The Case for Copyright Reform

Posted on May 6, 2012 by

This is the title of a 107-page book by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström. A must to read for all people involved in academy, politics or business.

In short, the authors propose a thorough copyright reform in six points:
* Moral rights unchanged
* Free non-commercial sharing
* 20 years of commercial monopoly
* Registration after 5 years
* Free sampling
* A ban on DRM

This is by far the best (albeit radical) set of suggestions in the last decade or so.  If it really succeeds, remains to be seen – especially as the other side has a long history of foul play.

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ACTA: the follow-up

Posted on February 15, 2012 by

The days after the protest (which was called ‘a qualitatively new phenomenon in Estonia’ by one of the main poll companies) have been full of action, too.  On the meme front, some musicians (rumoured to be serious ones) have released a techno-remix (using phrases from Mr Ansip’s speech mixed with visual metaphors and a techno track) under the alias of DJ Tinfoil. Quite a telling statement from real creators against the legislation supposed to be ‘protecting’ them.

On the more serious side, some of the leading thinkers of the ‘e-Estonia’ have proposed “The Internet Bill of Rights”. While still under discussion, this is a remarkable step to the right direction. And when the Foreign Minister Mr Urmas Paet tried to argue in the media that signing  ACTA would increase the respect of foreign investors towards Estonia and without it we would be downplayed as backwards, he was replied to by Mr Ahti Heinla.

The gentleman happens to be one of the original four ‘Skype guys’ and is an investor himself nowadays. He contacted several foreign investment people and asked their opinion. ALL of them said that things are totally the other way – without signing it, we would look better as a country thinking by itself and not willing to compromise new business models to keep outdated ones alive.

And Mr Prime Minister? He issued an ‘apology’ – basically saying that he was sorry that he was misunderstood. ACTA was still fine with him and all the stupidity he let loose was also OK.  Like a thug apologizing for running out of stones in his pockets… Bah.

On my behalf, I wrote a remixed fairytale – “A Tale of the Little Tin Riding Hood and the Big Bad Bureaucrat”. Right now, it’s only in Estonian, but maybe I should translate it into English. It already seems to gain some popularity…

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Stop ACTA @ Tallinn

Posted on February 11, 2012 by

Just returned from the event. Yes, I wore the tinfoil hat and shared some seeds (well, actually some nuts and goji berries) with others. Those who do not get it, please read the previous post (and note the abundance of tinfoil in the picture below).

Several thousands of people thwarted the -15 degrees frost and gathered to the centres of Tallinn and Tartu. Speakers included MEPs Kristiina Ojuland (Tallinn) and Indrek Tarand (Tartu), a number of Estonian MP-s and filmmaker Artur Talvik as well as several other well-known professionals.

Stop ACTA @ Tallinn, February 11, 2012

In addition, the Prime Minister’s arrogant speech has created a serious rift in his own party as well as the ruling coalition. A number of Reform Party members have vowed to resign if ACTA is signed. The chairman of their coalition partner calls for a halt in signing ACTA. And of course, the Internet memes about tinfoil keep running…

While Mr Ansip has got away with arrogance before, this time he ridiculed and thus enraged the very base of his own electorate – the well-off, literate and articulate professionals. So probably the most threatening slogan from the protest for the government was inspired from a song called “See you in the battlefield, dammit!” -  it read “See you in the elections, dammit!”

UPDATE: some photos of the event are also available from Flickr, e.g. the set by Otto de Voogd.  Also, Hillar Põldmaa has created a nice panorama of the event. By the way, the number of participants reported by the official media was ~1500. For me, the nunber seems to be quite remarkably bigger, judging on the panorama. If anyone cares to count the people…  :)

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Show must go on

Posted on February 9, 2012 by

Lucky, lucky Mr Laar…  He was relieved almost overnight of his dubiously honourable burden of bearing the title of “The Guy Who Filled Up Facebook” (see the previous post).  His coalition partner, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia Mr Andrus Ansip decided to speak up his mind about those pesky ACTA opponents at the weekly session of the Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament).  Note: I tried to find any stenogram in English but in vain, there are only some in Estonian (if anyone sees a suitable one, let me know!)

