liquid culture

the liquidculture notebook

2008-10-22T11:04:00.002+01:00

CESSATION OF SERVICE

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The Pirate Bay: the fine line between publishing and “merely providing” data

2008-09-06T14:44:00.005+01:00

A recent controversy illustrates the dual role of The Pirate Bay. When this infamous web site published links to files containing forensic evidence in a well-known Swedish murder case, and the victims asked to have the links removed, the website administrators staunchly refused.
Is this example of making-public controversial data to be seen as the operation of an allegedly “neutral” service provider? Or should we rather see any such operation as a form of publishing (making-public) in and by itself? Especially since The Pirate Bay is a website which does all this within a commercial remit. And more importantly: the site itself actually serves to change public opinion on what material should be publicised or best left untouched...
On the 5th of September 2008 it transpired (TT, 2008) that The Pirate Bay was making public some of the evidence from a well-known murder case in Sweden where the victims had been children. This evidence includes forensic autopsy footage, and the parents had contacted the site, begging the administrators to remove the torrent link to the material. Their request had, according to Swedish TV4 News, ultimately prompted this answer from one of the administrators: ‘You’re bloody nagging. No, no, and again, no’ (my translation). The Pirate Bay decided to keep the links despite protests from the victims’ parents and negative coverage of the whole issue in the established mass media. The site’s press spokesman Peter Sunde motivated their decision thus:

I do not think it is our task to judge whether something is ethical, or what other people want to put up on the net. People should be allowed to express themselves and spread material they think is important, that is one of the things we fight for, and that might surely be used for things which are unpleasant, however it is more important that such a possibility actually exists. (TT, 2008, my translation)

This is not only an assertion from their side to let ‘carrier neutrality’ take precedence over any publicist concerns, it also solidifies their position as a real-term institutional actor in Sweden: The national press ombudsman Yrsa Stenius was pressed to defend the ethical norms of the press in relation to their controversial publication. Such norms are not legally mandatory in Sweden, where almost all documents of public authorities are publicly available; instead they are optional, agreed rules which all publicists adhere to. In refusing this mild self-censorship of traditional publicists, The Pirate Bay’s administrators are asserting that they operate along different axes. Their guidelines, their standpoint implies, are those of the ‘carrier neutrality’ of infrastructural services.
   What they seem to overlook here, however, is that a communications network (in the sense of a telecommunications provider) is not a textual actor, or a producer of discourses. In their split role of providing an infrastructure but also a strategic, normative, sometimes-activist, sometimes-dissenting entity, their active decision that “anything goes” becomes not only a carrier decision but a publicist one as well. It is seen as if they are “making their own rules,” and thus challenging the role of publicists in a mass media climate which is already veering further to the neo-liberal agenda that “anything goes” in terms of press ethics and exploitation of individual fatalities.
   Might it be that the strong technological and historical determinism of The Pirate Bay, engrossed in a rapture of shiny new technical possibilities, blinds them to some considerations which might be inevitable if they want to keep their long-run hold on this strategic advantage? In their dogged determination to publicise almost anything, they seem to forget two things:
   1) That their decision to filter out child pornography already in itself constitutes a self-imposed, and at many times arbitrary choice to adhere to some form of ethical standards. Extending this to forensic footage is not a matter of principle but of degrees of damage limitation.
   2) It might be tempting, as a commercial actor, to publish the most controversial material possible, for sheer “shock value” alone. Yet, ~~the decision to go-ahead with forensic footage of this kind most likely makes for a poor PR strategy~~: In pressing so strongly for this belief in ‘carrier neutrality,’ are they sure to risk important public support for their overall cause?
[Correction: the actual decision to go-ahead should not be considered a PR-related one, as others have noted. TPB shouldn’t shy away from material just because it is “sensitive” to someone. Instead, the PR aspect belongs to the latter role, that of how TPB as a brand/Internet portal should motivate their carrier neutrality.]
   These are not new questions. The press has always struggled with exactly the same issues in terms of self-censorship. Any good publicist would ask him-/herself whether it is right to publish simply because one can. The trouble for The Pirate Bay is that they will not see themselves as publicists, due to their split role outlined above. They are a communications service and a normative influencer of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs about what digitization actually should entail.

This is a “work in progress” extract from a longer article soon to be published in the Culture Machine journal: Doing it for the good of the net: The Pirate Bay as strategic sovereign.

The fantasy of cultural control, and the crisis of distribution

2008-04-17T13:49:00.000+01:00

What strikes me, when reading Armin Medosch’s fascinating account of the increasingly hostile downside to all the “free” culture hype of lately, is how different logics of control become layered upon one another and serve to reinforce each other in rather nebulous ways. New technologies allow for freer exchange, but this becomes seized upon also by the cultural industries which then come to expect cheaper terms of trade for everyone involved, especially struggling artists. All this while we’re all applauding, because “free” is always good, isn’t it?

[...] the common word that digitisation makes it easier to access stuff is in fact only superficially true. Once again, on the raw, jungle-like networks this accessibility is directly determined by the search function. Mesh-like spheres like p2p and Web 2.0 networks might help to heighten the visibility of individual acts of consumption/production, but only in a way which is temporary, never fully overseeable, and ultimately statistical, where a panoptic view can only be attained by means of a search. And searches, as we all know, require prior knowledge.
Precisely because of this, well-maintained and comprehensive metadata is not enough. Active and deliberate connectors are still needed, especially since one of these primary connecting practices is the one linking the online with the offline, a gap which should not be seen as a barrier but which becomes exacerbated by the purely online ventures of social networks and torrent archives. Here Piratbyrån, Deptford.TV and burntprogress share similarities, despite the decidedly different practices of these three examples. They re-territorialise and by doing so, compel everyone into opinion or at least awareness. They shed light. They editorialise. They redistribute, or at least help users organise themselves to privately re-distribute in more orchestrated and thus more meaningful, potentially profitable ways. That can only be a good thing.

Jonas Andersson comments on the contributions made by Armin Medosch and Rasmus Fleischer (Piratbyrån) that are to appear in paper form in the Deptford.TV diaries II — Pirate Strategies reader (forthcoming, OpenMute publishing), and in digital form on Armin’s site thenextlayer.org.

Some notes on the Internet and media history

2007-12-04T21:50:00.000Z

A worldwide communications network whose cables spanned continents and oceans, it revolutionised business practice, gave rise to new forms of crime, and inundated its users with a deluge of information. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates, and dismissed by the sceptics. Governments and regulators tried and failed to control the new medium. Attitudes to everything from newsgathering to diplomacy had to be completely rethought. Meanwhile, out on the wires, a technological subculture with its own customs and vocabulary was establishing itself. (Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet, p. 1)

The telegraph = the Victorian Internet
Tom Standage argues that in the 19th century it was a common expectation that newspapers would be redundant, simply because news would be piped into people’s homes. Instead, the opposite happened – newspapers became increasingly important as they started reporting on the remote corners of the world, thanks to news agencies (Reuters etc.) which blossomed thanks to the telegraph.
The Internet has seen similar expectations, exaggerations and hype: in the 90s, ‘cyberculture studies’ was guilty of much of this, luckily cultural studies now treats the Internet more as a mundane technology, closely integrated with the everyday.
The Internet is not an “information superhighway,” it is, in many ways, a series of tubes, very much akin to telegraphy. Also, remember that the Internet is not a total chaos – it is closely managed through protocols, protocols which allow for a good degree of freedom. However this rather unrestricted freedom is now under threat:
As the tubes are getting congested, some argue for closely regulated “express lanes” (see the Net Neutrality debate below). Moreover, the tubes are getting monitored by governments (see the Data retention debate). Also, their function in aiding underground economies is not a simple anarchic free-for-all (see the BitTorrent debate).
Overall, we can see several tendencies on the Internet that resemble earlier developments in media history:
• Net neutrality --- compare with telephony, telegraphy, motorways etc
• Data retention/ censorship --- compare with phone tapping, Stasi type supervision
• The BitTorrent hydra --- compare with the consolidation that happens in free markets, emergence of oligarchies

• Net neutrality – an unregulated Internet or “express lanes” for proprietary content and services?
Many current arguments for “Quality of Service” imply that there should be dedicated “express lanes” for things like voice and real-time video, which require instantaneous, low-latency data streams. Big broadband providers like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T mean that peer-to-peer applications like BitTorrent now flood the Internet, prompting alternate methods like bandwidth limits and priority-based Quality of Service for voice and video.
But this clashes with the principle of providers’ non-interference with what is communicated over their networks, the idea that the carrier remains neutral to its users.
The term “network neutrality” was coined only recently, but advocates argue that the concept existed in the age of the telegraph. In 1860, a US federal law subsidizing a coast-to-coast telegraph line stated that

...messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.

