domain

You know you're a Phd student when…

* you can identify universities by their internet domains.
* you have difficulty reading anything that doesn’t have footnotes.
* you understand jokes about Foucault.
* the concept of free time scares you.
* you’ve ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied.
* Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird.
* you can read course books and cook at the same time.
* you find yourself citing sources in conversation.
* your office is better decorated than your apartment.
* you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.
* you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
* you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop.
* you look forward to summers because you’re more productive without the distraction of classes.
* professors don’t really care when you turn in work anymore.
* you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text.
* you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
* you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
* you often wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy.
* you have more photocopy cards than credit cards.
* you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.
Basically you are underqualified, overburdened and eternally in the dark…

for comfort there is Piled Higher & Deeper.

Posted on by mklang

Fair Use

The Center for Social Media has produced interesting material on Fair Use:

Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use

Peter Jaszi – â??Yes, You Can!â?? â??Where You Donâ??t Even Need â??Fair Useâ?? a guide offers to what falls into the category of free use.

Peter Jaszi – Fair Use: An Essential Feature of Copyright hearing testimony by explains the legal significance of the doctrine of fair use, for creators, consumers and commerce.

Peter Hirtle – How to Find Out What is in the Public Domain explains when copyrighted material falls into the public domain.

Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi – Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers – 2004 study shows how rights clearance problems hobbled creativity in documentary filmmaking.

Or watch the 7 minute video summarizing the results of the study Stories Untold: (43 Mb, streaming)

Posted on by mklang

Vietnam disagrees

Recently (17/11) the Reporters without Borders (RWB) published The 15 enemies of the Internet and other countries to watch. among the top (bottom?) 15 was Vietnam of which the article wrote:

The country closely follows the Chinese method of controlling the Internet, but though more ideologically rigid, the regime does not have the money and technology China has to do this. It has Internet police who filter out â??subversiveâ?? content and spy on cybercafés. Cyber-dissidents are thrown in prison and three have been in jail for more than three years for daring to speak out online in favour of democracy.

This article was not recieved happily by the countries on the list and now the Vietnamese news agency has written an article which argues against RWB putting Vietnamn on their list. The Vietnamese article is published by the VietNam News Agency (VNA) which is the official news service of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. The “VNA is directed by the Government and is authorized to make official statements reflecting the State’s points of view on important national and international issues” (more info about VNA). The article argues against the RWB list and claims that:

The RWB made groundless and ill-intended allegations against these nations for “violating the right to freedom of speech on Internet, censoring liberal sources of news, strictly controlling Internet services.” It accused these nations of “shutting the mouth of dissidents, making troubles, repressing and even imprisoning those who expressed on the Internet opinions running counter to the Government’s policies.”

the article then goes on to describe the development of Internet services in Vietnam. Which is naturally followed by the consequences of such development.

The country’s poor management capacity and infrastructure facilities have been blamed for the Government’s inability to control inflammatory, false and libelious information and pornographic images posted by several local Internet providers. The fact has caused concern among the people. Viet Nam has also failed to introduce effective measures to prevent hostile and reactionary forces and political opportunists at home and abroad from using the Internet and on-line forums to speak ill of achievements gained by the people.

The article then moves on to meeting the actual accusations which places them on the RWB list

Like other countries, Viet Nam discourages and restricts the dissemination of information calling for subversive attempts, and puts firewalls on websites that are not suitable to the morals and fine customs of oriental people in general, and the Vietnamese people in particular.

The main motivations for censorship are the twin threats of subjecting children to pornography and terrorism. Vietnams main defence, in his article, seems to be “everyone else is doing it”:

After the Sept. 11 incident, haunted by terror threats, many Western nations have tightened control over the Internet – a move considered by some citizens to violate individual privacy. The United Nations has been calling for the establishment of a UN Internet Surveillance Agency, which will map out and implement Internet administration policies, covering the most imperative areas of the global network, namely the distribution of domain names, Internet security and crimes, spam, and the protection of individual information on the net.

