As readers of this blog will doubtless know, Richard Stallman's great stroke of genius at the founding of the GNU project was to use copyright when crafting the GNU GPL licence, but in such a way that it undermined the restrictive monopoly copyright usually imposes on users, and required people to share instead.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Here's an interesting experiment that shows the way for all national libraries:Kopinor and the National Library of Norway signed a contract regarding a pilot project for digital books on the Internet.
Through the project, called Bokhylla.no (’Bookshelf’), the library will make all Norwegian books from the 1790s, 1890s and 1990s available on the Internet.
All titles from the 1990s and some titles from the 1890s – together approx. 50.000 books – are under copyright. These books will not be prepared for print or download, but will be made available to Norwegian IP-addresses.
There are things to fault - like limiting it to Norwegian IP addresses, and the fact that only some years are available - but it's a useful start.
What was Richard Stallman's greatest achievement? Some might say it's Emacs, one of the most powerful and adaptable pieces of software ever written. Others might plump for gcc, an indispensable tool used by probably millions of hackers to write yet more free software. And then there is the entire GNU project, astonishing in its ambition to create a Unix-like operating system from scratch. But for me, his single most important hack was the creation of the GNU General Public Licence....
On Linux Journal.
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“They order, said I, this matter better in France.” So wrote Laurence Sterne in his 1768 book A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Alas, things have changed much since then, at least as far as the Internet is concerned. In the light of recent events, now he would we have to say: they order this matter worse in France. Even more unfortunately, France's bad habits are spreading, and could have serious consequences for free software....
On Linux Journal.
Thousands of recordings that had been largely consigned to the realm of prehistory in the digital age have gained a new life, thanks to the tireless efforts of one man.
...
As the digital music movement started in earnest, Bolling began digitizing his records, and posted a list of first 1,500 songs he had digitized so fellow collectors could see what kind of progress he had made. Finally, he decided to upload MP3s of every song on the list so that he could access them from anywhere, and so that curiosity seekers could find them.
And so another commons is created, thanks to Cliff Bolling.
On Open Enterprise blog.
If you're in the EU, please do this.
The Pirate's Dilemma:The Pirate’s Dilemma tells the story of how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. It offers understanding and insight for a time when piracy is just another business model, the remix is our most powerful marketing tool and anyone with a computer is capable of reaching more people than a multi-national corporation.
To its credit, it is following its own philosophy:Why would an author give away a book for free? Obviously it makes a lot of sense given the arguments in this particular book, but it’s true for all authors that piracy isn’t a threat, it’s an opportunity.
There are millions of books on amazon.com, and on average each will sell around 500 copies a year. The average American is reading just one book a year, and that number is falling. The problem (to quote Tim O’Reilly) isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. Authors are lucky to be in a business where electronic copies aren’t considered substitutes for physical copies by most people who like reading books (for now at least).
By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.
Just one problem: To download, simply click on the link above or the book cover pictured on the left. You’ll be taken to a checkout page where you can set the price anywhere from $0.00 upwards.
How much to put in?
The European Commission wants your help:On 03/01/2008, the Commission adopted a Communication on Creative Content Online which launches further actions to support the development of innovative business models and the deployment of cross-border delivery of diverse online creative content services.
The transfer of creative content services to the online environment is an example of major systemic change. Building on the results of the 2006 consultation process, while complementing the initiatives already undertaken in the context of the i2010 strategy, the Commission intends to launch further actions to support the development of innovative business models and the deployment of cross-border delivery of diverse online creative content services.
That's good; less good is that among the four challenges are two where the Commission has got it all wrong:Interoperability and transparency of Digital Rights Management systems (DRMs) - Technologies allowing management of rights in the online environment can be a key enabler for the content sector's digital shift and for the development of innovative business models - especially with regard to high value content. As lengthy discussions among stakeholders did not yet lead to the deployment of interoperable DRM solutions, there is a need to set a framework for transparency of DRMs regarding interoperability, by ensuring proper consumer information with regards to usage restrictions and interoperability.
