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Libraries and Copyright

Copyright has a tendency to make library work difficult. This is a growing trend and many of the larger libraries in the world are struggling to come to terms with copyright issues.

Yesterday the EU’s High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries – which includes, inter alia, stakeholders from the British Library, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Federation of European Publishers and Google – presented an advisory report on copyright issues to the European Commission.

The group also discussed how to ensure more open access to scientific research and how to improve public-private cooperation. The work of the High Level Group is part of the European Commission’s efforts to make Europe’s rich cultural and scientific heritage available online. For this purpose, the group advises the Commission on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material.

Read their Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works, Selected Implementation Issues available here and the annex Model agreement for a licence on digitisation of out of print works available here.

(EU Press Release)

Posted on by mklang

Gun Control?

Waking up to the story of the horrible shootings at Virginia Tech which left at least 33 people dead brings back the question of gun control. Obviously there are crazy people everywhere but when they are able to get hold of serious firearms the devastation escalates. The American attitude towards guns has always seemed strange to me. The idea that the second amendment grants the right to bear arms may have been a good thing at some stage but that was in the time of the muzzle loader.

The right to have automatic weapons with armor piercing bullets can not have been what anyone meant. The technology of firepower has evolved beyond the scope of the constitution – how many tragedies must occur before this becomes obvious.

Gun politics on wikipedia and the point of view of the NRA.

Posted on by mklang

Employee's Privacy: No Monitoring

This comes straight from the latest EDRI newsletter:

The Welsh Government, through Carmarthenshire College, was found in breach of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for having monitored one of the college employee’s e-mails, internet traffic and
telephone calls.

As the College is publicly funded, Lynette Copland sued the government for infringing Art.8 of the European Convention on Human Rights that says “everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home
and his correspondence”.

The government argued that the monitoring was carried out in order to establish whether Copland had extensively used college resources for personal communication, but the court ruled that: “The court is not convinced by the government’s submission that the college was authorised under its statutory powers to do ‘anything necessary or expedient’ for the purposes of providing higher and further education, and finds the argument unpersuasive”.

Copland claimed that her correspondence had been monitored for about 18 months by the headmaster of the college who even contacted some of the people with whom she had communicated to ask for the nature of their communications. The government admitted the monitoring but stated it had lasted only a few months.

The Court ruling was that “According to the court’s case-law, telephone calls from business premises are prima facie covered by the notions of ‘private life’ and ‘correspondence’ ” and that “It follows logically that emails sent from work should be similarly protected under article eight, as should information derived from the monitoring of personal internet usage.”

“The applicant in the present case had been given no warning that her calls would be liable to monitoring, therefore she had a reasonable expectation as to the privacy of calls made from her work telephone. The same expectation
should apply in relation to the applicant’s e-mail and internet usage.”

The college had no policy to inform employees they might be monitored and Copland had received no warning on this.

“The ruling is important in that it reinforces the need for a statutory basis for any interference with respect to private use of a telecommunications system by an employee… The lawful business practice regulations [part of RIPA] allow an employer to monitor and intercept business communications, so the Court is implying that private use of a telecommunications system, assuming it is authorised via an acceptable use policy, can be protected.” said Dr Chris Pounder, a privacy specialist at Pinsent Masons.

The Court awarded Copland 3,000 Euros in damages and 6,000 Euros in costs and expenses.

European Court of Human Rights – Copland vs. The United Kingdom (3.04.2007)
http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/2007/253.html

EU court rules monitoring of employee breached human rights (5.04.2007)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/05/monitoring_breached_human_rights/

Court of Human Rights protects the private use of the Internet (4.04.2007)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/87867

Monitoring of employee breached human rights, says European court
(4.04.2007)
http://www.out-law.com/page-7936

Posted on by mklang

Stallman in Göteborg

This is really cool. Richard Stallman will be giving a lecture in Göteborg in May.

The Free Software Foundation Europe and Göteborg University are pleased to invite you to a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman:

Free Software and Beyond: Human Rights in the Use of Software and Other Published Works

Dr. Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement: defending essential freedoms for the users of software. In addition, he will address how the ideas of free software do or don’t extend to other kinds of published works. He will also explain what the Pirate Party must change in its program to avoid unintended negative consequences in the software field.

Dr. Stallman is the founder of the GNU project and president of the Free Software Foundation. He has received an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology, the University of Glasgow, Free University of Brussels and Universidad Nacional de Salta. In 1990, he was the receiver of a Macarthur foundation fellowship and has been elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The lecture will take place at:

University Aula
Göteborg University
Vasaparken
Göteborg, Sweden

May 16th
From 5pm to 8pm

While the lecture is a public event, and we invite you to forward this invitation to whomever you feel might be interested, we kindly request that in order to participate, you register via http://www.rms2007.se/registrering

Posted on by mklang

Been Offline

Since I spent the weekend moving I have been unable to go online. Actually my online behavior of late can at best be called erratic. All due to the weekends activities. The tough part about this is not so much getting organised afterwards (which is terrible) but to attempt to catch up on all the reading. My inbox, rss reader and real life reading have piled up in an incredible way. This all makes me feel like Chaplin in the film “Modern Times“.

