News

New sins and old

The Catholic Church has proposed seven new deadly sins:

Environmental destruction
Genetic Manipulation
Amassing unreasonable wealth
Causing poverty
Drug dealing
Using drugs

The list seems sensible enough since these actions cause pain and suffering to others. Naturally some of them are vague (what is unreasonable) but as a lawyer I know that it would be unfair to complain too much about that.

My beef, besides the whole church organization (all organizations exist to amass power), lies a bit with Catholic Church talking about unreasonable wealth – isn’t this the pot calling the kettle black? Actually my main beef is with the last one. I am not pro-drugs but it lies in the lack of definition of drugs.

Which drugs? Naturally narcotics, but what about abuse of prescription drugs? What about the discussion on hard and soft drugs? What about coffee, tobacco & alcohol? Their abuse, and sometimes their production, cause pain to the individual and others. Actually it would be kind of strange if the Church were to try to claim that wine was a deadly sin.

The list is published in L’Osservatore Romano and was created to help people in the confessional. Naturally the old seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride) still apply so this actually means that there are fourteen deadly sins.

Update: Read more about this at Times Online

Update 2:  Obviously I could not count as I only added six new sins when there were supposed to seven – there seems to be some confusion online as to the actual content of the list – I am not sure if it is actually a list or rather groups of social ills but there seems to be a general consensus on this…

Environmental pollution

Genetic manipulation

Accumulating excessive wealth

Inflicting poverty

Drug trafficking and consumption

Morally debatable experiments

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

(BBC news online)

Posted on by mklang

Land of the not so free

The US likes to refer to itself as “the land of the free” but as a new report (download pdf) points out America is the country that has the greatest number of its own citizens behind bars.

Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation. (via Yahoo news)

This is far more than repressive countries like China and the former Soviet block, who are also among the top ten in this league. In addition to this America is also among the world foremost in capital punishment. According to Amnesty International, its 53 executions in 2006 were exceeded only by China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.

Posted on by mklang

Sports, Politics and Resistance

Tommie Smith was the winner of the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico. His teammate John Carlos came third.

carlos-smith.jpg

“The two American athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty…” Both the americans and the silver medalist wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges. “Carlos had forgotten his black gloves, but Norman suggested that they share Smith’s pair, with Smith wearing the right glove and Carlos the left. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd.” Wikipedia

This is a classic image in symbolic resistance which has been an inspiration to all those who struggle.

The coming Chinese Olympics have already been the target of political campaigns. The Chinese civil rights record is a natural target for acts of civil disobedience – whether symbolic or not.

In order to prevent any such things the British Olympic chiefs are going to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from traveling to Beijing. (Daily Mail)

OK, so maybe there cannot be any official positions taken from the participating countries but to prevent individuals from protesting is going to far. The Chinese naturally see the Olympics as a perfect opportunity to present their position and of course this has not gone unopposed – for example AOL video, RSF, and Yahoo.

Posted on by mklang

Fidel Castro resigns

Not surprising really he is 81 years old and has held power since 1959 (BBC online). Growing up in the middle of the cold war without really “getting” the whole thing, I could never understand why the world couldn’t just leave Cuba alone. We tolerated a lot worse men…

photo: Viva Fidel by GoGap (CC AT-NC-SA)

Posted on by mklang

Hopeful news

My living problems may soon be resolved. Today I live in a very small place (30 square meters) on the bottom floor of an ugly concrete high rise (not too high though) surrounded by other concrete buildings. It’s a one room affair so I can lie in the bed and listen to the fridge humming away. My current living situation is depressing but reasonably cheap.

Things I miss in my living situation today:

  • Sofa (actually a whole living room)
  • Ability to open the curtains without passers by looking in
  • A view
  • Waking-up without seeing the washing-up
  • Having my books in shelves inside rather than in boxes in storage
  • Ability to invite people over

The operative word is maybe – so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Posted on by mklang

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

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

Education inflation

McDonalds has been certified to award A-levels

It will offer a “basic shift manager” course, training staff in skills such as human resources and marketing.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said the company had been approved to develop courses up to the equivalent of A-level standard. (BBC Online)

Ok so I value the importance of eductation but if you can get an A-level in D’ya want fries with that? then what is next? A bachelors in cleaning? A Masters in pizza hut? A PhD in video rental? Steps like this do not increase the value of the knowledge gained but only act to demean the importance of the A-level as a university entrance qualification.

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