Legal offers and piracy - Piracy and unauthorised up- and downloading of copyrighted content remains a central concern. It would seem appropriate to instigate co-operation procedures ("code of conduct") between access/service providers, right holders and consumers in order to ensure a wide online offer of attractive content, consumer-friendly online services, adequate protection of copyrighted works, awareness raising/education on the importance of copyright for the availability of content and close cooperation fight piracy/unauthorised file-sharing.
DRM is a dying model; the idea of trying to make such a dinosaur technology compatible across the EU is bonkers. Even worse is the thought that ISPs should be policing content, or that we should be brainwashing children to chant the multifaceted marvellousness of intellectual monopolies. Time to get those word-processors sharpened....
I've always assumed the Swedish Pirate Party were a bunch of anarchists who wanted to cock a snook at authority by disrupting one of its precious intellectual monopolies, and have some fun along the way.
I was wrong.
It turns out that there is some pretty deep thinking behind what they are doing, as evidence by this fascinating interview with Rick Falkvinge, founder and the leader of the party:What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.
And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.
So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point.
Intellectual capital? Hm....
And then he goes on to make this important point:The people who have been led to believe that file sharing can be stopped with minimal intrusion are basically smoking crack.
Early on in the debate, we dropped the economic arguments altogether and focused entirely on civil liberties and the right to privacy. This has proven to be a winning strategy, with my keynote "Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties" being praised as groundbreaking.
The economic arguments are strong, but debatable. There are as many reports as there are interests in copyright, and every report arrives at a new conclusion. If you just shout and throw reports over the volleyball net at the other team, it becomes a matter of credibility of the reports. When you switch to arguing civil liberties, you dropkick that entire discussion.
Obviously I need to pay more attention to these people.
One of the things that Eben Moglen has impressed on me when I've talked to him was that he - and Richard Stallman - have always preferred to negotiate settlements in cases of alleged breaches of the GNU GPL, rather than to rush to litigation. Hitherto, that's always worked, in the US at least. So it's extremely significant that Moglen's SFLC has decided to change tactics:The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed the first ever U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit based on a violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL) on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, against Monsoon Multimedia, Inc. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2.
One of the conditions of the GPL is that re-distributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that each downstream recipient is provided access to the source code of the program. On the company's own Web site, Monsoon Multimedia has publicly acknowledged that its products and firmware contain BusyBox. However, it has not provided any recipients with access to the underlying source code, as is required by the GPL.
Clearly something big is afoot, here. Perhaps Moglen thinks the time has come to establish the legal solidity of the GNU GPL once and for all, and that this is the case to do it with. It will certainly be fascinating to see how this plays out.
Most of this is just legal posturing, but the following paragraph is noteworthy:Intellectual property is worth $650 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Not only does intellectual property drive our exports, it's a key part of what distinguishes developed economies from developing ones. Protecting intellectual property spurs investment and thereby the creation of new technologies and creative entertainment. This creates jobs and benefits consumers. Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws.
This equation of intellectual monopolies with civilisation is insulting in the extreme. As this blog has noted, IP maximalists - mostly in the US, but from Europe, too - are trying to stuff their monopolies down the throats of many developing nations, with disastrous effects on national and local economies, on people's lives and on entire cultures. Civilisation, my foot, this is pure neo-colonialism.
But of course the real scream is the last statement: "Google and YouTube wouldn't be here if not for investment in software and technologies spurred by patent and copyright laws". What, like the free software both use, which employs copyright to subvert traditional intellectual monopolies, or like the millions of user-created videos that are added to the content commons for the sheer joy of creating and sharing?
Sad.
One of the problems with the DRM battle is that it tends to get into a rut: the same old arguments for and against are trotted out. For those of us who care, it's a necessary price to pay for telling it as it is, but for onlookers, it's just plain boring.