The lack of time to read is a common complaint. This is also connected to the increase in channels of information pouring in. Some of the choices are easy, while others are tough to lose for nostalgic reasons. Less or no television, skip the daily newspaper, more focused book reading, attempting to focus on one task at a time (rather than multitasking) and generally staying on top of all information flows by not allowing them to pile up.

Was it always like this? Obviously the couple of hundred feeds in my rss is new. How should one cope with the information one wants to maintain without becoming a simplified one-track person? In Republic.com Cass Sunstein writes about the daily me. This is the idea that users will tailor their information needs and ignore all “unnecessary” information. The result can be the creation of groups of outsiders who are unable to relate to their local groups.

Posted on by mklang

Bad Attitude

The blog Bad Vista puts a nice perspective on the difference in attitude between free and proprietary software:

As the GPL preamble says:

The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software–to make sure the software is free for all its users.

In contrast, a typical Microsoft Vista EULA says:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.

See the difference in attitude?

Posted on by mklang

The Third Draft

The third draft of the GPLv3 has been released. The draft is a result of feedback from various sources (general public, official discussion committees, and two international conferences held in India and Japan). The draft incorporates significant changes since the previous draft (July 2006). This draft is planned to be the penultimate draft prior to the formal release of the official GPLv3.

Changes in this draft include:

* First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if they remedy the problem within thirty days.
* License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of making them easier to understand and administer.
* Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also provide installation information for the software along with the source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that were proposed in previous drafts.
* New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection from patents.

    The draft will be open for comments and discussion for sixty days. Following this the FSF will release a “last call” draft, followed by another thirty days for discussion before the FSF’s board of directors approves the final text of GPL version 3.

    Richard Stallman, president of the FSF and principal author of the GNU GPL, said, “The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms which define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbor, and release your improvements to the public. The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.”

    Posted on by mklang

    GPLv3 Update

    The work on version three of the GNU General Public License (Wikipedia) is moving along nicely. A news update on the progress reads:

    The second discussion draft of GPLv3 was released eight months ago, in July 2006. We had never planned to let so much time pass between public releases of the license. We felt it was important to fully discuss a few specific issues, including the recent patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, before proceeding with the process. A new discussion draft will be released on March 28 at 10:00 AM US Eastern time; it represents the outcome of those discussions, and the rationale document that will accompany it explains how we arrived at these decisions. However, we remain absolutely committed to hearing input from as much of the free software community as possible before publishing a final version of the license. We are adjusting the drafting process to make sure that everyone interested has an opportunity to make their voice heard.

    The third discussion draft will be open for comment for sixty days. Based on the feedback we receive during this window, we may publish new language from time to time for additional review. For example, if someone points out a side effect of some term that we hadn’t considered before, we may publish updated text for that section aimed at addressing the issue. These changes will be announced on the GPLv3 web site and mailing list.

    We will continue to take feedback from public comments and discussion committees as before. In addition, if there are common questions about the license, we will address those in blog posts on the GPLv3 web site. Our goal is not to preempt discussion or criticism of the draft, but rather to enhance that discussion by helping the community fully understand the text. We are also considering other ways to solicit input, which we will announce as they are planned.

    After this discussion period is over, we will publish a last call draft. That draft will be open for comment for thirty days, and the final license will be published shortly afterwards. We would like to thank everyone for their continued support during this process, and their assistance as we work to make the our licenses the best they can be.

    Read more about the GPLv3 and the progression of its development at the GPLv3 site.

    Posted on by mklang

    You can't say McJob

    After films and books like Supersize Me and Nickel and Dimed. Not to mention things like McLibel (documentary, book and lawsuit). It may be understandable that McDonald’s have had enough of bad publicity. So bad has the publicity become that the word McJob has now become synonymous with a badly paid shitty jobs. It’s even in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)

    The word McJob, as the OED definition makes clear, is “depreciative.” It goes on to define the term as: “An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.” It found its way into the dictionary in March 2001, 15 years after it was apparently coined by the Washington Post. (Speigel Online)

    But now McDonald’s has had enough and is demanding that the word McJob be stricken from the OED.

    “Dictionaries are supposed to be paragons of accuracy. And it this case, they got it completely wrong,” Walt Riker, a Mickey D’s McSpokesman complained to the Associated Press. “It’s a complete disservice and incredibly demeaning to a terrific work force and a company that’s been a jobs and opportunity machine for 50 years.” (Speigel Online)

    Apparently McD is arguing that the definition is outdated and old-fashioned. That may be true but the last time I looked into a McDonald’s the people working there sure seemed to have really classic McJobs.

    Posted on by mklang

    Resist Art

    The Norwegian Vigeland Park is an 80 acre landscape garden containing 212 statues created by Gustav Vigeland. Many of the life size statues are depicted carrying out everyday activities (walking, running) and are, unsurprisingly, nude. The nude statue has been part of mainstream culture for as long as there have been statues. But every now and then the established mainstream is attacked not because established art has changed but rather because existing norms have shifted over time.

    This morning the early visitors to the Vigeland Park could see that all the genitalia and nipples of the statues in the park had been covered with black paper strips. The resistor left a message explaining the action:

    “There is too much nudity in newspapers and magazines, so here on the bridge the limit has been reached!”

    Reported by VG (Norwegian Daily) and Art Threat (Political Art Journal)

    This is an interesting protest which probably achieves more publicity by attacking the established park statues rather than attempting to go for mainstream media.

    Posted on by mklang