Will a “tiered Internet” mean that companies can exclude competitors and unwanted applications from their own “express lanes”?
Censorship is in technical terms a form of violation of net neutrality. Quoting Wikipedia:

Violations of the principle of network neutrality also occur in the censorship of political, “immoral” or religious material around the world. For example China and Saudi Arabia both filter content on the Internet, preventing access to certain types of websites. In the United Arab Emirates as of 2006, Skype was blocked.
Singapore has network blocks on more than 100 sites. In Britain, telecommunication companies block access to websites that depict sexually explicit images of children. In Norway some ISPs use a voluntary filter to censor websites that the police believe to contain what they believe are abuse images of young children. Germany also blocks foreign sites for copyright and other reasons. In America public institutions (e.g. libraries and schools), by law, block material that is related to the exploitation of children, and “obscene and pornographic” material. However, the network filters also block sites and material relating to women’s health, gay and lesbian rights groups, and sexual education for teenagers.

Worldwide, the Bittorrent application is widely given reduced bandwidth or even in some cases blocked entirely.

Worldwide, under heavy attack from spam email, many email servers no longer accept connections except from white-listed hosts. While few care about the rights of spammers, this means that legitimate hosts not on the list are often blocked.

Proponents of a “tiered Internet”:
* AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner
and their lobby groups like Hands Off the Internet and NetCompetition.org
* Some Internet pundits (Bob Kahn)

Proponents of net neutrality:
* Most Internet pundits (Tim Wu, Lawrence Lessig, Tim Berners-Lee etc), invoking the argument that net neutrality/deregulation has been part of the Internet since its inception
* Large Internet companies like Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft
* Interest groups like savetheinternet.com

See previous blog post for further information.

• IPRED2 – “ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights” (IPRED2 = Second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive)
A proposed EU directive that incriminates infringements of intellectual property rights.
Targeting those who merely link to copyrighted content. Aren’t Google thereby also criminals? A link is a string of text, it is a phrase. In other words, does banning links constitute banning free speech, and can pirate copying only be blocked through such measures?

• Data retention – authorities archiving when, where and who you talk to, email or connect to (websites, FTP etc). Quoting Wikipedia:

On 15 March 2006 the EU formally adopted Directive 2006/24/EC, on “the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks” The Directive requires Member States to ensure that communications providers must retain, for a period of between 6 months and 2 years, necessary data as specified in the Directive
* to trace and identify the source of a communication;
* to trace and identify the destination of a communication;
* to identify the date, time and duration of a communication;
* to identify the type of communication;
* to identify the communication device;
* to identify the location of mobile communication equipment.

For what purpose?
Allegedly homing in on terrorists and crime syndicates – but are these the only uses for this extensive supervision? What about lesser crimes, like pirate copying, tax evasion etc?
With phone calls, everything but the content of the call is archived. But when distinguishing between content and metadata in an email, doesn’t that require the supervisor to have access to the whole email? And who is to say that the supervisor might not retain also what is said given that situation?

See previous blog post for further information.

• The BitTorrent “hydra”
P2P-based file-sharing is extremely decentralised, fully comparable to an “underground” or “alternative” economy.
As such, it is completely deregulated if not anarchical, but ironically recent developments show an increasing consolidation.
The BitTorrent infrastructure is often likened to a hydra – if one head is cut off, two new ones will grow out. Yet some of these heads are disproportionally bigger and more influential than the other. Why? Essentially because of the convenience of economies of scale, where one comprehensive search engine is better than 14 very limited ones.
What’s the problem then? This top-heavy infrastructure is more vulnerable to legal clampdowns, and it is generally more monopolistic (say if The Pirate Bay started demanding charges etc). As with broadcasters or newspapers, small sites can specialize and cater for more niche interests.

“Net neutrality” no simple matter

2007-03-31T18:26:00.000+01:00

The idea of a tiered Internet, with “diamond lanes” for heavy commercial services like web TV and IP telephony, is a key contemporary issue - not only technically, but democratically. The issue is not, however, entirely without irony...
New Internet services like Joost and YouTube are about to exceed the capacity of the underlying Internet backbone of cables and switches. Only the other week, Google themselves warned us that the Internet as it stands today isn’t suited for TV. Therefore they want to cooperate with the cable operators, who have earlier been frightened that companies like Google would take over the lucrative market for Internet TV. The term “net neutrality” was one of last year’s buzzwords in the US, in the debate about whether network operators would be allowed to appropriate parts of the Internet infrastructure and create “diamond lanes” dedicated to heavier traffic like, particularly, web TV. Many, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, were strongly critical towards the idea, and instead advocate a form of net-neutrality where telcos and cable operators would not not be able to decide whose data should flow faster or slower. They want to legislate for all Internet traffic being equally treated; this is most of all in the interest of Internet companies like the abovementioned, since these otherwise would risk to pay extra for being allowed to utilize these “diamond lanes”.
      What has to be noted is that the debate is, without exemption, all about services like TV, games and IP telephony — that is, transmissions which require to be instantaneous and which are essentially based on flows of data (streaming), as opposed to transmissions of objects (file-sharing). These instantaneous services are typically suited for rigorous DRM; essentially copy-protection and fees. The self-imposed challenge that the network operators say they have ni front of them — to “upgrade” the Internet backbone — is, in other words, a shortcut to increased commercialisation of not only the infrastructure but also the very Internet experience in itself.
      This is why so many file-sharers, who often see themselves as defenders of the digital commons or even as anti-capitalists, strongly oppose this tiering of the Internet, and instead propose net neutrality.
      There is, however, an ironic contradiction here.
      Because file-sharing spokesmen (like for example Piratbyrån representative Rasmus Fleischer) often duly criticise another form of neutralism, more specifically the form of technological neutralism which purports to have an equilibrium of laws applying across the board for all types of communication, regardless of its form and technical logic. The present, debated EU law proposal on data retention for example presupposes, somewhat simplified, that nation states should be enabled the rights to wire-tap sensitive communication networks, analogue as well as digital ones. To equate these fundamentally different technologies is technological neutralism, and it is fundamentally naïve when applied to ontological differences between technologies: just think about how easy it is to encrypt digital communication compared to analogue, or how hard it is to overlook p2p-based file-sharing compared to radio channels. Note how questionable it really is to implement a TV license for computers, or to implicate blogs and web services into a regulation system originally devised for magazines and newspapers.
      This later form of technological neutralism is therefore seriously misleading, Fleischer argues, and many with him. But what happens if we flip the arguments, and turn some of his remarks on this type of neutralism against the abovementioned “net neutrality” debate?
      The net neutralists — that is, the file-sharers who oppose the commercial severing of the Internet backbone — then appear directly nostalgic: the argument that the Internet must remain what it always has been itself presupposes a form of Platonic ideal world, to which habits and traditions connected to established media gradually can be allocated and be given “eternal” appearance. One example would here be the assumption that there is an “Internet idea,” which is later manifested through different media technologies (wireless, ADSL, fibre optic direct lines...). These technologies are seen as different variations of the same idea, and their respective differences are glossed over; the Internet backbone is assumed to serve heavy BitTorrent junkies as well as occasional e-mailers, and nothing will ultimately change this.
      Net neutralism is in that sense a way to repress, or to postpone that which is unmanageable to the future. It is a safe assurance that the relative statelessness, facelessness and independence from commercial actors that the base structure of the Internet has been able to gain from will remain.
      And I can definitely understand them. But the problem is that current services like for example BitTorrent after all create bottlenecks, which affect all users when some users download terabytes of pornography and computer games. The Internet isn’t a superhighway, it is pipes after pipes which all have limited capacity. When they are full, they are full. And you have to wait. If the large majority of consumers want to have that mythological future, repeatedly said to be around the corner, where we can have immediate video conferences and get streams of (undeniably DRM-packaged) HD video directly into our living rooms, well then we also have to grab the bull by the horns and realize that the options we make today in fact might be a side-track which would take us far from the initial idea of the Internet, historically speaking.
      Once again an example of how the globalization-critical Left actually often constitute the conservative, retrospective voice in today’s doubtlessly increasingly commercialised society. The issue has been referred to as a democratically central one, but the self-interests shine through — not only Internet companies and network operators in-between, but between those who want to have an Internet where many file-share “for free” (exploiting the system, in other words*) and thus push the existing, communal network to its limits, and those who happily want to bring us to a far more sequestered space. Do we want to pay the expenses for an Internet which more and more will resemble those commercial futuristic scenarios where homes have screens on every available surface and are constanly online, on interminable credit? Is this an unavoidable development when file-sharing otherwise risks to eat up all the capacity that the communal lines has to offer? Have the positions actually been advanced that far?

