Greece Stares Into the Abyss; Meanwhile, Local Music And Audiovisual Collecting Society Gets Court Order To Block Web Sites

As you may have heard, Greece is having a spot of bother at the moment. Its economy shrank by 6.2% in the last three months alone, and the austerity measures imposed in return for international loans to keep the country running have contributed to a 40% jump in the suicide rate. 

On Techdirt.

ACTA Update V

The European Commission's defence of ACTA has essentially two prongs. The first is that "ACTA changes nothing for Europeans"; I discussed why that was simply not true in my previous two updates. The other is: "we need ACTA to protect our economies from counterfeiting." Leaving aside the sleight of hand that blurs the distinction between physical counterfeits and digital copies - something I've noted before - I want to show why this claim too is false.

On Open Enterprise blog.

θαλασσα θαλασσα

Since I've been using the Web for over 15 years, it's not often that a site leaves me gob-smacked. But of all the sites I've seen recently, Marine Traffic is definitely one of the most amazing:

This web site is part of an academic, open, community-based project. It is dedicated in collecting and presenting data which are exploited in research areas, such as:

- Study of marine telecommunications in respect of efficiency and propagation parameters
- Simulation of vessel movements in order to contribute to the safety of navigation and to cope with critical incidents
- Interactive information systems design
- Design of databases providing real-time information
- Statistical processing of ports traffic with applications in operational research
- Design of models for the spotting of the origin of a pollution
- Design of efficient algorithms for sea path evaluation and for determining the estimated time of ship arrivals
- Correlation of the collected information with weather data
- Cooperation with Institutes dedicated in the protection of the environment

It provides free real-time information to the public, about ship movements and ports, mainly across the coast-lines of Europe and N.America. The project is currently hosted by the Department of Product and Systems Design Enginnering, University of the Aegean, Greece. The initial data collection is based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS). We are constantly looking for partners to take part in the community. They will have to install an AIS receiver and share the data of their area with us, in order to cover more areas and ports around the world.

Basically, then, it shows in *real-time* the positions of ships along major sea-lanes around the world. Hovering over their icons brings up information about that ship, including its speed and heading. Other pages have background data on ports and the ships. But the most amazing thing is just watching the shipping traffic gradually *move* in front of your eyes...

Free, open and gobsmacking: what more do you want? (Via Global Guerillas.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

EngLab: A Gift of a Program for Engineers

On Open Enterprise blog.

I Fear Microsoft, Bearing Gifts for the Greeks

They're at it again:

Η Microsoft είναι η πρώτη εταιρεία που θα προσφέρει δωρεάν εργαλεία ανάπτυξης και σχεδίασης λογισμικού στην ελληνική ακαδημαϊκή κοινότητα μέσω της νέας υπηρεσίας «Αναφανδόν» του Εθνικού Δικτύου Έρευνας και Τεχνολογίας (ΕΔΕΤ). Οπως ανακοινώθηκε την περασμένη εβδομάδα, πρόσβαση στην υπηρεσία έχουν αυτή τη στιγμή οι φοιτητές και καθηγητές του Εθνικού Μετσόβιου Πολυτεχνείου, ενώ σύντομα αναμένεται η σταδιακή ένταξη όλων των ιδρυμάτων της τριτοβάθμιας εκπαίδευσης και των ερευνητικών κέντρων.

[Via Google Translate:

Microsoft is the first company that will offer free development tools and design software to the Greek academic community through new service Anafandon of the National Research and Technology Network (GRNET). Microsoft is the first company that will offer free development tools and design software to the Greek academic community through new service Anafandon of the National Research and Technology Network (GRNET).]

It's Déjà Vu, All Over Again

A few months back, I wrote about a petition calling for ERT, the Greek national broadcaster, to make its content freely available. Now it looks like ERT is following in the misguided footsteps of the BBC in terms of platforms:

Greek Open Source developers are protesting that ERT, Greece's national broadcaster, will make its online archive available only for users of Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OSX.

The Hellenic Linux User Group six months ago approached ERT, after finding out the public broadcaster was restricting their access to a new archive. ERT is a public organisation, the developers argue, and should not discriminate against users of Open Source.

In some ways, the situation here is even worse than for the BBC:

ERT is developing an archive of its broadcast material, digitising film, video, pictures and hosting them online. The archive is going to be developed in a 1.95 million euro project, the major part of which is funded by the European Union, the Open Source developers say.

Since the money is being paid for by the EU, it follows that access should not be limited to a couple of platforms.

I Fear the Greeks, Not Bearing Gifts

As a big fan of the Greek national television channel ERT (available as a stream), I was interested in this campaign to gain open access to the ERT audiovisual archive:

Greek citizens, but also citizens of other countries, we jointly sign this text on the occasion of ERT’s choice to distribute its audiovisual archive non-freely to the public. Our aim and ambition is to publicize our propositions so that they become the starting point of an open dialog among the Greek society, the European and global public audience and to signal the revision of backward policies and the creation of common political wealth.

Few days ago, the ERT administration presented the beginning of the availability, only via Internet streaming, of a part of its audiovisual archive. This move constitutes an important first step, which, however, in our opinion, is tarnished by the fact that the public availability of the archive is not made free, although the Greek and European citizens have paid their money to make the production and digitization of the archive feasible.

To which I can only say: σωστά. (Via Open Access News.)

Creative Commons in the Agora

If the Creative Commons licences are all Greek to you, try this.