That's what makes this piece, which reports on the recent conference "Copyright, DRM Technologies, and Consumer Protection", at UC Berkeley, quite simply the most interesting writing on DRM that I've come across for ages: as well as explaining the old arguments well, it includes a couple of new thoughts:One good point a few panelists made is that successful DRM is likely to weaken the user's privacy. All DRM prevents computers and media devices from sharing files freely with each other. But in order to merely curb freedom, rather than end it entirely, DRM must identify which files can be shared and which can't, and which methods of sharing are permissible. The more sophisticated this process of determination becomes, the more it is necessary for devices to analyze information about the files in complex ways. The burden of this analysis will often be too great to implement in typical consumer electronics — so instead the data will be sent to an online server, which will figure out your rights and tell the client device what to do. But step back and consider where this is going: devices all over your house, sending information about your viewing and listening habits to a central server. Is this data certain to be subpoena-able someday? You bet. It probably already is.
Another point (made by Peter Swire among others) was the computer security implications of running DRM. The code in a DRM system must be a black box: it cannot be open source, because if the user could understand and change it, she could disable it and copy her files without restriction. But if the code is opaque, it cannot be examined for security flaws — and in fact, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to even attempt such an examination in most circumstances. Basically, you have to run this code, for even if you are technically capable of modifying it, doing so would be illegal. (In response to this situation, Jim Blandy proposed a new slogan: "It's my computer, damn it!")
I believe that now is a critical moment in the fight against DRM: if we don't scotch the snake soon, it will turn into a hydra. To win, we need to convince "ordinary" people that DRM is mad, bad and dangerous to use; the points raised above could well prove important additions to the anti-DRM armoury.
See: it's not just me....Although Microsoft’s attempt to exploit Google’s YouTube problems is understandable, it’s also slightly repulsive and reeks of desperation. The software titan is hoping to build itself up by tearing Google down, never a good long-term strategy for success. Microsoft might damage Google’s reputation in the short-term, but it’s highly doubtful that Google’s incredible usefulness, not to mention its solid legal footing, will slip over time.
In the meanwhile, Microsoft will still be Microsoft, still playing distant second to Google. I would argue that Microsoft has damaged its own reputation with this lambast, showing to the world how it’s willing to tear down rivals instead of building itself up. That’s just not classy.
It seems that the WTO's demands are starting to bite in Vietnam:Though copyright sale isn’t very common on the Vietnamese market, at the end of 2006, several major state-owned businesses signed copyright contracts with Microsoft. An example was the Ministry of Finance, which bought 15.000 Office software copyrights. Vietnam Commercial Bank (Vietcombank) also signed agreements to have 4.000 permits for Microsoft Office 2003 within 3 years.
Vietnam’s starting to buy software copyrights is indeed a good sign showing that the country is starting to respect WTO rules. The fact that the Ministry of Finance, one of the most important ministries in Vietnam, plays the leading role, also helps to prove to the world that Vietnam intends to make good all of its software copyright pledges to the WTO.
And not surprisingly, people there are beginning to wonder if there isn't a better way - especially for a developing country that has better things to do with its financial resources than giving them to the richest man in the world and his company:At a national conference on open-source software held in Hanoi at the end of 2006, Vietnam Information Association called for the use and development of domestic products, encouragement of free software with similar functions such as OpenOffice, and application of new technologies such as Web 2.0 which Google, Yahoo, Sun, Oracle are currently using.
As the WTO clamps down on countries that use unauthorised copies of software on a large scale, this kind of development is bound to be repeated.
Update: Meanwhile, here's another country with reasons of its own for preferring free software to the kind that comes from the US....
This blog has constantly warned readers to be on their guard against weasel words whose unexceptionable and generalised nature betray an intent to redefine. A classic example - double-barrelled to boot - is the Progress & Freedom Foundation, which has absolutely nothing to do with freedom as Richard Stallman would understand it, and as a concomitant, precious little to do with progress either.
As its About page makes clear, freedom means the right to impose intellectual monopolies - or, as it quaintly puts it:the "imperative" to protect rich digital content and encourage innovation through the traditional legal notions of copyright and patent.
Hm, that's a new one: the imperative to impose intellectual monopolies. Not much freedom there, methinks. The other key phrases to note are "market-oriented policy" and "Applying benefit-cost analysis to proposals for regulation of the market for personal information" - so you can forget about any right to privacy: if it's profitable, it's good.
No surprise, then, that one of the foundation's luminaries has written an oh-so-reasonable defence of the Microsoft-Novell stitch-up. Except that it is fundamentally flawed, despite its reasonable tone.
