the idea brilliant.

The problem with this approach is that with its focus on the technology the field is left open to the idea that the project would have worked if the computer had been better. This approach ignores the problem that simply chucking technology at people will automatically solve problems.

Laptops are not really what is needed to help children in developing nations. What they need is schools, tables, chairs, paper, books, teachers, pencils and the infrastructure to attend a school. Laptops, even cheap ones, are a luxury.

The OLPC has been criticized before read more on Wikipedia.

Posted on by mklang