Regulation

Cat & Mouse of internet regulation

Regulating technology is (almost) hopeless. When giving a speech to the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre Symposium on ‘Meeting Privacy Challenges’ in 2008 Senator John Faulkner  said

Trying to legislate to control technological development or the ways people use technology is not perhaps ordering the tide to not come in, but it is certainly like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon.

And yet we keep digging away with the teaspoon. Take for example the latest developments on The Pirate Bay site (via Slashdot)

“The Pirate Bay has shut down their BitTorrent tracker. Instead TPB is now using Distributed Hash Table to distribute the torrents. The Pirate Bay Blog states that DHT along with PEX (Peer Exchange) Technology is just as effective if not better for finding peers than a centralized service. The Local reports that shutting down the tracker and implementing DHT & PEX could be due to the latest court rulings in Sweden against 2 of TPB’s owners, and may decide the outcome of the case.”

Check out warsystems for a better and more thoughtful analysis of tpb’s latest move.

And thats just it. No matter what the single state may attempt to do, technical individuals will find a way to evade the problem for a little while longer. It is doubtful whether this can go on forever, the individuals will still lose but the problems will remain and grow. At best any victory will be a Pyrrhic one.

Posted on by mklang

Dead things don't have sex

Gunther von Hagens has lost an appeal to display his more sexually explicit plastinated corpses – the court in Augsburg, Germany, say the exhibit in his Body Worlds (freak) show would breach public decency. It’s not the fact that he displays dead people stripped of their skin in strange poses. The indecent part is that he has arranged the poses in sexual positions. (Austrian Times, Bild.com) The new Body Worlds exhibition (with corpses having sex) has already been displayed in other German cities.

bodyworlds-1

Fascinating that the earlier exhibitions were not seen as indecent but placing dead things on top of each other in a particular order is indecent. If the courts accept the fact that bodies can be plastinated, stripped and displayed then I don’t really see what’s wrong with putting them in sexual positions.

Posted on by mklang

I'm a Gikii

It’s soon time for the Gikii 4 conference which will be held in Amsterdam during 18-19 September – this year it is organized by the Institute for Information Law (IViR). I am particularly happy since I will be attending with a paper of my own.

The program for the conference is here. Just to give you an idea of the type of stuff presented there here are a couple of papers being presented (full list here).

Luddism 2.0, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web

ZombAIs and family law: technology beyond the grave

“Get out of my head, bloodsucker!” Notions of surveillance in the vampire mind

EAT ME

Robot Law?

Future Tech: Governance & Ethics In The Age Of Artificially Enhanced Man (Or ‘Beware The Zombais At The Gate’)

As you can see from this short list Gikii is definately on the bizarre side of technology law.

Posted on by mklang

Enforcing dress codes

In case anyone missed it President Sarkozy recently decided to attack the Burka

In our country we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” Mr Sarkozy said to applause in the parliament’s ceremonial Versailles home. The burka is not a religious sign. It is a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement,” he added. “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.”

So ok the man has a point. Equality cannot be achieved in a society when one group has the power to enforce dress codes on another group. The intentions behind forcing a sub-group to behave or dress in a special manner is irrelevant. As the saying goes: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions…”

Photo: Stencils Oslo May 2009 by svennevenn (CC BY-NC-SA)

So even we can agree with Sarkozy what can be done? Sarkozy seems to be attempting to regulate the wearing of a specific style of clothes in public. This is not the same as refusing to allow different types of clothes inside public buildings such as schools or courts. Attempting to enforce such a rule would in itself be a form of denial of freedom. Can you imagine police arresting burka wearing women on the street? This would hardly strengthen the image of France as a democracy.

Another question is what other forms of dress would be prohibited? Are we to focus on the fully dressed aspect then maybe wearing hoods, scarves and masks would be considered wrong. On the other hand if we were to see the lack of individual freedom as an important aspect then wouldn’t all the slaves to fashion be violating the intent of the law?