*) This is of course a deliberately tendentious statement. One could just as well say, given the original Internet peer-to-peer structure of the Internet, that the file-sharers are utilizing the very specific technical strength of the Internet (asynchronous packet transfer, as opposed to DTM) — but then we easily end up on square one all over again: the notion of a form of “Internet idea,” or “built-in logic” specific to the Internet.

Deptford.TV and the ethos of sharing

2007-01-15T18:06:00.000Z

Our new book is finally published!
Deptford.TV diaries combines wider analyses of digitization and liberated media practices with geographically specific reflections on the current regeneration process of Deptford (south-east London) — a process which is currently documented by the innovative, collaborative Deptford.TV film-making project.
As the blurb reads:

Deptford.TV is an audio-visual documentation of the regeneration process of Deptford in collaboration with SPC.org media lab, Bitnik.org, Boundless.coop, Liquid Culture and Goldsmiths College. Since September 2005 we have assembled AV material around the area, asking community members, video artists, film-makers, visual artists and students to contribute statements, feedback and critique of this regeneration process. The unedited as well as edited media content is being made available on the Deptford.TV database and distributed over the Boundless.coop wireless network. The media is licensed through open content licenses such as Creative Commons and the GNU general public license. This book is a compilation of theoretical underpinnings, interviews and written documentation of the project. Contributors: Adnan Hadzi, Maria X, Heidi Seetzen, James Stevens, Erol Ziya, Bitnik media collective, Andrea Pozzi, Andrea Rota and Jonas Andersson, alongside selected public-license texts from Hakim Bey, Jaromil and Guy Debord.

Here is an exclusive excerpt: Jonas Andersson's critical analysis of the cultural significance of The Pirate Bay — ultimately a response to Rasmus Fleischer's and Palle Torsson's Grey Commons speech.
download → → → → → → PDF

Benjamin and digitization

2006-07-01T15:30:00.000+01:00

As with [Walter] Benjamin’s pioneering understanding of film in the 1930s, the present era of digitization constitutes a conundrum of a radical, potentially disruptive technology exacerbating some interesting changes and discontinuities in our relations to media materiality, content and carrier.

The metamorphosis of music-listening and the (alleged) obliteration of the aura
Bearing on Walter Benjamin’s cultural analysis of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, I am here sketching on some possibilities offered by the current, globally distributed process of digitization of media content. Some pertinent themes are the question of digital content as artefact or flow; the question of meaning, activity and passivity; and ultimately, I am here arguing, the question of digitization constituting a radical fragmentation of value.
This academic paper was originally presented at Sounds of the Overground, a postgraduate colloquium on ubiquitous music and music in everyday life, held at University of Liverpool 17/5 2006. I want to credit Rasmus Fleischer, Dan Hill and Andrea Rota for inspiration, quotes and food for thought.

To be published in a joint publication following the Sounds of the Overground colloquium. For the current version, see this link (pdf).

Update on the Swedish file-sharing raid

2006-06-01T16:25:00.000+01:00

1) It turns out that The Pirate Bay might not have been the prime target: The anti-piracy lobby lawyer and spokesperson Henrik Pontén has today publicly admitted that the prime target for the raid was the (opinion-maker, news agency and user forum) Piratbyrån website, and not (torrent tracker) The Pirate Bay! This is, in other words, testimony that the real aim of the operation was suppression of opinion!!!

2) Further, Swedish public service television, SVT, reveals that there are governmental links behind the crackdown - Swedish and US ministers had met earlier this year to draw up plans for striking down on the Pirate Bay website. If this allegation is true, this amounts to a huge political scandal: In Sweden, ministerial interference into police matters etc. is illegal. The ministers in charge could potentially go to jail for this.

3) Earlier in the day, it also turned out that several small companies and organisations (that were all entirely unrelated to The Pirate Bay) had their services shut down since the Swedish police seized their servers too.

4) The actual Pirate Bay site will most likely be up and running in a few days' time anyway, this time hosted in another country (probably outside the EU).

5) The same public prosecutor who is behind the Pirate Bay crackdown, Håkan Roswall, tried less then a month ago to illicitly close down kavkazcenter.com, a Chechen news agency which is critical to Russia, and hosted in Sweden. This closure did not fell through, however, since it would have severly infringed on freedom of speech.

This all means: not only has the police (led by a prosecutor with questionable standards in terms of seeing to issues freedom of speech, and prompted by a non-democratic lobbyist organisation with links to top figures in government) closed down a perfectly legitimate political website (Piratbyrån) which should legally enjoy freedom of speech, they have also mistakenly closed down a handful commercial and non-commercial services (companies which will hopefully sue very shortly).
The site they were actually claiming to be targeting - while clumsily closing down also these extraneous sites - will soon be up anyway, this time out of reach of Swedish legislation. Today, up towards 80.000 respondents ticked the box deeming it "wrong" to close down file-sharing services in Sweden's biggest newspaper Aftonbladet's survey. Even my parents have heard about the story and think it seems dodgy that the authorities seem to have given in to American corporate interests, as the Swedish news media duly have been quick to assert, and that this could stretch as far as to ministerial level.
The MPAA say it loud and clear in their statement (PDF):

Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously wofficials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down.

These American adversaries might be happy for now, but it is far from clear how this will end. It seems like the Swedish anti-file-sharing ("anti-pirate") lobby is actually facing a PR disaster...... and if that's the case, rightly so.

in swedish:
http://blog.crookedmoon.org/index.php/2006/06/01/31-maj-2006-dagen-den-svenska-demokratin-dog/
http://copyriot.blogspot.com/2006/06/pontn-erknner-att-piratbyrn-var-mlet.html

http://strangnet.se/blog/2006/06/01/en-rattsskandal-pa-uppseglande/
http://intrikat.blogspot.com/2006/05/tpb-razzian-det-ligger-ett-par-hundar.html

To the Swedish police: why not shut down Google too?

2006-06-01T15:39:00.000+01:00

Type for example this into Google search:

"prison break" filetype:torrent
Metallica inurl:"\.torrent"
or
madonna intitle:"Index of" intext:mp3

hmmm.....turns out Google hosts links to copyrighted material too! Well, if we are to follow the current example from Sweden, this is very dodgy, if not illegal. Better crack down on those Google ne'er-do-wells, and seize their servers too! (And while we're at it, why not close down some random, unrelated companies that happen to share server halls with the big G?)

Swedish police are censoring political websites

2006-05-31T19:17:00.000+01:00

Today I was about to write a post about repression of political rights on the Internet in different parts of the world (see this BBC special report), but it turned out that the very same morning Swedish police raided the servers of The Pirate Bay, the world's largest BitTorrent tracker. In the absence of more information, one would assume what is hosted by The Pirate Bay are only links that point to copyrighted material stored somewhere else (on the computers of the millions of individual users using the site), and thus not any copyrighted material per se. However, it is as of yet unconfirmed exactly what other material is hosted on these servers - one thing is for sure, though, and that is that these servers also hosted the Piratbyrån website, forum and news agency: a fully legal, acknowledged and popular political website.
This is outrageous.
Piratbyrån ("The Pirate Association" or "Bureau of Piracy"; see further description here*) is a political activist organisation that propagates for changes in copyright law. Now the Swedish police has rejected them the right to express their views through seizing their web servers. The initiative to the raid most likely came from the Antipiratbyrån organisation; the main lobby organisation of the multinational entertainment industry in Sweden, an organisation which represents an opposite stance in the issue.
In other words, a political attack against a perfectly legitimate political web site, initiated by a non-democratic, corporate interest organisation, effected by the police. Does this sound like something that would happen in Cuba or in China?
No, it happened in Sweden, 109 days before the general election (in which a Pirate Party, affiliated to the closed-down website is participating).

links in english:
http://www.piratbyran.org/
http://piratbyran-in-eng.blogspot.com/
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/05/31/1226224.shtml
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1203

links in swedish:
http://www.katallaxi.se/2006/05/31/huh-6/
http://erikhultgren.blogspot.com/2006/05/de-som-inte-hade-med-piratebay-att-gra.html
http://swartz.typepad.com/texplorer/2006/05/pirate_bay_och_.html#comment-18026833
http://piratbyran.blogspot.com/
http://kommentar.typepad.com/k/2006/05/spnnande_om_pir.html
http://kommentar.typepad.com/k/2006/06/nattliga_funder.html
http://expressen.se/index.jsp?a=599722
*) Note: I have to link to Google's cached version, due to the Piratbyrån servers being down...