Naturally the fact that other countries are behaving badly is something which the RWB is aware of even countries that did not make the list (yet) are included in the study as countries which need to be watched. Among the more interesting statements in the article is a sentence at the end “Why did RWB try to politicise a technology that has brought vigorous changes to daily life worldwide?”…Nice try – but when was technology apolitical?

Posted on by mklang

CC Press Release

This press release is available from here

Silicon Valley-based NGO introduces its innovative copyright licenses in Sweden

San Francisco, CA, USA and Berlin, GERMANY â?? November 30, 2005 â?? Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative work free to share and build upon, today unveils a localized version of its innovative licensing system in Sweden.

Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the groupâ??s website (http://creativecommons.org). The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditionsâ??to declare â??some rights reserved,â?? in contrast to the traditional â??all rights reservedâ??â??thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials with minimal legal friction.

Staff at Creative Commonsâ?? offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with Project Lead Mathias Klang and Karl Jonsson of the Creative Commons Sweden team to adapt the standardized licenses to Swedish law. Creative Commons Sweden is hosted and supported by the IT University of the University of Göteborg.
Today the Swedish versions of Creative Commons licenses are being launched and will be available at http://creativecommons.org/ worldwide/se.

As a first official use of the Swedish Creative Commons licenses, the Swedish band Auto-Auto will be releasing their new EP â??Totemâ?? on December 13, 2005 under a Creative Commons license. â??Totemâ?? will contain five tracks and will be available for download at http:// www.auto-auto.se/. Together with the release, the record company and Internet community Substream are making a remix-kit freely available and will be announcing a competition for the best remix of â??Totem.”

About Göteborg University and IT University

IT University is a faculty within Göteborg University. It is a new addition to the centre for IT research, education and development in the west of Sweden. This venture offers excellent scope for cooperation between researchers within different areas of expertise and specializations. The programs offered are based on advanced research and are in a constant state of development.

Göteborg University offers the most comprehensive range of courses and degree programs in Sweden. Göteborg University has about 40 000 students, a staff of well over four thousand, and almost as many part- time teachers spread over approx. 70 departments.

For general information, visit http://www.gu.se/ & http://www.ituniv.se

About Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation founded in 2001, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic worksâ??whether owned or in the public domainâ??by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, and the Hewlett Foundation.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org/

Contact

Christiane Asschenfeldt
Executive Director CC International, Creative Commons
christiane@creativecommons.org
+49.30.280.93.909

Mia Garlick
General Counsel & COO,
Creative Commons
mia@creativecommons.org
+ 1 415 946 3073

Mathias Klang
Project Lead Sweden
klang@creativecommons.se
+46705432213

Karl Jonsson
License coordinator Sweden
jonsson@creativecommons.se
+46707454211

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit/

Posted on by mklang

Canadian Lego & Lacie Hardisks

In the case of Kirkbi AG v. Ritvik Holdings Inc. (aka Lego v Mega Blocks) focus was on Lego bricks. The Lego patent has expired and the bricks are in the public domain. The company however is attempting to stop others from manufacturing similar bricks by claiming trademark infringement.


lacie lego

The Canadian Supreme Court, titled “the court that gets it” by Micheal Geist found the right balance in the case and wrote in its decision:

“In the end, the appellant seems to complain about the existence of competition based on a product, which is now in the public domain. As â??LEGOâ?? and LEGO-style building blocks have come close to merging in the eyes of the public, it is not satisfied with distinctive packaging or names in the marketing operations of Ritvik. It seems that, in order to satisfy the appellant, the respondent would have to actively disclaim that it manufactures and sells LEGO bricks and that its wares are LEGO toys. The fact is, though, that the monopoly on the bricks is over, and MEGA BLOKS and LEGO bricks may be interchangeable in the bins of the playrooms of the nation â?? dragons, castles and knights may be designed with them, without any distinction. “

Ouch! Excellent reasoning. I agree with Micheal any court that spells it out in this way is definately a court that gets it! While I sympathise with Lego for nostaligic reasons it is not enough to give them trademark rights over the shape of every little brick.