Wow. Just wow.  We (altogether with all the MPs) learned that those people who oppose ACTA
* are lunatics who should wear tinfoil hats,
* are probably eating some seeds, ‘not those we sow in the field, but some bad ones’,
* look like those panicking over the swine flu
* should just take a jacuzzi and calm down
plus some other juicy epithets.

And he was ‘ready to be held personally responsible for signing the agreement if such a person is necessary’. ACTA was all good and those who stood up against it were deranged idiots.  All this was based on briefly reading the Ministry of Justice short memo probably written by some junior official and saying nothing but a couple of  the same old tired half-truths coupled with some lies (compared to that, the EU ’10 Myths’ are much more thorough, but these have also been refuted by the FFII). But as Mr Prime Minister had read it, nothing more was deemed necessary.

It was really a worthy show. Mr Prime Minister looked like a high school guy ranting at his teachers on the Teachers’ Day (when some schools swap the roles of teachers and students for that day). His fellow members of the Reform Party seemed to feel a bit awkward and tried to bravely play along the bad game. Some other MPs were a little shocked.

Still, the final result was probably in line with the previous debacle of Mr Laar.  Lots of Facebook memes about  tinfoil hats and seeds sprung up almost immediately. I especially liked the one which featured a record cover  – ‘Andrus Ansip & The Bad Seeds”… The connection with the real Bad Seeds, the Nick Cave band, was outright hilarious;  in addition, the album title meant ‘Relief from Jacuzzi’… There were several others – and to be honest, I contributed some as well.

So now we are waiting for Saturday – at one o’clock in the afternoon, people in Tallinn and Tartu will join the European protests against the Agreement. And again we have to thank the guy who did it. Thank You, Mr Prime Minister – now every participant knows what to bring along.  Yes, you guessed it – tinfoil hats and packs of seeds.

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How Mart managed to fill up Facebook

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

(the story is actually nearly a week old by now, but I had no time to write about it earlier. It might still be of interest to somebody)

The international tragicomical farce called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement) has reached Estonia during the last weeks. And considering the previous experiences in Europe (Poland etc), it will be signed by our spineless politicians, no matter what it takes. I am not naive enough to assume anything else (even if I still expect the whole system of ‘intellectual property’ to crash within the next 5-10 years – but it might take a more radical way by first evolving into a real draconian system which then goes down with a big bang, lots of stink and angry people).

Yet, it has not gone as smoothly as the MAFIAA had predicted. The whole absurdity has reached the wide public by now – driving to work today, I happened to listen to the main radio station of the Estonian Public Broadcasting. When the national radio programme starts musing on future scenarios how your parents can be arrested for ‘illegally copying’ the recipe they learned at a cooking course (and things like this are definitely possible under the current legal trends of ‘intellectual property’), it’s telling enough.  At least here in Estonia, the initial plan to pass the whole ACTA farce quickly and silently has utterly failed.

One of the persons to be thanked for remarkably increasing the public awareness of ACTA is the former two-times Prime Minister Mart Laar – but not the way he himself would have wished for. Last week, he was asked about ACTA on his Facebook wall. He tried to reply some, but when further questions and remarks started to pile up, the whole wall was wiped.  And the reason given was… “Sorry, I ran out of space”!!!  And THIS was said by a guy who likes to present himself as a computer-savvy politician who helped to start the Tiger Leap Foundation and stuff…? Er… interesting.

It did not take long until Estonia got a new Internet meme spreading like wildfire (e.g. this, this or this; regrettably, most of them are in Estonian). “The guy who managed to fill up Facebook” is likely to haunt Mr Laar for many days to come.  Using another meme-like phrase – EPIC FAIL.

But as it often is – the awareness of ACTA and its dangers were tremendously boosted. Thank you, Mr Laar!