File-sharing: The American way

2006-05-08T13:49:00.000+01:00

Fredrik at Crooked Moon writes, in a disillusioned, very critical way, about American influences on “IP” (I myself have a problem with that abbreviation) law and the politics of file-sharing in Sweden. He notes how connecting file-sharing with terrorism has been a cunning rhetorical tactic among corporate hard-liners and DRM advocates. However, using questionable methods themselves (remember the Sony rootkit conundrum and note the current rumour that AT&T forwards all Internet traffic to the panopticon-like National Security Agency), the credibility of these corporate actors would pale by comparison.

What is most worrying with the US [...] is the fact that private organizations to a very large part control the decision-making. NRA is a good example. Another one is the RIAA, which was integral to the DMCA, which they now want to revise [and make even harsher]. Amongst other things, they would like to see file-sharing of software leading to potentially 10 years in jail (20 if repeated), and allow bugging in legal investigations of file-sharing, something which should raise some thoughts also in Sweden, noting the discussions regarding monitoring citizens and [proposed] harder legal measures against file-sharers.
There is also a law proposal regarding digital broadcasting. In short, the proposition wants to limit the use of digital reciever equipment to “customary historic use”, instead of the present standard of “fair use”. At first sight, it might not look that special, but is has a significant drawback (source: Ars Technica):

The post points to broadcast flag draft legislation sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) that contains provisions which appear to limit digital broadcast media reception devices to “customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law and that prevents redistribution of copyrighted content over digital networks.” In other words, if it does anything heretofore unheard of with the digital content that it receives, then it’s illegal. And if it does anything “customary” that could also possibly lead to unauthorized redistribution, then it’s also illegal.

The currently most interesting case, and at the same time most frightening, Fredrik notes, is the case of Elektra versus Barker:

The case in itself is not special, it is very similar to the 19,000 law suits that the RIAA have run against American citizens. What has happened is that EFF noticed that RIAA/MPAA tried to change copyright law through trying to reach a prejudicate in this case. What they are trying is to change the definition of copyrighted material. More specifically: Simply the fact that you have a shared folder on your hard drive, regardless if you have uploaded anything or not, and regardless if you have actually legally acquired everything in this folder, makes you a distributor of protected material (source). Would this case set principle, that would have devastating effects for how the Internet works in the US, and for the rest of the world. More about this at Ars Technica.
It might seem weird that the RIAA / MPAA are so tough on their customers/users, noting that these organisations do not abide by especially high legal/moral standards. Earlier, the large recording corporations that the RIAA represent have been caught forming price cartels, and it has also turned out that they deliberately lied in an investigation regarding whether they were trying to instigate an illegal monopoly for digitally distributed music. At the same time, they keep claiming that they lose vast amounts of money because of digital file-sharing, while EMI has actually has seen increased music sales. What is essentially happening is that the amount of sold CDs is declining, but not at the same rates as the sales of online music are increasing. However, the industry does not shy away from using the first-mentioned statistics in order to get what they demand. Maybe they should really think about how things really are and start listening to their own customers instead? In any way, they could take a look at CRIA, the Canadian equivalent of RIAA.
The CRIA is an organization whose future looks uncertain. What happened was that six Canadian record companies got tired of their organization caring more about the multinationals (Sony BMG, Universal etc.) than the local music industry, so these local companies simply left the organization. Moreover, CRIA has spun some very bad PR around itself through claims that turned out to be entirely false. For example, their own research showed that illegal downloading rather increased CD sales than decreased them, something the organization itself denies. Artists from these companies did then create their own organization, Canadian Music Creators Coalition. Included are for example Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan. This organization claims that DRM is wrong and that it is also wrong to sue the fans and supporters of artists. The question now is, whether this might happen to the RIAA as well. In order for this scenarion to come true, some huge worldwide stars need to break their contracts with the majors and exit the organization, something which does not seem plausible during the next years.
All awhile the development in Canada seems positive, there is reason for worrying about the Swedish situation. The country seems too much to strive towards the line of thinking that is present in the US, rather than the Canadian one. One does not need much introspection to suspect cartel-like price formation in Sweden, as well as doubts regarding how legitimate the methods of IFPI and STIM are. That the Antipiratbyrån (Anti Piracy Bureau) does not shun dodgy methods is already well known. As [Swedish rapper] Timbuktu says it:
“Please don't turn us into a mini America.”

As a follow-up, Fredrik further notes that there now are legal propositions out there that may make it illegal to stream mp3-formatted sound. Instead, the proposed standard is one with the most restricitve form of DRM imaginable. In one blow, this might force numerous web radio stations to close, since they would have to swap over to a format with significantly higher requirements in regards to equipment and investment costs. The podcasters / radio stations we see on iTunes would disappear as well, since Apple does not license the WMA or Real formats.

The other news story (via Engadget) is that Gary Shapiro, leader of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), has clearly preferred siding with private persons rather than the huge multinational media corporations. He is deeply critical of how the latter have managed to skew the terms by which copyrights is equated with actual physical goods, and how the large media corporations are allowed to control both the technical development and thereby stifle innovation.It would be interesting to follow the development of this since the CEA is an immensely huge organization which has the potential to stand a fight against the media corporations. It is doubtful whether they would win the fight when media corporations like Sony also are vital members of the CEA themselves, but there is hope that this will help forming opinion against restrictive legal propositions.

This posting was copied & translated from Crooked Moon. Kopimi!

Supervision without the promised security

2006-01-24T12:52:00.000Z

TECHNOCULTURAL ANALYSIS: AUTHORITIES MONITORING CITIZENS
This article has been published in Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik, and in the English collaborative inter-disciplinary web-mag Somewhere Else.

The harsh legal stronghold besieging our digital commons, that leading European politicians are currently arguing for, is not only putting the personal integrity of citizens at risk – it is also symptomatic for how allegedly democratic measures can in effect be jeopardizing democracy. What is worse, it is a strategy which cannot keep what it promises, thus amounting to hypocrisy, argues Jonas Andersson, PhD student in Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, London.
The main problem with the come-lately abrasive policy of these European politicians is not integrity per se, the problem is that the propositions will fail to do what the lawmakers think they will do; the supervision relies on a false hope of security.

The Swedish social democrats was the only Swedish party whose MEPs supported the now infamous data retention directive that the EU Commission and Ministerial Council tried to smuggle through towards the end of last year. 2005 in general comprised a toughened policy across European Ministries of Justice, regarding monitoring of citizens and an artificial limiting of innovation (with anti-file-sharing laws passed, proposals for software patents, and bans on inventions aiming to circumvent copy protection).
The Swedish are, together with Great Britain, the primary supporters within the EU for imposing governmental supervision of both telephony and Internet traffic. The proposition is to force service providers to collect traffic logs in order to, as it is called, make these logs available in investigations of severe criminal offences. The Swedish Minister of Justice, Thomas Bodström, also wants to give the police and national intelligence the rights of secret bugging, secret domestic search warrants, and secret monitoring of suspects’ homes and workplaces. Main reason given: to prevent terrorism and organised crime.
My argument in this issue is: the anti-terrorism concern is merely a cover.
Just as with related technological systems, like Digital Rights Management (DRM) and legally enforced ‘safekeeping’ of decryption master keys (so-called key escrow), obligatory data retention only works in an ideal world – or to be more precise, dystopia – where no exceptions to the rule can be allowed. For these technologies to be effective, they must be utilized in ways that are irrefutably totalitarian; just as with laws, rules and norms, it is in their nature to be as absolute and conclusive as possible, not allowing for exceptions. It only takes one glitch in the system to render it in practice ineffective against enemies that know what they are doing, like avid hackers and crackers, as well as terrorists and serious criminals.
Suppose now, that the data retention directive became actual law. Suppose that I was a terrorist. Why would I communicate my fiendish plans to my collaborators in plaintext, via usual email, or via mainstream European telephone networks, when there are foreign, unregulated service providers for all sorts of telecom- and Internet services? When there is voice over IP, and more or less private intranets and communities everywhere? When there are virtually limitless methods of cryptography, steganography and onion routing? When I just as well could use regular (still secret) snail mail?

That these current proposals would entail real hindrances for professional terrorists and criminals is thus patently absurd, given that we all still would like to live in a free society. Freedom requires certain sacrifices – the fact that everyone should be allowed anonymity is one of them.
No, the motive for the tightened legislation is something rather different: it is to render more difficult for the large masses of moderately competent citizens that in the current political-economical climate are made suspect; wanglers, free-riders, abusers of the system. Tax evaders, spammers, file-sharers.
Earlier in December, it also emerged that the Bush administration has used the intelligence service National Security Agency in order to spy on their own citizens. Seen in relation to, for example, current Swedish measures, the American strategy is more understandable: it operates in a political climate where the political leaders themselves (at least ostensibly) base their decisions on quasi-religious concepts and unadulterated nationalism, in a country which itself has been subject to de facto terrorist attacks.
But in Sweden? I can see three motives: Either the politicians in Bodström’s bunch startlingly naïve if they believe these technocratic directives would in practice do anything at all to stifle international terrorism. Or, they might simply be interested in appearing dogged allies in the top-level political game, alongside the British-American policy makers that together with the copyright industries are really calling the shots. Or, they might be deliberately cunning – since they under the pretence of ‘being tough on terror’ actually are tougher on democracy, public sense of justice and the liberty of their own citizens.
My belief is that their true motives actually consist of a mix of all the above. Too bad, because what we risk because of the short-sightedness of these politicians is an over-attentive superintendence without the promised heightened security.