While on the topic of bricks take a look at the new stackable Lacie hard drives. In their own words “Professional storage is now easy and fun”. The image above shows the Lacie harddrives. Something about toys for boys springs to mind.

Posted on by mklang

Thesis abstract

Strange as it may seem I have never actually written an abstract for my thesis. The title is Regulating Disruptive Technologies…the rattling you hear is the dried up remnants of a brain which seem to shake inside my skull when I write.

Different groups claim to be superstitous. I think deep down inside all Phd students are superstitious (a bit like Pascal’s gambit – the odds are better on believing!). So I will say that the date is closing fast but I will not utter the actual calender date.

Abstract
The main point of this thesis is to show that the regulation of technology is the regulation of democracy. To understand how the regulation of technology effects the regulation of democracy this thesis will study the regulatory activities of the regulator and the reactions of those being regulated. The driving force is the understanding of the effect of technological change upon social institutions. This work will examine the technological challenges to central social institutions and show that the technological change has far outpaced the evolution of the social concepts in these areas and as a result the technology can be viewed as being a disruptive force in society.

The understanding of the concept of disruption within this work is important. Disruption is as an agent of change in society. Change is a semi-autonomous driving force in society brought about by disruption. Therefore, disruption is the motor of change, change is what pushes, or pulls, society forward. Therefore the basis of this thesis is that disruption is good.

The locus of this work is the Internet. The study is on the regulation and over-regulation of Internet based activities. The measure of whether a technology has been regulated or over-regulated will depend upon the democratic effects of the regulation. If the implemented regulation tends to not only regulate unwanted/undesirable behaviour but regularly criminalises or frustrates many types of legitimate behaviour then the situation is one of over-regulation.

It is therefore the purpose of this thesis to look at the use of power through the regulatory structures. While the study of the creation and adaptation of regulation shows the movements and flows within structures, the reactions towards regulation shows the human actors desires to adapt and negotiate the new social orders being created. To better understand these processes it is necessary to look at the way in which technology can be seen as a disruptive force and the way in which technology and democracy are being linked together in rhetoric and practice. This thesis will exemplify, discuss and analyse the democratic effects of the disruptive effects being brought about by technology and the attempts to regulate information and communications technology (ICT).

The development of understanding of the way in which we regulate disruptive technology helps us to understand the regulation of that which is new and which threatens that which is established. The results of such a study can then be applied to all domains where regulation of disruptive technology may occur. This may be within an organisation, a family group, a multi-national corporation or a state.

Posted on by mklang

New Swedish NGO

The new Swedish NGO has now established its first web presence. http://www.libre.se/.

The “Association for free culture and software” (Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) is called Libre for short and will be active in four areas Infrastructure, Culture, Access & Digital Rights. Since the main focus of the NGO is to bring a major part of an international discussion into the Swedish domain the site is in Swedish.

Posted on by mklang

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.

Posted on by mklang

Expanding the Public Domain

James Boyle on the Public Domain

“My goal here has been to offer a theory, and a practice, of the public domain. The theory and practice come with a change in attitude. It’s time to think about expanding the public domain, not just defending or salvaging it. Some of the decisions that have already been made were unfortunate. There was no need to extend the copyright terms, in my view. It was not economically justified, it didn’t harmonize the law, and we’ve locked up 20 years of culture for no good reason. But the good news is, I don’t think that the term extension would pass today. What we have to do now is to think of all of the ways in which we can use the wonderful technology that is available to us, and build a public domain that people can get access to practically, but also a public domain they are aware of. Because if people have a sense of this world of available, accessible information, and understand what they can do with it, not just as passive consumers, but as people who can actually use and build on it, then we will solve the theoretical problem I started out with. We will have our rich and complex idea of public domain because we will all be living it every day.”

ARL 241: Expanding the Public Domain

Posted on by mklang

The Demise of the Public Domain

“Within every culture, there is a public domain?a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.”

Lessig predicts that the public domain will be unable to survive the next three decades… Unfortunately I think he is right.

Foreign Policy: The Public Domain

Posted on by mklang