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A desktop for new Linux users – some thoughts

Posted on January 3, 2012 by

There is an Estonian legend telling about the Old Man of Ülemiste (Lake Ülemiste is the water source for most of Tallinn, the capital) visiting the city gates every midsummer and asking if the city is ready. The guards are instructed to answer negatively – as the Old Man will drown the city when it’s finished. Luckily, no city will ever be completed.

And neither will Free and Open-Source Software.

That said, during the last two years, the development of mainstream Linux distros has reached a nasty sort of limbo. Starting from the early days of Mandrake and Red Hat (I moved to Linux in August 2000), there have almost always been some efforts around to make Linux understandable for ordinary people as well. Sure, for several years it was still ‘hacker stuff’ but the effort was there.  Slowly and gradually, Linux distros became more usable – the whole new boost was given to it with the emergence of Ubuntu in the mid-2000s.

I don’t know if it was some kind of collective madness, some insidious death rays sent by aliens bribed by proprietary software companies, or the fear of losing one’s job when Linux is ready (did they meet the Old Man of Ülemiste?) – anyhow, somewhere around 2010 it happened.  It was the long anticipated “Year of Desktop Linux”, but with a minus sign. First, KDE 4 was a royal bummer. Then the upcoming GNOME 3 decided to follow. And finally, the makers of THE Linux for Ordinary People and the ones who initially had helped a lot to make free software easier to use – Canonical – dreamed up a huge turd of a desktop, named it Unity and decided to force everyone to use it.

Sure, the users’ uproar was there – and Ubuntu has since then lost its top place at the Distrowatch list, practically for the first time after its introduction. Yet, those roaring hacker types flicked up a finger towards Canonical, mumbled some obscenities and then proceeded to download and install Fedora, Debian, Arch, OpenSuse etc (and dumping the bloated desktops for XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox and others).  But the newcomers were silently unhappy.  And a number of them went back to Windows (some richer ones went to Apple, too).

I personally have used the pre-madness Ubuntu 10.04 LTS since (long support and works well with data projectors – something an academic needs daily; it was also messed up in new versions). Yet, after a year of confusion, I now may at least have something to install on the ordinary guy’s machine.

The (at least temporary) solution is Linux Mint 12 (which incidentally is the new top guy on the Distrowatch list)  with the MATE desktop (a fork of the pre-madness GNOME 2). It is possible to set up a nice workplace with configurability, less bloat and still nice appearance.

What I did:
* installed the packages compizconfig-settings-manager (with dependencies) and compiz-fusion-plugins-main (enabling some nice things like Shift and Ring Switcher in Compiz)
* added the line ‘compiz –replace’ to the Startup list
* restarted and switched the session to MATE

Optionally, to achieve a Mac-like dock functionality and to reduce the messy-ish Mint menu to a backup feature:
* install avant-window-navigator and awn-settings (with dependencies)
* add the ‘avant-window-navigator’ to the Startup list
* move the bottom panel to the top and perhaps make it almost transparent
* to switch  tasks, I use the Rotate Cube for workspaces and Ring Switcher for windows, but there are other ways
* an idea is also use some the top panel for some icons which run rarely needed administrative tasks (in order to separate them from the everyday stuff in the dock).

I haven’t had a chance to test out data projectors yet – but if the configuration handles them well, I’ll likely also switch. At least this is something that I could set up for my parents without scaring them unconscious.

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Wow!

Posted on October 9, 2011 by

In my various lectures about legal aspects of IT, I’ve often used the hypothetical example of “what if Sir Timothy Berners-Lee had patented the Web?” (it would have been able to start developing freely from the year we have now). I’ve also always thought the example as a bit hyperbolic – in the same class with the FFII webshop.

And now Cory Doctorow tells us that some dude suggests in all honesty that it would have been a great idea. Sure, I’ve seen this kind of people before – but none of them have been in charge of a UN-level organization. Excessive use of a neck-tie…?

Joe Bauers aka Not Sure in the Idiocracy movie probably felt a bit similar after waking up at Buttfuckers.

Still, some other news suggest a bit better scenario – the Greens at the European Parliament have apparently grokked it. Even if they are few, the fact itself occurring at the EP level is notable indeed.