The enemies of information technology

2005-12-16T17:31:00.000Z

In 1937, Alan Turing proved that a machine can solve all computable mathematical problems. Thanks to his machine, he later managed to decipher the nazis' cryptography and make sure that the Allied forces won the Second World War. As a 'thank you', the British state forced him to endure a humiliating hormonal treatment against his homosexuality, which ultimately resulted in his suicide.
70 years later, a Swedish conservative party has decided to continue the humiliation.
Three important votings regarding the 'be or not to be' of signal modulation. Three wrongs out of three. The social democrats are the only Swedish party which has voted for software patents, for data retention, and for more stringent 'intellectual property' laws applied on algorithms and an insane prohibition of encryption analysis.
This insanity must end! Let Turing rest in peace.

This posting was lovingly copied & translated from Sweden's best blog, Copyriot. Kopimi!

Don't let 2006 become 1984! [updated]

2005-12-15T23:46:00.000Z

[Updated 15/12:] Can't trust 'em

The EU Parliament voted for the data retention directive (378 votes for, 197 against, 30 absent) on the 14/12. The directive, thrust through by the UK under their Presidency and after the events of July 7th, is avidly supported by conservatives both on the right and on the left (i.e. socialists and social democrats), whereas greens and liberals have voiced strong dissent towards the undemocratic nature of the directive. 70% of the Swedish MEPs voted against the directive — the only ones supporting it being the social democrats (whose main propagandist in this issue is Swedish Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström). The reason behind the directive is that data retention is believed to be a counter-measure against terrorism. I myself severely doubt this. More plausibly, it risks to significantly fracture the personal privacy of EU citizens.
Whatever the tally of the Parliamentary vote, Bodström asserts that the directive would have become reality anyway, at any cost. He doesn’t give two flying figs about parliamentary participation:
“If the Parliament votes for it, that gives it a democratic surplus value — if they are against it I anticipate a ministerial decision,” he said to Swedish newpaper Dagens Nyheter.
Bodström's closest ally, State Secretary Dan Eliasson, directly avoided to answer back regarding the privacy aspect of the directive, when I emailed him the other day. Instead, he chose to focus entirely on the purely pragmatic part of the reasoning behind it; the cost aspect. Where is the ideology in the thinking behind this directive? Exactly these rhtorical manouvres we see among neocons in the US and with New Labour in the UK — through concentrating purely on the means, the ends and guiding principles behind them are completely hidden!
It is absolutely frightening that social democrats in Europe are pursuing a realpolitik here that lies so close to actually being a war hawk policy, a policy which in this case undoubtedly lies closer to right-wing conservativism than left-wing liberalism.
However, below is my open letter to the MEPs, pre the unfortunate defeat.

Open letter to the Members of European Parliament, to warn about the consequences of the current data retention directive (backed by EU Commission and Council) which aims to a law-enforced storage of electronic tele- and data traffic.

Dear Member of Parliament,

I am emailing to warn you about the consequences of the current directive;

COD/2005/0182 Electronic communications: personal data protection rules and availability of traffic data for anti-terrorism purposes (amend. direct. 2002/58/EC)

The EU Parliament will vote on this controversial directive on data retention this Tuesday, 2005-12-13. I urge you to vote against it, first and foremost because our civil liberties and rights risk being radically repressed due to this directive, all in the name of “terrorist threat”.

I ask you to consider the following, very likely outcomes of the directive:

* There is huge risk that the “intellectual property” industry will use this directive to get unlimited possibilities in spying on their own consumers. Sony BMG is already using so-called ‘spy-ware’ which is automatically installed on your computer if you play music CDs distributed by this cartel. See link.

* Also, data retention is extremely expensive. In Sweden alone, the cost of constructing the system is estimated to €100 million, and then around €30—40 million a year to run it. Who will pay this cost? The tax payers?

* Additionally, this directive risks creating a society where information exchange will increasingly happen through anonymised, encrypted networks, and so-called ‘darknets’ and remailers. Anonymised, encrypted networks already exist; for example TOR, Waste and Freenet. Is a move to such underground technologies to prefer over today’s more open society?

American CIA agents and personnel are already operating on European ground, with the apparent (witting or unwitting) complicity of European governments and police. Ordinary, law-abiding Pakistani architects emailing sketches of skyscrapers in-between each other get threatening letters from American intelligence services, asking them what the purpose is of this communication – the intelligence services knowing what has been emailed due to the Echelon spy network. As a user of Microsoft Hotmail, you sign a contract where you, in vague wording, have to agree to all material being sent through their service becoming public, and to other (juridical) persons (including Microsoft) being able to use “your” material. This current EU directive will facilitate further such transnational abuses of personal integrity.

Article 8 i the European Convention for Human Rights (following Human Rights Act 1998) states that “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”. Article 12 in the UN Declaration of Human Rights is synonymous. The current directive thus violates both the European Convention and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Furthermore, the Art. 29 Working Party, consisting of European national Data Protection authorities oppose the type of data retention that the Commission and Council propose.

The vote on this data retention directive is happening on the 13th of December in the EU Parliament.

More links:
Music biz to 'hijack' Europe's data retention laws
MEPs urged to reject data retention plan
EU data retention law to help in fight against terrorism

Industry heads reaching new levels of absurdity

2005-12-12T18:03:00.000Z

I own the text of this blog. You're not allowed to read it without my permit...
So stop reading now!
You need to email me first!!!

...hey, OK you've gone too far now.
Oh, and that song you're whistling, I own the rights to that one as well. Stop whistling, or I'll call the police!

And the chair you're sitting on! My father owns the patents! Are you really sure you've signed a contract with him allowing you to sit on it like that?
Is it worn? You've made alterations to it!!! That is, like, 15 years in jail, if I would have my say in the matter!!!

The link: "intellectual property" industry reaching new levels of draconian absurdity: guitar tabs and song scores posted online should be made illegal, says the US Music Publishers' Association (MPA). These guys are even urging for imprisonment of copyright-infringers.

The video iPod: Apple restrains the consumer choice of content

2005-11-09T19:04:00.000Z

TECHNOCULTURAL ANALYSIS: APPLE’S NEW VIDEO iPOD
The new video iPod is not only a lauded status symbol, but also the ultimate symbol for how there in recent years has been a reformation in the multinational media conglomerations’ strategy for getting consumers to exclusively download conventional content. With the new iPod, hardware controls the selection of media content in subtle ways; we see a form of control through persuasion rather than force. ...
read more

[Also published 5/11 2005 in Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik.]

Online BBC archive up and coming...

2005-11-09T16:48:00.000Z

"The BBC plans to open up its archive to make a treasure trove of material available to everyone." [ BBC Press Release, August 2003]
This is now underway, with beta launch coming up probably around the new year. Programmer Matt Biddulph triumphatorily explains:

Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.
I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.

Here's a screenshot: searching for John Peel.
"Think IMDB for the BBC, only bigger," writes Ben Hammersley, also involved in the project, and promises a launch into public beta "in the next few weeks". Hammersley, a vocal defender of the concept of a public broadcaster utilising new digital technology to serve the public rather than the vested interests of some dusty copyright holders, wrote in the Guardian earlier this summer on the subject of the BBC Creative Archive:

Unlike other broadcasters, the BBC should be judged by the public good it does. The Creative Archive would be a public good that puts Lord Reith's original remit in the shade.
It isn't a fancy toy for iMovie users: it is a vault of the most important public culture of the past three generations. It is a gift for the future that is so far-sighted, and so much a good thing, that it is the duty of the BBC and, especially, the government to follow through.
So the question is, why are the creative industries in the UK allowed to take public money, without fulfilling the obligation to deliver publicly accessible value? Why is this even an option? We have paid for it, now let us use it.

Putting mp3s free online help UK band get number one

2005-11-05T14:12:00.000Z

Putting their music up for free download online has helped new Yorkshire band the Arctic Monkeys sell out concerts across Britain and have their first single go straight to number one. All of this despite the absence of a traditional marketing campaign and only getting a record deal with Domino in July.
The Daily Telegraph writes:

While established record companies struggled with internet piracy, the band used the net by allowing young music lovers to swap their songs free, creating a huge underground fan base. ...