Times Online has a list of dress related regulation:

— In France a law was passed in 2004 banning pupils from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols at state schools, a move widely interpreted as aimed at the Muslim headscarf

— In Turkey where 99 per cent of the population is Muslim, all forms of Muslim headscarf have been banned in universities for decades under the secular government. In June 2008 the country’s Consitutional Court overruled government attempts to lift the ban, prompting protests

— In Britain guidelines say that the full Islamic veil should not be worn in courts, but the final decision is up to judges. Schools may forge their own dress codes and in 2006, courts upheld the suspension of Aishah Azmi, a Muslim teaching assistant who refused to remove her veil in class

— German states have the option of choosing to ban teachers and other government employees from wearing Muslim headscarves; four have done so

—The Italian parliament in July 2005 approved anti-terrorist laws that make hiding one’s features from the public — including through wearing the burla — an offence

— Tunisia, a Muslim country, has banned Islamic headscarves in public places since 1981. In 2006 authorities began a campaign against the headscarves and began strictly enforcing the ban

— The Dutch Government said in 2007 that it was drawing up legislation to ban burkas, but it was defeated in elections in November and the new centrist coalition said it had no plans to implement a ban

Posted on by mklang

The abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren

Buying a good beer has never been this complicated! Check out the instructions and the promises you have to make if you would like to buy beer from The abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren. Amongst the instructions and warnings:

Our beer is sold in limited quantities and the reservations which we accept are always for a particular type of beer. Since we want to serve as many customers as possible, orders are limited to one order per car per per telephone number within any given month.
Anonymous numbers cannot be used.
You yourself must be the consumer. The receipt stipulates that the beer is not to be sold commercially to a third party. We reserve the right to prosecute offences.

Not only are you making promises to the monks – they even reserve the right to prosecute you if you break your promise. What is the religious punishment for lying to a monk?

Posted on by mklang

TGI Friday with high anticipation

Can you feel the excitment in the air? It’s happening tomorrow. Yes it is Friday and the weekend weather is looking great but thats not what I am talking about. Tomorrow the courts will present their ruling for the Pirate Bay Case. It promises to be an interesting read.

Posted on by mklang

Why numbers don't mean much – file sharing in Sweden

Presentation is everything. Shame that the truth may interupt an otherwise nice story. The Guardian was not alone among international media commenting on the implementation of IPRED (Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights) in Sweden. The article entitled Swedish internet use plummets after filesharing curb introduced began:

Internet traffic in Sweden – previously a hotbed of illicit filesharing – has fallen dramatically following the introduction of a law banning online piracy.

Lets begin with some of the obvious errors. The “hotbed of illicit filesharing” is a strange thing to call Sweden. We have a high Internet/broadband penetration and the Pirate Bay was launched and maintained by Swedes but there is no way that a county with 9 million inhabitants could be at the top of the file sharing list?

The fact that TPB was launched in Sweden does not mean that its users are Swedish or in Sweden – this is basic stuff – so did the writer want to increase the sensationalism in the article or doesn’t he understand how the Internet works? Check out this map of TPB users around the world.

TPB Tracker Geo Statistics
The statistics is now based on unique users connected per minute! Should provide alot more accurate data.
Keep in mind that a torrent client usually only connects to the tracker once every 15-20 minutes.

The next problem is that the measurements of the 30-50% drop in traffic (depending upon who you read) seems to be that the measurements where taken from a much too small sample and the drop mirrors a similar drop on the measured servers occurring at the same time last year (Sources in Swedish here).

Yes, there are file sharers in Sweden and yes one of the most popular torrent trackers was founded in Sweden. But the files are uploaded and downloaded from all locations across the world and a large dip in traffic may mean a number of things. Having said that there is no doubt that a number of users turned of their file sharing when IPRED entered into force – but only to begin searching for anonymity tools. It is extremely likely that the users who stopped file sharing will return since there is still no viable legal alternative.

Posted on by mklang

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?

Posted on by mklang

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?

Posted on by mklang

Quotable

The Australian Senator John Faulkner seems to be a highly quotable person. Here are two quotes from the New Zealand website Stuff.co.nz

A Facebook posting or a YouTube video, like an ill-considered tattoo, can linger forever.

and

Trying to legislate to control technological development or the ways people use technology is not perhaps ordering the tide to not come in, but it is certainly like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon.

Now that’s a man with a sense for metaphors! The Australian Law Reform Commission recently handed the Government Australian Privacy Law and Practice (ALRC Report 108) a three-volume, 2694-page report which contains 275 recommendations to improve privacy laws. It is being considered by the Government.

Posted on by mklang