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Backfired

Posted on September 9, 2011 by

Some time ago, the Tibetan Dalai Lama visited Tallinn. He has been here a couple of times before, always drawing ire from the Chinese government. This time, the reaction was to drop a minister’s planned visit to China, something else may be in reserve yet. But this is not the point that I wanted to write about. Rather, today’s Postimees (a major newspaper in Estonia) featured an 8-page inlay portion “purchased by China”.

Felt like 1982 or so. As a child, I started to read early and took on newspapers early as well. Growing up on Soviet-time literature kept me believing the Commie stuff for quite a while (honest!) – on the other hand, the Soviet newspapers were partially responsible for bringing me back to reality. They were just far too stuffed with unreal propaganda to be believed. Having grown into a full-fledged anti-Communist since, the today’s experience was like having an old nightmare suddenly come back. It was a book example of red propaganda in all its exaggeration.

Looking back to the days in the early 80s, I need to give some praise to Estonian media of the times. They occasionally found ways to put some twist into it, to be found by those willing to read between the lines.  One of the classic examples was the famous “Sitta kah!” cartoon during the 80s phosphorite war (the Soviets planned to start mining phosphorite in Eastern Estonia, the result was estimated to have turned 1/3 of the country into waste; this was the first large-scale, national protest movement which contributed heavily to the larger events following soon after – see the Wikipedia article for more). The cartoon featured a farmer shoveling dung to his field – with the biggest chunk looking like the silhouette of Estonia. “Sitta kah!” can be literally translated as “let’s add some shit” (to the field), but the common meaning of the phrase is rather “f… it!” or “to hell with that!” (I think the Wikipedia translation – “just shit” – does not convey the full meaning).  The cartoon caused a huge scandal, some ‘comrades’ were reprimanded, but the damage was done.

Among other things, this was the time of a kind of revelation – many Estonians who had been sedated by Soviet propaganda suddenly saw through it. And even if 25 years have passed, many of them are still alive and active. The today’s uproar in Estonian media proved that they largely shared the same “WTF???” moment with me.

I’m afraid that the Chinese government could not have picked a more inappropriate place in Europe to publish a paper like that. If some people were indifferent or … er, pragmatic (in political context, this usually means cynical cowardice) before that, they were convinced towards a totally different set of opinions from what the Chinese wanted to achieve. More than likely, the publication of the paper did more harm to the Chinese governmental interests than the visit of Dalai Lama. And Postimees has been hit by a far worse amount of virtual manure than what was featured in the cartoon (some critics ask if they would also be willing to publish stories purchased by the Kremlin – like how the mass deportations of 1941 and 1949 were actually tourist events…).  If this is not a blatant example of journalism for sale, then what it is?

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EPFSUG

Posted on August 20, 2011 by

…, the European Parliament Free Software User Group,  is apparently getting some wind into its sails. After visiting the EP last Spring,  I did not hope for such changes they are now trying to accomplish. Good work – and it’s nice that an Estonian MEP has taken on the principal role there.

It is also possible to become their supporter – it’s not limited to the people at the EP.

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Stealing the (very) old dreams

Posted on July 24, 2011 by

The JSTOR affair is really a new level of absurdity in the already pretty crazy world of ‘intellectual property’.  A very good overview is provided by Glyn Moody at his Open Enterprise blog.

The man who copied a bunch of ancient articles from the MIT server is charged for theft (and not copyright infringement  which could at least make some borderline sense!). To make things far worse, the US Attorney displays utter ignorance in understanding things digital. The latter is actually the real reason why this case is really important to get right – like cancer,  ignorant legislation tends to spread rapidly and is lethal if not treated early on.

Another issue is what was already touched earlier here and what is also pointed out by Moody -  most of the academic work has been paid by taxpayers already. This is just another case of double charge from customers seen so much in academic publishing – only this time, the stuff sold is old (in terms of copyright) as well.

And as pointed out by one of the commenters at OE, these same articles are still sold for tens of US dollars a piece. If this is what JSTOR deems affordable, they can really afford far too much.

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