UK conference on "web 2.0"

2005-10-14T21:29:00.000+01:00

d.Construct 2005 is Europe’s first grassroots Web 2.0 conference. It is an affordable, one-day event aimed at those building the latest generation of web-based applications. The event will discuss how new technology is transforming the web from a document delivery system to an application platform.

Brighton, UK, 11 November

Raiding the 20th century — the history of cut up

2005-10-11T18:56:00.000+01:00

On January 18th 2004, Strictly Kev [part of the DJ Food collective] premiered the original 'Raiding The 20th Century' on XFM's The Remix show in London. It was a 40 minute attempt to catalogue the history of cut up music — be it avant garde tape manipulation, turntable megamixes or bastard pop mash ups. It rapidly spread throughout the web and managed to cause a full scale server crash on boomselection.info when they hosted it due to the volume of net traffic.

After having read Paul Morley's recent book Words & Music, Kev decided to expand his idea and involve the voice of Morley himself to make a more definitive document on cut up music. The result: a 40 minute long caleidoscopic, fragmented, serendipitous journey back in time...
This newly expanded version, released a year to the day after the original airing, is an attempt to map the sonic boundaries of the pop music of the 20th century, and — as a consequence — also a sort of summary of the entire cut-up/remix/mash up music movement.

read more, and download the mix, at ubuweb or musicbear

web 2.0

2005-10-02T12:16:00.000+01:00

Tim O'Reilly on the concept of "web 2.0":

Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

web 1.0		web 2.0
DoubleClick	——→	Google AdSense
Ofoto	——→	Flickr
Akamai	——→	BitTorrent
mp3.com	——→	Napster
Britannica Online	——→	Wikipedia
personal websites	——→	blogging
evite	——→	upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation	——→	search engine optimization
page views	——→	cost per click
screen scraping	——→	web services
publishing	——→	participation
content management systems	——→	wikis
directories (taxonomy)	——→	tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness	——→	syndication

What Is Web 2.0 by Tim O'Reilly — Defining just what "web 2.0" means (the term was first coined at a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International, which also spawned the Web 2.0 Conference), still engenders much disagreement. Some decry it as a meaningless marketing buzzword, while others have accepted it as the new conventional wisdom. Tim O'Reilly attempts to clarify just what we meant by web 2.0, digging into what it means to view the web as a platform and which applications fall squarely under its purview, and which do not.
see here for longer description of web 2.0

World summit on free information infrastructures - London 2005

2005-09-27T17:44:00.000+01:00

There's a World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures (WSFII) held in London in the first weekend of October.
It's an event bringing together individuals and groups from across the world working on projects such as free wireless networking, free-of-copyright mapping and open hardware. It is also part of a larger season of events (timed to coincide with the UK's hosting of a pan-European Creative Economy conference) based around alternative approaches to knowledge production and access.

check it out

2005-08-01T13:39:00.000+01:00

for all you keen chefs out there!

"Illegal" file-sharers also big consumers of legal online music

2005-07-27T16:08:00.000+01:00

Computer-literate music fans who "illegally" share music over the internet also spend almost four and a half times as much on legal online music as those who do not, according to research published today.

A recent survey, conducted by music research firm The Leading Question, asked 600 music fans who also own computers and mobile phones to what extent they legally download music. Apparently, those who admittedly downloaded or shared unlicensed music on a regular basis were the ones that spent significantly more money on legal services: the average spending on legal downloads among these was £5.52 a month, compared to the average monthly expenditure on digital music among those who were not illegally filesharing, which was only £1.27.

"The research shows that music fans who break piracy laws are highly valuable customers," Paul Brindley, director of The Leading Question, said to The Guardian. "There's a myth that all illegal downloaders are mercenaries hell-bent on breaking the law in pursuit of free music. In reality they are often hardcore fans who are extremely enthusiastic about adopting paid-for services as long as they are suitably compelling."

liquidculture says: is it that surprising?
Consumption begets more consumption; if I download songs from 100 different artists and like, say, 20 of them, am I not likely to maybe buy an album by at least one or two of these 20 artists?

Companies suing each other over the rights to use the number "3" as trademark

2005-07-26T17:26:00.000+01:00

File under copyright/trademarking absurdity:
Swedish media conglomerate MTG (proprietor of satellite/cable channel TV3) is currently in a legal process with the mobile phone network operator Hi3G (owner of the mobile network 3), over the rights to use the numeral "3" as copyrighted trademark.

The MTG media conglomerate argues that Hi3G is positioning itself as a "media corporation", something that would thus imply that they are operating in the same marketplace as MTG. According to MTG, the mobile phone operator 3 cannot argue that they are only a mobile operator, and furthermore, they cannot use the number "3" because the TV channel media company TV3 used the number first, Swedish blog being J Andersson is reporting.
According to this view, mobile phones are not mobile phones — they are media platforms, and "3" is not a number — it’s a trademark.
This argumentation is made possible — yes even supported — by the contemporary copyright/trademark system, which allows companies to (at least in theory) claim rights to something as ubiquitous as a numeral, and which allows corporations to claim interests in areas that may in reality be remote from their core operations, but on paper (in the legal registry of operative markets) be amended to their "operations strategy". (That is, a company that is essentially a mobile communications company can due to the synergy of various media into these communications now lay claims to be a TV broadcaster, text publisher, or why not an amusement service provider?)
A central part of this story is that the MTG media conglomerate itself incorporates one of Scandinavia's biggest mobile phone operators, Tele2/Comviq, and obviously only uses this legal case to test the grounds for fighting core competitors also in the legal playing field. For these companies, the law is less of a metaphysical system for laying down core ethical guidelines, than simply a springboard for cutting the most profitable deals.

read more

What power does the US have over the Internet, really?

2005-07-22T17:17:00.000+01:00

Rasmus Fleischer reflects upon a current hot topic; the expected continuation of US government authority over the global DNS system.
At least two news stories have focussed on the question regarding the power over the Internet, more specifically the power over the Domain Name System (DNS). Partly, the German music monopoly GEMA is trying to force ISP’s to encumber the accessibility of sites connected to the eMule/eDonkey file-sharing network.
And partly, the US government has announced new principles, aimed at ‘ensuring stability and security’ of the global DNS, through ‘maintaining its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file’. In other words, the US government thereby refuses to hand over the control of the DNS to the non-profit ICANN corporation, as had been generally expected when the current contract is due to expired next year. Even less so, the US agrees to hand over control of domain names to the UN. Instead, all indications are that ICANN shall continue having responsibility only of the sheer technical management of the DNS. This has clearly upset several commentators, especially those voices being (allegedly) regarded “anti-American” and “anti-Bush”.
On the anti-Bush site Daily Kos, speculations are running wild:

Just as China would prefer not to let their people wander outside the Chinese portion of the net, I suspect the Bushies would prefer to keep Americans under their control and prevent us from being polluted with all those evil "French" ideas that are out their.
That said, having control over the root zone files gives the US a great deal of control over who can interconnect to "our" network.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The idea that control over the DNS root would give free hands for censorship is not correct. The Internet is a dynamic system that relies on standards and protocols, not on laws. Although protocols should not be equalled with “democracy”, the fact remains that the standard that most users adhere to has “won”, regardless of what the authority behind the losing standard claims.
On Slashdot, commentaries are written like; “let's start up our own DNS servers and let the US isolate themselves as they choose”. Which works, yes – in theory. The only authority in the DNS root is in humans/computers freely adhering to a unified system for transforming domain names to IP addresses. Effectively, it is illusory to think that anyone could start alternative domain name systems at wish, which is pointed out in another commentary; “It's like saying there is nothing prohibiting people from forming an alternative government, holding cabinet meetings in a garage. It's pointless unless people accept it, and sadly the only way to achieve acceptance is to press it through politics.”
But still – to the extent that the DNS authority ruins the Internet, the users will accordingly leave it behind, empty its authority of real content and point their browsers to other DNS servers instead.
Dana Blankenhorn on Corante.com examines “Balkanization” of the Internet as an actual and valid risk. This, for example, if UN organs would dismiss the US authority and construct an alternative DNS root. The result would then be two different ways of connecting domain names to IP addresses; strictly speaking, two different Internets. And if two, why not more? “China could establish its own DNS and thus simplify its Great Firewall by not having pointers to any site its leaders don't approve of.”
On the other hand, though, there is not actually anything that would stop China from doing this today.
Obviously, the choice remains to stay within the globally established standard, the one administered by ICANN under the authority of US government. To do anything else — that is, to try create national (isolationist) managerial tools for Internet standards and not only filter out unwanted pages — would basically be to say no to the Internet full stop and take the Northern Korean path. The struggle over (plural) Internets is, as we see, fought with anything but free hands. It cannot be compared to, say, The Soviet Union’s control over print presses. The alternative to press the “off” button does not exist. And no filters or DNS overthrows in the world control more than just the peaks of icebergs, since the www is merely one piece of the Internet.
Thus, there are no reasons to speculate about the “downfall of the Internet”. Especially when talking about the strategies of GEMA (introduced above) of manipulating DNS to block out certain domain names – to circumvent this is ridiculously easy. In the words of Oscar Swartz:

Obviously, knowledgeable users can dodge these tricks through, for example, utilising pure IP numbers rather than domain names. The IP addresses to relevant sites could be spread around the world on countless blogs, thanks to the effort of sympathising bloggers. The users could also set their computers manually to use other DNSs than their own provider’s, that is, non-tampered ones.