Its central argument in favour of the oh-so-reasonable Microsoft-Novell stitch-up is as follows:Customers also want freedom from concern about potential intellectual property problems. They do not want to worry whether someone might come out of left field claiming the right to enjoin some mission-critical application.
- and yes, there's that tell-tale little word "freedom" again.
So, as a customer, I'm supposed to worry about whether my supplier is infringing on somebody else's intellectual monopoly? Sorry, but I don't care a fig about the intellectual monopolies involved in products that I buy or use: I care about whether they do the job at a reasonable price. I expect the supplier to worry about the legal details - that's partly what I pay for.
Reframing it in these terms attempts to enmesh the user in the battles that try to employ intellectual monopolies as competitive weapons that are the very antithesis of progressive. It is a trick that aims to legitimise and bolster the strength of this approach, by falsely claiming that it matters to the general public. It is true that manufacturers and suppliers do indeed need to worry, unfortunately, but that is a problem, and a reflection of how the original legal frameworks have been distorted by corporate lawyers and greedy industries.
To remedy this situation, we all need to ignore those issues, and fight for minimalist intellectual monopolies - 14 years for copyright, as it was originally, and patents whose scope is narrowed considerably, or, ideally, abolished entirely.
Needless to say, since the premise of the article is mistaken, its conclusion is too: the Microsoft-Novell deal is bad for customers, since it brings in patenting issues where there aren't any. After all, if Microsoft really believed open source infringed on its patents it would go to court, as it routinely has in the past. Are we supposed to believe that Steve Ballmer has come over all magnanimous, and wants to give open source a chance to reform? I think not.
It's also a disaster for Novell, which is now tainted by Redmond's kiss of Judas. Indeed, I strongly suspect that in retrospect it will be seen as the inflection point that began the company's terminal decline.
Printing-on-demand has long been a dream, and the Espresso Book Machine looks like it's making it a reality, albeit on a small scale. But what's interesting about this - aside from the ability to get public domain books printed on the spot - is that it depends on the existence of a knowledge commons. Pity that recent copyright laws are doing their utmost to squeeze that space. (Via Slashdot.)
I've written a fair amount about patent woes in these posts (some would probably say too much). And in many ways, patents are easy pickings, since the idiocies perpetrated by patent offices around the world are pretty obviously wrong, even to the person on the Clapham omnibus.
But trademarks are another matter. Rights and wrongs here are more slippery, since there is certainly commercial sense in allowing owners to protect brands that they may have invested considerable amounts to build up. But trademarks are not like copyright: it is not an artistic question of infringing on an expression of an idea, but rather a commercial issue of avoiding confusion in the marketplace.
So the news that the US is about to push through some changes to its trademark law that will radically re-shape what trademarks will do in areas outside commerce is bad indeed. The bill in question would remove traditional exceptions to US trademark law that concern news reporting and commentary; fair use; and non-commercial use. If these proposals become law, it will give owners of trademarks huge and totally inappropriate power over not just competitors, but the media and the public too.
Update: Here's what companies already get up to using trademarks.
You may think that the US DMCA is bad enough, since it "criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet", as Wikipedia puts it.
But if you take a look at this news story, you'll see it can still get worse. It seems that the IP maximalists really want to nail everything down - even if that means soft parts of your anatomy get caught in the process.
And if you live outside the US, you can wipe that smile of smug satisfaction off your face. The DMCA has already led to the pernicious EU Copyright Directive; if the Americans are blessed with the joy and privilege of a DMCA++, rest assured that it will only be a matter of time before "IP harmonisation" demands that we follow suit.
I've already written about how the "commons" meme is on the rise, with all that this implies in terms of co-operation, sharing and general open source-iness. Now here are two more.
The first is the Co-operation Commons, "an interdisciplinary framework for understanding cooperation" (an excellent, fuller explanation can be found here). The second is the Credibility Commons, "an experimental environment enabling individuals the opportunity to try out different approaches to improving access to credible information on the World Wide Web."
As the commons becomes, er, commoner, I find that it is all just getting more and more interesting.
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