Posted on March 5, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Official statement from OSI denouncing the IIPA’s warped view of the world that says developing nations should not be mandating open source while the US states and federal agencies get right along with the same thing. Very welcome statement that I know we’ll see Open Source For America reacting to – I hope other countries will also flag the issue with their US diplomatic contacts.
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Excellent paper from the EFF provides us with the lessons of history as the UK considers implementing similar bad legislation. It’s not so much the primary objectives of the law that are the problem (although those are pretty obnoxious). It’s the fact that, through careless drafting (or rather drafting with the assistance of the wrong lobbyists), a whole range of loopholes are created which lead to unintended consequences like censorship, anticompetitive litigation and early monopolisation. This really is a document I want my representatives to read.
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“Imagine that, in the Summer of last year, you had been following the MP’s expenses scandal and heard that The Telegraph was publishing a rather less redacted version that MP’s were prepared to give us. Interested, you navigated your way to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk only to find it was not responding. After some searching around and asking friends you discover that the website has been blocked by most major UK ISP’s. It seems a junior official in Parliament had asked them to block The Telegraph for copyright violation.”
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Wading into the “Special 301 list” debate I explored at great length last weekend, this posting introduces the great analogy of asking if the same complaints would apply if they related to an own vs rent model on cars instead of software: “But one argument that doesn’t make sense is to say that government would be ‘distorting the market’ if it decided to buy cars rather than leasing them.”
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If you’re a Carly Simon fan then this free track is a great gift from Amazon, assuming you have a US account with them.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: Digital Economy Bill, DMCA, IIPA, Open Source, OSI | 3 Comments »
Posted on March 4, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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I usually do a best-of playlist for SXSW but this year I’ve not found the monster download of all the tracks. However, as second-best, NPR has seleted their top 100 tracks (that’s 10% of the festival) and put them online as streaming continuous-play radio.
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Or, “how to ensure your customers can’t use your product and become ‘criminals'”. Great illustration of why “technical measures” are ridiculous and counter-productive.
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The huge problem with the Digital Economy Bill – and one which I can’t help thinking is part of its design – is that it’s easy for attempts to fix it to be just as bad as the poison they are trying to fix, unless the fixes are very well thought through indeed. This is a case in point, where the opposition politicians are proposing amendments that sell our rights down the river too.
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The season of change is clearly upon us. Seems even with Microsoft’s support Novell couldn’t cut it.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: DRM, Music, Novell, Rights, SXSW | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 3, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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The finest possible visual aid for why we can't rely on automatic means to "filter" content. Lessig, as the world's leading authority on "fair use", is assumed guilty until he declares – and perhaps proves – himself innocent.
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The bill has its own home page – a fine reference, both for the content and for the process.
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I'm not a huge fan of 7Digital after some early customer experience of them, but the pressure on them to lean up their act on formats and DRM will be welcome. Does the world really need yet another music store though?
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This looks very do-able and it's the perfect solution for a group of people gathered to discuss a document together and all running different platforms and software tools.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: Collaboration, Copyright, Digital Economy Bill, DMCA, Etherpad, Fair Use, Lessig, Music, Ubuntu, UbuntuOne, YouTube | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 2, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Some very serious stuff in here, including insight into the degree to which European Commission bureaucrats are selling out European citizens rights. It’s a big document and I expect the analysis over the next week to reveal some matters of the greatest concern.
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More analysis of the UK’s Digital Economy Bill reveals even more badness. The Bill will effectively eliminate photographers copyrights to photographs without formal registration, and give anyone the right to block photography in public places in the UK. The fact this bill is characterised by the government as “no problem” is outrageous. Both measures can be made to sound citizen-friendly but actually open out enormous loopholes that will reduce citizen rights dramatically.
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Answer: yes, it is. That software you are using – like Final Cut Pro – does NOT include a license to distribute your end product and you need to separately pay fees to MPEG LA for anything you make with it. Very bad, very greedy.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Digital Economy Bill, H.264, Photography | Comments Off on ☞ An Assault On Digital Freedoms
Posted on March 1, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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This is a very sad development from the UK’s public service broadcaster.
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People have been wondering where I got all my strange ideas about American history. The answer: this great book, which I thoroughly recommend.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: BBC, Book, History, iPlayer | Comments Off on ☞ Access to Knowledge
Posted on February 28, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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At a recent debate in the House of Lords on the Digital Economy Bill, a number of amendments designed to ensure citizen rights (as opposed to most terms of the DEB that limit citizen rights in defence on corporate rights) were rejected by the UK government on the basis they would upset the delicate balance of UK law.
Yet here we see the very same Bill seriously disrupting the delicate balance of rights voters already enjoy. You’ll no longer be able to offer your guests easy wifi access, ruining evolving and desirable modes of work and interaction in order to shore up the 20th century monopolies of Lord Mandelson’s media friends.
I’ve not heard nearly enough from the opposition parties on this stuff, making me fear they will just do more of the same – not a surprise, it’s advance preparation for ACTA ratification. It’s election time; we need to make sure the politicians know we care about this stuff.
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UK citizens can sign this petition to the UK government calling for transparency.
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Useful summary from Michael Geist – worth asking your representatives why your government hates transparency if you’re in one of the countries opposing it.
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Peter Tribble documents some of the comments made by Oracle’s representative in theOpenSolaris annual meeting. Net: Oracle intends to keep going with OpenSolaris.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Digital Economy Bill, OpenSolaris, Oracle, Petition, Transparency, UK, Wi Fi | Comments Off on ☞ Imbalanced
Posted on February 27, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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While this is all good, it is not sufficient as ACTA will address far more than just “graduated response”. This looks to me like a co-ordinated action by the Commissioners in response to obvious concern, to try to prevent the Parliament forcing their hand in the negotiations. It’s still important to get MEPs to sign the opposition text.
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Goodbye, Tim – it has been fantastic and a privilege to work with you.
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Decent free jazz track on Amazon.com (US customers only).
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This is an excellent and on-target discussion on the ridiculous case where a lobbying organisation acting on behalf of BSA, RIAA, MPAA and others is able to direct the US government to discriminate against governments choosing to prefer open source software.
Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Amazon, Embargo, Music, Oracle, Sun, Trade | Comments Off on ☞ Gestures
Posted on February 25, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Very welcome – and beautifully-constructed – from Europe’s data protection supremo. While we should not let up pressure on transparency and on three-strikes, it may be time to start spotlighting some of the other evil in the leaked drafts, such as unlimited search powers at borders, criminalisation of infringements, internet access logging and international application of the DMCA.
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Various EU politicians have worked out that “three-strikes” arouses hatred in voters. All the same, the motivation in introducing the legislation is to clear the ground for ratification of ACTA, so we need to stay vigilant as this is almost certainly window-dressing.
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While I expect this will make a bunch of fundamentalists gag (including Dawkinians), I found this discussion interesting and timely. We have spent too long treating “spiritual” and “sacred” as words indicating a response to the passive, but everything I’ve ever admired in the inner life has related to creativity and creation. Worth reading even if just to disagree!
Filed under: Links, Spirituality | Tagged: ACTA, Spirituality, Three Strikes | Comments Off on ☞ Discoveries
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