The German CCC (Chaos Computer Club) has published a simple guide (in German) to getting round these censorship ploys. This due to an several year-long, still ongoing legal process, where the federal government of North Rhine and Westphalia has demanded 80 local ISPs to block out two Neo-Nazi domains through DNS manipulation. Does GEMA really think that they can stop file-sharing through taking this domain name route against the today already outmoded eDonkey network?
It also has become clear that their letter of warning was signed with the names of several German musicians that were not at all agreeing on these methods, among them the front person of the popular group Wir sind Helden. The anti-piracy antics of the music monopolists is losing the plot more and more, and they still continue to do it in the names of music makers that obviously do not agree with these strategies.
Earlier this spring, Henrik Pontén, spokesperson for the Swedish “Anti-Piracy Bureau” (Antipiratbyrån) joined this rhetoric, arguing in woolly language for filtering out file-sharing-related activity on the net. Still we have not received any further explanation of what is really meant by this.

Originally published by Rasmus Fleischer 12/07 2005 on Swedish blog Copyriot.

European software patenting directive rejected

2005-07-08T19:00:00.000+01:00

Some good news amid the horror of yesterday's events:
The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive — the very bill that has recently been criticised and opposed by the Free Software movement, the very bill that could have led to software being patented in the EU.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) congratulates the European Parliament on its clear "no" to what they see as bad legislative proposals and procedures. The bill would have stalled economic development and freedom of invention, they argue. Big technology firms, such as Philips, Nokia, Microsoft, Siemens, and telecoms firm Ericsson, continued to voice their support for the original bill, claiming that it would have brought harmonisation and consistency to the issue of patenting in Europe.
Software is already protected by copyright, and patents will continue to be handled by national patent offices, exactly as it has been before, according to the EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. This means that different interpretations as to what is patentable can apply, without any judiciary control by the European Court of Justice.

read more (BBC News)
FFII statement
FSF Europe statement

Let’s once and for all kill the solitary Romantic genius

2005-07-04T15:54:00.000+01:00

Translations — Creative Copying and Originality
Thomas Dane Gallery, London, 14/7 to 9/9 2005

“They said that when I began in Paris I copied Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen; possible, but never was a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec or Steinlen taken for mine. It is better to copy a drawing or painting than to try to be inspired by it, to make something similar. In that case one risks painting only the faults of the model. A painter’s atelier should be a laboratory. One doesn’t make a monkey’s job there: one invents.”
Pablo Picasso

Seventeen works by nine artists look at the central role copying plays in day-to-day studio practice. The idea that artists create autonomously is a great myth. The exhibition shows how artists have always been attracted by the works of their predecessors and contemporaries and how they have explored the creative potential of copying for their own goals. Allowing a multitude of approaches to the source (record, exercise, parody, quotation, paraphrase, exorcism, caricature, metamorphosis, transformation, catalyst), copying has enabled artists to establish their own voices, to invoke and reject precedents and declare affinities, to measure distances and declare new goals. In some cases the most radically advanced work has been deeply indebted to history (For example, Cezanne’s Bathers or Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon).

Rembrandt —> Frank Auerbach —> Glenn Brown
Pierre Puget, Peter Paul Rubens and The Antiquity —> Paul Cezanne
Daumier —> Peter Doig
Degas —> Howard Hodgkin and Rebecca Warren
Petrus Christus —> Gary Hume
Manet —> Pablo Picasso
Jan van Eyck and Georges Seurat —> Bridget Riley
more info

British Library acknowledges digitization

2005-06-30T16:49:00.000+01:00

Lynne Bryndley, Chief Executive at the British Library, expresses an embracing approach to digitization in regards to the Library's three-year strategy, unveiled 29/6 2005:

"Most people are aware that a national switch to digital broadcasting is expected by the end of this decade. Less well known is the fact that a similar trend is underway in the world of publishing: a study by EPS , commissioned by the Library, projects that, by the year 2020, 40% of UK research monographs will be available in electronic format only, while a further 50% will be produced in both print and digital. A mere 10% of new titles will be available in print alone by 2020."

[Quote from the press release. See also Redefining the Library: the British Library's strategy 2005-2008 as pdf.]

The Grokster case — possible outcomes... [updated version]

2005-06-28T16:23:00.000+01:00

The New York Times writes:

The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously today [27/6 2005] that Internet file-sharing services like Grokster and StreamCast Networks could be held responsible if they encouraged users to trade songs, movies and television shows online without paying for them.

The verdict is that the case thus can go back to lower court for proper trial. The justices' main argument is that there was enough evidence that the prosecuted Web services were seeking to profit from their customers' use of the illegally shared files spread through these networks.
In other words, a field day for Big Business — the established American movie- and music industry — which has argued persistently not only that online sharing of content severely harms their profits (an argument that is intrinsically hard to prove and duly has been disproved in several scientifical papers), but also that file-sharing ultimately could inhibit the creation of new content (which, of course, is simply untrue). So the bullies of the game keep smiling self-righteously while get a temporary advantage position in the continued struggle.
Cnet lists the prospective winners and losers of this slightly new situation; they conclude that licensed music and mp3 retailers are a winning bunch, with digital music sales probably continuing to soar, whereas mainstream file-sharing networks like eDonkey, LimeWire and Kazaa as well as mp3-only devices like today's iPods will lose out.
Obviously, these news report only address the mainstream, big-money networks out there. For more noncommercial/smaller/underground networks, the Supreme Court ruling is likely to have less of an effect. As New York Times once again writes,

there was some relief expressed among lawyers and advocacy groups aligned with Grokster, in that the Supreme Court seemed to clearly focus its attention not on the legality of peer-to-peer technology itself, but on the behavior of players seeking to make a profit from the technology [emphasis added].

read more (NY Times)
read more (Digital Music News)
read more (Cnet)

Added 28/6 2005, afternoon update:

Allow me to quote Swedish law and IT specialist Nicklas Lundblad, who points out that the ruling was one that essentially underlines how companies that knowingly support their customers to infringe on copyright law (and thereby indirectly breaking the law themselves) should be banned from doing so. In line with this, Lundblad argues, BitTorrent as a technology should not be outlawed (since its originator Bram Cohen neither contributorily nor vicariously has infringed on copyrights), whereas tracker sites definitely might be made illegal (they might well be already):

Probably our focus on Grokster was superfluous: the case is not the principal one we believed it to be, but a rather simple proceeding. And that it would be a blow against file-sharing is probably wrong too: what has happened is that companies that have gained from infringing the copyright of others have been condemned for this business model (which has been explicit and conscious).
The important part is this: it won’t become possible to outlaw file-sharing technology per se, nor the development of this technology. And [as pointed out above in this liquidculture posting] when there are no commercial businesses to refer back to the ruling becomes entirely irrelevant.
The music industry probably celebrates this as a victory just because there is so little else, that goes well for them.

MS reshuffle

2005-06-27T16:34:00.000+01:00

MS Reshuffle — a call for all bloggers out there to start writing “how to switch from MS ____ to ____” articles, in a clear, simple, effective language.
read more

The long tail of reggae riddims

2005-06-27T11:56:00.000+01:00

Boston College research student Pacey Foster has (in collaboration with fellows Stephen Cook and Rich DeJordy) mapped the structural properties of how reggae riddims are networked together in different versions of songs (originally archived at reggae-riddims.com), and it all makes for some quite amazing insight.
The world of reggae is often said to operate more like a creative commons than the corporate Western music industry, since artists freely compete with each other making different versions of the same songs, or riddims (rhythms). (Since as we all know, the Western ideal of copyright wouldn't allow for such free reproduction of rhythms and melodies...)
As with many other natural and cultural phenomena, the distribution of these reggae riddims display significant characteristics of a power-law distribution: a small number of riddims get versioned a lot and the vast majority (a long tail of different songs) get versioned only once or twice.
read more

other similar projects:
The word count flash site (shows how the dissemination of words in the English language displays similar properties).
The interactive sample application (shows how sampling creates interconnected links between works of music, displaying network properties).

Patent absurdity

2005-06-22T17:29:00.000+01:00

If patent law had been applied to novels in the 1880s, great books would not have been written. If the EU applies it to software, every computer user will be restricted, Free Software Foundation-founder and GNU guru Richard Stallman says in The Guardian.

openDemocracy goes CC

2005-06-20T17:25:00.000+01:00

OpenDemocracy, the online global magazine / debate forum of politics and culture has gone Creative Commons. As they put it:

From 13 June 2005 openDemocracy will be publishing the majority of its articles under Creative Commons licences. It's part of our contribution to global democracy. The rest is up to you...

remix the BBC! [updated version]

2005-06-20T16:58:00.000+01:00

The BBC has launched a new site, backstage.bbc.co.uk that actively encourages people to mash up, remix, and re-invent the BBC content. “Like the Creative Archive, but for data”...
read more
Worth mentioning here as well is the Wikiproxy BBC initiative: all matching words in all articles linked to wikipedia.

Added 20/6 2005:

J. Grant offers a critical outlook on the current state of the BBC Audio Download trial. While of course opening up BBC content for extended use over digital platforms is on the whole a positive step forward, the licenses used for the current BBC Interactive Media Player project involve so-called Digital Rights Management (DRM)technology, which basically severely restricts the use of this downloaded material.
The DRM software will make the content expire seven days after it was originally aired, and the user will then no longer be able to watch it. The software also prevents users emailing the files to other computer users or sharing it via disk. Why would it be in the BBC's interest to so severely limit the use of their newly-made-digitally-available content?
The answer, as the BBC probably would argue, might lie in the cumbersome nature of revisiting contracts with actors, script writers, music contributors and other copyright holders involved in the making of programmes. The nature of earlier contracts limit the re-broadcasting of content, and in the light of new, digital forms of distribution the problem becomes painfully complicated. But to counter this argument, we need not go further than a direct quote from J. Grant:

BBC is a public broadcaster, providing for people who pay the TV licence fee. The BBC agreement is set out in the Royal Charter. Providing that content over a TCP/IP should be no different from the way the BBC broadcast on Freeview. We can record programmes on VHS or DVR from Freeview, why do people with TV licences need to be restricted when the medium is an alternative digital form?

Yes, why? Is it simply so that there still is a lurking, not-fully-discernable fear of the fickle, fast-moving nature of digital media, especially after recurrent reports on DVD/CD piracy and mass-scale, allegedly illegal file-sharing? Doubtlessly, the issue of releasing audiovisual content into the public realm is still surrounded by a veritable morass of moral panic...
The BBC has a leading role here, though. Just as with the introduction of the concept of public service into the broadcasting technosphere 50 years ago, the BBC could make a bold strike and introduce a fuller realisation of this concept into the current digital technosphere!

BitTorrent as 'video-on-demand'

2005-06-17T14:56:00.000+01:00

The Guardian's Simon Waldman offers a brief introduction to BitTorrent for the uninitiated. He makes some interesting analogies; essentaially, he means, BitTorrent can be understood as a form of unofficial proto-version of a 'video-on-demand' system, allowing people to watch whatever TV they want when they want it – something the industry has been talking about for decades but never yet fully managed to provide to any distinguishable scale:

In this world the traditional restrictions of schedules and broadcasting territories disappear. You want to watch the latest OC, 24, or Desperate Housewives months before it arrives in the UK? No problem. You're addicted to Comedy Central's the Daily Show, but don't subscribe to Cable? It's all yours.

British government planning to extend copyright on pop music

2005-06-17T12:20:00.000+01:00

The British government wants to extend copyright laws to ensure pop songs are protected for almost twice as long as the current 50 years. This will in effect create a system more similar to the American, where copyright protection lasts more than 90 years.
The Sunday Times writes (although quite uncritically) on how the British government has announced plans to extend copyright for pop songs even long after the death of their authors. Like with the American 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (where currently active copyrights are given terms of 95 years from the date copyright was originally secured), is it a coincidence that these calls for copyright extension occur when certain corporate entities face their copyrights soon expiring?
In 1998, the rights for early Mickey Mouse were soon to expire — what happens? Extended copyright.
In 2005, the rights for 60's era Beatles and Rolling Stone material faces expiration under current British law (50 years after their original recording date) — what happens? It'll be exciting to see...

Added 17/6 2005:

Recording industry lobbyists claim that extending copyright terms will lead to further returns from a few, still profitable recordings from the 50s and 60s which can then be invested in new acts and artists. This perhaps might be true, but such a move would also cause many tens of thousands more unprofitable records to be kept out of the public domain and moulder slowly in private hands. This would be an immeasurable loss to current and future generations for the sake of increasing profits.
read more

/ James Davis

The only beneficiaries will the owners of limited number of valuable back catalogues — the large labels and a very few lucky performers — who will receive windfall gains. Meanwhile an extension would lock up for no-one's benefit the vast number of old works that no longer have commercial value — a huge loss to the public domain and our culture generally.
read more

/ Rufus Pollock

OECD dismisses record industry claims

2005-06-16T13:00:00.000+01:00

A recent OECD report dismisses the crude logical leap the recording industry makes through persistently claiming online file-sharing being a direct and single cause of faltering CD sales:

The number of simultaneous users on all P2P networks reached almost 10 million in October 2004. The United States makes up more than 50% of all simultaneous file-sharing users, with Germany at around 10%, Canada and France at 8%. In principle, file-sharing networks are an innovative technology that finds increasingly useful applications in new services and in authorised file-sharing. However, the use of P2P networks to exchange unauthorised copyright-protected content presents a significant challenge to the music industry and to the enforcement of intellectual property rights. There is currently a considerable volume of copyright infringement that is taking place among users of peer-to-peer networking software. This unfair competition puts pressure on legitimate online music and other content services and may have slowed commercial services that offer access to content online.
Nevertheless, it is very difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the size of the drop in music sales and the rise of file sharing. Sales of CDs, as well as the success of licensed on-line music services are likely to have been affected to some degree by a variety of other factors, for example physical piracy and CD burning, competition from other, newer entertainment products and faltering consumer spending in some markets. [p. 11]

The Economist reports that the music industry strongly objected to these conclusions, but it only confirms what many of have been saying for some time. P2P may have some impact on music sales but it is by no means the evil that the industry suggests.

Journalists must stop being in denial: bloggers are here to stay

2005-06-15T16:44:00.000+01:00

A good article by John Naughton, pointing out that although blogging makes a small but significant change in our media ecology, it should neither be denied nor be percieved as a monocausal threat to journalism.
He pitches a sharp criticism of how some traditionalist commentators like David Shaw (an uber-hack who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his media criticism) describe blogging as a "solipsistic, self-aggrandising, journalist-wannabe genre". Shaw stands for a view where bloggers are seen as "practitioners of what is at best pseudo-journalism" and "many bloggers... don't seem to worry much about being accurate".
Contra this, Naughton points out that

Shaw omits to provide any links to blogs which illustrate these dismissive claims — in itself an interesting lapse in journalistic standards. But that is par for this course.
And it isn't just professional hacks who editorialise like this. Non-journalists who are dismissive of blogs behave similarly — and in my experience those who are most critical have rarely actually seen any blogs, and certainly have not read any serious ones. But in truth the view that 'all blogs are x' (where x = 'self-indulgent', 'vanity publishing', 'solipsistic' or whatever other term of abuse comes to mind) is as absurd as the view that 'all books are x' or 'all newspapers are x'...

read more
see also: John Naughton's own blog

Brazil adopts open-source software

2005-06-14T20:18:00.000+01:00

Increasingly, Brazil's government ministries and state-run enterprises are abandoning Windows in favour of open source / 'free' software, Steve Kingstone writes for the BBC.

Open source-based software proves to be ideal for developing nations, partly because it drastically reduces costs, and partly because it can be modified to suit local needs, the author argues.
We thus see, once again, how the open source model for R&D and innovation becomes not only a matter of preference, choice or taste — but in many cases a matter of need, viability and survival!
read more

Google = the world?

2005-06-07T17:34:00.000+01:00

Google has ambitions of covering the world...

Google + Keyhole = Google Earth
Google are allegedly about to replace the Keyhole virtual map service, with 3D renderings of the entire planet.
read more

Add to this the already existing Google Maps initiative... soon the world will be slightly more overseeable.

The copyright 'copyfight' is on

2005-06-04T14:21:00.000+01:00

A “battle continues around the world,” BBC columnist Bill Thompson argues;

the continuing dispute over what sort of legal protection creative people or the companies that employ them should have over the ways in which their works are used.
...
Remix culture is everywhere. All we can do is accept it, adapt to it and find ways to work and make a living within it.